Wise advisers, owners of their destinies: Adela of Blois and Urraca Fernández. A comparative study
- Margarita Torres Sevilla University of Leon; Universidad de León https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9735-2429
Abstract
We draw a comparative study between two of the most important women of the 11th and 12th centuries: Adela, Countess of Blois, and the Infanta de León Urraca Fernández. Both for their origins, as for their education and role as advisers to powerful men, were judged favorably by contemporary chronicles. The epic, however, created a distorted image of Urraca Fernández because of King Sancho´s death in Zamora, while Adela's involvement in dark family plots was silenced. We have used historical sources and recent historiography. All of this leads us to conclude that the balance played in Adela's favor, due to her friendship with some of the most prominent men in the Church, and Urraca partly lost that battle, despite her connection with San Isidoro de León and Infantazgo monasteries.
Author Biography
Number one of her joint promotion of Geography, History and Art at the University of León (1992), Ph. D. in Medieval History (1997), she is Lectures of Medieval History at the University of León. In 2000 she was Visiting Scholar at Saint John's College, Cambridge University. Her accredited language skills include English, German, Russian, Classical Arabic, and French. She has been recognized three six-year research and five five-year teaching periods. Specialist in the Early Middle Ages, especially in the territorial sphere of the Kingdom of León, she has participated in 24 research projects, directed several theses and her scientific publications exceed 70. Between 2008 and 2015 she was Director of the Extraordinary Chair of Security and Defense "Admiral Bonifaz", linked to the Spanish Institute of Strategic Studies (Ministry of Defense). He has received various national and international awards, such as the First National Prize for Young Medievalists, awarded by the Spanish Society of Medieval Studies (1995 and 1999), the National Research Prize of the Spanish Federation of Genealogy, Heraldry and Nobility (2000), or the “Florianne de Koskull” (2000), in recognition of her research work, awarded in Belgium by the Academy Internationale de Généalogie, Heraldique et Nobiliaire. Between 2015 and 2019 she has been President of the Vela Zanetti Foundation, member of the Provincial Tourism Board of León, Coordinator of Tourism and Heritage in the Steering Committee of the Network of Jewish Quarters of Spain, and member of the Scientific Committee of the Association of Municipalities of the Camino de Santiago from 2017 to the present. She has curated half a dozen exhibitions and her dissemination work includes written press, national radio and television, as well as her participation as a scriptwriter in documentaries and fiction films. As a writer, she has published three historical novels, translated into several languages: Enrique de Castilla (Plaza & Janés), The Prophecy of Jerusalem (Edhasa) and La Cátedra de la Calavera (Today's Topics). And she has participated in several books with authors such as José Calvo Poyato, Luis Mateo Díez, Julio Llamazares, Gustavo Martín Garzo, Antonio Colinas, José Luis Corral Lafuente, Raúl Guerra Garrido and Almudena de Arteaga, among others.
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