Henry, third count of Albarracin

Henry
Count of Albarracin
Predecessor	Ramon
Successor	Ferran
Born	1049 Aragon
Died	20 May 1085 Barcelona, Kingdom of Aragon
Buried	Barcelona
Noble family	Cerdanya Vieja
Spouse(s)	Gueraua (d. 1077) Sança d'Urgell
Issue Ferran
Father	Ramon, second count of Albarracin
Mother	Adelaida

Henry de Cerdanya (Catalan: Enric; 1049 - 20 May 1085) was an Aragonese nobleman and rebel during the reign of Ramon-Berenguer I. A supporter of Sancho Jimena's claim to the Aragonese throne, Henry rebelled against Ramon-Berenguer and was executed for treason.

Life

Henry was born in 1049, the eldest son of Ramon de Cerdanya, himself the eldest son of the elderly court official and knight Giufré de Cerdanya. He came of age circa 1065, by which point his father had become baron of Cerdanya. As heir to a barony, Henry would have received the typical education of a Christian Iberian nobleman at this time, including education in Latin and Catholic theology, as well as riding, hunting, and the usage of weapons.

Henry's father became count of Albarracin in 1070 after the death of his uncle Berenguer. His father's elevation provided Henry with the wealth to make an independent marriage circa 1071, to a Catalan woman named Gueraua, perhaps a member of minor nobility. Henry succeeded his father as count of Albarracin after the latter's death in 1073.

Henry held some type of official office under Ramon-Berenguer; this can be surmised by his presence as consiliarius regius on one of the king's charters, issued from Vic on 1 March 1078. Henry's closeness to the king was also demonstrated in other ways. After Ramon-Berenguer's injury at Alhama de Aragón in 1077, multiple contemporaries report that the king was taken to the castle of Albarracin to recover. Henry improved his political standing within the kingdom of Aragon by taking Sança, sister of Ermengol, count of Urgell, as his second wife circa 1080.

The count's apparent loyalty to Ramon-Berenguer was balanced by his secret collaboration with the king's dynastic rival Sancho Jimena, whom Ramon-Berenguer had overthrown in 1070-71. During the spring of 1080, according to a chronicle written a century later, the king tasked Henry with tracking Sancho down, but Henry instead helped the ex-king, who had fled into the hills of Alto Aragón, to evade Ramon-Berenguer's clutches. Henry's relationship with Ramon-Berenguer may have been soured by the king's effective exclusion of Henry's brother-in-law Ermengol, count of Urgell, from the line of succession in 1082. In any case, by early 1083 Henry was offering private assurances to Sancho Jimena that he would support Sancho's bid to regain the crown of Aragon.

The ensuing dynastic war erupted in May 1083. Around the same time, Henry was dispatched on a successful embassy to seek the aid of Alfonso VI, king of León, for Sancho's cause. Henry acted as Sancho's chief diplomat during the war. He was humiliated by his failure to defend his ancestral castle of Cerdanya, which fell to a royal army on 11 June 1084. The count, who seems to have displayed no military aptitude, managed to escape Zaragoza before the city's capture by Ramon-Berenguer in January 1085. After Sancho's final defeat in battle in April, Henry decided that his only option was to throw himself on Ramon-Berenguer's mercy.

Henry surrendered to the king within days after Sancho's defeat, but was denied clemency. Taken in chains to Barcelona, Henry was beheaded in front of crowds in the city's Old Plaza on 20 May 1085. Henry's son and only child Ferran, a legal minor, was permitted to inherit his titles, in one of the so-called "Miracles of the House of Cerdanya". Henry's body was desecrated under the punishment of treason, and he was buried in an unmarked grave in Barcelona.