de LARA Ancestry

[T L Smith]

lfonso VI, K. of Castile (1030-39.)

Barber ("Arab Blood Royal") shows Nuno's parents as Gonsalo Gustaves (sic)
, Lord of Salas and LARA , and wife Mayiwah, daughter of Hakam II, caliph
of Cordoba. (Sir Iain Moncreiffe alluded to a similar connection.) The
alleged descent from Hakam II appeared to be an exciting probability for
several years, but of course has been refuted (with possibly one exception)
by contemporary scholars (most recently by Taylor and Farmerie in the Jan
1998 NEHGR.) (Turton showed a de LARA ancestry for Gonsalo Ruiz and his
wife - the NEHGR article disallows the one for his wife.)

Finally, ES (II:51) shows Fernan Gosalez (Count of LARA, Castile, and
Alava) having sons, including:
Gonsalo Fenandez, Count (count of what region not stated); wife,
Fonilda Gomez; died after 959; parents or at least ancestors of Sanco
Sanchez (sic).

(Does any one have access to Kraentzler's book which is said to be better
than Turton for some of the early Castillian lines?) `

[Todd A. Farmerie]

T L Smith wrote:
> (tls...@ffpmarketing.com) Can a valid descent be established for Gonsalo
> Ruiz GIRON who had daus (1) Aldonza Gonsalez and Maria Gonsalez GIRON.

Based on what evidence I have available, there is no reason to doubt
that the daughters of Pedro I were descended from Lara through him via
the Guzman line.

> If
> so, who is the earliest de LARA ancestor? Several sources have been used to
> place Marique de LARA as 5th in descent and Gonsalo Ruiz as 7th in descent
> from one Nuno Gosalez de LARA and wife, Dorda Diax, in the mid 10th
> century.

Well, here is where the confusion starts.

> Turton and Salazar y Castro (1696) place Nuno G. as son of Gonsalo
> Fernandez de LARA (son of Fernan Gonzalez, Count of Castile, etc.) and Nuna
> Amaya. Fernan G. is a documented ggg gf of Alfonso VI, K. of Castile (1030-39.)

>
> Barber ("Arab Blood Royal") shows Nuno's parents as Gonsalo Gustaves (sic)
> , Lord of Salas and LARA , and wife Mayiwah, daughter of Hakam II, caliph
> of Cordoba. (Sir Iain Moncreiffe alluded to a similar connection.) The
> alleged descent from Hakam II appeared to be an exciting probability for
> several years, but of course has been refuted (with possibly one exception)
> by contemporary scholars (most recently by Taylor and Farmerie in the Jan
> 1998 NEHGR.) (Turton showed a de LARA ancestry for Gonsalo Ruiz and his
> wife - the NEHGR article disallows the one for his wife.)
>
> Finally, ES (II:51) shows Fernan Gosalez (Count of LARA, Castile, and
> Alava) having sons, including:
> Gonsalo Fenandez, Count (count of what region not stated); wife,
> Fonilda Gomez; died after 959; parents or at least ancestors of Sanco
> Sanchez (sic).

Maybe a brief history will help. The traditional descent, including the
connection with the Caliph of Cordoba, is based on a romantic source
dealing with the Infantes de Lara. As the story goes, Gonzalo Gustioz
had seven sons (the infantes) before being captured in battle against
the Moors. While imprisoned at Cordoba, he fell in love with the
daughter of the Caliph and had by her an additional son, Mudarra
Gonzalez, who was raised at his grandfather's court. Meanwhile, on the
home front, the evil uncle of the infantes decided he didn't like them,
and offed the lot. Mudarra returned from Cordoba and exacted revenge on
his uncle, obtained the entire inheritance of his father and was
ancestor of the Lara family.

Now there was a Gonzalo Gustioz in Castile at this time. In fact there
were several. Likewise, the uncle Ruy Valasquez (I think it was)
existed, but there is no evidence his sister married Gonzalo Gustioz.
The one who cannot be shown to exist was Mudarra Gonzalez. No one of
this name can be found among the charters of the time, while others are
found in posession of the Lara lands. This led Salazar y Castro, as
early as 1696, to reject this account as being fabulous in nature, and
to consider other possibilities. The one which he selected as most
likely was the one which you cite, and which was followed by Turton and
most other authors. This showed the first recognizable member of the
family, Gonzalo Nunez (sic), father of Pedro and Rodrigo Gonzalez and
grandfather of Manrique, was son of Nuno Gonzalez, son of Gonzalo Nunez,
son of Nuno Gonzalez, son of Gonzalo Fernandez, oldest son of Fernan
Gonzalez, Count of Castile. (Moncreiffe tries to recover the best of
both worlds, by lifting Mudarra Gonzalez from the Infantes de Lara
tradition, and assigning him to Nuno Gonzalez, claiming that Mudarra was
just a nickname for a half-breed. One can read between the lines that
this would explain why Mudarra never appears in records. How
convenient!) The advantage of this reconstruction is that the family of
Fernan Gonzalez of Castile owned the land which would become the Lara
estates, and thus a continuity of holding. The problem is that Gonzalo
Fernandez, eldest son of Fernan Gonzalez had only one known child, a son
Sancho who died young without issue. It is thus impossible.

For about the past half-century, numerous attempts have been made to
reconstruct the early Lara lineage. Until recently, the solution which
seemed to be in favor was that followed by Carmen Carle, which made
Gonzalo Nunez (father of Pedro and Rodrigo) son of a Nuno Alvarez, who
posessed lands in the general area. This man had a sister married into
the Haro family, and was perhaps (but far from definitely) brother of
the Cid's maternal grandfather, Rodrigo Alvarez (who did have a brother
Nuno, but there were at least three Nuno Alvarez in Castile at the
time). Any link of this man to the Counts of Castile are unknown.

About 10 years ago, another solution appeared, which is based on the
research of Jaime de Salazar Acha (who is clearly one of the best of the
best contemporary spanish genealogists). As it turns out, it is a
modification of Salazar y Castro's 300 year old proposal. Before I
describe it though, another lineage must be brought into the question.
This is the other 'branch' of Lara, that of Gonzalo Salvadorez. An
older contemporary of Gonzalo Nunez, he was the first of his time to
appear with the title Count of Lara (the previous person to clearly ear
that title being Fernan Gonzalez, over 100 years before). He has
traditionally been held to be son of Salvador Perez, son of Pedro
Gonzalez, son of Fernan Gonzalez by his second wife, and thus a cousin
of Nuno Gonzalez (a tradition of kinship which preceeds the
reconstitution of these pedigrees). The problem with this is that Pedro
Fernandez never existed, and thus the kinship is doubly lost, with both
connections to Castile being broken. Balparda, in his work on Viscaya,
demonstrated that the father of Gonzalo Salvadorez was a Salvador
Gonzalez, who appeared to be a related to a Munio Gonzalez, Count of
Alava. This line was later shown by Canal Sanchez Pagin to be first of
the probable paternal line of Jimena, mistress of Alfonso VI, through
his son Gonzalo Munoz, and his son Munio Gonzalez, Count of Castile
(under Fernando I Sanchez, King of Castile). It is this same line which
has now been tapped as the probable ancestry of the later Laras,
restoring the kinship of the two Lara lines.

There is a problem reconstructing the genealogies of this time
distinguishing between the names Nuno and Munio. While they probably
shared the same origin, by this time, they had diverged into different
names (there are several examples of siblings being called Nuno and
Munio). By the 16th century, the two names had again been merged into
one, and historians treated them as being interchangable. Since most of
the surviving charters exist only as copies from this period, the
original distinction was lost until quite recently, when the volume of
original charters grew to the point where it was clear that they were
not interchangable (the same man would appear as either Munio in every
charter, or as Nuno, but would not use both names). A surprise finding
was that while most historians had refered to many of these men as Nuno
or Nunez, most were in fact Munio or Munoz. Thus the Gonzalo Nunez and
Nuno Gonzalez found in the Lara pedigree of Salazar y Castro are now
hypothesized to be Gonzalo Munoz and Munio Gonzalez.

This appeared in a summary of recent (mostly iberian) royal pedigrees
presented by Szabolcs de Vajay, based on the work of Salazar Acha and
David Masnata. It showed Gonzalo Munoz (father of Pedro and Rodrigo) as
brother of the mistress Jimena, children of Munio Gonzalez, Count of
Castile, son of Gonzalo Munoz, Count of Alava, son of Munio Gonzalez
(replacing Salazar y Castro's Gonzalo Nunez, Nuno Gonzalez, Gonzalo
Nunez, Nuno Gonzalez). Then it breaks with Salazar y Castro. Since
this Count Munio Gonzalez (and his hypothesized brother Salvador
Gonzalez) could not be son of Gonzalo Fernandez of Castile, they looked
about for another likely candidate. They found one in Gonzalo Garces, a
largely ignored son of Count Garcia Fernandez, and thus nephew of the
earlier Gonzalo Fernandez. Unfortunately, in the form that it was
presented by Vajay, it only references Salazar Acha and Masnata's
unpublished work, and since the logic behind the descent has not been
presented, it cannot be evaluated. (Still, having studied enough of
Salazar Acha's work to gain some insight into his thought process and
methodology, I suspect that he has weighed heavily the tradition of
descent from the Counts of Castile, as well as the descent of Lara and
Alava (and perhaps Castile itself, although it was clearly no longer
hereditary after it's merger with Navarre). Likewise, some charter
evidence of Gonzalo Garces must have been found, but we must await
publication to learn the nature of this evidence.)

So, what have we learned here. First of all, even as early as 1696, the
supposed muslim descent of the Lara was rejected by a (the) serious
genealogist (in the most recent study of the question by Menendez Pidal,
in spite of the author's strong bias toward the acceptance of such
traditional sources, the existance of Mudarra Gonzalez and the muslim
connection were likewise rejected). One of the first suggested
replacement pedigrees must be rejected because Gonzalo Fernandez had an
only child who d.s.p. There have been several alternative descents
suggested, te most recent tracing through powerful nobles of the time of
Sancho III Garces and Fernando I, to Garcia Fernandez, Count of
Castile. Until the arguments (and supporting documents) underpinning
this latest theory appear, we cannot sufficiently evaluate it, so the
question remains open.

> (Does any one have access to Kraentzler's book which is said to be better
> than Turton for some of the early Castillian lines?) `

I would not trust either. Most non-spanish sources are at least 50
years out of date, and because of the slow development of stringent
genealogical research practices, that is equivalent to being 100+ years
out date in England (pre Round).

taf

[Nathaniel Taylor]

Just to add to Todd's excellent Lara posting, and to return to the
tlsmith's original question, which was:

>(tls...@ffpmarketing.com) Can a valid descent be established for Gonsalo

>Ruiz GIRON who had daus (1) Aldonza Gonsalez and Maria Gonsalez GIRON. If

>so, who is the earliest de LARA ancestor?

This implies credence in the Lara-Giron marriage in Turton, and in Salazar
y Castro, which has recently been proven false. Sancha Rodriguez, wife of
Gonzalo Ruiz Giron, was a daughter of Rodrigo Fernandez de Torono and not
a Lara at all: this branch of the Laras, in descent from Rodrigo Gonzalez
de Lara, are largely an invention of Salazar y Castro. See Jaime de
Salazar Acha, "Los descendientes del conde Ero Fernandez," in _Galicia en
la edad media: actas del coloquio de 13-17 julio 1987_ (Madrid, 1990), pp.
67-86 (especially p. 81 and n. 88), based on an early thirteenth-century
genealogy prepared by the monks of Santa Maria de Ferreira de Pallares,
recording the progeny of their founders. This was noted in Todd
Farmerie's and my recent article on the ancestry of Sancha de Ayala,
published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in
January of this year.

However, the daughters of Pedro the Cruel, Constance and Isabel, who
married John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley respectively, do share at
least one descent from the Giron family, as shown in Turton, but not all
the descents.

Nat Taylor

[Todd A. Farmerie]

Nathaniel Taylor wrote:

> This implies credence in the Lara-Giron marriage in Turton, and in Salazar
> y Castro, which has recently been proven false. Sancha Rodriguez, wife of
> Gonzalo Ruiz Giron, was a daughter of Rodrigo Fernandez de Torono and not
> a Lara at all: this branch of the Laras, in descent from Rodrigo Gonzalez
> de Lara, are largely an invention of Salazar y Castro. See Jaime de
> Salazar Acha, "Los descendientes del conde Ero Fernandez," in _Galicia en
> la edad media: actas del coloquio de 13-17 julio 1987_ (Madrid, 1990), pp.
> 67-86 (especially p. 81 and n. 88), based on an early thirteenth-century
> genealogy prepared by the monks of Santa Maria de Ferreira de Pallares,
> recording the progeny of their founders.

I prepared an AT of the daughters of Rodrigo Fernandez, and was all
ready to post it when my computer ate it. I will put it back together
and post it following my posting of one for el Cid (which is done) and a
revised one for Teresa, Queen of Portugal (which just needs some
annotation). The best royal descent I could find for them was a descent
from the married Infantes Ordono Ramirez and Christina Vermudez,
children respectively of Ramiro III and Vermudo II of Leon.

taf