Ancestry of Jimena Diaz, wife of 'El Cid'
Todd A. Farmerie
of Jimena Diaz, based on modern scholarship. At the conclusion I
included a speculative argument for the possible identity of her
mother, Christina, specifically indicating that it was
speculation without direct support.
Well, last night, after a seven-plus hour drive, the last three
in white-out conditions, I experienced a brief moment of lucidity
(my first in years), resulting in the detection of a flaw in my
thinking. I wish now to retract that portion of my AT, and
further, to alter another portion. (Those of you who put this,
against my injunctions, into your databases, TAKE NOTE!)
To briefly summarize the argument, Menendez Pidal discovered a
document in which Jimena and her siblings name their mother,
Christina, and their grandfather Fernando Gundemariz. Since
Jimena Diaz was said to be a royal kinswoman and childen are
often named for their grandparents, he concluded that Christina
was daughter of Fernando by the infanta Jimena Alfonso, daughter
of Alfonso V.
This is flawed for two reasons. First, Fernando did not marry
Jimena (who cannot be shown to have ever married), but someone
else. Second, Christina could just as well have been
daughter-in-law of Fernando (the document does not call her his
daughter, but only calls her children Fernando's grandchildren).
Jaime de Salazar has argued that Christina's husband was Diego
Fernandez, suggesting that he was the son of Fernando
Gundemariz. This left Christina's parentage open, and as the
name Christina was extremely rare, she could perhaps be
identified with her contemporary Christina Alfonso, granddaughter
of the Infanta Christina Vermudez of Leon, who appears to have
been the first member of the spanish nobility to bear this name.
In so concluding, I failed to consider the most likely source for
Christina's name.
Infanta Christina Vermudez was godmother of none other than
Fernando Gundemariz, and while Menendez Pidal's document does not
call 'countess' Christina the daughter of Fernando, its failure
to mention Diego strongly suggests that she was the relative of
the family being discussed. The most likely source for
Christina's name was that Fernando Gundemariz named a daughter
for his godmother, which is a perfectly natural thing to do.
While this requires (the coincidence, you could call it) that
both Diego and Christina had the same patronymic, it does not
require any information not in evidence (unlike the hypothesized
marriage of Diego to Christina Alfonso, based on nothing more
than the name).
I thus conclude that Diego Fernandez was not son, but son-in-law
of Fernando Gundemariz. Likewise, it would then have to be him,
and not Christina, through whom the royal relationship (if it
existed) would attach. Perhaps a clue is to be found in the
names of himself and his oldest son, Rodrigo. The names Rodrigo,
Fernando, and Diego can all be found in a clan known to be
ancestral to King Alfonso VI, with a Fernando in the right
generation to be Diego's father, thus providing a possible avenue
for the attested kinship. However, I will not present that
speculation here, having learned my lesson.
taf