On 08-Sep-17 1:27 PM, taf wrote: > On Thursday, August 25, 2016 at 7:34:07 PM UTC-7, taf wrote: >> I have previously raised the issue here of the paternity of Vermudo II. He >> is known from chronicles and contemporary documents as the son of king >> Ordono. The problem is that there were two kings of that name in the >> preceding generation, Ordono III, son of king Ramiro II, and Ordono IV, >> son of king Alfonso (usually identified with Alfonso IV, brother of Ramiro >> II, both being sons of Ordono II, although a minority opinion would make >> Ordono IV the son of Alfonso Fruelaz, son of Fruela II and briefly king or >> anti-king in opposition to the sons of Ordono II). The traditional >> derivation of Vermudo II has been as son of Ordono III, but from time to >> time a scholar will argue that his father was instead Ordono IV. >> >> Not so. A published charter has come to my attention that makes the >> relationship explicit. A royal charter in the Cartulary of Santa Maria >> de Carracedo, issued by Vermudo, refers to "patris mei domini Hordonii, >> . . . quod avus noster dominus Ranemirus. . . .", so there it is Vermudo >> (II) was son of Ordono (III), son of Ramiro (II). This allows us to dismiss >> the alternative descent, and the various implications that would flow from >> it. > A year ago I posted about this charter in which Vermudo II of Leon names his father Ordono, confirming a grant made by "avus nostro dominus Ranemirus" - our 'grandfather' Ramiro, seemingly resolving the dispute about which king Ordono was his father, that it was Ordono III Ramirez and not Ordono IV Alfonso. Well, as might have been expected, the proponent of the alternative hypothesis has decided to explain this away as meaning something different. Indeed, he gives two alternative explanations, both relating to the imprecision of the term 'avus' and its cognates. > > In a 2014 article on the ancestry of Vermudo II, Manuel Carriedo Tejedo concludes that avus here does not mean grandfather. First he points to other cases where the term is used for a great-grandfather. He takes this to mean that in the charter in question, he may have been referring to great-great-great-great-grandfather, Ramiro I, in other words, that it is being used as 'ancestor'. (This seems unlikely to me, in that I don't recall ever seeing the word used for a relationship this remote.) Secondly, he points to a charter in which Vermudo refers to 'auus noster domnus Rudesindus episcopus' - calling Saint Bishop Rosendo avus when clearly 'grandfather' in the biological sense is not an option. He raises the possibility that the term might be used as ancestor to refer more broadly to a predecessor in the family - that it might refer to Ramiro II not as a direct ancestor but as first cousin of his grandfather. > > I would say that this cannot be definitively answered unless a charter is found naming Vermudo's mother, but even that would likely fall short - Ordono III and Ordono IV married the same woman, Urraca Fernandez of Castile. > > https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=5710005 The full article is available here: http://www.annuariumsanctiiacobi.org/sites/annuariumsanctiiacobi.org/files/la_ascendencia_de_vermudo_ii_982-999.pdf Peter Stewart