Early Modern Women:
An Interdisciplinary Journal
2011, vol. 6
The Visibility of Early Modern Castilian
Noblewomen in Genealogical Narratives: Bilateral
Kinship and its Memory within a Patrilineal Society
Carolina Blutrach-Jelín
F
amily, gender, and women’s history have shown that kinship in the
Middle Ages and the early modern period, in spite of the drive towards
patrilineal succession, continued to have a bilateral (in the sense of both
maternal and paternal) and horizontal orientation that was used both by
the aristocracy and urban “middling sorts” in the design of their daily lives.1
The case of the noble House of Fernán Núñez examined here shows that
this orientation was made visible in the public memorialization of the
nobility, a circumstance that calls the dichotomy between public/male and
private/female spheres into question.
The influence wielded by the women of the House of Fernán Núñez
did not differ significantly from that of their peers in other parts of
Europe.2 They exercised power through cultural and religious patronage
and as mediators in social networks, and so participated in the accumulation of family influence and wealth expressive of family status and connections. If we examine the biography of don Francisco Gutiérrez de los Ríos,
third Count of Fernán Núñez (1644–1721), we can see that women, especially those connected to him either by marriage or by family ties, played
an important role in the court career and success of this Andalusian nobleman. From his mother, doña Ana Antonia de los Ríos, second Countess
of Fernán Núñez, he inherited his title and mayorazgo (entailed estates).
His wife, doña Catalina Zapata, provided a link to important social and
patronage networks by way of her family ties with the House of Pastrana,
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which formed part of the Grandee. His sisters, confined to the family convent, played a critical role in guiding his patronage initiatives, as well as his
choice of a double burial.3 These three instances illustrate the important
role played by women in the reproduction of aristocratic culture and society, and their contribution to the success of the lineage.
What sources guard the memory of the contribution made by the
Fernán Núñez women to the lineage? Do they have a place in public
narratives of family memory of their House? Evidence of the power and
influence of these noblewomen can be found in wills, records of religious
foundations, and in brief notes on documents not produced by the women
themselves, most of which are preserved in the family archive.4 These
sources allow the experience of these women to be reconstructed in a fragmentary and indirect manner.5 But in this case, the role of these women
in the reproduction of the lineage is plainly visible in the genealogical history of the House of Fernán Núñez, which the third Count ordered the
historian and genealogist Luis de Salazar y Castro to prepare, and which
was published in 1682 in Madrid,6 a public text the political purpose of
which — the glorification of the House of Fernán Núñez — is indisputable.
Genealogies were a basic element in the configuration and legitimation of noble identity and privileges. These narrations proliferated in the
early modern period because they were important weapons in the struggle
for recognition that was waged in the public space. As numerous studies
have shown, these genealogies were not neutral; they remained silent about
matters that did not fit well with the ideal of nobility and laid stress on
others which contributed to exalting the virtues and greatness of the lineage.7 The Catálogo written by Salazar y Castro aims to communicate and
preserve the memory of the symbolic, social, and economic capital of the
House of Fernán Núñez, capital which was produced by both women and
men, as its text clearly reveals. Salazar did not confine himself to presenting the bearers of the House’s title and their merits (the patrilineal line
of succession); he also included a broad network of relatives, both agnate
and cognate. In this network women are clearly visible as bearers of the
House’s title and domains: consorts, sisters, mothers, aunts, grandmothers,
daughters, and cousins.
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With regard to the bearers of the House’s title, as well as the mother
of the third Count, the Catálogo records other cases of the House of
Fernán Núñez being held in female hands. In the lineage’s second generation we already come across a female bearer of the title, doña Constanza,
who received the state as a dowry and so became its second lady. Three
generations later, doña Aldonza, an only daughter, inherited the title and
became the fifth lady of Fernán Núñez. Aldonza had six children, and she
and her husband decided to pass her inheritance in its entirety on to one
of them, her daughter doña Inés who thus became the sixth lady. It was
during her time as title bearer that the mayorazgo was established in 1382.
The terms of its foundation held that from that point on “the oldest son
or daughter”8 would inherit the title. The majorat of Fernán Núñez went
on to follow this order of succession, the most common of the Castilian
ones, which preferred male to female offspring but excluded the latter only
when they were expressly prohibited in the founding document.9 It was
this custom that allowed doña María Magdalena to become its twelfth
lady after winning a case about the succession that she brought against her
cousin in 1555. It also allowed the second Countess, an only daughter, to
inherit her maternal grandfather’s title when her mother, also an only child,
predeceased him.10
Apart from the existence of female title bearers, what is special about
the Catálogo is that it includes not only the name of the title bearer and
consort, but also those of their parents. The origin, titles, services, and relevant family ties for both the paternal and maternal line of the husband and
wife were thus recorded — useful information for the family lineage and its
reputation, information which could be referred to in specific contexts to
claim inheritance rights or request the granting of the Grandee.
Not only the printed Catálogo but also other (visual) texts preserve
the memory of bilateral kinship ties, such as some paintings that the third
Count ordered to be added to the mayorazgo. Both maternal and paternal
descent were depicted in two enormous canvases representing family trees
which decorate the walls of the Fernán Núñez palace: one a “very large
family tree of all descendants through the male and female lines of this
House since its foundation,” and another of the same size showing “the
closest royal lines to the four grandparents of my succession.”11 Another
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genealogical narration, obviously selective in terms of the family members
it recalls, but showing both the male and female lines of descent, can be
read in a second group of paintings which form a family portrait gallery.
The pictures of the third Count of Fernán Núñez and of his wife doña
Catalina Zapata, painted on the occasion of their marriage in 1676, can
be seen as foundational for the genealogy represented in this gallery. From
the male line, the paintings immortalize the great-grandfather of the third
Count of Fernán Núñez, from whom the second Countess (his granddaughter and the mother of don Francisco) inherited the title. Her likeness and that of her husband are immortalized on canvas. With regard to
the forebears of doña Catalina, there are portraits of her father, the third
Count of Barajas, her mother, doña Ana María de Silva, and her maternal grandmother, the princess of Melito, doña Leonor de Guzmán, third
Duchess Consort of Pastrana.12
The third Count of Fernán Núñez, by means of the Catálogo and
these series of paintings, sought to communicate and preserve the memory
of the reputation and virtues of his lineage by making use of two distinct
formats: the printed word and images. The bilateral orientation of this
genealogical record comes as no surprise, given the crucial importance
of bilateral kinship for obtaining the signs of distinction for the nobility,
such as the habits of military orders awarded by the king at the Consejo
de Órdenes sitting as a “tribunal of honor and privilege.” If we examine the
genealogical evidence required of don Diego de los Ríos y Guzmán, second
Count of Fernán Núñez, and his son don Francisco in order to acquire the
habit of the order of Alcántara, in 1649 and 1650 respectively, we find
that witnesses were asked about the parents of the applicants and their
maternal and paternal grandparents. The applicant was required to be a
hidalgo with “pure blood” on four sides, that is to say, of legitimate descent
through the maternal and paternal line and to be of old Christian blood.13
It is not by chance, therefore, that the genealogist Salazar y Castro mapped
out hundreds of “árboles de costados” (starting from the parents and then
recording the generations through the four grandparents, the eight greatgrandparents and so on) of various members of the Spanish nobility, both
men and women,14 nor that the Catálogo included two family trees of this
type.
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The inclusion of the Fernán Núñez women in genealogical narratives
gave public visibility to the informal power they exercised on a de facto
basis in a patriarchal society. The genealogy, as a form of family memory,
was an essential element in the representation of aristocratic identity and
an effective weapon for winning social and political preeminence. The visibility of women in these representations reflects the important role they
played in the reproduction and success of the lineage and contrasts with
the widespread portrayal of women in the patriarchal, medical, and moral
discourses of the time and also by contemporary anthropologists of the
Mediterranean culture, which underlines their inferiority, modesty, obedience, and silence, and thus their exclusion from the public sphere.15 The
case of Fernán Núñez underlines that gender identities and roles and the
gender division of spaces of influence appear to have been more complex
and negotiable in practice than in patriarchal discourses and ideals.
Some questions remain to be answered. Was the visibility of women
in family memory and its bilateral orientation specific to the Castilian
nobility? What factors explain this practice? Some scholars have argued
that the greater access to resources guaranteed by the Castilian system of
inheritance16 gave women more authority and freedom of action than their
peers elsewhere in Europe.17 We have already seen that noblewomen were
not excluded from succeeding to mayorazgos which, by resort to primogeniture, sought to avoid the breaking up of the family’s patrimony and
to preserve its social and political status. Indeed, as a result of numerous
lawsuits in Castile in which distant male relatives claimed their right to
inherit, a Royal Pragmatic was issued in 1615 that established that preference must be given to female heirs of better lineage and closer degree of
consanguinity.18 It is worth mentioning that though they were few in number in early modern Spain, there were female mayorazgos that excluded
men from succeeding to them.19
Is it possible that systems of inheritance that did not exclude them
turned women into not only more active and influential actors but also
more visible ones in genealogical narratives? In order to answer this question it would be necessary to analyze the visibility or invisibility of women
in the family memory of other European noble houses, to examine their
systems of inheritance, and to see what type of relationship existed between
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the two elements. In my view, it would also be necessary to consider other
historical, social, political, cultural, and demographic factors which might
also have affected women’s visibility or invisibility. This research would
also allow an assessment of the supposed specificity of the Castilian case
that I have explored.
Notes
1. David Warren Sabean et al., eds., Kinship in Europe: Approaches to Long-Term
Development (1300–1900) (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007); Sandra Cavallo, Artisans
of the Body in Early Modern Italy: Identities, Families and Masculinities (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2007). This article forms part of the Research Project HAR
2008–04113, funded by MICINN.
2. For example, see Sharon Kettering, “The Patronage Power of Early Modern
French Noblewomen,” Historical Journal 32 (1989): 817–41; Renata Ago, Carriere e
clientele nella Roma barocca (Roma: Laterza, 1990); and Stanley Chojnacki, Women and
Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2000).
3. On horizontal kinship ties and their memory in the House of Fernán Núñez,
see Carolina Blutrach-Jelín, “Brother-Sister ‘Love’ and Family Memory in Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century Castile: The Third Count of Fernán Núñez and the Convent
of La Concepción,” in Giulia Calvi and Carolina Blutrach-Jelín, eds., “Sibling Relations
in Family History: Conflicts, Co-operation and Gender Roles (Sixteenth to Nineteenth
Centuries),” Special Issue, European Review of History 17, no. 5 (2010): 777–90.
4. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Sección Nobleza, Serie Fernán Núñez, Toledo
(henceforth AHN-SN, FN).
5. See Nupur Chaudhuri et al., eds., Contesting Archives: Finding Women in the
Sources (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010).
6. Luis de Salazar y Castro, Catálogo historial genealógico de los señores y condes de
la Casa y villa de Fernán Núñez, desde la conquista de Córdoba año de 1236 hasta este año
de 1682 (Madrid, 1682).
7. See, for example, “La culture généalogique,” Special Issue, Annales: Économies,
Sociétés, Civilisations 46, no. 4 (1991); and Renatta Ago et al., eds., “Costruire la parentela: Donne e uomini nella definizione dei legami familiari,” Special Issue, Quaderni
Storici 86, no. 2 (1994). For the Spanish case, see Jaime Contreras, “Linajes y cambio
social: la manipulación de la memoria,” in “Familia y relaciones de parentesco,” Special
Issue, Historia Social 21 (1995): 104–24; and Enrique Soria Mesa, “Genealogía y poder:
Invención de la memoria y ascenso en la España Moderna,” Estudis 30 (2004): 21–55.
8. “buestro fixo o fixa mayor que dejáredes,” Majorat foundation document, AHNSN, FN, C. 484–8-1, s.f.
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179
9. Bartolomé Clavero, Mayorazgo: propiedad feudal en Castilla, 1369–1836 (1974;
epr. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1989), 240–41.
10. Catálogo, 6, 21–24, 81, 130, 150–51.
11. AHN-SN, FN, C.490–20–4, Inventory of goods to be included in the majorat, attached to the will of the third Count of Fernán Núñez.
12. Some of these paintings are to be found in the Palacio de Fernán Núñez: the
two family trees, the portraits of the great-grandfather and father of the third Count of
Fernán Núñez (don Alonso Estacio de los Ríos, I Count, and don Diego Gutiérrez de los
Ríos, II Count, respectively), the portrait of doña Cataliza Zapata and the portraits of her
mother and father. The paintings are currently being restored.
13. AHN-OM, Caballeros de Alcántara, Exp. 1268.
14. Real Academia de la Historia (RAH), Colección Salazar y Castro, 9–294
(antiguo D-19), Árboles de costados de gran parte de la primera nobleza destos reynos en las
casas, cuios dueños viven este año de 1683, and RAH, Colección Salazar y Castro, 9–296
(antiguo D-21), Árboles de costados de los títulos que an concedido nuestros reies hasta
Pheliphe IV el Grande.
15. In the last decades some anthropologists have reconsidered their own tradition of Mediterranean studies. See, for example, Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology Through
the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987). The notions of a Mediterranean honor code have come under
intense scrutiny in various studies. For early modern Spain, the tension between prescriptive discourses of gender identity and social practices have been pointed out in Allyson
M. Poska, “Elusive Virtue: Rethinking the Role of Female Chastity in Early Modern
Spain,” Journal of Early Modern History 8 (2004): 135–46; and Scott K. Taylor, Honor and
Violence in Golden Age Spain (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008).
16. Castilian law mandated a system of partible inheritance, with equal inheritance
shares for both sons and daughters called legítimas, and the use of mejoras, an additional
bequest, as a mechanism to favor one descendant over the others. See Eugene H. Korth
and Della M. Flusche, “Dowry and Inheritance in Colonial Spanish America: Peninsular
Law and Chilean Practice,” The Americas 43 (1987): 395–410.
17. Helen Nader, Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain: Eight Women of the
Mendoza Family, 1450–1650 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 14. This
has been convincingly demonstrated for rural Galicia by Allyson M. Poska, “Gender,
Property, and Retirement Strategies in Early Modern Northwestern Spain,” Journal of
Family History 25 (2000): 313–25. See also Ofelia Rey Castelao, “Femmes et héritage
en Espagne au XVIIe siècle: stabilité legale et changements réels,” XVIIe siécle 3 (2009) :
451–76.
18. Clavero, Mayorazgo 240–41.
19. Enrique Soria Mesa, La nobleza en la España moderna: Cambio y continuidad
(Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2007), 226–27.
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