Since Luchino Visconti dazzled the world with his film
"The Guepard", the Sicilian nobility has retained an undeniable aura.
Its mixture of pomp, anachronistic refinement, as well as nostalgia for the end
of a world is a mixture that continues to fascinate far beyond lovers of
history or Sicily.
There was the book “The Guepard” by Giuseppe Tomasi,
Prince of Lampedusa, but also “I Viceré” by Federico de Roberto, as well as
first-hand testimonies from people who lived this Sicilian palace life in their
youth. This is the case of the famous jeweler and jewelry designer Fulco di
Verdura, whose real name is Fulco Santostefano della Cerda, Duke of Verdura,
born near Palermo in 1898 and who died in London in 1978.
Born from the marriage between the Marquis Giulio
Santostefano della Cerda and Carolina Valguarnera, daughter of the Prince of
Niscemi, he is, by this last family, cousin of Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author
of the novel "The Guepard".
In his autobiographical story "The happy summer
days: a Sicilian childhood" published in London in 1976, Fulco di Verdura
evokes his youth which, to us seems taken straight from a film of princes and
princesses, but which was the reality of the Sicilian nobility until the
beginning of the 20th century. Fulco's generation is the one that saw the last
fires of this aristocratic class, which is why his book reads like the story of
a vanished world.
In this book he evokes in particular his paternal
family of Spanish origin, the San Esteban y La Cerda italianized in Santostefano
della Cerda. This passage from his autobiography interested me the most because
my wife descends from this same family and I hoped to find information there
that would take me back in time.
However, I was very disappointed. Fulco evokes well
his distant ancestor, King Alfonso X of Castile and his son Fernando, “el de la
Cerda”, who had married Blanche, daughter of the King of France Louis IX, known
as Saint Louis. When Fernando died, his sons were too young to rule. Their
uncle Sancho was appointed as regent, but he usurped the throne. This is why
Alfonso, the eldest of Fernando's sons, got the nickname "the
disinherited". They tried in vain to recover their throne, they were given
in exchange the duchy of Medinaceli and they kept for life the nickname of
their grandfather "de la Cerda" (which is thought to have been
attributed because Fernando was hairy as a pig!) which became their surname.
Unfortunately, Fulco in his story jumped the
intermediate generations to reach the de la Cerda established in Sicily. The
particularity of their surname guaranteed their common origin but the
individuals who linked Alfonso de la Cerda to his Sicilian descendants remained
in the greatest fog…
You can imagine the frustration of the genealogist who
sees the prospect of linking up with the kings of Spain and Saint Louis but who
is unable to bridge the gap… For several years I tried in vain to find traces
of this Girolamo de la Cerda, “ Capitano Giustiziere di Palermo nel 1589” and
from “del ducato di Medinaceli”. The Marquis of Villabianca, in his reference
work “Della Sicilia nobile”, described the very detailed epitaph of the
funerary monument of the ancestors of Fulco and my wife, Diego de Santesteban
and Ippolita de La Cerda. We learn that Girolamo, Ippolita's father, is from
Caceres (Spain), that he was a cavalry captain and that his own mother's
surname was "Holahuin".
Much more information than we usually find on our
distant ancestors! But despite these multiple leads, my searches were in vain…
Until the providential (and recent) discovery of a
mention in the index of the collection of documents of the famous Spanish
genealogist Salazar y Castro where we read the following text:
Otra del emperador (Fernando
I] a Felipe II, en recomendación del capitán Jerónimo de la Cerda, [natural de
Cáceres], hijo de Hernán Pérez Golfín, maestresala que ha sido de dicho
emperador, y nieto de Sancho de Paredes (Golfin, camarero de los Reyes
catolicos) para que le haga alguna merced. 17/12/1562
This short mention unlocks the ancestry of the Cerda
and gives us two additional generations! We learn that Geronimo (Jeronimo in
Spanish) is the son of Hernan Perez Golfin, "room master" of Emperor
Felipe II, and grandson of Sancho de Paredes, "waiter" of the
Catholic Monarchs (King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabel of Castile
therefore).
Armed with this new information, I took advantage of
the extensive research done on the families of Caceres by the Club Universo
Estremeño of this city, in particular the table of the Golfin family available at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliotecavirtualextremena/50123620511/in/photostream/
Hernan Perez Golfin, Girolamo's father, had married an
Isabel de La Cerda, herself the granddaughter of another Isabel de la Cerda.
Six generations above the latter, I arrived at Luis de la Cerda who, with his
wife Leonor de Guzman, had been appointed by the King of Spain king "of
the Fortunate Islands" that is to say of the Canaries in 1344 , which was
not worth much since at the time the Canary Islands had not yet been conquered…
Luis was himself the son of the famous Alfonso “the disinherited”. The circle
was complete, Fulco could smile where he was, I had finally connected him to
Alfonso XI and Saint Louis, and my wife at the same time!
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