Person:Filipa Moniz-de-Melo (1)

DE ACORDO COM O NOBILIARIO GENEALOGICO DAS FAMILIAS DA MADEIRA POR HENRIQUE HENRIQUES DE NORONHA - PERESTRELO

One clue to Christopher's wife's family is found in the will of her son, Diego Columbus. Diego speaks of "Dona Felipa Muniz, my mother, who is in the monastery of Carmo in Lisbon, in a chapel that is called of Piety, because of her lineage from the Munizes". At this time Diego was a wealthy man, married to a duke’s niece, a man who had never been in Portugal. There seems little reason for him to mention this if it were not true. This seems sufficient evidence of her descent from a Gil Ayres for whose descendants burial in the Chapel of Piety in the monastery of St. Mary of Carmo was reserved. Gil Ayres was born about 1370, and Philipa about 1455, so Philipa would probably have been Gil's great-granddaughter, and her mother, Isabel Moniz, therefore, his granddaughter.