Alfonso Téllez de Meneses ( 1161–1230), known as el Viejo ("the Old"), was a nobleman of Castile and a participant in the key Reconquista battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. He was the second Lord of Meneses, Lord of Cea, Grajal, Montalbán, and, through his second wife, first Lord of Alburquerque.
Family
His father was Tello Pérez de Meneses, a powerful noble in Tierra de Campos and Cea, founder, with his wife Gontrodo, of the Monastery of Santa María de Matallana, and three hospitals for lepers and pilgrims in Cuenca, Villamartín, and in San Nicolás del Real Camino. Although mistakenly considered the founders of the Monastery of Santa María de Trianos because of the donation that the couple made in 1185 with the consent of their five children, the monastery had been founded before 1125 the year in which Pope Honorius II issued a Papal bull appointing the abbot and the prior of this religious establishment.
The mother of Alfonso Téllez de Meneses was Gontrodo García of the Fláinez family who married Tello Pérez de Meneses around 1161, the year in which he granted her arras. Gontrodo was the daughter of García Pérez, tenente in Cea who distinguished himself in the conquest of Baeza and Almería, and of Teresa Pérez. Gontrodo's parents founded the Cistercian convent of Santa María la Real in Gradefes, which she joined after she was widowed and where she eventually became the abbess.
Life
In 1209 King Alfonso VIII ceded to Alfonso Téllez de Meneses the village of Montalbán. The following year he received as a gift of the king the village of Navahermosa, its castle Dos Hermanas, and the village of Malamoneda and its eponymous castle, splitting them off from the jurisdiction of the Knights Templar. Around this time Alfonso Téllez de Meneses also governed Portillo on behalf of his relative Ermengol VIII, Count of Urgell.
He fought at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, which took place on 16 July 1212, along with his brothers-in-law Gonzalo, Rodrigo, Pedro, Nuño, and Álvaro Rodríguez Girón, and his three brothers.
In July 1213 Alfonso VIII ceded the village of Palazuelos to Alfonso Téllez de Meneses and he in turn donated it to a Cistercian community, specifically that of San Andrés de Valbení. In 1216 construction began on the Romanesque Monastery of Palazuelos. It was completed in the middle of the 13th century and became the headquarters of the Cistercians of Castile.
In February 1216, during the uprising of Álvaro Núñez de Lara, he took part in an extraordinary parliament along with other Castilian nobles including Lope Díaz de Haro, Gonzalo Rodríguez Girón, Álvaro Díaz de Cameros, and others, where they agreed, with the support of Berengaria (sister of the young king Henry I), to form a common front against Álvaro Núñez. By the end of May the situation in Castile had become dangerous for Berengaria, so she decided to take refuge in the castle of Autillo de Campos, a property of Gonzalo Rodríguez Girón, and sent her son Fernando to the court of León and his father, King Alfonso IX. On 15 August 1216 a meeting was held among all the nobility of the Kingdom of Castile to try to reach an accord and avoid civil war, but their disagreements led the families of Girón, Téllez de Meneses, and Haro distance themselves definitively from Álvaro Núñez de Lara.
According to the Crónica latina de los reyes de Castilla, the year 1217 was one of great tension, such as never had occurred in Castile before. Álvaro Núñez de Lara refused to renounce the power he had gained thereto and harassed the forces that remained loyal to Berengaria, laying waste to the valley of Trigueros and besieging Autillo de Campos, where Berengaria and her partisans were located, as well as Cisneros and Frechilla.
Circumstances changed suddenly when King Henry died on 6 June 1217 after receiving a head wound from a roof tile that came loose accidentally while he was playing with other children in the palace of the Bishop of Palencia, Tello Téllez de Meneses. Álvaro Núñez de Lara, as the young king's guardian, tried to keep the matter quiet, bringing the king's body to the castle of Tariego, but he could not prevent the news from reaching Queen Berengaria.