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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2009-04 > 1239498128


From: Francisco Tavares de Almeida <>
Subject: Re: was the wife of Antonio de Cardona, viceroy of Sicily, same lady as the widow of Jacopo de Aragon-Prades, lord of Caccamo,constable of Sicily ?
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:02:08 -0700 (PDT)
References: <mailman.732.1239452733.2001.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com>


« when you write "... no reliable documents about his descende...",
does this mean that there is no reliable documentation that he
actually were the father of Eleonora, the first wife of antonio de
Cardona ???? »

No document that I know about but her paternity was never questioned
until your wild guess that a Violante could weel be a Villena.

« I would like to see this sort of question to be settled immediately.
It's paramount to know whether Eleonora's paternity is up to
conjecture, or whether it is actually mentioned to be this Henrique
Manoel by some near-contemporary document. »

She is identified as daughter of Henrique Manoel de Vilhena in old
genealogies, the eldest I heard about from the first half of XVI.
Nothing iron-proof but still more solid than your conjectures.

« I have to demolish the idea that such a sort of granddaughter of
Juan Manuel would have inherited lands of Juan Manuel's second wife.
It seems to be well established that Henrique Manoel was himself
illegitimate son of Juan Manuel, and anyway certainly not son of the
second wife the Aragonese infanta. Thusly, the Aragonese infanta's
lands would in no easy way have passed to either Henrique Manoel or
any daughter of Henrique Manoel.
Aragonese infantas did not leave their inheritance to their husband's
illegitimates, nor did they generally leave their inheritance to their
stepchildren. hereditary lands were by nature ancestral lands, to
whose inheritance there were a queue of blood relatives to claim them.
The Aragonese infanta's lands would have devolved to her own
legitimate biological children, and absent of such, to the infanta's
own siblings.... Not easy to imagine that a king of arago, a close
relative of that infanta, would have allowed some illegitimate
stepchild or such to take those lands, when there existed better blood
claims to the inheritance - for example, the Aragonese king's own
blood claim would have been better than any stepchild's. »

Now you have been carried away by your own wishes.
You can not apply to Iberia the knowledge you have about Germany,
Nordic countries, England or France (order not arbitrary). Most of
Iberia and all of Portugal were reconquered from Muslims with the
natural consequence that the jurisdiction of the king was much larger
than in countries where feudalism had it’s peak. A bastard legitimized
by royal charter would nor displace a legitimous heir in entailed
property but he would inherit goods, lands, lordships or even titles.
The idea that a cousin or a nephew could dispute the inheritance of a
legitimised bastard is just preposterous.
Iberian infantas rarely brought entailed property to marriage - except
in the absence of male brothers and elder sisters - but always brought
dowries. Some lands in Valencia is exactly the sort of thing to be
expected in the dowry of an Aragonese infanta and those would be full
property of the widower. The idea that those could be claimed by other
royal Aragonese based in blood relationship belongs to another world,
not to Iberia.
Once the owner was Juan Manoel and Henrique Manoel was legitimised he
would be the natural heir of those lands as he could not inherit the
lordships of Villena, Escalona or Peñafiel.
Another thing to take into account, is that nobody could expect to
retain properties, lordships or titles in Portugal if choosed to leave
the country other than in the king’s service. The contrary was not
always true mainly when the territory in question was an alied of
Portugal against Castile, e.g. Aragón until Fernando ‘o Católico’.

* the sojourn of the bastard Henrique Manoel de Vilhena in Portugal,
speaks for that he had no significant inheritance in any other
place.... had he received something in Aragon, it's not conceivable he
wouldn't been in records and some presence there.

If it was in England, you were probably rigt. In Germany I am quite
sure that an ‘amtmann’ would have been appointed and if not his
accounts, at least the entries in ‘steurbuch’ could be known. But in
Iberia you can not expet to trace alodial property if it is not part
of a testament, a marriage contract or a judicial process.

« "....Different authors, conflicting between themselves say some of
the other children are also legitimous and, amongst them, D. Leonor
Manoel de Vilhena that married Antonio Folch de Cardona...."

* this 'dumping' a somewhat-difficult-to-define lady from Sicilian
context to be ILLEGITIMATE daughter of a count in Portugal, gives me a
hunch that this filiation is only a creation of exasperated nobility
genealogists, working on the 'name's the same' (Villena) basis, to
have some Villena as her father. »

For one, we are not sure if she was illegitimate. For other, the
father could hardly be defined as a count in Portugal wich he was for
a short period of his life. Until 1373 he was called Henrique Manoel
or Henrique Manoel de Vilhena; only in 1381 he was first mentioned as
Dom and Conde; in one only document of 1383 he is Conde de Seia, many
times Conde D. Henrique and only once Conde D. Henrique, lord of
Cascais; in 1386 he was already in Castile, considered as a traitor in
Portugal and obviously deprived of title, lordships and goods.

« geography speaks strongly against this filiation. Antonio de
Cardona, is he somehow recorded in any contact or presence in Portugal
in those crucial years (such as, 1400..1410) ? It would be rather much
more plausible that he (a Catalan with a presence in Sicily) married a
daughter of an Aragonese family which daughter was possibly the one
with recorded recent presence in Sicily. »

“In those crucial years (such as, 1400...1410)” Henrique Manoel was in
Castile since 14-24 years before and D. Leonor Manoel was married or
about to marry Antonio Cardona. (I do not know in wich basis but, as
an illegitimate, she was said ‘natural’ and not ‘bastarda’ meaning
that she was born before the father married, what makes her marriage
before or around 1400 quite probable).
And if you really think that geography could be important, remember
that Henrique Manoel was a grandson of an infant of Castile and a
princess of Savoia (dau. of Amedeo IV).

« is there really some near-contemporary documentation of that Antonio
de Cardona's first wife was daughter of this Henrique Manoel ? »

As above stated, none that I heard about. All based in some old
genealogies repeated with some conflicting data about legitimacy. Note
that the site posted by Antoine Barbry ‘Grandes de España’ says “hija
(¿nat?)” what means no doubt about daughter, doubts about
illegitimacy.
All these Villena, Manoel and Cardona are not considered portuguese
families and there is no motive for portuguese scholars to investigate
them in detail. On the other hand, where portuguese and spanish tell
the same story there is not much interest left for further research.

Regards,
Francisco
(Portugal)


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