Fenenna of Kuyavia
Overview
Biography
(See also Genealogical Table(s): 2.1, 2.2, 4.2.)
Fenenna was the daughter of Ziemomysl, prince of Kuyavia (in northern Poland) and Salomea of Pomerania. She was the first wife and queen of king Andrew III, the last Árpád king of Hungary whom she married in 1290. They had one child, Elisabeth., who was engaged to Wenceslaus of Bohemia, but the betrothal was broken and she entered a Dominican convent. Andrew’s path to the throne was not smooth; his half-brothers exiled his mother, Thomasina, and rejected him as a bastard. When he returned to Hungary, on the invitation of a nobleman and the bishop of Esztergom, from Venice where he grew up, he was captured and imprisoned, but when the king was murdered, monks helped Andrew escape and he claimed the throne Envoys from the Venetian republic gave lavish gifts to queen Fenenna on their accession.
Several of her charters are confirmations of earlier charters, including one which the editor, Zsoldos, describes but does not include:: a charter of lady Fenenna queen consort of king Andrew in the 1294th year of the lord in which … that lady Fenenna noted that Martin of Dewecher showed her two charters, namely one of king Ladislaus and the other of lady queen Elisabeth [Isabella] his consort, by which they granted that said reginal land to that Martin in perpetuity as was written and that she confirmed that grant, she wrote that those two charters, of king Ladislaus and his consort queen Elisabeth were word for word in her charter [but] did not transcribe them. Az Árpád-házi hercegek, hercegnök és a királnék okleveleinek kritikai jegyzéke, Regesta ducum, ducissarum stirpis Arpadiana, ed. A. Zsoldos (Budapestini, 2008), 169, #271, dated 1294: [privilegium] domine Fenenne regine consortis Andree regis anno Domini Mo CCo nonagesimo quarto [emanatum, in quo] … eadem vero domina Fenenna ipsum Martinum de Dewecher duo privilegia, scilicet unum Ladislai regis et aliud domine Elyzabeth regine consortis eiusdem, quibus mediantibus iidem predictam terram reginalem ipsi Martino perpetuo, ut scribebatur, contulissent, sibi exhibuisse et eandem collationem se confirmasse denotasset, iamdicta autem duo privilegia, que Ladizlai regis et Elyzabeth regine consortis eiusdem fuisse scripsisset de verbo ad verbum in eodem suo privilegio non transscripsisset.
Letters from Fenenna of Kuyavia
A letter to Bishop of Waciens (1294 or 1295)A letter to Public (1290)
A letter to Public (1291)
A letter to Public (1291)
A letter to Public (1291)
A letter to Public (1291)
A letter to Public (1291, July 26)
A letter to Public (1293, January 10)