Elisenda de Montcada

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The tomb of Elisenda de Montcada with her reclining figure portrayed as queen in the Abbey of Pedralbes.

Elisenda de Montcada (* 1292 ; † 1364 in Barcelona ) was Queen of Aragón from 1322 to 1327 as the fourth and last wife of King James II the Just .

Elisenda was a daughter of Pere II. De Montcada († 1300), royal seneschal and lord of Aitona and Soses , and of Elisenda de Pinós. On her father's side, she came from one of the first families in Catalonia and was herself of royal descent, her great-grandmother was an illegitimate daughter of King Peter II the Catholic . Because of this kinship to the royal family, a papal dispensation was necessary for her marriage to James II. She herself was the first Catalan lady to be married to an Aragonese king. At the time of their wedding on December 25, 1322 in Tarragona , she was already thirty years old. No children had resulted from the marriage, but Elisenda acted as the foster mother of her stepson Alfonso IV , who was a godson of her brother Ot de Montcada († 1341), and his son Peter IV.

Elisenda had been close to the Franciscan order throughout her life and, with the support of her husband, founded the royal abbey of Santa Maria de Pedralbes for the Sisterhood of the Poor Clares in 1326 . After the death of her husband in 1327, she joined this monastery community as a layperson , in which she died in 1364 and was buried. Her tomb is equipped with a double sarcophagus and two reclining figures, one of which depicts her as a queen and once as a Poor Clare sister.

literature

  • Ernesto Martínez Ferrando: Biografia de Elisenda de Montcada (Barcelona, ​​1953)
  • Ester Balasch, Francesca Español: Elisenda de Montcada: Una reina lleidatana i la fundació del real monestir de Pedralbes (Lleida, 1997).
  • Eileen McKiernan González: Reception, Gender, and Memory: Elisenda de Montcada and her Dual-Effigy Tomb at Santa Maria de Pedralbes , ed. by Therese Martin in: Reasessing the Roles of Woman as 'Makers' of Medieval Art and Architecture (2012), pp. 309–351.

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personal data
SURNAME Elisenda de Montcada
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Queen of Aragon
DATE OF BIRTH 1292
DATE OF DEATH 1364
Place of death Barcelona