THE AGE OF ALFONSO THE LEARNED, AND OF SANCHO
1220-1300
If we reject the claim of Lope de Moros to be the author of the
_Razón feita d'Amor_, the first Castilian poet whose name reaches us
is GONZALO DE BERCEO (?1198-?1264), a secular priest attached to the
Benedictine monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla, in the diocese of
Calahorra. A few details are known of him. He was certainly a deacon in
1220, and his name occurs in documents between 1237 and 1264. He speaks
of his advanced age in the _Vida de Santa Oria, Virgen_, his latest and
perhaps most finished work; and his birthplace, Berceo, is named in his
_Historia del Señor San Millán de Cogolla_, as in his rhymed biography
of _St. Dominic of Silas_. His copiousness runs to some thirteen
thousand lines, including, besides the works already named, the
_Sacrificio de la Misa_ (Sacrifice of the Mass), the _Martirio de San
Lorenzo_ (Martyrdom of St. Lawrence), the _Loores de Nuestra Señora_
(Praises of Our Lady), the _Signos que aparecerán ante del Juicio_
(Signs visible before the Judgment), the _Milagros de Nuestra Señora_
(Miracles of Our Lady), the _Duelo que hizo la Virgen María el día de
la Pasión de su hijo Jesucristo_ (The Virgin's Lament on the day of her
Son's Passion), and three hymns to the Holy Ghost, the Virgin, and God
the Father. In most editions of Berceo there is appended to his verses
a poem in his praise, attributed to an unknown writer of the fourteenth
century. This poem is, in fact, conjectured to be an invention of
Tomás Antonio Sánchez, the earliest editor of Berceo's complete works
(1779). The chances are that Berceo and his writings had passed out of
remembrance within two hundred years of his death, and he was evidently
unknown to Santillana in the fifteenth century. But a brief extract
from him is given in the _Moisén Segundo_ (Second Moses) of Ambrosio
Gómez, published in 1653. With the exception of the _Martirio de San
Lorenzo_, of which the end is lost, all Berceo's writings have been
preserved, and he suffers by reason of his exuberance.
He sings in the vernacular, he declares, being too unlearned in the
Latin; but he has his little pretensions. Though he calls himself a
_juglar_, he marks the differences between his _dictados_ (poems) and
the _cantares_ (songs) of a plain _juglar_, and he vindicates his title
by that monotonous metre—the _cuaderna vía_—which was taken up in
the _Libro de Apolonio_ and became the model of all learned clerks in
the next generations. Berceo uses the rhythm with success, and if his
results are not splendid, it was not because he lacked perseverance.
On the contrary, his industry was only too formidable. And, as a
little of the mono-rhymed quatrain goes far, he must have perished had
he depended upon execution. Beside Dante's achievement, as Puymaigre
notes, the paraphrases of Berceo in the _Sacrificio de la Misa_
(stanzas 250-266) seem thin and pale; but the comparison is unfair to
the earlier Castilian singer, who died in his obscure hamlet without
the advantage of Dante's splendid literary tradition. Berceo is
hampered by his lack of imagination, by the poverty of his conditions,
by the absence of models, by the narrow circle of his subjects, and by
the pious scruples which hindered him from arabesquing the original
design. Yet he possesses the gifts of simplicity and of unction, and
amid his long digressions into prosy theological commonplace there
are flashes of mystic inspiration unmatched by any other poet of his
country and his time. Even when his versification, clear but hard, is
at its worst, he accomplishes the end which he desires by popularising
the pious legends which were dear to him. He was not—never could have
been—a great poet. But in his own way he was, if not an inventor, the
chief of a school, and the necessary predecessor of such devout authors
as Luis de León and St. Teresa. He was a pioneer in the field of devout
pastoral, with all the defects of the inexperienced explorer; and,
for the most part, he had nothing to guide him but his own uncultured
instinct. Some specimen of his work may be given in Hookham Frere's
little-known fragmentary version of the _Vida de San Millán_:—
"_He walked those mountains wild, and lived within that nook
For forty years and more, nor ever comfort took
Of offer'd food or alms, or human speech a look;
No other saint in Spain did such a penance brook._
_For many a painful year he pass'd the seasons there,
And many a night consumed in penitence and prayer—
In solitude and cold, with want and evil fare,
His thoughts to God resigned, and free from human care._
_Oh! sacred is the place, the fountain and the hill,
The rocks where he reposed, in meditation still,
The solitary shades through which he roved at will:
His presence all that place with sanctity did fill._"
This is Berceo in a very characteristic vein, dealing with his own
special saint in his chosen way—the way of the "new mastery"; and
he keeps to the same rhythm in the nine hundred odd stanzas which he
styles the _Milagros de Nuestra Señora_. Here his devotion inspires
him to more conscientious effort; and it has been sought to show
that Berceo takes his tales as he finds them in the _Miracles de la
Sainte Vierge_, by the French _trouvère_, Gautier de Coinci, Prior of
Vic-sur-Aisne (1177-1236). Certain it is that Gautier's source, the
Soissons manuscript, was known to Alfonso the Learned, who mentions it
in the sixty-first of his Galician songs as "a book full of miracles":—
"_En Seixons ... un liuro a todo cheo de miragres._"
There were doubtless earlier Latin collections—amongst others, Vincent
de Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ and Pothon's _Liber de miraculis
Sanctæ Dei Genitricis Mariæ_—which both Berceo and Alfonso used. But
since Alfonso, a middle-aged man when Berceo died, knew the Soissons
collection, it seems possible that Berceo also handled it. A close
examination of his text converts the bare possibility into something
approaching certainty. Of Berceo's twenty-five Marian legends, eighteen
are given by Gautier de Coinci, whose total reaches fifty-five. This
is not by itself final, for both writers might have selected them from
a common source. Yet there are convincing proofs of imitation in the
coincidences of thought and expression which are apparent in Gautier
and Berceo. These are too numerous to be accidental; and still more
weight must be given to the fact that in several cases where Gautier
invents a detail of his own wit, Berceo reproduces it. Taken in
conjunction with his known habit of strict adherence to his text, it
follows that Berceo took Gautier for his guide. He did what all the
world was doing in borrowing from the French, and in the _Virgin's
Lament_ he has the candour to confess the northern supremacy.
Still, it would be wrong to think that Berceo contents himself with
mere servile reproduction, or that he trespasses in the manner of
a vulgar plagiary. Seven of his legends he seeks elsewhere than in
Gautier, and he takes it upon himself to condense his predecessor's
diffuse narration. Thus, where Gautier needs 1350 lines to tell the
legend of St. Ildefonsus, or 2090 to give the miracle of Theophilus,
Berceo confines himself to 108 and to 657 lines. Gautier will spare
you no detail; he will have you know the why, the when, the how, the
paltriest circumstance of his pious story. Beside him Berceo shines by
his power of selection, by his finer instinct for the essential, by
his relative sobriety of tone, by his realistic eye, by his variety of
resource in pure Castilian expression, by his richer melody, and by the
fleeter movement of his action. In a word, with all his imperfections,
Berceo approves himself the sounder craftsman of the two, and therefore
he finds thirty readers where the Prior of Vic-sur-Aisne finds one.
Small and few as his opportunities were, he rarely failed to use
them to an advantage; as in the invention of the singular rhymed
octosyllabic song—with its haunting refrain, _Eya velar!_—in the
_Virgin's Lament_ (stanzas 170-198). This argues a considerable lyrical
gift, and the pity is that the most of Berceo's editors should have
been at such pains to hide it from the reader.
In the ten thousand lines of the _Libro de Alexandre_ are recounted
the imaginary adventures of the Macedonian king, as told in Gautier
de Lille's _Alexandreis_ and in the versions of Lambert de Tort and
Alexandre de Bernai. Traces of the Leonese dialect negative the
ascription to Berceo, and the Juan Lorenzo Segura de Astorga mentioned
in the last verses is a mere copyist. The _Poema de Fernán González_,
due to a monk of San Pedro de Arlanza, embodies many picturesque and
primitive legends in Berceo's manner. But the value of both these
compositions is slight.
So much for verse. Castilian prose develops on parallel lines with
it. A very early specimen is the didactic treatise called the _Diez
Mandamientos_, written by a Navarrese monk, at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, for the use of confessors. Somewhat later follow
the _Anales Toledanos_, in two separate parts (the third is much more
recent), composed between the years 1220 and 1250. Rodrigo Jiménez
de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo (1170-1247), wrote a Latin _Historia
Gothica_, which begins with the Gothic invasion, and ends at the year
1243. Undertaken at the bidding of St. Ferdinand of Castile, this work
was summarised, and done into Castilian, probably by Jiménez de Rada
himself, under the title of the _Historia de los Godos_. Its date would
be the fourth decade of the thirteenth century, and to this same time
(1241) belongs the _Fuero Juzgo_ (_Forum Judicum_). This is a Castilian
version of a code of so-called Gothic laws, substantially Roman in
origin, given by St. Ferdinand (1200-1252) to the Spaniards settled in
Córdoba and other southern cities after the reconquest; but though of
extreme value to the philologer, its literary interest is too slight to
detain us here. Two most brilliant specimens of early Spanish prose
are the letters supposed to have been written by the dying Alexander
to his mother; and the accident of their being found in the manuscript
copied by Lorenzo Segura de Astorga has led to their being printed at
the end of the _Libro de Alexandre_. There is good reason for thinking
that they are not by the author of that poem; and, in truth, they
are mere translations. Both letters are taken from _Hunain ibn Ishāk
al-'Ibādī's_ Arabic collection of moral sentences; the first is found
in the _Bonium_ (so called from its author, a mythical King of Persia),
and the second on the Castilian version of the _Secretum Secretorum_,
of which the very title is reproduced as _Poridat de las Poridades_.
Further examples of progressive prose are found in the _Libro de los
doce Sabios_, which deals with the political education of princes,
and may have been drawn up by the direction of St. Ferdinand. But
the authorship and date of these compilations are little better than
conjectural.
These are the preliminary essays in the stuff of Spanish prose. Its
permanent form was received at the hands of ALFONSO THE LEARNED
(1226-84), who followed his father, St. Ferdinand, to the Castilian
throne in 1252. Unlucky in his life, balked of his ambition to wear the
title of Emperor, at war with Popes, his own brothers, his children,
and his people, Alfonso has been hardly entreated after death.
Mariana, the greatest of Spanish historians, condenses the vulgar
verdict in a Tacitean phrase: _Dum cœlum considerat terra amissit_.
A mountain of libellous myth has overlaid Alfonso's fame. Of all the
anecdotes concerning him, the best known is that which reports him
as saying, "Had God consulted me at the creation of the world, He
would have made it differently." This deliberate invention is due
to Pedro IV. (the Ceremonious); and if Pedro foresaw the result,
he must have been a scoundrel of genius. Fortunately, nothing can
rob Alfonso of his right to be considered, not only as the father of
Castilian verse, but as the centre of all Spanish intellectual life.
Political disaster never caused his intellectual activity to slacken.
Like Bacon, he took all knowledge for his province, and in every
department he shone pre-eminent. Astronomy, music, philosophy, canon
and civil law, history, poetry, the study of languages: he forced his
people upon these untrodden roads. To catalogue the series of his
scientific enterprises, and to set down the names of his Jewish and
Arab collaborators, would give ample work to a bibliographer. Both the
_Tablas Alfonsis_ and the colossal _Libros del Saber de Astronomía_
(Books on the Science of Astronomy) are packed with minute corrections
of Ptolemy, in whose system the learned King seems to have suspected
an error; but their present interest lies in the historic fact, that
with their compilation Castilian makes its first great stride in the
direction of exactitude and clearness.
Similar qualities of precision and ease were developed in encyclopædic
treatises like the _Septenario_[3] which, together with the _Fuero
Juzgo_, Alfonso drew up in his father's lifetime; and in practical
guides such as the _Juegos de Açedrex, Dados, et Tablas_ (Book of
Chess, Dice, and Chequers). This miraculous activity astounded
contemporaries, and posterity has multiplied the wonder by attributing
well-nigh every possible anonymous work to the man whose real activity
is a marvel. It has been sought to prove him the author of the _Libro
de Alexandre_, the writer of Alexander's _Letters_, the compiler of
treatises on the chase, the translator of _Kalilah and Dimnah_, and
innumerable more pieces. Not one of these can be brought home to him,
and some belong to a later time. Ticknor, again, foists on Alfonso two
separate works each entitled the _Tesoro_, and the authorship has been
accepted upon that authority. It is therefore necessary to state the
real case. The one _Tesoro_ is a prose translation of Brunetto Latini's
_Li Livres dou Trésor_ made by Alfonso de Paredes and Pero Gómez,
respectively surgeon and secretary at the court of Sancho, Alfonso's
son and successor; the other _Tesoro_, with its prose preamble and
forty-eight stanzas, is a forgery vamped by some parasite in the train
of Alonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, during the fifteenth century.
Alonso de Fuentes, writing three hundred years after Alfonso's death,
names him as author of a celebrated _romance_—"_I left behind my
native land_"; the rhythm and accentuation prove the lines to belong
to a fifteenth-century maker whose attribution of them to the King is
palpably dramatic. Great authorities accept as authentic the _Libro de
Querellas_ (Book of Plaints), which is represented by two fine stanzas
addressed to Diego Sarmiento, "brother and friend and vassal leal" of
"him whose foot was kissed by kings, him from whom queens sought alms
and grace." One is sorry to lose them, but they must be rejected. No
such book is known to any contemporary; the twelve-syllabled octave in
which the stanzas are written was not invented till a hundred years
later; and these two stanzas are simply fabrications by Pellicer, who
first published them in the seventeenth century in his _Memoir on the
House of Sarmiento_, with a view to flattering his patron.
This to some extent clears the ground: but not altogether. Setting
aside minor legal and philosophic treatises which Alfonso may have
supervised, it remains to speak of more important matters. A great
achievement is the code called, from the number of its divisions, the
_Siete Partidas_ (Seven Parts). This name does not appear to have been
attached to the code till a hundred years after its compilation; but it
may be worth observing that the notion is implied in the name of the
_Septenario_, and that Alfonso, regarding the number seven as something
of mysterious potency, exhausts himself in citing precedents—the seven
days of the week, seven metals, seven arts, seven years that Jacob
served, seven lean years in Egypt, the seven-branched candlestick,
seven sacraments, and so on. The trait is characteristic of the time.
It would be a grave mistake to suppose that the _Siete Partidas_ in
any way resembles a modern book of statutes, couched in the technical
jargon of the law. Its primary object was the unification of the
various clashing systems of law which Alfonso encountered within his
unsettled kingdom; and this he accomplished with such success that all
subsequent Spanish legislation derives from the _Siete Partidas_, which
are still to some extent in force in the republican states of Florida
and Louisiana. But the design soon outgrows mere practical purpose,
and expands into dissertations upon general principles and the pettier
details of conduct.
Sancho Panza, as Governor of Barataria, could not have bettered the
counsels of the _Siete Partidas_, whose very titles force a smile:
"What things men should blush to confess, and what _not_," "Why
no monk should study law or physics," "Why the King should abstain
from low talk," "Why the King should eat and drink moderately," "Why
the King's children should be taught to be cleanly," "How to draw
a will so that the witnesses shall not know its tenor," with other
less prudish discussions. The reading of this code is not merely
instructive and curious; apart from its dry humouristic savour, the
_Siete Partidas_ rises to a noble eloquence when the subject is the
common weal, the office of the ruler, his relations to his people, and
the interdependence of Church and State. No man, by his single effort,
could draw a code of such intricacy and breadth, and it is established
that Jacobo Ruiz and Fernán Martínez laboured on it; but Alfonso's is
the supreme intelligence which appoints and governs, and his is the
revising hand which leaves the text in its perfect verbal form.
In history, too, Alfonso sought distinction; and he found it. The
_Crónica_ or _Estoria de Espanna_, composed between the years 1260 and
1268, the _General e grand Estoria_, begun in 1270, owe to him their
inspiration. The latter, ranging from the Creation to Apostolic times,
glances at such secular events as the Babylonian Empire and the fall
of Troy; the former extends from the peopling of Europe by the sons of
Japhet to the death of St. Ferdinand. Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and Lucas
de Tuy are the direct authorities, and their testimonies are completed
by elaborate references that stretch from Pliny to the _cantares de
gesta_. Moreover, the Arab chronicles are avowedly utilised in the
account of the Cid's exploits: "thus says Abenfarax in his Arabic
whence this history is derived." A singular circumstance is the
inferiority of style in these renderings from the Arabic. Elsewhere
a strange ignorance of Arabs and their history is shown by the
compiler's inclusion of such fables as Muhammad's crusade in Córdoba.
The inevitable conclusion is that the _Estorias_, like the _Siete
Partidas_, are compilations by several hands; and the idea is supported
by the fact that the prologue to the _Estoria de Espanna_ is scarcely
more than a translation of Jiménez de Rada's preface.
Late traditions give the names of Alfonso's collaborators in one or
the other _History_ as Egidio de Zamora, Jofre de Loaysa, Martín de
Córdoba, Suero Pérez, Bishop of Zamora, and Garci Fernández de Toledo;
and even though these attributions be (as seems likely) a trifle
fantastical, they at least indicate a long-standing disbelief in the
unity of authorship. It is proved that Alfonso gathered from Córdoba,
Seville, Toledo, and Paris some fifty experts to translate Ptolemy's
_Quadri partitum_ and other astronomic treatises; it is natural that he
should organise a similar committee to put together the first history
in the Castilian language. Better than most of his contemporaries,
he knew the value of combination. As with astronomy so with history:
in both cases he conceived the scheme, in both cases he presided at
the redaction and stamped the crude stuff with his distinctive seal.
Judged by a modern standard, both _Estorias_ lend themselves to a
cheap ridicule; compared with their predecessors, they imply a finer
appreciation of the value of testimony, and this notable evolution of
the critical sense is matched by a manner that rises to the theme. Side
by side with a greater care for chronology, there is a keener edge of
patriotism which leads the compilers to embody in their text whole
passages of lost _cantares de gesta_. And these are no purple patches:
the expression is throughout dignified without pomp, and easy without
familiarity. Spanish prose sheds much of its uncouthness, and takes
its definitive form in such a passage as that upon the Joys of Spain:
"More than all, Spain is subtle,—ay! and terrible, right skilled in
conflict, mirthful in labour, stanch to her lord, in letters studious,
in speech courtly, fulfilled of gifts; never a land the earth overlong
to match her excellence, to rival her bravery; few in the world as
mighty as she." It may be lawful to believe that here we catch the
personal accent of the King.
Compilations abound in which Alfonso is said to have shared, but they
are of less importance than his _Cantigas de Santa María_ (Canticles
of the Virgin)—four hundred and twenty pieces, written and set to
music in the Virgin's praise. Strictly speaking, these do not belong to
Castilian literature, being written in the elaborate Galician language,
which now survives as little better than a dialect. But they must be
considered if we are to form any just idea of Alfonso's accomplishments
and versatility. At the outset a natural question suggests itself: "Why
should the King of Castile, after drawing up his code in Castilian,
write his verses in Galician?" The answer is simple: "For the reason
that he was an artist." Velázquez, indeed, asserts that Alfonso was
reared in Galicia; but this is assertion, not evidence. The real motive
of the choice was the superior development of the Galician, which so
far outpassed the Castilian in flexibility and grace as to invite
comparison with the Provençal. Troubadours in full flight from the
Albigensian wars found grace at Alfonso's court; Aimeric de Belenoi,
Nat de Mons, Calvo, Riquier, Lunel, and more.
That Alfonso wrote in Provençal seems probable enough, especially as
he derides the incapacity in this respect of his father's _trovador_,
Pero da Ponte; still, the two Provençal pieces which bear his name are
spurious, and are the work of Nat de Mons and Riquier. Howbeit, the
Provençal spell mastered him, and drove him to reproduce its elaborate
rhythms. The first impression given by the _Cantigas_ is one of unusual
metrical resource. Verses of four syllables, of five, octosyllabics,
hendecasyllabics, are among the singer's experiments. From the popular
_coplas_, not unlike the modern _seguidillas_, he strays to the
lumbering line of seventeen syllables; in five strophes he commits
an acrostic as the name _María_; and half a thousand years before
Matilda's lover went to Göttingen, he anticipates Canning's freak
in the _Anti-Jacobin_ by splitting up a word to achieve a difficult
rhyme; he abuses the refrain by insistent repetition, so as to give
the echo of a litany, or fit the ready-made melody of a _juglar_
(clxxii.);—puerilities perhaps, but characteristic of a school and an
epoch. Subjects are taken as they come, preference being given to the
more universal version, and local legends taking a secondary place.
A living English poet has merited great praise for his _Ballad of a
Nun_. Six hundred years before Mr. Davidson, Alfonso gave six splendid
variants of the famous story. Two men of genius have treated the legend
of the statue and the ring—Prosper Mérimée in his _Vénus d'Ille_, and
Heine in _Les Dieux en Exile_—with splendid effect. Alfonso (xlii.)
anticipated them by rendering the story in verses of incomparable
beauty, pregnant with mystery and terror.
For his part, Alfonso rifles Vincent de Beauvais, Gautier de Coinci,
Berceo, and, in his encyclopædic way, borrows a hint from the old
Catalan _Planctus Mariæ Virginis_; but his touch transmutes bold
hagiology to measures of harmony and distinction. He was not—it
cannot be claimed for him—a poet of supreme excellence; yet, if he
fail to reach the topmost peaks, he vindicates his choice of a medium
by outstripping his predecessors, and by pointing the path to those
who succeed him. With the brain of a giant he combined the heart of
a little child, and, technique apart, this amalgam which wrought his
political ruin was his poetic salvation. Still an artist, even when
he stumbles into the ditch, his metrical dexterity persists in such
brutally erotic and satiric verse as he contributes to the Vatican
_Cancioneiro_ (Nos. 61-79). Withal, he survives by something better
than mere virtuosity; for his simplicity and sincere enthusiasm,
sundered from the prevalent affectation of his contemporaries, ensure
him a place apart.
His example in so many fields of intellectual exercise was followed.
What part he took (if any) in preparing _Kalilah and Dimnah_ is not
settled. The Spanish version, probably made before Alfonso's accession
to the throne, derives straight from the Arabic, which, in its turn,
is rendered by Abd Allah ibn al-Mukaffa (754-775) from Barzoyeh's lost
Pehlevī (Old Persian) translations of the original Sanskrit. This
last has disappeared, though its substance survives in the remodelled
_Panchatantra_, and from it descend the variants that are found in
almost all European literatures. The period of the Spanish rendering is
hard to determine exactly, but 1251 is the generally accepted date, and
its vogue is proved by the use made of it by Raimond de Béziers in his
Latin version (1313). It does not appear to have been used by Raimond
Lull (1229-1315), the celebrated _Doctor illuminatus_, in his Catalan
Beast-Romance, inserted in the _Libre de Maravelles_ about the year
1286. The value of the Spanish lies in the excellence of the narrative
manner, and in its reduction of the oriental apologue to terms of the
vernacular. Alfonso's brother, Fadrique, followed the lead in his
_Engannos é Assayamientos de las Mogieres_ (Crafts and Wiles of Women),
which is referred to 1253, and is translated from the Arabic version of
a lost Sanskrit original, after the fashion of _Kalilah and Dimnah_.
Translation is continued at the court of Alfonso's son and successor,
SANCHO IV. (d. 1295), who, as already noted, commands a version of
Brunetto Latini's _Tesoro_; and the encyclopædic mania takes shape
in a work entitled the _Luçidario_, a series of one hundred and six
chapters, which begins by discussing "What was the first thing in
heaven and earth?" and ends with reflections on the habits of animals
and the whiteness of negroes' teeth. The _Gran Conquista de Ultramar_
(Great Conquest Oversea) is a perversion of the history originally
given by Guillaume de Tyr (d. 1184), mixed with other fabulous
elements, derived perhaps from the French, and certainly from the
Provençal, which thus comes for the first time in direct contact with
Castilian prose. The fragmentary Provençal _Chanson d'Antioche_ which
remains can scarcely be the original form in which it was composed by
its alleged author, Grégoire de Bechada: at best it is a _rifacimento_
of a previous draught. But that it was used by the Spanish translator
has been amply demonstrated by M. Gaston Paris. The translator has been
identified with King Sancho himself; the safer opinion is that the work
was undertaken by his order during his last days, and was finished
after his death.
With these should be classed compilations like the _Book of Good
Proverbs_, translated from Hunain ibn Ishāk al-'Ibādī; the _Bonium_
or _Bocados de Oro_, from the collections of Abu 'l Wafā Mubashshir
ibn Fātik, part of which was Englished by Lord Rivers, and thence
conveyed into Caxton's _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_; and
the _Flowers of Philosophy_, a treatise composed of thirty-eight
chapters of fictitious moral sentences uttered by a tribe of thinkers,
culminating—fitly enough for a Spanish book—in Seneca of Córdoba.
In dealing with these works it is impossible to speak precisely as to
source and date: the probability is that they were put together during
the reign of Sancho, who was his father's son in more than the literal
sense. Like Alfonso's, his ambition was to force his people into the
intellectual current of the age, and in default of native masterpieces
he supplied them with foreign models whence the desired masterpieces
might proceed; and, like his father, Sancho himself entered the lists
with his _Castigos y Documentos_ (Admonitions and Exhortations),
ninety chapters designed for the guidance of his son. This production,
disfigured by the ostentatious erudition of the Middle Ages, is saved
from death by its shrewd common-sense, by its practical counsel, and
by the admirable purity and lucidity of style that formed the most
valuable asset in Sancho's heritage. With him the literature of the
thirteenth century comes to a dramatic close: the turbulent fighter,
whose rebellion cut short his father's days, becomes the conscientious
promoter of his father's literary tradition.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] So called because it embraced the seven subjects of learning: the
_trivio_ (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), and the _quadrivio_ (music,
astrology, physics, and metaphysics).