Many people who have visited Madrid will be able to recognize the street Maria de Molinaa road that connects Avenida de América with Paseo de la Castellana. However, fewer will know who he was.
María de Molina was a medieval queen. In fact, she was not only a queen, she was “thrice queen”according to the words of the historian Mercedes Gaibrois. This nickname could not be more accurate, since Mary exercised power on three occasions: queen consort with her husband Sancho IV (1258-1295), regent during the minority of her son Ferdinand IV (1285-1312) and tutor of her grandson. Alfonso XI (1311-1350).
When she was born in 1264, she was considered a “rich woman” – a term for noble and wealthy ladies – but no one thought that she could one day become sovereign. In 1282 she married the infante Sancho, son of the famous Alfonso X “the Wise”. But her husband was a second-in-command and, after the death of her older brother, Ferdinand, some – including her mother – considered that according to the law of Castile the throne was destined for Ferdinand’s children.
Besides, Their marriage was never viewed favorably by the Church. because the bride and groom – a distant nephew and aunt – had not obtained the bull that allowed them to marry even though they were relatives and, mainly, because Sancho was still married to Guillerma de Montcada, although the wedding had not been consummated.
These impediments, however, were solved by the luck and skill of the couple. Sancho took the throne from his brother’s children and, at the same time, María began a campaign aimed at get approval from the Vaticana process that culminated successfully in 1301.
life in the palace
During her nearly sixty years of life, María traveled throughout her territories, since the Crown did not have a fixed residence.
It was common for monarchs to stay in the palaces of nobles, in specific rooms within some monasteries or in their own royal palaces. Queen Mary He felt a special predilection for Valladolid and there he used to stay in the Palacio de la Magdalena, a space to which some plasterwork may have belonged that still today reflects the interest of the Castilian elites in the arts of the Andalusian kingdom of Granada.
And to understand more deeply the admiration that the court felt towards Granada objects, we must turn our eyes to the funerary trousseau of one of Mary’s sons: the Infante Alfonso (1286-1291), who was buried with a cloth inscribed in Arabic. The luxury of Mary’s court is also reflected in the royal accounts, which mention works such as the Santa Catalina gold front or her husband’s luxurious objects, among which the Saint Louis Biblea sword, a crown with cameos and other fabrics also from Granada.
A queen in memory
Throughout their lives, both María de Molina and her husband felt a strong devotion to religious orders and, specifically, to the Dominican Order. This is not a coincidence, since Saint Dominic de Guzmán was Castilian and his order had achieved great success thanks to preaching. Mary entrusted her soul to several Dominican confessors and favored many monasteries of the order, even asking in her will that They dressed his corpse in the habit of Dominican nuns.
What is most intriguing, however, is that neither Mary nor Sancho IV ever asked to be buried in a convent of the Dominican Order. The king had chosen the cathedral of Toledo as his final resting place and several sources indicate that he had a stone tomb carved there. Despite everything, this was not the last tomb of Sancho IV, because Mary replaced it with the tomb decorated with the statue of the king which is still preserved today in the cathedral. For herself she had a mysterious tomb built that must have been similar but, however, we do not know if it was ever built.
A few years later, María changed her mind and asked to be buried in the Cistercian convent of Las Huelgas in Valladolid, thus creating a parallel with the famous royal pantheon of Las Huelgas in Burgos. This monastery underwent several reconstructions over the centuries that make it practically impossible to recognize its medieval appearance.
What we do know is that it was built near the Royal Palace of Magdalena and a few years after the queen’s death it was still under construction. It was at that moment when María de Molina’s tomb was covered in silvera rich material that should accompany that woman who should not reign, but who was “queen three times” for centuries and centuries.
María Teresa Chicote Pompanin is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid. This article was originally published in The Conversation.
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