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- Menendo González (Portuguese and Galician: Mendo Gonçalves) (died 6 October 1008) was a semi-autonomous Duke of Galicia and Count of Portugal (997-1008) and a dominant figure in the Kingdom of León around the turn of the second millennium. He was the tutor and father-in-law of King Alfonso V from at least 1003. He maintained peaceful diplomatic relations with the Caliphate of Córdoba until 1004, after which there was a state of war. In his last years he had to deal with Viking raids, during one of which he may have been killed.
Menendo González was probably the eldest son and successor of Gonzalo Menéndez and his wife Ilduara Peláez.[2] Menendo's wife is variously known in contemporary sources as Toda, Tota, Todadomna, Tutadomna, Tutadonna, etc. One twelfth-century source calls her Mayor.
Menendo had at least five sons and three daughters. One son, Rodrigo Menéndez, was a direct ancestor in the maternal line of Urraca Fróilaz, wife of Pedro Fróilaz de Traba. Another, Gonzalo (attested 1007-14), is cited with the title of count, and one Ramiro (attested 1005-14) was the armiger regis, or royal alférez, a post his father had also held. His other sons were Egas and Munio (both attested 1007-14). Besides his daughter Elvira (of whom more below), he had daughters named Ilduara (attested 1025-58) and Ildoncia/Eldonza (attested 1014). Ilduara married Nuño Aloitiz, a count in Portugal.
Regency of Alfonso V:
Before 999 King Vermudo II placed his heir, Alfonso V, under the tutorship of his alférez Menendo.[6] Alfonso was only five at his father's death (September 999) and he spent the early years of his reign in the care of Menendo and his wife. The earliest act of Alfonso as king dates to 13 October 999, and it lists as confirmants first Count Menendo González (“Menendus Gundisaluiz, comes”) and then "Duke" (count) Sancho García of Castile (“Santius, dux, Garsea prolis”). Menendo also appears in contemporary documents with the ducal title, as in dux domnus Menendus proles Gundisalvi.
The young Alfonso always appears in his early charters beside his mother, Elvira García, a sister of the count of Castile and possibly exercising the regency under his influence. After 1003 Elvira no longer appears in royal charters, perhaps she was removed in a palace coup by Menendo. In subscribing one royal act Menendo went so far as to call himself "he who under the authority of the aforementioned king ordains and guides all things" (“qui sub imperio iam dicti regis hec omnia ordinavit et docuit”). In 1004 Sancho challenged the regency of Menendo. Both counts petitioned the Córdoban hajib Abd al-Malik al-Muzaffar to arbitrate the dispute. According to Ibn Khaldun, a hearing took place and al-Muzaffar's deputy, the qadi of the Mozarabic community of Córdoba, Asbag bin Abd Allah bin Nabil, found in favour of Menendo. According to some sources this took place in Córdoba with the two disputant counts in attendance, but according to others it took place in León.
In 1000, as regent, Menendo confirmed the testament of Hilal, called Salvatus, the Mozarabic abbot of San Cipriano de Valdesalce, after the queen-regent Elvira and the young king and before five bishops of the realm. A charter dated 23 December 1001 records the settlement of a dispute concerning the monastery of Celanova by Alfonso V and "his elder, the lord Menendo, son of Gonzalo" (“senatus sui domni Ermenagildi Gundisaluiz prolis”). Another charter dated 11 January 1002 records the donation of San Andrés de Congostro to the monastery of Celanova and was confirmed by "duke Menendo, son of Gonzalo" (“Menendus dux prolis Gundisaluiz”).
Relations with Córdoba:
Menendo did not initially collaborate with the Córdobans, but after contingents were sent from Córdoba to reinforce Coimbra and the frontier with Portugal, Menendo entered into a pact with al-Muzaffar, which included a clause calling for military collaboration in 1003. That year Leonese and Castilian troops assisted the Córdobans in their attack on Catalonia. This pact seems to have been broken when, in 1005, a Córdoban army marched with the intent of taking Zamora. The city was not captured, but much territory was seized. For the remainder of Menendo's regency there was no peace with the Córdobans.
There is an ivory pyxis containing a contemporary chalice and paten in the treasury of the Cathedral of Braga. The pyxis has an inscription on the rim of its lid which allows it to be dated rather precisely to between 1004, when the hajib Abd al-Malik received the title he bears in the inscription, Sayf al-Dawla, and 1007, when he received the higher title of al-Muzaffar. The pyxis had found its way into the hands of Menendo González sometime before his death, since an added inscription on the bottom of it relates its donation to the church by him and his wife, Toda. It reads: IN N[omi]NE D[omi]NI MENENDUS GUNDISALVI ET TUDAD[o]MNA SUM. It has been suggested that the chalice and paten, which appear to be made to fit the pyxis, were possibly commissioned by Menendo for the pyxis he obtained during a campaign against Córdoba, so to be donated to Braga. On the other hand, it has been suggested that the pyxis was originally a gift from the court of Córdoba to the Leonese regent during diplomatic negotiations. Historian Serafin Moralejo sees it presented to Menendo by Asbagh the qadi as "a good-will gift ... a bitter one indeed and a warning oo, since the title of Sayf al-Dawla carved on its lid commemorated the raid the hajib had launched on León one year earlier." The iconography of the pyxis is peaceful, and its original function could have been at a "marriage, or an occasion of a calendrical observance such as a summer of fall harvest festival". The carvings of birds eating fruit may imitate a well-used Christian eucharistic motif dating back to Visigothic times. If so, the piece may have been designed to serve as a diplomatic gift to a Christian ruler, perhaps Menendo.
Death:
The Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun, dating it by the anno Hegirae, places Menendo's death between 17 September 1007 and 4 September 1008. The Chronicon Lusitanum records Menendo's death under the year 1008 as taking place on 6 October (Æra 1046. II. Non. Octobris occisus fuit Comes Menendus). The wording suggests that Menendo was assassinated. He was succeeded as regent by the queen-mother Elvira and the count of Castile. Towards 1013 Alfonso V, by then of age, married Elvira Menéndez, Gonzalo's daughter. She gave him a son, Vermudo III, his successor, and a daughter, Sancha, who married Ferdinand of Castile and passed the Leonese throne on to him. She died on 2 December 1022. In 1014 Alfonso confirmed all the possessions of the monastery of Guimarães, founded by Menendo's grandmother, Mumadona Díaz.
It has been suggested that Menendo was perhaps killed defending Portugal from a Viking raid. According to the later Icelandic saga Heimskringla, the Vikings under Olaf Haraldsson attacked Gunnvaldsborg (from hypothetical Latin *Gundisalvus-burgus), probably to be identified as a descriptive toponym meaning "city of González" (Portuguese: cidade de Gonçalves) and indicating Tui, which was in Menendo's lordship and is independently known to have been destroyed by Vikings about this time. In the words of the Heimskringla:
Here [Olaf] conquered the city of González, which was large and ancient, and here he made a prisoner the count who was lord of the city and who was called Geirfinn. Here King Olaf spoke with the inhabitants of the city; he made the city and the count pay twelve thousand coins of gold and he carried away all that he could. Sigvat said this:
O the dreadful lord of Trönderne
has won his thirteenth battle
in the south, at Rivas de Sil
Unfortunate fugitives!
Rapidly, in the morning he took control
of the city of González,
he risked himself and took prisoner
the count who is called Geirfinn.
There is a Latin document of 1024 titled “Tudensis sedes post Normannorum vastationem Ecclesiae Divi Jacobi attributa”: the see of Tui was assigned to the church of Santiago after being laid waste by the Northmen.
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