Elisenda of Montcada

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

Elisenda was a daughter of Pere de Montcada II († 1300), Royal Seneschal and Lord of Aitona and Soses, and the Elisenda de Pinós. Father's side she was descended from one of the first families of Catalonia and was himself of royal descent, her great-grandmother was an illegitimate daughter of King Peter II the Catholic. Because of this close kinship to the royal family a papal dispensation for her marriage to James II was necessary. She herself was the first Catalan lady who was taken by the Aragonese king for his wife. At the time of their wedding on December 25, 1322 in Tarragona, she was already thirty. The marriage produced no children had emerged, however, acted as Elisenda foster mother of her stepson Alfonso IV, who was a godson of her brother Ot de Montcada († 1341 ) and his son Peter IV.

Her life had been close Elisenda the Franciscan Order and with the support of her husband she had founded in 1326 for the Klarissenschwesternschaft the royal Abbey of Santa Maria of Pedralbes. After her husband's death in 1327 she had joined as a layman of this monastic community in which she died in 1364 and was buried. Her grave is equipped with a double sarcophagus and two deck figures that represent them once a queen, and once as Klarissinnenschwester.