Ramiro II, called the Monk, was a member of the House of Jiménez who became king of Aragon in 1134. Although a monk, he was elected by the Aragonese nobility to succeed his childless brother Alfonso the Battler. He then had a daughter, Petronilla, whom he had marry Count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona, unifying Aragon and Barcelona into the Crown of Aragon. He withdrew to a monastery in 1137, leaving authority to Ramon Berenguer but keeping the royal title until his death.

The Jiménez dynasty, alternatively called the Jimena, the Sancha, the Banu Sancho, the Abarca or the Banu Abarca, was a medieval ruling family which, beginning in the 9th century, eventually grew to control the royal houses of several kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula during the 11th and 12th centuries, namely the Kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon, Castile, León and Galicia as well as of other territories in the South of France. The family played a major role in the Reconquista, expanding the territory under the direct control of the Christian states as well as subjecting neighboring Muslim taifas to vassalage. Each of the Jiménez royal lines ultimately went extinct in the male line in the 12th or 13th century.