To mark the 700th anniversary of the royal abbey in Barcelona, archaeologists have opened eight tombs from the 14th century – including the tomb of Elisenda de Montcada, Queen of Aragon. Something surprising emerged: the queen had been buried in simple robes and in a small, simple wooden box. A supposed knight’s grave contained the bones of two women and three children instead of male remains, and the grave of the queen’s niece contained the bones of nine people buried at different times, the team reports.
The noblewoman Elisenda de Montcada, born in Barcelona in 1292, was herself of royal blood and the daughter of a royal seneschal. At the age of 30, she became the fourth wife of the then King of Aragon, James II. This king, also known as Jaime el Justo, was already relatively old at this point and died just five years later. In 1326, shortly before his death, Queen Elisenda, with the support of the king, founded a nunnery for the female branch of the Franciscans, the Poor Clares, the royal abbey of Santa Maria of Pedralbes in Barcelona.
First look at medieval tombs
Although Elisenda de Montcada did not become a nun herself, she lived not far from the monastery and took part in monastic life as a lay sister. On the queen’s death in 1364 she was buried in the abbey church. Her tomb with a sarcophagus shows the dead woman both as a queen and in the costume of a Poor Clare sister.
But what the sarcophagus of this queen’s tomb contains is only now becoming apparent: As part of the 700th anniversary of the founding of the royal abbey, archaeologists led by the monastery director Anna Castellano-Tresserra and the municipal archaeologist Josep Maria Vila have now opened and examined in more detail the tomb of Elisenda de Montcada and eight other tombs from the 14th century for the first time. As part of a multidisciplinary project, the team analyzed the human bones and determined age, gender and medical abnormalities. The researchers also examined the clothing and grave goods of the dead.
Simple coffin and nun’s habit
It became clear that the bones of Queen Elisenda, who was already 70 years old when she died, were not buried in a magnificent coffin or with rich offerings. Instead, their bones lay in a small, simple wooden box that stood in a kind of gap between the church and the monastery. According to archaeologists, this could reflect the queen’s dual position: in worldly terms she was a ruler, but in spiritual terms she was a lay sister of the monastery and thus of an order that obliged its members to be poor and humble.
The queen’s clothing also reflects this: Although Elisenda was buried in the simple habit of the nuns, the research team also discovered remnants of a gold-decorated silk fabric in her grave. Overall, however, the investigations confirm that the bones in the tomb must actually be those of Queen Elisenda.
Women and children instead of the bones of a knight
The situation is different when it comes to the contents of some other graves from the founding period of the Abbey of Santa Maria of Pedralbes: The archaeologists made a surprising find, among other things, when they opened the tomb of the Aragonese knight Artal I de Foces. In the 14th century, on the orders of the King of Aragon, he brought votive offerings to the then Pope and received valuable relics in return. But when Vila’s team examined the bones found in the knight’s grave, something unexpected emerged. Because instead of a single adult man, the bones come from two adult women and three children. One of the women still had her long hair tied in a ponytail, the team reports. Who these dead were and why they lie in the knight’s tomb is still unclear.
The contents of the tomb of Francesca Saportella, niece of Queen Elisenda and second abbess of the royal abbey, proved equally unexpected. In her tomb, archaeologists discovered the remains of at least nine different people who had been buried there at different times. These include four male skulls with clear signs of stab wounds and the mummified torso of a woman who had apparently died of a premature birth: the remains of a 20 to 23 week old fetus were still in her birth canal.
Who were these people?
The researchers now hope to use DNA and isotope analyzes to determine who all these people were, whether and how they were related to each other and what relationship they had to the monastery. They have already taken samples of bone material and teeth and laboratory analyzes are underway. “The final results of our investigations should make it possible to clarify key questions about the identity of individuals, the reuse of graves, burial rituals and the internal dynamics of this monastery as a center of female power in the 14th century,” says the communication from the Cultural Institute of Barcelona.
Source: Institut de Cultura de Barcelona