On Friday, June 2, 2017 at 5:28:48 AM UTC-3, taf wrote: > I forgot to throw in the citation:: > > http://riubu.ubu.es/handle/10259.4/2345 > > Gonzalo Martínez Díez, 2007, "Ascendientes de Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar", Boletín de la Institución Fernán González, 86 (234): 31-52 Wow! Thank you for the link. I wasn't aware of the 10-year paywall. I've downloaded it to read as I was not very convinced by Margarita Torres-Sevilla's reconstruction, even though it has acquired a status of "almost definitive." Thanks again.

On Friday, June 2, 2017 at 4:31:53 PM UTC-7, J.L. Fernandez Blanco wrote: > Wow! Thank you for the link. I wasn't aware of the 10-year paywall. I've > downloaded it to read as I was not very convinced by Margarita Torres- > Sevilla's reconstruction, even though it has acquired a status of "almost > definitive." I too was never entirely comfortable with her reconstruction, for one of the reasons Martinez Diez mentioned - the children of Flain Munoz, by both wives, seemed to be well documented with no Diego, and he just seemed to be forced in. That and a resistence to the general pattern where every noble family is made a younger branch of a small number of premier families. (For example, in Ireland, the way every family is made to descend from the kings one wonders who exactly they ruled over). That being said, I don't for a minute think the descent of El Cid from Lain Calvo can be taken for granted, based on the testimony of Historia Roderici. I don't know where the historical horizon is (the point at which authentic historical memory ends and before which is legend and tradition), but I doubt it is that far back, especially when we have the parallel of the Lara pedigree, which is completely fantastical. In one of the last papers Martínez Díez published, he went back over some of Menéndez Pidal's identifications in the Siete Infantes tale and concluded the only named figures that can be considered fully historical are count Garcia Fernandez, Almanzor, and one Cordoba general, Ghalib al-Nasiri. Gonzalo Martínez Díez, El Cantar de los siete infantes de Lara: la historia y la leyenda. Cahiers d'études hispaniques médiévales. no. 37:171-189 (2014). [http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=CEHM_037_0171] taf

On Friday, June 2, 2017 at 9:59:47 PM UTC-3, taf wrote: > On Friday, June 2, 2017 at 4:31:53 PM UTC-7, J.L. Fernandez Blanco wrote: > > > Wow! Thank you for the link. I wasn't aware of the 10-year paywall. I've > > downloaded it to read as I was not very convinced by Margarita Torres- > > Sevilla's reconstruction, even though it has acquired a status of "almost > > definitive." > > I too was never entirely comfortable with her reconstruction, for one of the reasons Martinez Diez mentioned - the children of Flain Munoz, by both wives, seemed to be well documented with no Diego, and he just seemed to be forced in. That and a resistence to the general pattern where every noble family is made a younger branch of a small number of premier families. (For example, in Ireland, the way every family is made to descend from the kings one wonders who exactly they ruled over). > > That being said, I don't for a minute think the descent of El Cid from Lain Calvo can be taken for granted, based on the testimony of Historia Roderici. I don't know where the historical horizon is (the point at which authentic historical memory ends and before which is legend and tradition), but I doubt it is that far back, especially when we have the parallel of the Lara pedigree, which is completely fantastical. In one of the last papers Martínez Díez published, he went back over some of Menéndez Pidal's identifications in the Siete Infantes tale and concluded the only named figures that can be considered fully historical are count Garcia Fernandez, Almanzor, and one Cordoba general, Ghalib al-Nasiri. > > Gonzalo Martínez Díez, El Cantar de los siete infantes de Lara: la historia y la leyenda. Cahiers d'études hispaniques médiévales. no. 37:171-189 (2014). [http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=CEHM_037_0171] > > taf Well, if it serves for something, one of my great-aunts (a sister to my paternal grandmother) who was illiterate half of her life (she started school at 45 and died at 92), could recite her paternal ancestry upto the 6th generation, spouses included, and on her maternal side, she could do the same upto the 7th generation. When I was I child I used to go to her house and we (my cousins, my brother and I) would sit under a centenarian apple-tree and she'd tell us those stories. Except for me, who always brought a notebook and a pen to take notes (at 8 years old!), the rest of the lot couldn't care less. When I grew up, I found out that all she knew, except in just one case (the first name, but not the last, which was correct) of one of her ancestress on the maternal side, at the 6th generation level, she had memorized (remember, she started as illiterate and never was a genealogist) all that vast information in an astonishingly accurate way. Even the places where they had been born were pretty accurate. She even knew the names of all her kinship on both sides of the family starting with her third cousins. That was prodigious for me. And a blessing because when I grew up I could start working--even though I had not much faith in what I had written down--with some material. To my completely disbelief, she was right! Her line of the family is the one I know the best. My mother only remembers her grandparents and my brother and cousins don't even know who their grandparents were. This is not to say that the Historia Roderici is accurate but she came from an area not disimilar to the one where the Cid's family belonged. She was from the mountains in Asturias (de Oviedo), and her family owned lands both in the mountain and the valleys and in some surrounding villages. When I traveled to Spain in my late 20's doing research, I was amazed at the memory the older generations still had. Now, when I went to Avilés, where one of my uncles lived, he didn't even know the name of his grandparents. Maybe the isolation, the fact that both her paternal and maternal families were patrons of churches, where many of those ancestors are interred, and who knows what else, were all contributing factors for her to learn the stories handed down generation after generation in those horrid winter nights in the mountains. Nothing to do, what else than tell stories about the family? The difference among her sides of the family and my mother's is that my mother grew up in a city, La Coruña. Well, after this little story, I'm going to read the other link you sent, which I was not aware of. For years now, I've been mostly dealing with European genealogies and haven't focused so much on Spain...maybe it's time to return to it! Thanks again.