title of Illustrious Ancestry, Glorious Deeds, and Noble Posterity of the Famous Nuño Alfonso, Alcaide of Toledo , written in 1648 by the industrious genealogist Rodrigo Mendez Silva, who availed himself of a manuscript genealogy by Juan de Mena, the poet laureate and historiographer of John II .
The origin of the name Cervantes is curious.
Nuño Alfonso was almost as distinguished in the struggle against the Moors in the reign of Alfonso VII as the Cid had been half a century before in that of Alfonso VI , and was rewarded by divers grants of land in the neighbourhood of Toledo.
On one of his acquisitions, about two leagues from the city, he built himself a castle which he called Cervatos, because “he was lord of the solar of Cervatos in the Montaña,” as the mountain region extending from the Basque Provinces to León was always called.
At his death in battle in 1143, the castle passed by his will to his son Alfonso Munio, who, as territorial or local surnames were then coming into vogue in place of the simple patronymic, took the additional name of Cervatos.
His eldest son Pedro succeeded him in the possession of the castle, and followed his example in adopting the name, an assumption at which the younger son, Gonzalo, seems to have taken umbrage.
Everyone who has paid even a flying visit to Toledo will remember the ruined castle that crowns the hill above the spot where the bridge of Alcántara spans the gorge of the Tagus, and with its broken outline and crumbling walls makes such an admirable pendant to the square solid Alcázar towering over the city roofs on the opposite side.
It was built, or as some say restored, by Alfonso VI shortly after his occupation of Toledo in 1085, and called by him San Servando after a