Bourbons of Spain extinct in genetic line?
M Sjostrom
in a fresh book, by Jose Maria Zavala, entitled "Bastardos y Borbones - los
hijos desconocidos de la dinastia"
the author claims historical knowledge that none of the children born to
queen M.Louisa, were sired by her husband the king Charles IV
If true, this means that Ferdinand VII, and all Carlist pretenders, and all
the lineage from infante Francis of Paula, were not of Capetian male line.
Queen Charlotte of Portugal also was thusly not biological daughter of
Spanish king - but Charlotte was of course a matrilineal descendant of
Louise Elisabeth of France, daughter of kling Louis XV.
The book claims that on her deathbed, Maria Luisa of Parma (= the said
queen) told her confessor, priest Juan de Alvaraz, that the king was not the
father of any of her 14 children.
This expands the long-time assumption that the queen's youngest children
were anyway sired by Godoy. Now we hear that none of the children (none of
the elder either) were sired by king Charles IV.
It is reported that in her will, the queen willed a legacy to her confessor,
de Alvaraz. King Ferdinand VII refused to pay the legacy to the priest. The
priest started to blackmail the king, threatening to make public the queen's
said confession. The priest is reported to have sent a note to the pope,
containing the the queen's confession. The blackmailed king Ferdinand (= an
alleged bastard) was wary about the consequences for him and his
recently-restored throne. The king sent a posse to Italy, they captured the
priest, brought him to Spain to spend seven years incarcerated.
Michael O'Hearn
The book claims that on her deathbed, Maria Luisa of Parma (= the said
queen) told her confessor, priest Juan de Alvaraz, that the king was not the
father of any of her 14 children.
>>
It is reported that in her will, the queen willed a legacy to her confessor,
de Alvaraz. King Ferdinand VII refused to pay the legacy to the priest. The
priest started to blackmail the king, threatening to make public the queen's
said confession. The priest is reported to have sent a note to the pope,
containing the the queen's confession. The blackmailed king Ferdinand (= an
alleged bastard) was wary about the consequences for him and his
recently-restored throne. The king sent a posse to Italy, they captured the
priest, brought him to Spain to spend seven years incarcerated.
This is all entirely speculative and extremely unkikely.
Confession is a sacrament instituted by Christ in the Roman Catholic
Church. The seal of confession cannot be broken even to save a life.
Whatever is told to the priest must remain strictly confidential. Any
priest who discloses information from a confession has himself committed a
mortal sin and would be subject to excommunication as well as eternal
punishment in hell.
--
Michael O'Hearn
M Sjostrom
The previous message based itself on a belief that priests do not do
forbidden things.
I do not wonder at all that the previous message's writer (who is well known
of his irrationality, wishful thinking and separation from reality, among
other characteristics) argues that the possibility of a priest betraying a
confidence would be impossible.
Leo
Godoy has been around since their times. I understand that those four for a
period did not even appear in the Almanach de Gotha but the King complained
and since then they were recorded as his children.
That the other children were not by the king I have never heard before. Does
the book explain why this knowledge has remained hidden for over two hundred
years?
Kings and Queens lived always under scrutiny and to me it seems quite a feat
if, from 1771 to 1794 (the Queen's childbearing years), she had no children
by the king and no-one was aware she was sleeping with other men? Somehow
this book will need to do a lot of convincing.
What Mr. Sjostrom found is a tale that a piece of paper was sent to the
Vatican, the priest kidnapped who then spent seven years in prison. In those
days for a priest to blackmail a king, based on hearsay? He had nothing to
back up his statement. If he had gone public he would, quite rightly, have
finished up in an asylum.
However there are many male line descendants from King Felipe V and DNA
tests could perhaps provide an answer as there are also a fair number of
male line descendants of Carlos IV.
Interesting and I hope someone can read the book to tell how reliable the
story is.
With best wishes
Leo van de Pas,
Canberra, Australia
----- Original Message -----
From: "M Sjostrom" <mqs...@gmail.com>
To: <gen-me...@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 2:30 AM
Subject: Bourbons of Spain extinct in genetic line?
> http://www.lecturalia.com/libro/56620/bastardos-y-borbones-los-hijos-desconocidos-de-la-dinastia
>
> in a fresh book, by Jose Maria Zavala, entitled "Bastardos y Borbones -
> los
> hijos desconocidos de la dinastia"
> the author claims historical knowledge that none of the children born to
> queen M.Louisa, were sired by her husband the king Charles IV
>
> If true, this means that Ferdinand VII, and all Carlist pretenders, and
> all
> the lineage from infante Francis of Paula, were not of Capetian male
> line.
> Queen Charlotte of Portugal also was thusly not biological daughter of
> Spanish king - but Charlotte was of course a matrilineal descendant of
> Louise Elisabeth of France, daughter of kling Louis XV.
>
> The book claims that on her deathbed, Maria Luisa of Parma (= the said
> queen) told her confessor, priest Juan de Alvaraz, that the king was not
> the
> father of any of her 14 children.
>
> This expands the long-time assumption that the queen's youngest children
> were anyway sired by Godoy. Now we hear that none of the children (none of
> the elder either) were sired by king Charles IV.
>
> It is reported that in her will, the queen willed a legacy to her
> confessor,
> de Alvaraz. King Ferdinand VII refused to pay the legacy to the priest.
> The
> priest started to blackmail the king, threatening to make public the
> queen's
> said confession. The priest is reported to have sent a note to the pope,
> containing the the queen's confession. The blackmailed king Ferdinand (=
> an
> alleged bastard) was wary about the consequences for him and his
> recently-restored throne. The king sent a posse to Italy, they captured
> the
> priest, brought him to Spain to spend seven years incarcerated.
>
> -------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
> GEN-MEDIEV...@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the
> quotes in the subject and the body of the message
M Sjostrom
not at all interested in her cousin and wedded wife, queen Luisa.
There is even such a rumor written that Charles IV was homosexual.
(however, one does not need to be homosexual in order to be uninterested in
a hideous-looking woman, cousin or not... though the homosexuality would
explain yet better some of the supposed behavior)
Let's assume that there were valid reasons why king Charles IV was not up to
sire children, perhaps not willing at all, or fatally disattracted by
hideousness.
They frequently married cousins in those says, but a marriage with a cousin
who was descended from the same dynasty, makes eminent sense as choice if
the bridegroom did not expect himself to sire children.
The bridegroom wanted to have children (many "incompetent" men are) -without
himself siring them- and was ready to accept "fertility treatments"
If today a man who wants to have child and manages to have one merely by
assistance of fertility treatment of his wife, finds out that some
publication insinuates that the child is not his, we generally would expect
lawsuits from him demanding the publication to pay heavily, and to
apologize. I find nothing odd that the king in about early 1800s complained
to Gotha if that publication made such a similar insinuation.
Peter Stewart
"M Sjostrom" <mqs...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.12.12964172...@rootsweb.com...
> well, also priests do now and then do commit mortal sins.
>
> The previous message based itself on a belief that priests do not do
> forbidden things.
Obviously priests can gossip and engage in blackmail, but one who did this
in writing to a pope and a king respectively in the early 19th century would
be extremely stupid or certifiably insane, probably both. Either way he
would have blown his credibility to smithereens, no matter what he had to
tell.
There were no DNA tests available, and the revelation - even if true - could
have produced no consequences in canon or civil law _on that basis_.
"Pater is est quem nuptiae demonstrant" was the legal principle at issue,
both in Spain and Italy.
Anyway, just as grasping priests are capable of telling lies so are dying
queens.
Peter Stewart
M Sjostrom
>
> ....Kings and Queens lived always under scrutiny and to me it seems quite a
> feat if, from 1771 to 1794 (the Queen's childbearing years), she had no
> children by the king and no-one was aware she was sleeping with other men?
> Somehow this book will need to do a lot of convincing.
>
> What Mr. Sjostrom found is a tale that a piece of paper was sent to the
> Vatican, the priest kidnapped who then spent seven years in prison. In those
> days for a priest to blackmail a king, based on hearsay? He had nothing to
> back up his statement. If he had gone public he would, quite rightly, have
> finished up in an asylum.
>
Is the asylum that catholic church's right solution to betrayal of
confessional? I thought asylum was the standard solution of Soviet Union to
those who did not comply to the powerful dictates.
>
> However there are many male line descendants from King Felipe V and DNA
> tests could perhaps provide an answer as there are also a fair number of
> male line descendants of Carlos IV.
>
>
>
>
In those days, I believe people were well-prepared to believe the
authenticity of information from a confessional.
It seems that it was well verifiable in those days that it was de Alvaraz
who was with the queen in her last days. So, his say-so would have enjoyed a
great degree of "corroboration" given his known position.
King Ferdinand VII's throne surely was such an uncertainty-filled thing that
such a source (priest in his mother's deathbed) would have been utilized to
some foreseeable effect by those who were Ferdinand's antagonists. That
would have shaken Ferdinand's regime.... no doubt about it.
Effectively, the priest was gambling the worth of his presumably-credible
(and fully plausible) word supported by his deathbed position [irrespective
of what was the truth of the matter], in order to gain his money. He was
trying to sell his cooperation. The result was that he got kidnapped.
I would not see the missive to the pope as overly problematic. I understand
that in the catholic church, priests now and then informed the papal curia
about their findings. Perhaps the confidentiality of the confessional was
not an obstacle to that activity.
---
If king Charles IV wanted to facilitate sperm-donoring to his wife, I think
they could well have managed it to that inconspicuity the net result shows.
For example, being relatively careful in the first ten years, and only in
the late stages gotten too careless and transparent.
--
btw, unfortunately, there seems not to be male-liners of the elder sons of
queen Luisa extant any longer.... the only extant male lines come from
Francis of Paula whose filiation to someone else than Charles IV is even
stronger indicated...
So, in effect, a DNA test between on one hand the Parma and/or Naples
lineages and on the other hand extant male lines of queen Luisa, are limited
now to show things about Francis of Paula's paternity at most, and nothing
about the long line of carlists nor of Ferdinand VII.
Peter Stewart
The question is, what could the priest have done next? Since the succession
to thrones was not determined in law by the death-bed confessions of queens,
or by popes responding in secret to canonically forbidden tittle-tattle, his
only recourse would have been to make the information public. Then what?
As I said before, the credibility of a priest revealing details learned in
confession would be nil. And then, how could he establish without a witness
that the queen had really told him this? Or prove that she was in full
control of her faculties at the time, with her mind alert and memory
undiminished rather than rambling incoherently as death approached?
The whole story smacks of retrospective wish fulfilment.
Peter Stewart
Leo
Juan de Alvarez "sent" a note to the pope? Presuming he was in Rome? (Don't
forget, said was that he was kidnapped and taken back to Spain.) With "so
sensitive" a message would he not have gone to the Pope?
But what message did he have for the pope? Ferdinand is denying me the
bequest from the Queen? I have blackmailed him but he still is not coughing
up?
I understand the confessional is highly sacred, how kindly would the pope
take it for a priest to exploit a supposed deathbed confession?
The papal archives appear to be highly secretive. How did Jose Maria Zavala
obtain the supposed knowledge? I doubt anyone else has heard before that
ALL the children of Maria Luisa were fathered elsewhere.
I wonder how critics of the book will react.
With best wishes
Leo van de Pas
M Sjostrom
the literal law is able to control and that the father is the husband of the
mother....
Surely, it must have been registered in at least some minds that there are
examples when the child of his wife, even accepted by the husband, was not
allowed to succeed. In Spains, Juana 'la beltraneja' comes to forefront in
that respect.
In Britain, in a number of peerage cases, it became established that a
bastard birthed by wife was not allowed to succeed, whatever remained
"legal" paternity and such.
Plus, plausible claims to deny paternity have so many times been a good
foment to rebels....
----------------------
On another point, it looks like that Peter Stewart has decided that the
deathbed priest would not have had credibility.
I disagree about that. My grounds for my assessment are chiefly already
written. A main point is that the said priest would have been believed in
several quarters.
As I said before, the credibility of a priest revealing details learned in
confessional would have been high. And in this case, it would have been
supported also by the late queen's reputation.
the priest's story may well have been some retrospective wish fulfillment.
And/or his revenge....
However, him making his claim public, would in my estimation have had effect
and consequences. Rebels having got good pretexts - much like in the
beltraneja thing.
Leo
the last four children was loud enough for the Almanach de Gotha to ignore
them at first.
But there was no "gossip" about the other children. Not until now, when Jose
Maria Zavala writes a book, some 182 years later.
I don't think Juana 'La Beltraneja' is a good example. There was no nice
conversation about the law and what reality people may have seen. After
several battles, in 1479 Juana was forced to enter a convent.
It will be interesting to see whether the book will be translated into
English to make it accessible to a wider audience.
With best wishes
Leo van de Pas
----- Original Message -----
From: "M Sjostrom" <mqs...@gmail.com>
To: <gen-me...@rootsweb.com>
M Sjostrom
can do when they get a plausible claim of non-paternity
I also point out that it had a result which is squarely against the belief
that it suffices that the mother is married with the designated father.
another interesting example of how people tend to do in these questions, is
the carlist succession upon the death of Alfonso Carlos (was it in the year
1936).
Carlists did not want to accept the isabellist descendant as successor, and
in that they started to use the pretext that whatever was the legal
paternity, Alfonso XII had not been genuinely son of Francis of Cadiz the
consort
Peter Stewart
>I think people in general are too gullible in a belief that in successions
> the literal law is able to control and that the father is the husband of
> the
> mother....
If so, why is it not gullible to suppose that Maria Luisa's allegely
cuckolded husband Charles IV of Spain was himself biologically a Borbon in
the first place? Legally this simply didn't matter, there was no mechanism
to test it from a scientific or forensic point of view even if a credible
accustion was made. But a confessor who was not present at the conception of
a supposedly illegitimate child was not ideally placed to make such an
accustion anyway.
> Surely, it must have been registered in at least some minds that there are
> examples when the child of his wife, even accepted by the husband, was not
> allowed to succeed. In Spains, Juana 'la beltraneja' comes to forefront in
> that respect.
The husband has the right to disown his child, and can legally establish
this readily enough if (a) he is a king and/or (b) he has proof that his
paternity is impossible - for instance, a crusader who returned from
Palestine to find that a wife he had not seen for three years had a
one-year-old baby. The law makes a presumption that is next-to absolute
where such incontrovertible evidence is lacking.
> In Britain, in a number of peerage cases, it became established that a
> bastard birthed by wife was not allowed to succeed, whatever remained
> "legal" paternity and such.
And in Britain the Russell baby was held to be the legitimate heir to a
peerage even though it was accepted that his parent's marriage had not been
consummated and that his mother had spent nights in hotel rooms with men
other than her husband.
> Plus, plausible claims to deny paternity have so many times been a good
> foment to rebels....
"Plausible" is in the ear of the listener - rebels can make up their own
pretexts without depending on a renegade priest.
> ----------------------
>
> On another point, it looks like that Peter Stewart has decided that the
> deathbed priest would not have had credibility.
> I disagree about that. My grounds for my assessment are chiefly already
> written. A main point is that the said priest would have been believed in
> several quarters.
> As I said before, the credibility of a priest revealing details learned in
> confessional would have been high. And in this case, it would have been
> supported also by the late queen's reputation.
The priest would have sacrificed his position and credibility by breaching a
most important rule that he had a duty to observe. The secrecy of the
confessional is something that the Roman hierarchy (then and now) would
collectively die in a ditch to protect. A priest who threatened this would
have swiftly ended up in a papal dungeon.
> the priest's story may well have been some retrospective wish fulfillment.
> And/or his revenge....
> However, him making his claim public, would in my estimation have had
> effect
> and consequences. Rebels having got good pretexts - much like in the
> beltraneja thing.
The Church in Spain, from the top down to the lowliest parish priest, would
have had the strongest possible motivation to support the king in these
circumstances. Something that should not be known and that could not be
proved, even if true, would hardly provide a new incentive to rebels who
didn't want Ferdinand VII as king legitimate or not. This argument is
somewhat akin to the notion of some people opposed to capital punishment
that it is somehow worse to execute an innocent man - if this is wrong, it
is equally so for the guilty. Equally, if a despised king ought to be
deposed what difference does it make whether or not he was his legal
father's son?
Peter Stewart
Peter Stewart
And they did not carry their argument.
Anyone seeing King Juan Carlos and the duke of Anjou would have no
difficulty identifying them as Borbons, even if the ancestral likeness came
through females and from inbreeding. I doubt that anyone would pick them as
Godoys. But it doesn't matter in the slightest to their legal status.
Peter Stewart
M Sjostrom
unrealistic. And looks like it comes from some sort of orthodoxism in
catholicism. Odd.
My view is that, rather, quite a lot of people would have given credence to
the tale of that priest, for the very reason that he was revealing something
which he was forbidden to reveal. Such a case looks to many people that he
endangered himself for the sake of truth.
And the basic fact is that a dying person is generally believed to speak
truth in their deathbed confessionals.
I am basing my this assessment in part in experiences how the revelations
from spy-traitors have been received.
It is totally clear that the regime which had employed them in the positions
(such as, in military, or so) definitely had legislated those leaks as
treason or espionage, and punishable by severe penalties (including death
penalty). And those governments had spread (to their faithful and
nationalists, at least) an attitude that divulging state secrets is very
very despicable etc.
about the reception: when such spies have revealed secrets, they have been
believed in many quarters, and quite much in the situation where they by the
very act had done a severely criminal thing.
It is intriguing that the regimes which were betrayed by spy-traitors, often
concocted a public response that the traitor had merely created it from thin
air....
and such "official denials" were rarely believed.
-------------------
when a plausible story about non-paternity gets aired, people starts also
look towards corroboration.
Already some years ago, I was of an opinion that the teenage Ferdinand VII
(in portraiture) resembled his mother's nephew, the Parmesan young man Louis
de Bourbon. Now that I take a look at Ferdinand VII's portraits, I cannot
find anywhere in him any visible feature from the big- and strong-bodied
Saxony family of king Charles IV's mother. An analysis of pertinent elements
in the genealogy of course tells that the Saxon-family features would be
ones to distinguish Charles IV's biological begats from those merely of his
wife but not of his.
Peter Stewart
>I think that Peter Stewart's view about loss of credibility is somewhat
> unrealistic. And looks like it comes from some sort of orthodoxism in
> catholicism. Odd.
Are you suggesting that orthodox Catholicism is not relevant to Spain in the
early 19th century? That would be odd, indeed. If you are trying to
insinuate something about my own personal beliefs you are laughably off the
mark. And of course they _are_ irrelevant.
> My view is that, rather, quite a lot of people would have given credence
> to
> the tale of that priest, for the very reason that he was revealing
> something
> which he was forbidden to reveal. Such a case looks to many people that he
> endangered himself for the sake of truth.
If he couldn't keep faith with his priestly obligations, why would be
considered honest after he had broken canon law and then tried blackmail?
Priests who broke the seal of the confessional were defrocked and often
confined for life, tonsured in monasteries with a rule of silence if they
agreed, or imprisoned otherwise. They didn't _ever_ get the pope's
endorsement for going public.
> And the basic fact is that a dying person is generally believed to speak
> truth in their deathbed confessionals.
But there is only the supposed account of this allegedly criminal priest
that Maria Luisa did make such a deathbed confession.
> I am basing my this assessment in part in experiences how the revelations
> from spy-traitors have been received.
So the probabilities of what might have happened in these particular
circumstances are to be gauged by what did happen in very different ones?
Who would have believed him, or wanted to believe him, only matters if
events would have turned out differently as a consequence. But as I said,
those who might have gained from circulating this story (if it was actually
current) already had other motives for getting rid of Ferdinand - and they
did not succeed. He briefly took the throne in his father's lifetime, and
was not disowned even then. He was held prisoner by rebels but they did not
depose him. A scandal about his birth would have been no more than
background noise at any point in his reign.
The alleged hearsay - that may or may not have occurred anyway - apparently
looms much larger now for some than it did then, since it didn't leave so
much as a blip in the politics of the day.
People love stories about royal impostors and wrong successions, like the
Man in the Iron Mask or the absurd fiction that a duke of Buccleuch found
proof that Charles II had been married to Lucy Walter. But history doesn't
unfold according to the intuitions of people living at another time and in a
different culture.
Peter Stewart
M Sjostrom
of Ferdinand VII and of the crucial adultery of his mother, were knowledge
of their contemporaries,
already since the publication of the admittance to that effect from the
queen herself in 1808 or so, as part of the Bayonne proceedings, published
in several newspapers.
Hez.Niles, an american journalist, cited to those publications in his weekly
register sometime in early 1810s.
It is merely Peter Stewart's ignorance that he maintains some doctrine that
the claim of illegitimacy surfaced only after their century.
Peter Stewart
I did NOT say that - I wrote: "The alleged hearsay - that may or may not
have occurred anyway - apparently looms much larger now for some than it did
then, since it didn't leave so much as a blip in the politics of the day."
The alleged hearsay was specifically about the queen's deathbed confession.
Maria Luisa plainly CANNOT have admitted "in 1808 or so" that she would
confess to this in 1819, and nor can "Hez.Niles" have written about it "in
the early 1810s".
Try to get your facts straight and avoid dumb inaccuracies that come
perilously close to mistruth.
Peter Stewart
taf
> "M Sjostrom" <mqs...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:mailman.27.12964513...@rootsweb.com...
>
> > there should be no doubt that allegations of the illegitimacy of the birth
> > of Ferdinand VII and of the crucial adultery of his mother, were knowledge
> > of their contemporaries,
> > already since the publication of the admittance to that effect from the
> > queen herself in 1808 or so, as part of the Bayonne proceedings, published
> > in several newspapers.
> > Hez.Niles, an american journalist, cited to those publications in his
> > weekly
> > register sometime in early 1810s.
> The alleged hearsay was specifically about the queen's deathbed confession.
> Maria Luisa plainly CANNOT have admitted "in 1808 or so" that she would
> confess to this in 1819, and nor can "Hez.Niles" have written about it "in
> the early 1810s".
Not that I find this all the least bit interesting, but I can provide
what appears to be the article to which M. Sjostrom refers. While I do
not have access to Niles' Weekly Register (the publication of Hezekiah
Niles), I do find the following commentary taken from it and reprinted
in two other papers, the Shamrock, 29 Feb. 1812, and the Essex
Register, 18 March 1812:
"LEGITIMATE PRINCES
I never hear an American citizen speak of the "legitimacy" of Princes
without indignation or pity. . . .
But to wipe off the "usurpation" of India, and cleanse herself from
the blood of 36 millions destroyed by her lust for territory in Asia,
"G. Britain is fighting for the liberties of the world" - in Europe! -
deprecating the inordinate ambition of Bonaparte, who wants to rule
over, not to kill, 10 or 11 millions of Spaniards, - and denouncing
him as the most perfidious of wretches for keeping Ferdinand from his
people. Agreed that he is so - but is Ferdinand better than Tippoo?
Why are the claims of the former so much more powerful than the claims
of the latter, to this "shield of afflicted humanity," the English
nation, and their friends? Young Tippoo was the lawful child of the
Prince his father, and lived unimpeached of crime. Ferdinand is
infamously acknowledged by his own mother to be the fruit of her
adulterous inter course with the villain Godoy, whose connection with
her was notorious to all the civilized world - and he was charged by
the man to whom he supposed himself indebted for life - the king, of a
design to murder him; - which confession and allegation there are the
strongest reason to believe was true. . . . . H.N."
taf
Peter Stewart
Godoy was born in May 1767 and Ferdinand VII in October 1784 - so the latter
was conceived when the former was aged 16, before he was even in Madrid and
the ambit of Maria Luisa. Amazing prepotency to inseminate the queen from a
distance at such a young age...
Peter Stewart
"taf" <t...@clearwire.net> wrote in message
news:b157a2d8-1bee-4de0...@i39g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
Matthew Hovious
this book, which has sprouted in shop windows across the city over the
last few days.
The author includes photographs of the relevant documents, which were
found in the archive of Spain's Ministry of Justice. They include a
statement written by Almaraz and dated a few days after María Luisa's
death, setting forth the allegation described above; Almaraz stated
that his only purpose for putting this in writing was that the letter,
sealed, should be given to his own confessor if he died without being
able to make confession. There is also a photograph of the copy kept
here of the letter Ferdinand VII directed to the Pope, describing
Almaraz as 'a bad priest and worse Spaniard' and seeking Vatican
influence to order Almaraz to Spain; for whatever reason the Curia
seems to have taken no action and so Almaraz was indeed kidnapped,
brought back to Spain and locked in solitary confinement in a castle
for seven years.
The story itself is not a new discovery: a local historian in
Peñiscola (location of the castle where Almaraz was kept) has posted
online the text of an article published in 1874 which essentially sets
forth everything contained in the above summary and also states that
the records pertaining to Almaraz were then to be found in the
Ministry of Justice archives. It is probably no coincidence that this
was published during the First Spanish Republic when the Bourbons were
again absent from the throne. A separate text on the same site refers
to a Spanish journalist who in 1828 indicated that he had knowledge of
Almaraz' allegation and someone has worked out that it appears
Ferdinand was dawdling in the area a few miles away from where the
ship carrying Almaraz docked on the same day of its arrival, the
implication being that he wanted to interrogate Almaraz personally.
(http://www.peniscolanos.es/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=233:1827-1834-presidio-en-peniscola-
de-fray-juan-de-almaraz-cronica-del-vizconde-de-san-
javier&catid=110:historia&Itemid=108)
Of course, this may all be what it appears on the surface: a simple
attempt at blackmail by a greedy individual. On the other hand, could
Ferdinand VII have cooked up the alleged blackmail demand as a means
of discrediting Almaraz? Some recent Spanish historians have suggested
that Ferdinand VII was more subtle and devious than indicated by the
image held of him by most Spaniards since, as a coarse, authoritarian
buffoon.
Closer reading of Zavala's book would probably be worthwhile for those
with an interest, particularly with regard to whether or not it can be
proven that Almaraz attempted to extort the King (and wasn't simply
trying to stay out of Spain for his own good - would you trust
Ferdinand VII with your life, if you thought he knew what you'd been
told?).
Curiously enough, if the allegation were true and all of the
descendants of Carlos IV 'disqualified' (for want of a better term) as
Bourbons, then the senior male Bourbon dynast and, I suppose,
legitimist candidate to the French throne would be Carlos de Borbón-
Dos Sicilias, who just happens to be the only person outside his
immediate family to whom King Juan Carlos has accorded 'the royal
treatment' (by designating him as an Infante of Spain).
Peter Stewart
The story seems highly dubious. Far from priests being under an obligation
to "confess" other people's sins confessed to them, this is directly
prohibited by the seal of the confessional, so that this reason given for
Almaraz allegedly putting an account of someone else's sins in writing
scarcely adds to the credibility. Nor does his remaining alive in
Ferdinand's clutches if he had such knowledge from the mare's own mouth and
was prepared to reveal it, after blackmail or not.
Can you let us know how it is established that the document held by the
Ministry of Justice was really written by Almaraz and not a forgery?
I don't see that according the rank of infante to Carlos is curious - isn't
this because he is a close relative, rather than from singling him out as a
distant agnate?
Peter Stewart
"Matthew Hovious" <dominus_...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
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