Sancha of Castile

Infanta Sancha of Castile (September 21 1154 or 1155 – November 9 1208, Sijena) was the only child of King Alfonso VII of Castile by his second queen, Richeza of Poland, who was the daughter of Vladislav II, Duke of Silesia.

On January 18 1174 in Saragossa she married King Alfonso II of Aragon. They had 9 children, but only seven would survive into adulthood:

* Constance of Aragon-> married King Imre of Hungary and later, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
* Leonor -> married Count Raymond VI of Toulouse
* Peter II of Aragon (I of Barcelona), b. 1174, killed at the Battle of Muret, September 12, 1213
* Dolça (nun)
* Alfonso II, Count of Provence, b. 1180, d. 1209
* Fernando, Abbot of Montearagon, d. after 1227
* Ramon Berenguer, d. in the 1190s

A patroness of troubadours such as Giraud de Calanson and Peire Raymond, the queen became involved in a legal dispute with her husband concerning properties which formed part of her dower estates. In 1177 she entered the county of Ribagorza and took forcible possession of various castles and fortresses which had belonged to the crown there.

After her husband died at Perpignan in 1196, Sancha was relegated to the background of political affairs by her son Pedro II, and she retired from court, withdrawing to the abbey of Nuestra Senora, at Sijena, which she had founded. There she assumed the cross of the Order of St John of Jerusalem which she wore till the end of her life. The queen mother entertained her widowed daughter Queen Constanza of Hungary (1179-1222) at Sijena prior to her leaving Aragon for her marriage with the emperor Frederick II in 1208. She died soon afterwards, aged fifty-four, and was interred before the high altar of the church at Sijena.

References

*E.L. Miron, "The Queens of Aragon: Their Lives and Times," Stanley Paul & Co, London (c1910).