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Ironically, El Cid survives as the perfect type of the feudal vassal turned defender of Christianity.
His wife ends up as a footnote.
Ximenes Diaz appears to have been the second wife of El Cid Rodriguez de Vivar (born c.1043), and their marriage settlement is dated as July 19 1074.5
Rodrigo's first wife may have been Ximenes Gomez, and perhaps she had died before his second marriage, which seems to have occurred when he was about 30.
Ximenes Diaz comes through the documents as devoted to her husband, a fierce protector of her children, and a doughty warrior. She was also of impeccable descent, perhaps counting the king of Leon, Alphonso VI, as her uncle and, as her great grandfather, Alphonso V of Leon. Her mother was Cristina, grandaughter of Alphonso, who also married beneath her to Diego Count of Oviedo. Ximenes' descent actually surpassed that of her husband: it seems, as was the custom, that the king rewarded loyal service by his vassal Rodriguez by giving him as his bride a young wife of high nobility..6
It has been speculated that it was Ximenes who acquired a place at the inner sanctum of the court for her new husband, using her influence with her uncle.7
But a genuine affection and respect seems to have united the Cid and his Ximenes from the beginning. The marriage settlement contracted in 1074 was generous, including three towns in Castile plus properties in 34 other settlements. This may have been a sign of the respect held for Ximenes, marking her as a great lady constantly perambulating between one manor and another. The contract also contains an unusual phrase: it states that the endowment was made "...in homage to both her beauty and her maidenhood."8
Legend would have it that the marriage began in turmoil, and that El Cid killed Ximenes' father in a duel of honour. The storytellers claimed that the king forced the daughter to marry her father's murder, and that their love grew through a white hot passion of opposites.
There appears to be no foundation to these tales, first recounted in the fourteenth century.9
Everything in their lives points to the opposite, including their tender regard for their three children, Diego, named for El Cid's father, Cristina, named for Ximenes' mother, and Maria.
And the traditional words of Ximenes to her husband at their enforced parting bear witness to her feelings.
Alphonso's insane jealousy for his greatest vassal culminated in El Cid's banishment from the kingdom in 1081. The family's parting moment is the beginning of the famous poem of the Cid. Legend has it that this occurred at the monastery of San Pedro de Cardena.
Before the assembled followers of her lord, clutching her youngest infant to her, Ximenes knelt, weeping:
"Good my lord....lying tongues have driven you forth. Too well I perceive that the hour has come when we must be parted in life as if by death."10
For the Cid, there was to be a decade of fighting and wandering in foreign wars, until he was at last recalled by a faithless king desperate for his aid against Ben Yusuf, leader of the Almoravides.
For Ximenes and her children, there was the same time to be endured in strait prison, living in constant fear of their lives from a king who had usurped a throne over the corpse of his own brother.
Like most ladies of medieval war lords, she probably spent more time alone than with her husband. Certainly, their life together was to be shortened after his return by the years of fighting and hardship he had endured. El Cid seized the fortress city of Valencia from the Moors for Leon, only to die there at about the age of 56 on Sunday July 10, 1099, from a combination of age, wounds and exhaustion.
Alone, Ximenes maintained Valencia for three years further. She sought divine intervention on May 21 1101 when she made a gift to Valencia Cathedral. In more material terms, she was given aid by her son in law Ramon Berengeria of Barcelona. But when Yusuf came in person to lay siege in October of that year she was forced to send Bishop Jeronimo to beg assistance from the aloof Alphonso.11
The king at last came at the head of a relieving army, saw he was unable to hold the city, and soon afterwards withdrew. Amongst other relics, he took the swords of the Cid to serve as part of his regalia. The evacuation took place over May 1 to 4, 1102, and when it was complete, the king ordered burned to ashes the city that had cost the blood of El Cid.
Ximenes withdrew to the monastery of Cardena, where that painful parting had taken place a lifetime before. She placed her husband's body in its last tomb, and endowed the monastery generously in keeping with the value she placed on her love for her partner. She herself spent the remainder of her days at the monastery, where she died some 15 years later.
The crusading lady remained with her lord in life, and in death she was buried at his side.
Ximenes was but one of many remarkable women whose lives were entwined inescapably with the men who took part in that most fantastic series of events now known as the Crusades: like so many of those women, she has been condemned to take the role of a footnote to history.
Much of the impetus for the movement to the Holy Sites actually came from the inspiration and actions of a woman: Helena, mother of Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Byzantium.
Constantine, as part of the establishment of his new religion, began the process of identifying sites in Palestine associated with Christ.
And so, in the year 327, the fiery Helena, then in her 73rd year, set off for Jerusalem. She was taken on a tour of the sites by Archbishop Marcarius. According to the received version of the story, she had a vision which led her to discover the True Cross in a cistern behind the temple to Aphrodite. According to the chroniclers. the methodical empress tested the find's validity by having a dying woman laid down on it. The woman's miraculous cure proved the worth of the relic, and distinguished it from two other crosses nearby, apparently those of the thieves who had flanked Christ at Calvary.12
The Cross was taken in triumph to Byzantium, from where Constantine sent a piece of it to Rome.
The Empress, with her son's backing, embarked on an even more ambitious restoration programme at the Holy Sites, including the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as well as endowments for buildings at the site of the Nativity and the Mount of Olives.
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