book 7 of Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada's 'Historia de rebus Hispaniae' that
has puzzled me since, as follows:
Below is another record which gives evidence of the identity of the
mother of Alice of France as Constance of Castile. This record is
taken from the Spanish source "Roderico Toletani Archiepiscopi"
which is found in the series, Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et
de la France, vol. 12 (1877), edited by Léopold Delisle, pg. 383.
It is available on the gallica website at:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/.
<snip>
Source: Ex Roderico Toletani Archiepiscopi de Rebus Hispaniae
Libris IX
pg. 383 Libro Septimo
"Nunc as gesta Aldefonsi (VII.) Hispaniarum Regis, prout coepimus,
revertamur ... Habuit autem duas uxores, Berengariam atque Richam;
ex Berengaria genuit Sancium et Fernandum, Elisabeth et Beatiam.
Elisabeth nupsit Ludovico (VII.) Regi Francorum, ex qua genuit
filiam quae dicta fuit Adeladis, et fuit uxor Comitis de Pontivo;
et illa Comitissa genuit Mariam, quae fuit mater Joannae Reginae
Castellae et Legionis."
The modern editor, Monsieur Delisle, added the following
information in a footnote regarding "Elisabeth" named in this
document: "Vulgatius dictam apud Gallos Constantiam." I believe
this mean that Elisabeth was commonly called Constance in France.
This explanation by Delisle strikes me as quite unconvincing, first
because the name Elisabeth (Isabel) is not otherwise found in the royal
family of Castile until the second half of the 13th century, whereas
Constance was given to several descendants of Alfonso VI's wife of the
same name; and secondly because it would not have been at all unfamiliar
to the French, who were scarcely prone to renaming their queens for
whimsical - or better - reasons.
However, I thought it odd that someone with as many sources available to
him as Archbishop Rodrigo of Toledo should have asserted a wrong name
for this Spanish princess who had made such an important marriage.
Purely by serendipity, while looking for references to Alfonso VI's
wives, I discovered that the passage quoted above was taken by Rodrigo
from Lucas de Tuy's 'Chronicon mundi' [_Hispaniae illustratae_, edited
by Andreas Schott, 4 vols (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1603-1608) IV p. 103], a
work in which errors of this kind are not infrequent.
Unless much stronger evidence turns up, there is no reason to believe
that King Louis VII's wife Constance was ever called by a different name
in her homeland, or that she was commonly renamed by the French.
Peter Stewart