Elvira Menéndez (
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
and
Galician: Elvira Mendes; died between 20 February and 12 October 921) was
Queen consort of
León due to her marriage with King
Ordoño II.
Biography
Elvira was the daughter of
Hermenegildo Gutiérrez Hermenegildo Gutiérrez (Hermenegildo Guterres in Portuguese) (c. 850 – after May 912), was a distinguished Galician noble who lived during the 9th and 10th centuries. As the Mayordomo mayor of King Alfonso III, he was an active member of the cu ...
, a
Galician noble, count in
Tuy and
Oporto
Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropo ...
, who was responsible for the reconquest of
Coimbra
Coimbra (, also , , or ) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2011 census was 143,397, in an area of .
The fourth-largest urban area in Portugal after Lisbon, Porto, and Braga, it is the largest cit ...
, and his wife Ermesenda Gatónez. Around 892, Elvira married ''
Infante
''Infante'' (, ; f. ''infanta''), also anglicised as Infant or translated as Prince, is the title and rank given in the Iberian kingdoms of Spain (including the predecessor kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, Navarre, and León) and Portugal to th ...
'' Ordoño, the son of King
Alfonso III of Asturias, who first ruled as King of
Galicia and later of
León after the death of his brother
García I in 914. Elvira confirmed numerous charters with her husband, many of these being privileges and donations to Galician nobles and religious establishments, especially to the
Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
The Santiago de Compostela Archcathedral Basilica (Spanish and Galician: ) is part of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Santiago de Compostela and is an integral component of the Santiago de Compostela World Heritage Site in Galicia, Spain. The c ...
.
Elvira died between 20 February and 12 October 921. According to the chronicle of
Sampiro, when King Ordoño received the news of her death upon his return from a successful campaign against the
Moors
The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages.
Moors are not a distinct or ...
in
Zamora, "...the pain was as great as the joy for his triumph". She was buried in the
Pantheon of Asturian Kings in the
Cathedral of San Salvador in
Oviedo.
Issue
From her marriage with King Ordoño she had the following children:
*
Sancho Ordóñez
Sancho Ordóñez ( 895 – 929) was King of Galicia from 926 and until his death in 929, and may briefly have been King of León in 925–26. He was the eldest son of Ordoño II, who inherited Galicia in a partition of the Kingdom of Asturias wit ...
,
King of Galicia
Galicia is an autonomous community and historical nationality in modern-day northwestern Spain on the Iberian Peninsula, which was a major part of the Roman province known as Gallaecia prior to 409. It consists of the provinces of A Coruña, ...
;
*
Alfonso IV;
King of León
In the reign of Ordoño I of Asturias (850–866), the kingdom began to be known as that of León. In 910, an independent Kingdom of León was founded when the king of Asturias divided his territory amongst his three sons.
Below follows a ...
;
*
Ramiro II, King of León after the abdication of his brother Alfonso;
* Jimena Ordóñez (died after 935);
* García Ordóñez (died after 934).
References
Bibliography
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elvira Menendez (died 921)
921 deaths
Leonese queen consorts
Galician queens consort
10th-century Portuguese people
10th-century Portuguese women
10th-century people from the Kingdom of León
10th-century Spanish women
10th-century Visigothic people