GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives

Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1995-09 > 0810489587


From: Nat Taylor < >
Subject: Re: Maternal ancestry of Teresa, Countess of Portugal
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995 15:59:47 GMT


In article <42l2gr$ >, (Todd A.
Farmerie) wrote:

> Teresa de Leon, illegitimate daughter of Alfonso VI of Leon and
> Castile married Henry of Burgundy, and by him was mother of Affonso I
> Enriquez, first King of Portugal. From him come not only the future
> Kings of Portugal, but also, through the marriage of his daughter Urraca
> with Fernando II of Leon, the Kings of Castile and Leon, Eleanor of
> Castile, wife of Edward I of England, and Sancha de Ayala ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Todd,

I'm not convinced that Sancha can be numbered among the descendants of
the first count of Portugal. This has usually been done through the
marriage of an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso IX of Leon to Lope Diaz
de Haro, lord of Viscaya (called "Cabeza Brava" by Garcia Carraffa,
eleventh sovereign lord of Viscaya, +1236). In his 1963 article on
Sancha Milton Rubincam had mentioned that she was a descendant of
Alfonso IX,. This was based on her pedigree by Alexander Croke in
_The Genealogical History of the Croke Family Originally Named Le Blount
(2 vols., Oxford, 1823), which shows the following:

1. Lope Diaz de Haro (+1236), m. Urraca, dau. Alfonso IX of Leon
2. Lope Ruiz "el Chico" (attested 1253?), m. Berenguela Gonzales Giron
3. Pedro Lopez, m. Elvira Sanchez de Guevara, heiress of Ayala.
4. Sancho Lopez de Ayala, "el Motila", m. Aldonza de Velasco.
5. Pedro Lopez de Ayala, Notario Mayor of Castile, Adelantado of Murcia
in 1318; great-grandfather of Sancha de Ayala.

This, descent, apparently derived from Salazar y Castro's _Historia
genealogica de la casa de Lara_, is repeated by John Denison Champlin,
"The Ancestry of Anne Hutchinson", New York Genealogical and
Biographical Register 45 (1914), pp. 21-22.

However, Garcia Carraffa's articles on "Haro" and "Salcedo (Ayala)" in
the _Enciclopedia genealogica y heraldica hispano-americana_ give a more
pedestrian descent of the fourteenth-century Ayalas, from the grandfather
and namesake of "Cabeza Brava", thus bypassing descent from Alfonso IX.
"Haro", at p. 277, and "Salcedo (Ayala)", at p. 202, show the following:

1. Lope Diaz de Haro, 9th lord (+ 1170), m. (2) Aldonza Ruiz de Castro
2. Sancho Lopez, Ricohombre, m. ??
3. Lope Sanchez, m. Elvira Sanchez de Guevara, heiress of Ayala
4. Sancho Lopez de Ayala, "el Motila", m. Aldonza de Velasco.
5. Pedro Lopez de Ayala, Notario Mayor of Castile, Adelantado of Murcia
in 1318; great-grandfather of Sancha de Ayala.

Chronologically it is difficult to favor one over the other, given the
lack of precise birthdates for these generations. Schwennicke's tables
of the house of Haro (III/1:117-118) do not support either filiation.
Against the latter version Schwennicke gives Lope Diaz (+1170) an
illegitimate son Sancho, archdeacon of Calahorra. He is not mentioned
as progenitor of a family, although his clerical orders don't preclude a
secular life in the twelfth-century Rioja. Against the earlier version
one must cite Szabolcs de Vajay, "From Alfonso VII to Alfonso X: the First
Two Centuries of the Burgundian Dynasty in Castile and Leon: a
Prosopographical Catalogue in Social Genealogy, 1100-1300," in _Studies
in Genealogy and Family History in Tribute to Charles Evans on the Occasion
of His Eightieth Birthday_, ed. Lindsay L. Brook (Salt Lake City:
Association for the Promotion of Scholarship in Genealogy, Ltd.,
Occasional Publication no. 2, 1989), pp. 366-417, at p. 381, where no Lope
is listed
among the children of Lope Diaz and Urraca Alfonso. Schwennicke doesn't
show him either, although a Lope Lopez in the same generation seems to be
indicated as progenitor of the family of the "lords of La Guardia, later
marquesses of Carpio and dukes of Montoro, grandees of Spain."

It is curious, however, that the Salazar y Castro pedigree shows "el Chico"
as the husband of Berenguela Gonzales Giron. Vajay shows that Rodrigo
Gonzales Giron married Berenguela, daughter of Lope Diaz and Urraca Alfonso;
perhaps "el Chico", a nobody, married their daughter, and then their child
married the Ayala heiress? This might have resulted in the confused
assumption of "el Chico's" descent from Urraca Alfonso when in fact it
was through his wife. This would squeeze another generation into an
already tight chronology, however.

I'd like to be corrected if you can show Sancha de Ayala's descent from
the Burgundian rulers of Castile or Portugal!

Nat Taylor
< >

This thread: