General Notes

[g] Roger, son of Count Rodulf married, in Spain, Stephanie, sister of Raymond Berenger; which lady afterwards m. Garsias, King of Spain. This agrees with the statement of Ademar, that he m. a da. (unnamed) of the widowed Ermensede, Countess of Barcelona, the mother of Raymond abovenamed. If this Roger were Roger de Toeni, he married Godeheut while his 1st wife was alive, and Stephanie m. Garsias III, King of Navarre, while Roger was living.  [Complete Peerage XII/1:756 note (g)]

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Note: Roger Toeni's 1st wife, Stephanie, is questioned by some; especially her 2nd marriage to Garcias of Spain while Toeni was still alive.  I agree that it does not make much sense.  However, Roger was fighting battles in Spain and could have "married" a Spanish lady whom he later "divorced" when he returned to Normandy.  It has been speculated that Stephanie was mother of Robert de Toeni of Belvoir (as opposed to the younger son Robert de Stafford) and of a Berenger de Toeni, whose ancestry is not known, but is likely (especially with the name) to be a son of Roger & Stephanie.

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Following copied from a post by Bryant Smith to the soc.genealogy.medieval newgroup, which supports my take on Garcia's wife:

From: Bryant Smith (skip31@@racsa.co.cr)
Subject: STEPHANIE OF BARCELONA AND HER FOURFATHERS
Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval
Date: 2001-12-12 09:14:14 PST


"Success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan"  (JFK, misquoting Count Galeazzo Ciano's "Victory finds a thousand fathers but defeat is always an orphan") and by that measure Estafania was moderately successful, for she has found at least four fathers.  These four alternative fathers, with samples of their sponsors, are:

1. Bernard-Roger de Foix.  Said by TAF to be the "traditional" one, and found as such in ES and, probably based on that, in Brian Tomsett's database, in  the Theroff text files, in the Roglo database, and elsewhere.  As recently as July 14, 1999, TAF was able to write "... all Iberian works with which I am familiar (and as recent as 1996) are united in calling the Queen of Navarre the daughter, not of Ramon Borrel and Ermesende, but of her brother Bernard,  Count of Bigorre, and sister of the Queen of Aragon."    This is vintage TAF obscurantism, but becomes clear when you read "Queen of Navarre" as Sephanie the wife of Garcia IV/V Sanchez of Navarre and "Queen of Aragon" as Gerberge, undoubted daughter of Bernard-Roger and wife of Ramiro I Sanchez of Aragon,

2.  Ramon I Borel of Barcelona, husband of the Ermesinda rejected by all Iberian works with which TAF was familiar in mid-1999.  This past December 8 TAF wrote that the Roger-Bernard paternity "is based on a late source, and a more contemporary one calls her daughter of the Countess Ermesende. (This Catalonian variant has only become popular within the last several years.)"  Tempora mutantur et nos in eis mutamur?

3.   Ramon Berenguer I of Barcelona, grandson son of Ramon I Borel and Ermesinda.  Keats-Rohan is said to have called him the father of Stephanie in K S B Keats-Rohan *Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons occurring in English Documents,1066-1166* (The Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 1999), according to Richard Borthwick who said in this NG, January 14 1999 (in an annotated AT of William (II) d' Aubigny of Belvoir) that "The wife of Roger was Estefania/Stephanie (not Adelaide) sister of Ramon Berenguer I and not his daughter as claimed by Keats-Rohan."

4.  Berenguer Ramon I of Barcelona, son of #2 and father of #3.  This is Borthwick's horse and is, incidentally, also backed by a pre-1996 Iberian work with which TAF was evidentally unfamiliar in 1999, even though it had been mentioned in this NG on 19 January  1997 by Valerio P. Lucchinetti:  "According to Diccionario de Historia de Espana, dir.by German Bleiberg, Madrid 1979, Queen Estefania, wife of King Garcia IV of Navarre (k.a.Atapuerca 1054) was the dau. of Ct Berenguer Ramon I of Barcelona and she married King Garcia in Barcelona in 1038."

It is striking that three generations of the counts of Barcelona find places at the starting gate.  Perhaps for want of reliable dates of births and marriages (death dates are fairly well-established but not dispositive of the issue), there is no apparent chronological impossibility to lay against any of  the runners.  Bernard de Foix, as a brother of Ermesinda, must have been roughly contemporary with her and with her husband Ramon I Borel.  Since historians and genealogists were evidently comfortable with Bernard until quite recently, it must be supposed that the chronology raised no eyebrows, and hence we could say that Ramon Borel should be equally welcome on any chronological grounds, and that in some sense a burden of persuasion increases as we drag Stephanie forward in time from that generation's children.

It would be nice to know more about the "more contemporary" source TAF mentions which calls Stephanie the daughter of Ermesinde;  however I suppose it is not conclusive, otherwise TAF would not have treated Bernard-Roger de Foix as still in the race, as he recently did, as we shall see in a moment.

Maria Emma Escobar has given us a priceless document in Stephanie's will.  She posted it as definitive of the children of Stephanie but in the present context it is the names themselves that are of crucial importance, for as TAF has elaborated, the heirs all appear to be namesakes of fairly near relations of Stephanie or of Garcia.  The will mentions eight children, six of them having names found among the relations of Garcia. Here is what TAF found, converting the relation-labels' referents from the children to Garcia:
Sancho - Garcia's father
Mayor - Garcia's mother
Ramiro - Garcia's brother
Fernando - Garcia's brother
Jimena - Garcia's sister (or his paternal grandmother)
Urraca - Garcia's maternal grandmother

The other two legatees were named Ermesinda and Raymond/Ramon (lit. Regummendo), and they seem to be related to Stephanie rather than Garcia, but the relationship depends on who her father was.

The first and most appealing case is that they were her own mother and father.  This would balance the inclusion of Garcia's parents in the name-list of the will.  If instead her father was Berenguer Ramon I, then they would be her father (or paternal grandfather) and her paternal grandmother.  If her father was Ramon Berenguer, then they would be her great-grand parents on the paternal-paternal side, but in this case the same Urraca who was Garcia's maternal grandmother would also be Stephanie's maternal grandmother.

Finally, if Stephanie's father was Bernard-Roger de Foix:  Ermesinda would appear as Stephanie's paternal aunt and Raymond as her paternal uncle.  (TAF discusses and summarizes in this NG on 16 July  1998, Stasser, Thierry, Autour de Roger de Vieux: les alliances matrimoniales des comtes de Carcassonne,  Annales du Midi, 108:165-187, wherein, according to TAF's summary, Bernard is shownto have had siblings: Arsinde m. William, Count of Beziers; Ermessinde; Raymond; Peter; and a sister  m. William Amelius.)

On the basis of finding a Raymond among the siblings of Bernard and Ermessinde, TAF suggests that the roster of legatees in Stephanie's will "tends to slightly favor the placement of Estefania as daughter of Raymond Borrell and Ermesenda.  However, not strongly, because the Foix alternative would make Raymond named for paternal uncle and Ermesenda for paternal aunt.  Still, I would have expected to see the grandparents' names."

I think the case is much more emphatic than that, that the absence of Bernard-Roger's parents' names (Roger, Adelaide) is not just unexpected but downright telling, especially where one of the alternatives offers her parents' names, another those of her grand-parents, and a third those of her great-grand-parents. 

Her husband's siblings were included in the honors list but none of his aunts or uncles.  If Stephanie was the daughter of de Foix she had at least four siblings -- Bernard, Gerberge, Clemence, Pierre -- who would have had stature exactly equal to the siblings of Garcia but none of whose names she appears to have given to any of her children.

Some caution may be called for in drawing conclusions from the names in Stephanie's will; I may be reading too much into her choices of names for her children (if it was she who made the choices).   But to the extent that the "Garcia side" of the will shows six namesakes closely related to him, the hobgoblin of small minds would call, along with TAF, for a consistency on Stephanie's side. 

Finally, when she married Garcia, King of Navarre, she did so, not in Navarre and not in France but in Barcelona.  Or at least so says the Diccionario de Historia de Espana, anyway that's what Valerio P. Lucchinetti said it says.  A Barcelona wedding would make sense for a daughter of a Count of Barcelona, but would seem  a strange venue for a daughter of a count of Bigorre, Foix or Commignes.

The paternity of Stephanie appears to me to be a good occasion for balancing the desire to put a name in a blank space in a pedigree against the desire to learn and take advantage of the educated opinions of experts who do not agree unanimously.  In recent discussions here of that issue I took the position that using the software's capacity to allow for multiple parents was better than "NN" or "Unknown" with a note showing the alternatives, because there is a qualitative difference between "totally unknown [we haven't a clue]" and "subject of discussion."  I received several useful suggestions for which I am grateful, but my solution will be to enter my choice of most likely parents (Ramon Borel and Ermesinda) as "preferred" parents with "natural" filiation, and to tack on the other sets of possible parents with "unknown" filiations, with appropriate notes on all the alternative parents.  In this way the pedigrees (as far as I have them) of all of them will be not only preserved in the database but will not be unattached fragments, and if ever the balance educated opinions of experts changes it will be relatively easy to change the filiations, and in the meantime to give further attention to the implications of the alternatives by simply changing temporarily the "preferred" set of parents.

Saludos
Bryant Smith
Playa Palo Seco
Costa RicaStephanie (m. 2nd Garsias, King of Spain) sister of Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona.  [Burke's Peerage]