Jimena Muñoz DE BIERZO

Filiation incertaine. The earliest widely disseminated attempt to traceher ancestry was to make her daughter of Nuno Rodriguez, the husband of Jimena Ordonez, a granddaughter of Vermudo II of Leon. I have not looked into the history of this solution - it is intimately linked to thediscredited belief that Jimena Nunez (i.e. Jimena Munoz) was sister ofRodrigo Nunez/Munoz de Guzman, founder of that family, in turn made sonof this Nuno Rodriguez. Once this age-old confusion of Nuno/Munio istaken into account, the parents so named did exist - a count Munio Rodriguez and wife Jimena Ordonez were historical individuals, having, it would seem, two children, in addition to younger son Suero an elder son,count Rodrigo Munoz, who was killed at Segrajas in 1086. In terms of the Guzman descent, it cannot be supported, The founder of that family was a generation younger than Jimena Munoz, who herself seems too youngto be sister of this Rodrigo Munoz. Further Rodrigo Munoz appears to have left a sole heiress, Mayor Rodriguez, the mother in law of Rodrigo Perez de Traba, el Velloso. (It should be added that Munio Rodriguez remarried to Ilduara Velasquez. having daughter Elvira Munoz, wife of Pelayo Gomez, of the Banu Gomez clan.) The first recent work to attempt to address the issue was that of Clemente Palencia. His work is notablefor finding documentation int he region of Ulvia, in which a Jimena Munoz, tenant, is named, along with kin Munio Munoz and Velasquita. He proposes that Jimena is identical to the king's mistress and was daughterof this couple. The next serious study was that of Canal Sanchez-Pagin. He reevaluated the starting material and concluded that she would not have been daughter of Munio Munoz. This obscure nobleman could hardly be the father of one called "most noble". Rather, he looked to the families of the highest rank, and found three possible fathers named Munio. One was the Munio Rodriguez traditionally made her father. The second was the Count of Asturias, Munio Gonzales, while the third was thewell-documented family of count Munio Munoz and his father Munio Rodriguez Canis. He found documentation of an "Infanta Jimena Munoz" and concluded that this 'most noble' lady was sister of the premier count of her time, Rodrigo Munoz, the son of Munio Gonzalez, the other counts Munio being too old to be her father. A third study of the issue, by Jaime de Sanchez y Acha, had been published in a Spanish academy proceedings, but had proved difficult to obtain. The only clue I had was that ina recent work by Canal Sanchez-Pagin on count Gomez Gonzalez, he indicated that the count's wife was daughter of count Rodrigo Munoz, brotherof the royal mistress, and further, that she was descended from RodrigoRomanez (father of Munio Rodriguez, who married Jimena Ordonez). Thismade me wonder if Salazar y Acha hadn't reverted to the original descent. Well, thanks to the FMG library, I have now seen the original Salazar y Acha article. He fully accepts Canal's argument with regard to Jimena's immediate parentage, concluding that she was daughter of count Munio Gonzalez and his wife Mayor. He then concludes that she is also the Jimena associated with Munio Munoz, but here is the twist. He concludes that given that we have an associated Jimena, daughter of Mayor ofunknown parentage, and a Munio Munoz, husband of Velasquita of unknownparentage, that it is likely Mayor and Velasquita are the two siblingsnamed in a document as daughters of Munio Rodriguez (son of Rodrigo Romaniz) and Jimena Munoz, in turn daughter of count Munio Munoz (the sonof Munio Rodriguez Canis), thereby placing all three of Canal's countsMunio in Jimena's pedigree.

This does not come without a severe problem. In another article from acouple of years earlier, Salazar y Acha discusses #6, Munio Rodriguez,the son of Rodrigo Romaniz, in more detail, but gives him two entirelydifferent wives, Jimena Ordonez and Ilduara Velasquez. Here he shows him as marrying Jimena Munoz. At some point between the two articles hehas changed his mind, either as to the paternity of Munio R's wife Jimena, which Munio R was son of Rodrigo Romaniz, or something, but does not discuss this change of mind in either article, making it impossibleto determine the reason for the change, if it was even intended. (Notethat a somewhat analogous thing happened to this author when he speculated concerning the parentage of countess Urraca of Castile, only to have a years-old ancestry table of his published the next year that showedthe superseded version, making it appear to be a corrected one.) At any rate, at least with regard to the parents of Jimena, there seems tobe consensus between these two Iberian genealogical specialists of theperiod. This uniformity is, apparently, not universal, as Luiz Mello Vaz de São Payo apparently gives different parentage, making her daughter of a Munio Moniz, count of Bierzo, and his wife Muniadona Moniz. I have not seen this original work, nor am I familiar enough with this Monio Moniz (i.e. Munio Munoz) to determine whether his is idntical to oneof the above of that name or not.

Canal Sánchez-Pagín, José Maria. Jimena Muñoz, Amiga de Alfonso VI. Anuario de Estudios Medievales. 21:11-40 (1991). Palencia, Clemente. Historia y Legendas de las Mujeres de Alfonso VI. in Estudios Sobre AlfonsoVI y la Reconquista de Toledo. 281-90 (1988). Salazar y Acha, Jaime de. Los Descendientes del Conde Ero Fernandez, Fundador del Monasterio de Santa Maria de Ferreira de Pallares. in Galicia en la Edad Media. 67-86 (1990). Salazar y Acha, Jaime de. Contribución al estudio del reinado de Alfonso VI de Castilla: algunas aclaraciones sobre su política matrimonial. Anales de la Real Academia Matritense de Heráldica y Genealogía, 2:299-336 (1992-1993)

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