Re: clan of Vimara Peres

On Jun 14, 9:05 am, Francisco Tavares de Almeida
<francisco.tavaresdealme...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 14 Jun, 15:22, taf <t...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

You are the one arguing that it was Oneca's royal connections that
gave the family it's power. Relatively speaking, then, Diego was not a
high noble in your reconstruction.  It has to be one or the other.
Either Diego was a nobleman of distinction, in which case the
achievements of his children need not surprise and need no royal
connection to explain, or else Diego was not a nobleman of
distinction, requiring Oneca to be royal to explain the family's
success, but making it unlikely a royal Oneca would have made such a
marriage.

Diego is not - that I know - mentioned before his marriage to Onega.
And out of nothing he becomes 'presor' of Portugal.

And neither was Oneca. We don't have that many contemporary documents
from the period that any of this need be more than sampling error.

You speak of royal favor and suggest that Onega could have been a lady
in attendance to Jimena and that is exactly what I find improbable and
against common sense. 'Presor' was the king's representant with full
powers in a region were royal power was not consolidated, difuse or in
risk. It implied both political trust and militar (and administrative
and diplomatic an so on) ability. It was a full time job.
The royal favor was gained in courtier tasks like lady in attendance.
What I find against all probability was a lady in attendance living
with the court married to a 'presor'.
As you speculated with the lady in attendance I would speculate that
Diogo had proved his merits in Castile and when the king need somebody
trustable in Portugal thought of Onega and gave her Diogo as an aide.
If Diogo was from the lower nobility he probably would not be more
than an aide but being a magnate - this is the argument for him being
a magnate, nothing is really known - he could well be married to
Oneca.
What I refuse is a part time job for a 'presor' or a part time
marriage for them.

So a man went from us having no information to him having been
'presor'. How does this demonstrate that he married a royal princess
from another country? You say that the role he fulfilled was one of
trust that would not have been given to just anyone, but then you
would have it given to just anyone because the man in question had
married well. If, as you have suggested, he had 'proved his merits'
in Castile, why need we invoke a royal Oneca? Isn't proving you could
do the job in another province sufficient?


All of this based on the suggestion by much later chroniclers and 17th
century creative genealogists that Jimena, whose own parentage is not
directly documented, was 'of French royal blood', and yer resulting in
a solution that provides no French royal blood?
This is not the only
reference to a Frankish royal connection for the kings of Navarre, but
to derive such a specific solution is wishful thinking.

Not quite. The cronicle of Sampiro is not from the XVII and, in

Note the "much later chroniclers" part. That would refer to someone
writing in the reign of Alfonso's great-great-grandson.

Pelayo's transcription, says more or less 'Alfonso associated all
Galia with Pamplona, for motives of kinship, taking as spouse one of
that lineage, called Ximena, niece of king Charles'.

Given how flatterig Sampiro was toward Vermudo, is it a stretch to
suggest he might have been trying to exaggerate his ancestry? Most
authors I have seen treat this with extreme skepticism.


Returning to generalities, it seems to me that iberian genealogy in
this epoch has to be done this way: hypothesis integrating the most
possibly known facts, substituted by new hypothesis integrating new
facts or better intrepretating the whole.

Is it really that bad to just say 'there is insufficient data for any
hypothesis'?

Try that yourself and tell me what rests.

I would rather have no answer than an 'answer' built on quicksand.

What I knew out of my head was that García
Sanchez married first Andregoto and divorced her 'probably because she
was much older than him and did not give him a son in due time'.

But she did - son and heir Sancho was by Andregota.

Now that I have looked more carefully to it, I am not so sure that I
was that wrong. I know you *hate* onomastics but it is really a
coincidence that such a rare name - Andregoto, not certainly a mode -
was the name of the eldest sister of Acibela.
And as Sancha did raised Andregoto maybe she became known as the
mother. Just an(other) hypothesis.

I dislike using onomastics in the absence of other evidence (although
there are specific cases where it can be illuminative). I HATE using
onomastics alone to justify 'correcting' the primary evidence.

taf
.