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From: Francisco Antonio Doria< >
Subject: Isabel Moniz
Date: 2 Apr 1998 11:12:51 -0800


Dear John,

I must say I've really enjoyed your page with Columbus' bio. However I
must also say that you've been deceived by a (possible) old forgery
concerinig Isabel Moniz, Columbus' mother-in-law.

The info you give is originally based on Dego Colon's testimony. However
you can't fit Isabel Moniz as the daughter of Gil Ayres because of
obvious chronological inconsistencies - her supposed brothers were born
c. 1390/1400, that is to say, more than a generation before her estimate
birth.

Isabel Moniz was - most certainly - a member of the Moniz Barreto de
Meneses family from Madeira. They were distantly related to royalty
(Leonor Teles de Meneses, a relative, was queen of Portugal, wife of d.
Fernando I `o Formoso'. Shew was called `the Portuguese Lucrezia
Borgia.') Nobody knows for sure who were Isabel's parents. Chronological
considerations discard the solution given by the 17th century
genealogist H. H. de Noronha. Then she either was sister of Vasco
Martins Moniz, who settled in the Madeira c. 1440, or the illegitimate
daughter of another Vasco Martins Moniz, ancestor of the marquesses of
Angeja.

Also, she never married Perestrello, but had four children from him:
Filipa Moniz, Columbus' wife, d.c. 1480, probably after giving birth to
her only son; Briolanja Moniz, who married Giannotto de' Bardi, a
Florentine merchant, and then Miguel Muylaert, Cristova~o Moniz, who
became a bishop c. 1506, and Bartolomeu Moniz, who succeded in
reclaiming his father's lordship from his half-sisters, who had married
Mem Rodrigues de Vasconcellos and Pedro Correia da Cunha, lord of
Graciosa. Filipa's illegitimacy is suggested by the fact that they only
adopted the Perestrello name after young Bartolomeu's judicial victory.

Best, Francisco Antonio Doria

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