DISCOURAGEMENTS OF SPANISH CULTURE AT THE END OF THIS PERIOD,
AND ITS GENERAL CONDITION.
Spanish Intolerance 446
Persecution of Jews 446
Persecution of Moors 446
Inquisition, its Origin 447
Its Establishment in Spain 448
Its first Victims Jews 448
Its next Victims Moors 449
Its great Authority 450
Punishes Opinion 451
State of the Press 451
Past Literature of Spain 452
Promise for the Future 453
SECOND PERIOD.
THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN FROM THE ACCESSION OF THE
AUSTRIAN FAMILY TO ITS EXTINCTION; OR FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH.
CHAPTER I.
CONDITION OF SPAIN DURING THESE TWO CENTURIES.
Periods of Literary Glory 457
Period of Glory in Spain 458
Hopes of Universal Empire 458
These Hopes checked 459
Luther and Protestantism 460
Protestantism in Spain 460
Assailed by the Inquisition 461
Protestant Books forbidden 461
The Press subjected 462
Index Expurgatorius 462
Power of the Inquisition 463
Its Popularity 465
Protestantism driven from Spain 466
Learned Men persecuted 466
Religious Men persecuted 467
Degradation of Loyalty 468
Increase of Bigotry 468
Effect of both on Letters 469
Popular Feeling 470
Moral Contradictions 470
The Sacrifices that follow 471
Effect on the Country 471
CHAPTER II.
ITALIAN SCHOOL OF BOSCAN AND GARCILASSO.
State of Letters at the End of
the Reign of Ferdinand and
Isabella 473
Impulse from Italy 474
Spanish Conquests there 475
Consequent Intercourse 476
Brilliant Culture of Italy 477
Juan Boscan 478
He knows Navagiero 479
Writes Poetry 480
Translates Castiglione 481
His Coplas Españolas 482
His Imitation of the Italian
Masters 483
Its Results 485
Garcilasso de la Vega 486
His Works 489
His First Eclogue 490
His Versification 493
His Popularity 495
Italian School introduced 496
CHAPTER III.
CONTEST CONCERNING THE ITALIAN SCHOOL.
Followers of Boscan and
Garcilasso 497
Fernando de Acuña 497
Gutierre de Cetina 500
Opponents of Boscan and
Garcilasso 501
Christóval de Castillejo 501
Antonio de Villegas 503
Gregorio de Silvestre 505
Controversy on the Italian
School 507
Its final Success 508
CHAPTER IV.
DIEGO HURTADO DE MENDOZA.
His Birth and Education 510
His Lazarillo de Tórmes 511
Its Imitations 512
He is a Soldier 514
Ambassador of Charles the
Fifth 514
A Military Governor 515
Not favored by Philip the
Second 516
He is exiled from Court 516
His Poetry 517
His Satirical Prose 519
His Guerra de Granada 520
His Imitation of Tacitus 522
His Eloquence 526
His Death 527
His Character 528
CHAPTER V.
DIDACTIC POETRY AND PROSE.--CASTILIAN LANGUAGE.
Early Didactic Poetry 529
Luis de Escobar 529
Alonso de Corelas 531
Gonzalez de la Torre 531
Didactic Prose 531
Francisco de Villalobos 532
Fernan Perez de Oliva 534
Juan de Sedeño 536
Cervantes de Salazar 536
Luis Mexia 537
Pedro Navarra 537
Pedro Mexia 537
Gerónimo de Urrea 538
Palacios Rubios 539
Alexio de Vanegas 539
Juan de Avila 540
Antonio de Guevara 540
His Relox de Príncipes 541
His Década de los Césares 543
His Epístolas 543
His other Works 545
The Diálogo de las Lenguas 546
Its Probable Author 546
State of the Castilian Language
from the Time of Juan de
Mena 547
Contributions to it 548
Dictionaries and Grammars 549
The Language formed 550
The Dialects 550
The Pure Castilian 551
CHAPTER VI.
HISTORICAL LITERATURE.
Chronicling Period gone by 553
Antonio de Guevara 553
Florian de Ocampo 554
Pedro Mexia 555
Accounts of the New World 556
Fernando Cortés 556
Francisco Lopez de Gomara 557
Bernal Diaz 558
Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo 559
His Historia de las Indias 560
His Quinquagenas 562
Bartolomé de las Casas 563
His Brevísima Relacion 565
His Historia de las Indias 566
Vaca, Xerez, and Çarate 567
Approach to Regular History 568
HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.
FIRST PERIOD.
THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN BETWEEN THE FIRST
APPEARANCE OF THE PRESENT WRITTEN LANGUAGE AND THE EARLY PART OF
THE REIGN OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES THE FIFTH; OR FROM THE END OF
THE TWELFTH CENTURY TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH.
HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.
FIRST PERIOD.
CHAPTER I.
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.--ORIGIN OF SPANISH LITERATURE IN TIMES OF
GREAT TROUBLE.
In the earliest ages of every literature that has vindicated for itself
a permanent character in modern Europe, much of what constituted its
foundations was the result of local situation and of circumstances
seemingly accidental. Sometimes, as in Provence, where the climate was
mild and the soil luxuriant, a premature refinement started forth,
which was suddenly blighted by the influences of the surrounding
barbarism. Sometimes, as in Lombardy and in a few portions of France,
the institutions of antiquity were so long preserved by the old
municipalities, that, in occasional intervals of peace, it seemed as if
the ancient forms of civilization might be revived and prevail;--hopes
kindled only to be extinguished by the violence amidst which the first
modern communities, with the policy they needed, were brought forth
and established. And sometimes both these causes were combined with
others, and gave promise of a poetry full of freshness and originality,
which, however, as it advanced, was met by a spirit more vigorous than
its own, beneath whose predominance its language was forbidden to rise
above the condition of a local dialect, or became merged in that of
its more fortunate rival;--a result which we early recognize alike in
Sicily, Naples, and Venice, where the authority of the great Tuscan
masters was, from the first, as loyally acknowledged as it was in
Florence or Pisa.
Like much of the rest of Europe, the southwestern portion, now
comprising the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, was affected by nearly
all these different influences. Favored by a happy climate and soil, by
the remains of Roman culture, which had lingered long in its mountains,
and by the earnest and passionate spirit which has marked its people
through their many revolutions down to the present day, the first
signs of a revived poetical feeling are perceptible in the Spanish
peninsula even before they are to be found, with their distinctive
characteristics, in that of Italy. But this earliest literature of
modern Spain, a part of which is Provençal and the rest absolutely
Castilian or Spanish, appeared in troubled times, when it was all but
impossible that it should be advanced freely or rapidly in the forms it
was destined at last to wear. For the masses of the Christian Spaniards
filling the separate states, into which their country was most
unhappily divided, were then involved in that tremendous warfare with
their Arab invaders, which, for twenty generations, so consumed their
strength, that, long before the cross was planted on the towers of the
Alhambra, and peace had given opportunity for the ornaments of life,
Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio had appeared in the comparative quiet of
Lombardy and Tuscany, and Italy had again taken her accustomed place at
the head of the elegant literature of the world.
Under such circumstances, a large portion of the Spaniards, who
had been so long engaged in this solemn contest, as the forlorn
hope of Christendom, against the intrusion of Mohammedanism[1] and
its imperfect civilization into Europe, and who, amidst all their
sufferings, had constantly looked to Rome, as to the capital seat of
their faith, for consolation and encouragement, did not hesitate again
to acknowledge the Italian supremacy in letters,--a supremacy to which,
in the days of the Empire, their allegiance had been complete. A school
formed on Italian models naturally followed; and though the rich and
original genius of Spanish poetry received less from its influence
ultimately than might have been anticipated, still, from the time of
its first appearance, its effects are too important and distinct to be
overlooked.
[1] August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Ueber Dramatische Kunst,
Heidelberg, 1811, 8vo, Vorlesung XIV.
Of the period, therefore, in which the history of Spanish literature
opens upon us, we must make two divisions. The first will contain the
genuinely national poetry and prose produced from the earliest times
down to the reign of Charles the Fifth; while the second will contain
that portion which, by imitating the refinement of Provence or of
Italy, was, during the same interval, more or less separated from the
popular spirit and genius. Both, when taken together, will fill up
the period in which the main elements and characteristics of Spanish
literature were developed, such as they have existed down to our own
age.
* * * * *
In the first division of the first period, we are to consider the
origin and character of that literature which sprang, as it were, from
the very soil of Spain, and was almost entirely untouched by foreign
influences.
And here, at the outset, we are struck with a remarkable circumstance,
which announces something at least of the genius of the coming
literature,--the circumstance of its appearance in times of great
confusion and violence. For, in other portions of Europe, during
those disastrous troubles that accompanied the overthrow of the Roman
power and civilization, and the establishment of new forms of social
order, if the inspirations of poetry came at all, they came in some
fortunate period of comparative quietness and security, when the minds
of men were less engrossed than they were wont to be by the necessity
of providing for their personal safety and for their most pressing
physical wants. But in Spain it was not so. There, the first utterance
of that popular feeling which became the foundation of the national
literature was heard in the midst of the extraordinary contest which
the Christian Spaniards, for above seven centuries, urged against
their Moorish invaders; so that the earliest Spanish poetry seems but
a breathing of the energy and heroism which, at the time it appeared,
animated the great mass of the Spanish Christians throughout the
Peninsula.
Indeed, if we look at the condition of Spain, in the centuries that
preceded and followed the formation of its present language and
poetry, we shall find the mere historical dates full of instruction.
In 711, Roderic rashly hazarded the fate of his Gothic and Christian
empire on the result of a single battle against the Arabs, then just
forcing their way into the western part of Europe from Africa. He
failed; and the wild enthusiasm which marked the earliest age of
the Mohammedan power achieved almost immediately the conquest of
the whole of the country that was worth the price of a victory. The
Christians, however, though overwhelmed, did not entirely yield. On
the contrary, many of them retreated before the fiery pursuit of
their enemies, and established themselves in the extreme northwestern
portion of their native land, amidst the mountains and fastnesses of
Biscay and Asturias. There, indeed, the purity of the Latin tongue,
which they had spoken for so many ages, was finally lost, through that
neglect of its cultivation which was a necessary consequence of the
miseries that oppressed them. But still, with the spirit which so long
sustained their forefathers against the power of Rome, and which has
carried their descendants through a hardly less fierce contest against
the power of France, they maintained, to a remarkable degree, their
ancient manners and feelings, their religion, their laws, and their
institutions; and, separating themselves by an implacable hatred from
their Moorish invaders, they there, in those rude mountains, laid deep
the foundations of a national character,--of that character which has
subsisted to our own times.[2]
[2] Augustin Thierry has in a few words finely described the
fusion of society that originally took place in the northwestern
part of Spain, and on which the civilization of the country still
rests: “Reserrés dans ce coin de terre, devenu pour eux toute la
patrie, Goths et Romains, vainqueurs et vaincus, étrangers et
indigènes, maîtres et esclaves, tous unis dans le même malheur,
oublièrent leurs vieilles haines, leur vieil éloignement, leurs
vieilles distinctions; il n’y eut plus qu’un nom, qu’une loi,
qu’un état, qu’un langage; tous furent égaux dans cet exil.” Dix
Ans d’Études Historiques, Paris, 1836, 8vo, p. 346.
As, however, they gradually grew inured to adversity, and understood
the few hard advantages which their situation afforded them, they
began to make incursions into the territories of their conquerors,
and to seize for themselves some part of the fair possessions, once
entirely their own. But every inch of ground was defended by the same
fervid valor by which it had originally been won. The Christians,
indeed, though occasionally defeated, generally gained something by
each of their more considerable struggles; but what they gained could
be preserved only by an exertion of bravery and military power hardly
less painful than that by which it had been acquired. In 801, we find
them already possessing a considerable part of Old Castile; but the
very name now given to that country, from the multitude of castles with
which it was studded, shows plainly the tenure by which the Christians
from the mountains were compelled to hold these early fruits of their
courage and constancy.[3] A century later, or in 914, they had pushed
the outposts of their conquests to the chain of the Guadarrama,
separating New from Old Castile, and they may, therefore, at this date,
be regarded as having again obtained a firm foothold in their own
country, whose capital they established at Leon.
[3] Manuel Risco, La Castilla y el mas Famoso Castellano, Madrid,
1792, 4to, pp. 14-18.
From this period, the Christians seem to have felt assured of final
success. In 1085, Toledo, the venerated head of the old monarchy, was
wrested from the Moors, who had then possessed it three hundred and
sixty-three years; and in 1118, Saragossa was recovered: so that, from
the beginning of the twelfth century, the whole Peninsula, down to
the Sierra of Toledo, was again occupied by its former masters; and
the Moors were pushed back into the southern and western provinces,
by which they had originally entered. Their power, however, though
thus reduced within limits comprising scarcely more than one third
of its extent when it was greatest, seems still to have been rather
consolidated than broken; and after three centuries of success, more
than three other centuries of conflict were necessary before the fall
of Granada finally emancipated the entire country from the loathed
dominion of its misbelieving conquerors.
But it was in the midst of this desolating contest, and at a period,
too, when the Christians were hardly less distracted by divisions among
themselves than worn out and exasperated by the common warfare against
the common enemy, that the elements of the Spanish language and poetry,
as they have substantially existed ever since, were first developed.
For it is precisely between the capture of Saragossa, which insured to
the Christians the possession of all the eastern part of Spain, and
their great victory on the plains of Tolosa, which so broke the power
of the Moors, that they never afterwards recovered the full measure of
their former strength,[4]--it is precisely in this century of confusion
and violence, when the Christian population of the country may be
said, with the old chronicle, to have been kept constantly in battle
array, that we hear the first notes of their wild, national poetry,
which come to us mingled with their war-shouts, and breathing the very
spirit of their victories.[5]
[4] Speaking of this decisive battle, and following, as he always
does, only Arabic authorities, Conde says, “This fearful rout
happened on Monday, the fifteenth day of the month Safer, in
the year 609 [A. D. 1212]; and with it fell the power of the
Moslems in Spain, for nothing turned out well with them after
it.” (Historia de la Dominacion de los Árabes en España, Madrid,
1820, 4to, Tom. II. p. 425.) Gayangos, in his more learned
and yet more entirely Arabic “Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain,”
(London, 1843, 4to, Vol. II. p. 323,) gives a similar account.
The purely Spanish historians, of course, state the matter still
more strongly;--Mariana, for instance, looking upon the result of
the battle as quite superhuman. Historia General de España, 14a
impresion, Madrid, 1780, fol., Lib. XI. c. 24.
[5] “And in that time,” we are told in the old “Crónica General
de España,” (Zamora, 1541, fol., f. 275,) “was the war of the
Moors very grievous; so that the kings, and counts, and nobles,
and all the knights that took pride in arms, stabled their horses
in the rooms where they slept with their wives; to the end
that, when they heard the war-cry, they might find their horses
and arms at hand, and mount instantly at its summons.” “A hard
and rude training,” says Martinez de la Rosa, in his graceful
romance of “Isabel de Solís,” recollecting, I suspect, this very
passage,--“a hard and rude training, the prelude to so many
glories and to the conquest of the world, when our forefathers,
weighed down with harness, and their swords always in hand, slept
at ease no single night for eight centuries.” Doña Isabel de
Solís, Reyna de Granada, Novela Histórica, Madrid, 1839, 8vo,
Parte II. c. 15.
CHAPTER II.
FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE SPANISH AS A WRITTEN LANGUAGE.--POEM OF
THE CID.--ITS HERO, SUBJECT, LANGUAGE, AND VERSE.--STORY OF THE
POEM.--ITS CHARACTER.--ST. MARY OF EGYPT.--THE ADORATION OF THE
THREE KINGS.--BERCEO, THE FIRST KNOWN CASTILIAN POET.--HIS WORKS AND
VERSIFICATION.--HIS SAN DOMINGO DE SILOS.--HIS MIRACLES OF THE VIRGIN.
The oldest document in the Spanish language with an ascertained date
is a confirmation by Alfonso the Seventh, in the year 1155, of a
charter of regulations and privileges granted to the city of Avilés
in Asturias.[6] It is important, not only because it exhibits the new
dialect just emerging from the corrupted Latin, little or not at all
affected by the Arabic infused into it in the southern provinces, but
because it is believed to be among the very oldest documents ever
written in Spanish, since there is no good reason to suppose that
language to have existed in a written form even half a century earlier.
[6] See Appendix (A.), on the History of the Spanish Language.
How far we can go back towards the first appearance of poetry in this
Spanish, or, as it was oftener called, Castilian, dialect is not so
precisely ascertained; but we know that we can trace Castilian verse
to a period surprisingly near the date of the document of Avilés. It
is, too, a remarkable circumstance, that we can thus trace it by works
both long and interesting; for, though ballads, and the other forms of
popular poetry, by which we mark indistinctly the beginning of almost
every other literature, are abundant in the Spanish, we are not obliged
to resort to them, at the outset of our inquiries, since other obvious
and decisive monuments present themselves at once.
* * * * *
The first of these monuments in age, and the first in importance, is
the poem commonly called, with primitive simplicity and directness,
“The Poem of the Cid.” It consists of above three thousand lines, and
can hardly have been composed later than the year 1200. Its subject, as
its name implies, is taken from among the adventures of the Cid, the
great popular hero of the chivalrous age of Spain; and the whole tone
of its manners and feelings is in sympathy with the contest between
the Moors and the Christians, in which the Cid bore so great a part,
and which was still going on with undiminished violence at the period
when the poem was written. It has, therefore, a national bearing and a
national character throughout.[7]
[7] The date of the only early manuscript of the Poem of the Cid
is in these words: “Per Abbat le escribio en el mes de Mayo, en
Era de Mill è CC..XLV años.” There is a blank made by an erasure
between the second C and the X, which has given rise to the
question, whether this erasure was made by the copyist because
he had accidentally put in a letter too much, or whether it is
a subsequent erasure that ought to be filled,--and, if filled,
whether with the conjunction _è_ or with another C; in short, the
question is, whether this manuscript should be dated in 1245 or
in 1345. (Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Madrid, 1779, 8vo, Tom.
I. p. 221.) This year, 1245, _of the Spanish era_, according
to which the calculation of time is commonly kept in the elder
Spanish records, corresponds to our A. D. 1207;--a difference
of 38 years, the reason for which may be found in a note to
Southey’s “Chronicle of the Cid,” (London, 1808, 4to, p. 385,)
without seeking it in more learned sources.
The date of _the poem itself_, however, is a very different
question from the date of _this particular manuscript_ of it;
for the _Per Abbat_ referred to is merely the copyist, whether
his name was Peter Abbat or Peter the Abbot, (Risco, Castilla,
etc., p. 68.) This question--the one, I mean, of the age of
_the poem itself_--can be settled only from internal evidence
of style and language. Two passages, vv. 3014 and 3735, have,
indeed, been alleged (Risco, p. 69, Southey’s Chronicle, p.
282, note) to prove its date historically; but, after all, they
only show that it was written subsequently to A. D. 1135. (V.
A. Huber, Geschichte des Cid, Bremen, 1829, 12mo, p. xxix.) The
point is one difficult to settle; and none can be consulted
about it but natives or _experts_. Of these, Sanchez places it
at about 1150, or half a century after the death of the Cid,
(Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. p. 223,) and Capmany (Eloquencia
Española, Madrid, 1786, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 1) follows him. Marina,
whose opinion is of great weight, (Memorias de la Academia de
Historia, Tom. IV. 1805, Ensayo, p. 34,) places it thirty or
forty years before Berceo, who wrote 1220-1240. The editors of
the Spanish translation of Bouterwek, (Madrid, 1829, 8vo, Tom.
I. p. 112,) who give a fac-simile of the manuscript, agree with
Sanchez, and so does Huber (Gesch. des Cid, Vorwort, p. xxvii.).
To these opinions may be added that of Ferdinand Wolf, of Vienna,
(Jahrbücher der Literatur, Wien, 1831, Band LVI. p. 251,) who,
like Huber, is one of the acutest scholars alive in whatever
touches Spanish and Mediæval literature, and who places it about
1140-1160. Many other opinions might be cited, for the subject
has been much discussed; but the judgments of the learned men
already given, formed at different times in the course of half
a century from the period of the first publication of the poem,
and concurring so nearly, leave no reasonable doubt that it was
composed as early as the year 1200.
Mr. Southey’s name, introduced by me in this note, is one that
must always be mentioned with peculiar respect by scholars
interested in Spanish literature. From the circumstance, that
his uncle, the Rev. Herbert Hill, a scholar, and a careful and
industrious one, was connected with the English Factory at
Lisbon, Mr. Southey visited Spain and Portugal in 1795-6, when
he was about twenty-two years old, and, on his return home,
published his Travels, in 1797;--a pleasant book, written in the
clear, idiomatic, picturesque English that always distinguishes
his style, and containing a considerable number of translations
from the Spanish and the Portuguese, made with freedom and
spirit rather than with great exactness. From this time he never
lost sight of Spain and Portugal, or of Spanish and Portuguese
literature; as is shown, not only by several of his larger
original works, but by his translations, and by his articles
in the London Quarterly Review on Lope de Vega and Camoens;
especially by one in the second volume of that journal, which was
translated into Portuguese, with notes, by Müller, Secretary of
the Academy of Sciences at Lisbon, and so made into an excellent
compact manual for Portuguese literary history.
The Cid himself, who is to be found constantly commemorated in Spanish
poetry, was born in the northwestern part of Spain, about the year
1040, and died in 1099, at Valencia, which he had rescued from the
Moors.[8] His original name was Ruy Diaz, or Rodrigo Diaz; and he was
by birth one of the considerable barons of his country. The title of
_Cid_, by which he is almost always known, is believed to have come to
him from the remarkable circumstance, that five Moorish kings or chiefs
acknowledged him in one battle as their _Seid_, or their lord and
conqueror;[9] and the title of _Campeador_, or Champion, by which he is
hardly less known, though it is commonly supposed to have been given
to him as a leader of the armies of Sancho the Second, has long since
been used almost exclusively as a popular expression of the admiration
of his countrymen for his exploits against the Moors.[10] At any rate,
from a very early period, he has been called _El Cid Campeador_, or The
Lord Champion. And he well deserved the honorable title; for he passed
almost the whole of his life in the field against the oppressors of his
country, suffering, so far as we know, scarcely a single defeat from
the common enemy, though, on more than one occasion, he was exiled and
sacrificed by the Christian princes to whose interests he had attached
himself.
[8] The Arabic accounts represent the Cid as having died of
grief, at the defeat of the Christians near Valencia, which fell
again into the hands of the Moslem in 1100. (Gayangos, Mohammedan
Dynasties, Vol. II. Appendix, p. xliii.) It is necessary to read
some one of the many Lives of the Cid in order to understand
the Poema del Cid, and much else of Spanish literature; I will
therefore notice four or five of the more suitable and important.
1. The oldest is the Latin “Historia Didaci Campidocti,” written
before 1238, and published as an Appendix in Risco. 2. The next
is the cumbrous and credulous one by Father Risco, 1792. 3.
Then we have a curious one by John von Müller, the historian of
Switzerland, 1805, prefixed to his friend Herder’s Ballads of
the Cid. 4. The classical Life by Manuel Josef Quintana, in the
first volume of his “Vidas de Españoles Célebres” (Madrid, 1807,
12mo). 5. That of Huber, 1829; acute and safe. The best of all,
however, is the old Spanish “Chronicle of the Cid,” or Southey’s
Chronicle, 1808;--the best, I mean, for those who read in order
to enjoy what may be called the literature of the Cid;--to which
may be added a pleasant little volume by George Dennis, entitled
“The Cid, a Short Chronicle founded on the Early Poetry of
Spain,” London, 1845, 12mo.
[9] Chrónica del Cid, Burgos, 1593, fol., c. 19.
[10] Huber, p. 96. Müller’s Leben des Cid, in Herder’s Sämmtliche
Werke, zur schönen Literatur und Kunst, Wien, 1813, 12mo, Theil
III. p. xxi.
But, whatever may have been the real adventures of his life, over which
the peculiar darkness of the period when they were achieved has cast a
deep shadow,[11] he comes to us in modern times as the great defender
of his nation against its Moorish invaders, and seems to have so
filled the imagination and satisfied the affections of his countrymen,
that, centuries after his death, and even down to our own days, poetry
and tradition have delighted to attach to his name a long series of
fabulous achievements, which connect him with the mythological fictions
of the Middle Ages, and remind us almost as often of Amadis and Arthur
as they do of the sober heroes of genuine history.[12]
[11] “No period of Spanish history is so deficient in
contemporary documents.” Huber, Vorwort, p. xiii.
[12] It is amusing to compare the Moorish accounts of the
Cid with the Christian. In the work of Conde on the Arabs of
Spain, which is little more than a translation from Arabic
chronicles, the Cid appears first, I think, in the year 1087,
when he is called “the Cambitur [Campeador] who _infested_ the
frontiers of Valencia.” (Tom. II. p. 155.) When he had taken
Valencia, in 1094, we are told, “Then the Cambitur--_may he be
accursed of Allah!_--entered in with all his people and allies.”
(Tom. II. p. 183.) In other places he is called “Roderic the
Cambitur,”--“Roderic, Chief of the Christians, known as the
Cambitur,”--and “the Accursed”;--all proving how thoroughly he
was hated and feared by his enemies. He is nowhere, I think,
called Cid or Seid by Arab writers; and the reason why he appears
in Conde’s work so little is, probably, that the manuscripts
used by that writer relate chiefly to the history of events in
Andalusia and Granada, where the Cid did not figure at all.
The tone in Gayangos’s more learned and accurate work on the
Mohammedan Dynasties is the same. When the Cid dies, the Arab
chronicler (Vol. II. App., p. xliii.) adds, “May God not show him
mercy!”
The Poem of the Cid partakes of both these characters. It has sometimes
been regarded as wholly, or almost wholly, historical.[13] But there
is too free and romantic a spirit in it for history. It contains,
indeed, few of the bolder fictions found in the subsequent chronicles
and in the popular ballads. Still, it is essentially a poem; and in
the spirited scenes at the siege of Alcocer and at the Cortes, as well
as in those relating to the Counts of Carrion, it is plain that the
author felt his license as a poet. In fact, the very marriage of the
daughters of the Cid has been shown to be all but impossible; and thus
any real historical foundation seems to be taken away from the chief
event which the poem records.[14] This, however, does not at all touch
the proper value of the work, which is simple, heroic, and national.
Unfortunately, the only ancient manuscript of it known to exist is
imperfect, and nowhere informs us who was its author. But what has been
lost is not much. It is only a few leaves in the beginning, one leaf in
the middle, and some scattered lines in other parts. The conclusion is
perfect. Of course, there can be no doubt about the subject or purpose
of the whole. It is the development of the character and glory of the
Cid, as shown in his achievements in the kingdoms of Saragossa and
Valencia, in his triumph over his unworthy sons-in-law, the Counts of
Carrion, and their disgrace before the king and Cortes, and, finally,
in the second marriage of his two daughters with the Infantes of
Navarre and Aragon; the whole ending with a slight allusion to the
hero’s death, and a notice of the date of the manuscript.[15]
[13] This is the opinion of John von Müller and of Southey,
the latter of whom says, in the Preface to his Chronicle, (p.
xi.,) “The poem is to be considered as metrical history, not as
metrical romance.” But Huber, in the excellent Vorwort to his
Geschichte, (p. xxvi.,) shows this to be a mistake; and in the
introduction to his edition of the Chronicle, (Marburg, 1844,
8vo, p. xlii.,) shows further, that the poem was certainly not
taken from the old Latin Life, which is the proper foundation for
what is historical in our account of the Cid.
[14] Mariana is much troubled about the history of the Cid, and
decides nothing (Historia, Lib. X. c. 4);--Sandoval controverts
much, and entirely denies the story of the Counts of Carrion
(Reyes de Castilla, Pamplona, 1615, fol., f. 54);--and Ferreras
(Synopsis Histórica, Madrid, 1775, 4to, Tom. V. pp. 196-198)
endeavours to settle what is true and what is fabulous, and
agrees with Sandoval about the marriage of the daughters of the
Cid with the Counts. Southey (Chronicle, pp. 310-312) argues both
sides, and shows his desire to believe the story, but does not
absolutely succeed in doing so.
[15] The poem was originally published by Sanchez, in the first
volume of his valuable “Poesías Castellanas Anteriores al
Siglo XV.” (Madrid, 1779-90, 4 tom., 8vo; reprinted by Ochoa,
Paris, 1842, 8vo.) It contains three thousand seven hundred and
forty-four lines, and, if the deficiencies in the manuscript were
supplied, Sanchez thinks the whole would come up to about four
thousand lines. But he saw a copy made in 1596, which, though not
entirely faithful, showed that the older manuscript had the same
deficiencies then that it has now. Of course, there is little
chance that they will ever be supplied.
But the story of the poem constitutes the least of its claims to our
notice. In truth, we do not read it at all for its mere facts, which
are often detailed with the minuteness and formality of a monkish
chronicle; but for its living pictures of the age it represents, and
for the vivacity with which it brings up manners and interests so
remote from our own experience, that, where they are attempted in
formal history, they come to us as cold as the fables of mythology.
We read it because it is a contemporary and spirited exhibition of
the chivalrous times of Spain, given occasionally with an Homeric
simplicity altogether admirable. For the story it tells is not only
that of the most romantic achievements, attributed to the most
romantic hero of Spanish tradition, but it is mingled continually
with domestic and personal details, that bring the character of the
Cid and his age near to our own sympathies and interests.[16] The
very language in which it is told is the language he himself spoke,
still only half developed; disencumbering itself with difficulty
from the characteristics of the Latin; its new constructions by no
means established; imperfect in its forms, and ill furnished with the
connecting particles in which resides so much of the power and grace
of all languages; but still breathing the bold, sincere, and original
spirit of its times, and showing plainly that it is struggling with
success for a place among the other wild elements of the national
genius. And, finally, the metre and rhyme into which the whole poem
is cast are rude and unsettled: the verse claiming to be of fourteen
syllables, divided by an abrupt cæsural pause after the eighth, yet
often running out to sixteen or twenty, and sometimes falling back
to twelve;[17] but always bearing the impress of a free and fearless
spirit, which harmonizes alike with the poet’s language, subject, and
age, and so gives to the story a stir and interest, which, though we
are separated from it by so many centuries, bring some of its scenes
before us like those of a drama.
[16] I would instance the following lines on the famine in
Valencia during its Siege by the Cid:--
Mal se aquexan los de Valencia · que non sabent ques’ far;
De ninguna part que sea · no les viene pan;
Nin da consejo padre à fijo, · nin fijo à padre:
Nin amigo à amigo nos · pueden consolar.
Mala cuenta es, Señores, · aver mengua de pan,
Fijos e mugieres verlo · morir de fambre.
vv. 1183-1188.
Valencian men doubt what to do, · and bitterly complain,
That, wheresoe’er they look for bread, · they look for it in vain.
No father help can give his child, · no son can help his sire,
Nor friend to friend assistance lend, · or cheerfulness inspire.
A grievous story, Sirs, it is, · when fails the needed bread,
And women fair and children young · in hunger join the dead.
From the use of _Señores_, “Sirs,” in this passage, as well as
from other lines, like v. 734 and v. 2291, I have thought the
poem was either originally addressed to some particular persons,
or was intended--which is most in accordance with the spirit of
the age--to be recited publicly.
[17] For example:--
Ferran Gonzalez non vió alli dos’ alzase · nin camara abierta
nin torre.--v. 2296.
Feme ante vos yo · è vuestras fijas,
Infantes son è · de dias chicas.--vv. 268, 269.
Some of the irregularities of the versification may be owing to
the copyist, as we have but one manuscript to depend upon; but
they are too grave and too abundant to be charged, on the whole,
to any account but that of the original author.
The first pages of the manuscript being lost, what remains to us begins
abruptly, at the moment when the Cid, just exiled by his ungrateful
king, looks back upon the towers of his castle at Bivar, as he leaves
them. “Thus heavily weeping,” the poem goes on, “he turned his head and
stood looking at them. He saw his doors open and his household chests
unfastened, the hooks empty and without pelisses and without cloaks,
and the mews without falcons and without hawks. My Cid sighed, for he
had grievous sorrow; but my Cid spake well and calmly: ‘I thank thee,
Lord and Father, who art in heaven, that it is my evil enemies who have
done this thing unto me.’”
He goes, where all desperate men then went, to the frontiers of the
Christian war; and, after establishing his wife and children in a
religious house, plunges with three hundred faithful followers into
the infidel territories, determined, according to the practice of his
time, to win lands and fortunes from the common enemy, and providing
for himself meanwhile, according to another practice of his time, by
plundering the Jews as if he were a mere Robin Hood. Among his earliest
conquests is Alcocer; but the Moors collect in force, and besiege him
in their turn, so that he can save himself only by a bold sally, in
which he overthrows their whole array. The rescue of his standard,
endangered in the onslaught by the rashness of Bermuez, who bore it, is
described in the very spirit of knighthood.[18]
[18] Some of the lines of this passage in the original (vv. 723,
etc.) may be cited, to show that gravity and dignity were among
the prominent attribute of the Spanish language from its first
appearance.
Embrazan los escudos · delant los corazones,
Abaxan las lanzas apuestas · de los pendones,
Enclinaron las caras · de suso de los arzones,
Iban los ferir · de fuertes corazones,
A grandes voces lama · el que en buen ora nasceò:
“Ferid los, cavalleros, por · amor de caridad,
Yo soy Ruy Diaz el Cid · Campeador de Bibar,” etc.
Their shields before their breasts, · forth at once they go,
Their lances in the rest, · levelled fair and low,
Their banners and their crests · waving in a row,
Their heads all stooping down · toward the saddle-bow;
The Cid was in the midst, · his shout was heard afar,
“I am Ruy Diaz, · the champion of Bivar;
Strike amongst them, Gentlemen, · for sweet mercies’ sake!”
There where Bermuez fought · amidst the foe they brake,
Three hundred bannered knights, · it was a gallant show.
Three hundred Moors they killed, · a man with every blow;
When they wheeled and turned, · as many more lay slain;
You might see them raise their lances · and level them again.
There you might see the breast-plates · how they were cleft in twain,
And many a Moorish shield · lie shattered on the plain,
The pennons that were white · marked with a crimson stain,
The horses running wild · whose riders had been slain.[19]
[19] This and the two following translations were made by Mr.
J. Hookham Frere, one of the most accomplished scholars England
has produced, and one whom Sir James Mackintosh has pronounced
to be the first of English translators. He was, for some years,
British Minister in Spain, and, by a conjectural emendation
which he made of a line in _this very poem_, known only to
himself and the Marquis de la Romana, was able to accredit a
secret agent to the latter in 1808, when he was commanding a
body of Spanish troops in the French service on the soil of
Denmark;--a circumstance that led to one of the most important
movements in the war against Bonaparte. (Southey’s History of the
Peninsular War, London, 1823, 4to, Tom. I. p. 657.) The admirable
translations of Mr. Frere from the Poem of the Cid, are to be
found in the Appendix to Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid; itself
an entertaining book, made out of free versions and compositions
from the Spanish Poem of the Cid, the old ballads, the prose
Chronicle of the Cid, and the General Chronicle of Spain. Mr.
Wm. Godwin, in a somewhat singular “Letter of Advice to a Young
American on a Course of Studies,” (London, 1818, 8vo,) commends
it justly as one of the books best calculated to give an idea of
the age of chivalry.
It is proper I should add here, that, except in this case of
the Poem of the Cid, where I am indebted to Mr. Frere for the
passages in the text, and in the case of the Coplas of Manrique,
(Chap. 21 of this Period,) where I am indebted to the beautiful
version of Mr. Longfellow, the translations in these volumes are
made by myself.
The poem afterwards relates the Cid’s contest with the Count of
Barcelona; the taking of Valencia; the reconcilement of the Cid to the
king, who had treated him so ill; and the marriage of the Cid’s two
daughters, at the king’s request, to the two Counts of Carrion, who
were among the first nobles of the kingdom. At this point, however,
there is a somewhat formal division of the poem,[20] and the remainder
is devoted to what is its principal subject, the dissolution of this
marriage in consequence of the baseness and brutality of the Counts;
the Cid’s public triumph over them; their no less public disgrace; and
the announcement of the second marriage of the Cid’s daughters with
the Infantes of Navarre and Aragon, which, of course, raised the Cid
himself to the highest pitch of his honors, by connecting him with the
royal houses of Spain. With this, therefore, the poem virtually ends.
[20] This division, and some others less distinctly marked, have
led Tapia (Historia de la Civilización de España, Madrid, 1840,
12mo, Tom. I. p. 268) to think, that the whole poem is but a
congeries of ballads, as the Iliad has sometimes been thought to
be, and, as there is little doubt, the Nibelungenlied really is.
But such breaks occur so frequently in different parts of it,
and seem so generally to be made for other reasons, that this
conjecture is not probable. (Huber, Chrónica del Cid, p. xl.)
Besides, the whole poem more resembles the Chansons de Geste of
old French poetry, and is more artificial in its structure, than
the nature of the ballad permits.
The most spirited part of it consists of the scenes at the Cortes,
summoned, on demand of the Cid, in consequence of the misconduct of the
Counts of Carrion. In one of them, three followers of the Cid challenge
three followers of the Counts, and the challenge of Munio Gustioz to
Assur Gonzalez is thus characteristically given:--
Assur Gonzalez · was entering at the door,
With his ermine mantle · trailing along the floor;
With his sauntering pace · and his hardy look,
Of manners or of courtesy · little heed he took;
He was flushed and hot · with breakfast and with drink.
“What ho! my masters, · your spirits seem to sink!
Have we no news stirring from the Cid, · Ruy Diaz of Bivar?
Has he been to Riodivirna, · to besiege the windmills there?
Does he tax the millers for their toll? · or is that practice past?
Will he make a match for his daughters, · another like the last?”
Munio Gustioz · rose and made reply:--
“Traitor, wilt thou never cease · to slander and to lie?
You breakfast before mass, · you drink before you pray;
There is no honor in your heart, · nor truth in what you say;
You cheat your comrade and your lord, · you flatter to betray;
Your hatred I despise, · your friendship I defy!
False to all mankind, · and most to God on high,
I shall force you to confess · that what I say is true.”
Thus was ended the parley · and challenge betwixt these two.[21]
[21]
Asur Gonzalez entraba · por el palacio;
Manto armino è un · Brial rastrando:
Bermeio viene, · ca era almorzado.
En lo que fabló · avie poco recabdo.
“Hya varones, quien · vió nunca tal mal?
Quien nos darie nuevas · de Mio Cid, el de Bibar?
Fues’ á Riodouirna · los molinos picar,
E prender maquilas · como lo suele far’:
Quil’ darie con los · de Carrion a casar’?”
Esora Muno Gustioz · en pie se levantó:
“Cala, alevoso, · malo, è traydor:
Antes almuerzas, · que bayas à oracion:
A los que das paz, · fartas los aderredor.
Non dices verdad · amigo ni à Señor,
Falso à todos · è mas al Criador.
En tu amistad non · quiero aver racion.
Facertelo decir, que · tal eres qual digo yo.”
Sanchez. Tom. I., p. 359.
This passage, with what precedes and what follows it, may be
compared with the challenge in Shakspeare’s “Richard II.,” Act IV.
The opening of the lists for the six combatants, in the presence of the
king, is another passage of much spirit and effect.
The heralds and the king · are foremost in the place.
They clear away the people · from the middle space;
They measure out the lists, · the barriers they fix,
They point them out in order · and explain to all the six:
“If you are forced beyond the line · where they are fixed and traced,
You shall be held as conquered · and beaten and disgraced.”
Six lances’ length on either side · an open space is laid;
They share the field between them, · the sunshine and the shade.
Their office is performed, · and from the middle space
The heralds are withdrawn · and leave them face to face.
Here stood the warriors of the Cid, · that noble champion;
Opposite, on the other side, · the lords of Carrion.
Earnestly their minds are fixed · each upon his foe.
Face to face they take their place, · anon the trumpets blow;
They stir their horses with the spur, · they lay their lances low,
They bend their shields before their breasts, · their face to the
saddle-bow.
Earnestly their minds are fixed · each upon his foe.
The heavens are overcast above, · the earth trembles below;
The people stand in silence, · gazing on the show.[22]
[22]
Los Fieles è el rey · enseñaron los moiones.
Librabanse del campo · todos aderredor:
Bien gelo demostraron · à todos seis como son,
Que por y serie vencido · qui saliese del moion.
Todas las yentes · esconbraron aderredor
De seis astas de lanzas · que non legasen al moion.
Sorteabanles el campo, · ya les partien el sol:
Salien los Fieles de medio, · ellos cara por cara son.
Desi vinien los de Mio Cid · à los Infantes de Carrion,
Ellos Infantes de Carrion · à los del Campeador.
Cada uno dellos mientes · tiene al so.
Abrazan los escudos · delant’ los corazones:
Abaxan las lanzas · abueltas con los pendones:
Enclinaban las caras · sobre los arzones:
Batien los cavallos · con los espolones:
Tembrar querie la tierra · dod eran movedores.
Cada uno dellos mientes · tiene al só.
Sanchez, Tom. I. p. 368.
A parallel passage from Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale”--the combat
between Palamon and Arcite (Tyrwhitt’s edit., v. 2601)--should
not be overlooked.
“The heraudes left hir priking up and down,
Now ringen trompes loud and clarioun,
There is no more to say, but est and west,
In gon the speres sadly in the rest;
In goth the sharpe spore into the side:
Ther see men who can just and who can ride.”
And so on twenty lines farther, both in the English and the
Spanish. But it should be borne in mind, when comparing them,
that the Poem of the Cid was written two centuries earlier than
the “Canterbury Tales” were.
These are among the most picturesque passages in the poem. But it
is throughout striking and original. It is, too, no less national,
Christian, and loyal. It breathes everywhere the true Castilian spirit,
such as the old chronicles represent it amidst the achievements and
disasters of the Moorish wars; and has very few traces of an Arabic
influence in its language, and none at all in its imagery or fancies.
The whole of it, therefore, deserves to be read, and to be read in the
original; for it is there only that we can obtain the fresh impressions
it is fitted to give us of the rude but heroic period it represents: of
the simplicity of the governments, and the loyalty and true-heartedness
of the people; of the wide force of a primitive religious enthusiasm;
of the picturesque state of manners and daily life in an age of trouble
and confusion; and of the bold outlines of the national genius, which
are often struck out where we should least think to find them. It
is, indeed, a work which, as we read it, stirs us with the spirit
of the times it describes; and as we lay it down and recollect the
intellectual condition of Europe when it was written, and for a long
period before, it seems certain, that, during the thousand years which
elapsed from the time of the decay of Greek and Roman culture, down to
the appearance of the “Divina Commedia,” no poetry was produced so
original in its tone, or so full of natural feeling, picturesqueness,
and energy.[23]
[23] The change of opinion in relation to the Poema del Cid,
and the different estimates of its value, are remarkable
circumstances in its history. Bouterwek speaks of it very
slightingly,--probably from following Sarmiento, who had not
read it,--and the Spanish translators of Bouterwek almost agree
with him. F. v. Schlegel, however, Sismondi, Huber, Wolf, and
nearly or quite all who have spoken of it of late, express a
strong admiration of its merits. There is, I think, truth in the
remark of Southey (Quarterly Review, 1814, Vol. XII. p. 64):
“The Spaniards have not yet discovered the high value of their
metrical history of the Cid, as a poem; they will never produce
any thing great in the higher branches of art, till they have
cast off the false taste which prevents them from perceiving it.”
Of all poems belonging to the early ages of any modern nation,
the one that can best be compared with the Poem of the Cid is
the Nibelungenlied, which, according to the most judicious among
the German critics, dates, in its present form at least, about
half a century after the time assigned to the Poem of the Cid. A
parallel might easily be run between them, that would be curious.
In the Jahrbücher der Literatur, Wien, 1846, Band CXVI., M.
Francisque Michel, the scholar to whom the literature of the
Middle Ages owes so much, published, for the first time, what
remains of an old poetical Spanish chronicle,--“Chrónica Rimada
de las Cosas de España,”--on the history of Spain from the death
of Pelayo to Ferdinand the Great;--the same poem that is noticed
in Ochoa, “Catálogo de Manuscritos,” (Paris, 1844, 4to, pp.
106-110,) and in Huber’s edition of the Chronicle of the Cid,
Preface, App. E.
It is a curious, though not important, contribution to our
resources in early Spanish literature, and one that immediately
reminds us of the old Poem of the Cid. It begins with a prose
introduction on the state of affairs down to the time of Fernan
Gonzalez, compressed into a single page, and then goes on through
eleven hundred and twenty-six lines of verse, when it breaks off
abruptly in the middle of a line, as if the copyist had been
interrupted, but with no sign that the work was drawing to an
end. Nearly the whole of it is taken up with the history of the
Cid, his family and his adventures, which are sometimes different
from those in the old ballads and chronicles. Thus, Ximena is
represented as having three brothers, who are taken prisoners by
the Moors and released by the Cid; and the Cid is made to marry
Ximena, by the royal command, against his own will; after which
he goes to Paris, in the days of the Twelve Peers, and performs
feats like those in the romances of chivalry. This, of course,
is all new. But the old stories are altered and amplified, like
those of the Cid’s charity to the leper, which is given with a
more picturesque air, and of Ximena and the king, and of the
Cid and his father, which are partly thrown into dialogue, not
without dramatic effect. The whole is a free version of the old
traditions of the country, apparently made in the fifteenth
century, after the fictions of chivalry began to be known, and
with the intention of giving the Cid rank among their heroes.
The measure is that of the long verses used in the older Spanish
poetry, with a cæsural pause near the middle of each, and the
termination of the lines is in the _asonante_ a-o.[*] But in all
this there is great irregularity;--many of the verses running
out to twenty or more syllables, and several passages failing to
observe the proper _asonante_. Every thing indicates that the old
ballads were familiar to the author, and from one passage I infer
that he knew the old poem of the Cid:--
Veredes lidiar a porfia · e tan firme se dar,
Atantos pendones obrados · alçar e abaxar,
Atantas lanças quebradas · por el primor quebrar,
Atantos cavallos caer · e non se levantar,
Atanto cavallo sin dueño · por el campo andar.
vv. 895-899.
The preceding lines seem imitated from the Cid’s fight before
Alcocer, in such a way as to leave no doubt that its author had
seen the old poem:--
Veriedes tantas lanzas · premer è alzar;
Tanta adarga à · foradar è pasar;
Tanta loriga falsa · desmanchar;
Tantos pendones blancos · salir bermeios en sangre;
Tantos buenos cavallos · sin sos duenos andar.
vv. 734-738.
[*] For the meaning of _asonante_, and an explanation of
_asonante_ verse, see Chap. VI. and the notes to it.
Three other poems, anonymous like that of the Cid, have been placed
immediately after it, because they are found together in a single
manuscript assigned to the thirteenth century, and because the language
and style of at least the first of them seem to justify the conjecture
that carries it so far back.[24]
[24] The only knowledge of the manuscript containing these three
poems was long derived from a few extracts in the “Biblioteca
Española” of Rodriguez de Castro;--an important work, whose
author was born in Galicia, in 1739, and died at Madrid, in 1799.
The first volume, printed in 1781, in folio, under the patronage
of the Count Florida Blanca, consists of a chronological account
of the Rabbinical writers who appeared in Spain from the earliest
times to his own, whether they wrote in Hebrew, Spanish, or
any other language. The second, printed in 1786, consists of a
similar account of the Spanish writers, heathen and Christian,
who wrote either in Latin or in Spanish down to the end of
the thirteenth century, and whose number he makes about two
hundred. Both volumes are somewhat inartifically compiled, and
the literary opinions they express are of small value; but their
materials, largely derived from manuscripts, are curious, and
frequently such as can be found in print nowhere else.
In this work, (Madrid, 1786, fol., Vol. II. pp. 504, 505,) and
for a long time, as I have said, there alone, were found notices
of these poems; but all of them were printed at the end of the
Paris edition of Sanchez’s “Coleccion de Poesías Anteriores
al Siglo XV.,” from a copy of the original manuscript in the
Escurial, marked there III. K. 4to. Judging by the specimens
given in De Castro, the spelling of the manuscript has not been
carefully followed in the copy used for the Paris edition.
The poem with which this manuscript opens is called “The Book of
Apollonius,” and is the reproduction of a story whose origin is
obscure, but which is itself familiar to us in the eighth book of
Gower’s “Confessio Amantis,” and in the play of “Pericles,” that has
sometimes been attributed to Shakspeare. It is found in Greek rhyme
very early, but is here taken, almost without alteration of incident,
from that great repository of popular fiction in the Middle Ages, the
“Gesta Romanorum.” It consists of about twenty-six hundred lines,
divided into stanzas of four verses, all terminating with the same
rhyme. At the beginning, the author says, in his own person,--
In God’s name the most holy · and Saint Mary’s name most dear,
If they but guide and keep me · in their blessed love and fear,
I will strive to write a tale, · in mastery new and clear,
Where of royal Apollonius · the courtly you shall hear.
The new mastery or method--_nueva maestría_--here claimed may be
the structure of the stanza and its rhyme; for, in other respects,
the versification is like that of the Poem of the Cid; showing,
however, more skill and exactness in the mere measure, and a slight
improvement in the language. But the merit of the poem is small. It
contains occasional notices of the manners of the age when it was
produced,--among the rest, some sketches of a female _jongleur_, of the
class soon afterwards severely denounced in the laws of Alfonso the
Wise,--that are curious and interesting. Its chief attraction, however,
is its story, and this, unhappily, is not original.[25]
[25] The story of Apollonius, Prince of Tyre, as it is commonly
called, and as we have its incidents in this long poem, is the
153d tale of the “Gesta Romanorum” (s. l., 1488, fol.). It is,
however, much older than that collection. (Douce, Illustrations
of Shakspeare, London, 1807, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 135; and Swan’s
translation of the Gesta, London, 1824, 12mo, Vol. II. pp.
164-495.) Two words in the original Spanish of the passage
translated in the text should be explained. The author says,--
Estudiar querria
Componer un _romance_ de nueva _maestría_.
_Romance_ here evidently means _story_, and this is the earliest
use of the word in this sense that I know of. _Maestría_, like
our old English _Maisterie_, means _art_ or _skill_, as in
Chaucer, being the word afterwards corrupted into _Mystery_.
The next poem in the collection is called “The Life of our Lady, Saint
Mary of Egypt,”--a saint formerly much more famous than she is now, and
one whose history is so coarse and indecent, that it has often been
rejected by the wiser members of the church that canonized her. Such
as it appears in the old traditions, however, with all its sins upon
its head, it is here set forth. But we notice at once a considerable
difference between the composition of its verse and that of any
Castilian poetry assigned to the same or an earlier period. It is
written in short lines, generally of eight syllables, and in couplets;
but sometimes a single line carelessly runs out to the number of ten or
eleven syllables; and, in a few instances, three or even four lines are
included in one rhyme. It has a light air, quite unlike the stateliness
of the Poem of the Cid, and seems, from its verse and tone, as well as
from a few French words scattered through it, to have been borrowed
from some of the earlier French Fabliaux, or, at any rate, to have been
written in imitation of their easy and garrulous style. It opens thus,
showing that it was intended for recitation:--
Listen, ye lordlings, listen to me,
For true is my tale, as true can be;
And listen in heart, that so ye may
Have pardon, when humbly to God ye pray.
It consists of fourteen hundred such meagre, monkish verses, and is
hardly of importance, except as a monument of the language at the
period when it was written.[26]
[26] St. Mary of Egypt was a saint of great repute in Spain and
Portugal, and had her adventures written by Pedro de Ribadeneyra
in 1609, and Diogo Vas Carrillo in 1673; they were also fully
given in the “Flos Sanctorum” of the former, and, in a more
attractive form, by Bartolomé Cayrasco de Figueroa, at the end
of his “Templo Militante,” (Valladolid, 1602, 12mo,) where they
fill about 130 flowing octave stanzas, and by Montalvan, in the
drama of “La Gitana de Menfis.” She has, too, a church dedicated
to her at Rome on the bank of the Tiber, made out of the graceful
ruins of the temple of Fortuna Virilis. But her coarse history
has often been rejected as apocryphal, or at least as unfit to be
repeated. Bayle, Dictionaire Historique et Critique, Amsterdam,
1740, fol., Tom. III. pp. 334-336.
The last of the three poems is in the same irregular measure and
manner. It is called “The Adoration of the Three Holy Kings,” and
begins with the old tradition about the wise men that came from the
East; but its chief subject is an arrest of the Holy Family, during
their flight to Egypt, by robbers, the child of one of whom is cured of
a hideous leprosy by being bathed in water previously used for bathing
the Saviour; this same child afterwards turning out to be the penitent
thief of the crucifixion. It is a rhymed legend of only two hundred and
fifty lines, and belongs to the large class of such compositions that
were long popular in Western Europe.[27]
[27] Both of the last poems in this MS. were first printed by
Pidal in the Revista de Madrid, 1841, and, as it would seem, from
bad copies. At least, they contain many more inaccuracies of
spelling, versification, and style than the first, and appear to
be of a later age; for I do not think the French Fabliaux, which
they imitate, were known in Spain till after the period commonly
assigned to the Apollonius.
* * * * *
Thus far, the poetry of the first century of Spanish literature, like
the earliest poetry of other modern countries, is anonymous; for
authorship was a distinction rarely coveted or thought of by those who
wrote in any of the dialects then forming throughout Europe, among the
common people. It is even impossible to tell from what part of the
Christian conquests in Spain the poems of which we have spoken have
come to us. We may infer, indeed, from their language and tone, that
the Poem of the Cid belongs to the border country of the Moorish war in
the direction of Catalonia and Valencia, and that the earliest ballads,
of which we shall speak hereafter, came originally from the midst of
the contest, with whose very spirit they are often imbued. In the same
way, too, we may be persuaded that the poems of a more religious temper
were produced in the quieter kingdoms of the North, where monasteries
had been founded and Christianity had already struck its roots deeply
into the soil of the national character. Still, we have no evidence to
show where any one of the poems we have thus far noticed was written.
But as we advance, this state of things is changed. The next poetry we
meet is by a known author, and, comes from a known locality. It was
written by Gonzalo, a secular priest who belonged to the monastery
of San Millan or Saint Emilianus, in the territory of Calahorra, far
within the borders of the Moorish war, and who is commonly called
Berceo, from the place of his birth. Of the poet himself we know
little, except that he flourished from 1220 to 1246, and that, as he
once speaks of suffering from the weariness of old age,[28] he probably
died after 1260, in the reign of Alfonso the Wise.[29]
[28] It is in Sta. Oria, st. 2.
Quiero en mi vegez, maguer so ya cansado,
De esta santa Virgen romanzar su dictado.
[29] Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. II. p. iv.; Tom. III. pp.
xliv.-lvi. As Berceo was ordained Deacon in 1221, he must have
been born as early as 1198, since deacon’s orders were not taken
before the age of twenty-three. See some curious remarks on the
subject of Berceo in the “Examen Crítico del Tomo Primero de el
Anti-Quixote,” (Madrid, 1806, 12mo, pp. 22 et seq.,) an anonymous
pamphlet, written, I believe, by Pellicer, the editor of Don
Quixote.
His works amount to above thirteen thousand lines, and fill an octavo
volume.[30] They are all on religious subjects, and consist of rhymed
Lives of San Domingo de Silos, Santa Oria, and San Millan; poems on
the Mass, the Martyrdom of San Lorenzo, the Merits of the Madonna, the
Signs that are to precede the Last Judgment, and the Mourning of the
Madonna at the Cross, with a few Hymns, and especially a poem of more
than three thousand six hundred lines on the Miracles of the Virgin
Mary. With one inconsiderable exception, the whole of this formidable
mass of verse is divided into stanzas of four lines each, like those
in the poem of Apollonius of Tyre; and though in the language there
is a perceptible advance since the days when the Poem of the Cid was
written, still the power and movement of that remarkable legend are
entirely wanting in the verses of the careful ecclesiastic.[31]
[30] The second volume of Sanchez’s Poesías Anteriores.
[31] The metrical form adopted by Berceo, which he himself calls
the _quaderna via_, and which is in fact that of the poem of
Apollonius, should be particularly noticed, because it continued
to be a favorite one in Spain for above two centuries. The
following stanzas, which are among the best in Berceo, may serve
as a favorable specimen of its character. They are from the
“Signs of the Judgment,” Sanchez, Tom. II. p. 274.
Esti sera el uno · de los signos dubdados:
Subira a los nubes · el mar muchos estados,
Mas alto que las sierras · è mas que los collados,
Tanto que en sequero · fincaran los pescados.
Las aves esso mesmo · menudas è granadas
Andaran dando gritos · todas mal espantadas;
Assi faran las bestias · por domar è domadas,
Non podran à la noche · tornar à sus posadas.
And this shall be one of the signs · that fill with doubts and
fright:
The sea its waves shall gather up, · and lift them, in its might,
Up to the clouds, and far above · the dark sierra’s height,
Leaving the fishes on dry land, · a strange and fearful sight.
The birds besides that fill the air, · the birds both small and
great,
Shall screaming fly and wheel about, · scared by their coming
fate;
And quadrupeds, both those we tame · and those in untamed state,
Shall wander round nor shelter find · where safe they wonned of
late.
There was, no doubt, difficulty in such a protracted system of
rhyme, but not much; and when rhyme first appeared in the modern
languages, an excess of it was the natural consequence of its
novelty. In large portions of the Provençal poetry, its abundance
is quite ridiculous; as in the “Croisade contre les Hérétiques
Albigeois,”--a remarkable poem, dating from 1210, excellently
edited by M. C. Fauriel, (Paris, 1837, 4to,)--in which stanzas
occur where the same rhyme is repeated above a hundred times.
When and where this quaternion rhyme, as it is used by Berceo,
was first introduced, cannot be determined; but it seems to
have been very early employed in poems that were to be publicly
recited. (F. Wolf, Ueber die Lais, Wien. 1841, 8vo, p. 257.) The
oldest example I know of it, in a modern dialect, dates from
about 1100, and is found in the curious MS. of Poetry of the
Waldenses (F. Diez, Troubadours, Zwickau, 1826, 8vo, p. 230) used
by Raynouard;--the instance to which I refer being “Lo novel
Confort,” (Poésies des Troubadours, Paris, 1817, 8vo, Tom. II. p.
111,) which begins,--
Aquest novel confort de vertuos lavor
Mando, vos scrivent en carita et en amor:
Prego vos carament per l’amor del segnor,
Abandona lo segle, serve a Dio cum temor.
In Spain, whither it no doubt came from Provence, its history is
simply,--that it occurs in the poem of Apollonius; that it gets
its first known date in Berceo about 1230; and that it continued
in use till the end of the fourteenth century.
The thirteen thousand verses of Berceo’s poetry, including even
the Hymns, are, with the exception of about twenty lines of
the “Duelo de la Vírgen,” in this measure. These twenty lines
constitute a song of the Jews who watched the sepulchre after
the crucifixion, and, like the parts of the demons in the old
Mysteries, are intended to be droll, but are, in fact, as Berceo
himself says of them, more truly than perhaps he was aware, “not
worth three figs.” They are, however, of some consequence, as
perhaps the earliest specimen of Spanish lyrical poetry that has
come down to us with a date. They begin thus:--
Velat, aliama de los Judios,
Eya velar!
Que no vos furten el fijo de Dios,
Eya velar!
Car furtarvoslo querran,
Eya velar!
Andre è Piedro et Johan,
Eya velar!
Duelo, 178-9.
Watch, congregation of the Jew,
Up and watch!
Lest they should steal God’s son from you,
Up and watch!
For they will seek to steal the son,
Up and watch!
His followers, Andrew, and Peter, and John,
Up and watch!
Sanchez considers it a _Villancico_, to be sung like a litany
(Tom. IV. p. ix.); and Martinez de la Rosa treats it much in the
same way. Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 161.
In general, the versification of Berceo is regular,--sometimes
it is harmonious; and though he now and then indulges himself
in imperfect rhymes, that may be the beginning of the national
_asonantes_ (Sanchez, Tom. II. p. xv.) still the license he
takes is much less than might be anticipated. Indeed, Sanchez
represents the harmony and finish of his versification as quite
surprising, and uses stronger language in relation to it than
seems justifiable, considering some of the facts he admits. Tom.
II. p. xi.
“The Life of San Domingo de Silos,” with which his volume opens,
begins, like a homily, with these words: “In the name of the Father,
who made all things, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, son of the glorious
Virgin, and of the Holy Spirit, who is equal with them, I intend to
tell a story of a holy confessor. I intend to tell a story in the plain
Romance, in which the common man is wont to talk to his neighbour; for
I am not so learned as to use the other Latin. It will be well worth,
as I think, a cup of good wine.”[32] Of course, there is no poetry in
thoughts like these; and much of what Berceo has left us does not rise
higher.
[32] San Domingo de Silos, st. 1 and 2. The Saviour, according
to the fashion of the age, is called, in v. 2, _Don_ Jesu
Christo,--the word then being synonymous with Dominus. See a
curious note on its use, in Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Madrid,
1836, 4to, Tom. V. p. 408.
Occasionally, however, we find better things. In some portions of his
work, there is a simple-hearted piety that is very attractive, and in
some, a story-telling spirit that is occasionally picturesque. The
best passages are to be found in his long poem on the “Miracles of
the Virgin,” which consists of a series of twenty-five tales of her
intervention in human affairs, composed evidently for the purpose of
increasing the spirit of devotion in the worship particularly paid to
her. The opening or induction to these tales contains, perhaps, the
most poetical passage in Berceo’s works; and in the following version
the measure and system of rhyme in the original have been preserved, so
as to give something of its air and manner:--
My friends, and faithful vassals · of Almighty God above,
If ye listen to my words · in a spirit to improve,
A tale ye shall hear · of piety and love,
Which afterwards yourselves · shall heartily approve.
I, a master in Divinity, · Gonzalve Berceo hight,
Once wandering as a Pilgrim, · found a meadow richly dight,
Green and peopled full of flowers, · of flowers fair and bright,
A place where a weary man · would rest him with delight.
And the flowers I beheld · all looked and smelt so sweet,
That the senses and the soul · they seemed alike to greet;
While on every side ran fountains · through all this glad retreat,
Which in winter kindly warmth supplied, · yet tempered summer’s heat.
And of rich and goodly trees · there grew a boundless maze,
Granada’s apples bright, · and figs of golden rays,
And many other fruits, · beyond my skill to praise;
But none that turneth sour, · and none that e’er decays.
The freshness of that meadow, · the sweetness of its flowers,
The dewy shadows of the trees, · that fell like cooling showers,
Renewed within my frame · its worn and wasted powers;
I deem the very odors would · have nourished me for hours.[33]
[33]
Amigos è vasallos de · Dios omnipotent,
Si vos me escuchasedes · por vuestro consiment,
Querriavos contar un · buen aveniment:
Terrédeslo en cabo por · bueno verament.
Yo Maestro Gonzalvo de · Berceo nomnado
Iendo en Romeria · caeci en un prado,
Verde è bien sencido, · de flores bien poblado,
Logar cobdiciaduero · pora ome cansado.
Daban olor sobeio · las flores bien olientes,
Refrescaban en ome · las caras è las mientes,
Manaban cada canto · fuentes claras corrientes,
En verano bien frias, · en yvierno calientes.
Avie hy grand abondo · de buenas arboledas,
Milgranos è figueras, · peros è mazanedas,
E muchas otras fructas · de diversas monedas;
Mas non avie ningunas · podridas nin acedas.
La verdura del prado, · la olor de las flores,
Las sombras de los arbores · de temprados sabores
Refrescaronme todo, · è perdi los sudores:
Podrie vevir el ome · con aquellos olores.
Sanchez, Tom. II. p. 285.
This induction, which is continued through forty stanzas more, of
unequal merit, is little connected with the stories that follow; the
stories, again, are not at all connected among themselves; and the
whole ends abruptly with a few lines of homage to the Madonna. It
is, therefore, inartificial in its structure throughout. But in the
narrative parts there is often naturalness and spirit, and sometimes,
though rarely, poetry. The tales themselves belong to the religious
fictions of the Middle Ages, and were no doubt intended to excite
devout feelings in those to whom they were addressed; but, like the
old Mysteries, and much else that passed under the name of religion at
the same period, they often betray a very doubtful morality.[34]
[34] A good account of this part of Berceo’s works, though,
I think, somewhat too severe, is to be found in Dr. Dunham’s
“History of Spain and Portugal,” (London, 1832, 18mo, Tom. IV.
pp. 215-229,) a work of merit, the early part of which, as in
the case of Berceo, rests more frequently than might be expected
on original authorities. Excellent translations will be found
in Prof. Longfellow’s Introductory Essay to his version of the
Coplas de Manrique, Boston, 1833, 12mo, pp. 5 and 10.
“The Miracles of the Virgin” is not only the longest, but the most
curious, of the poems of Berceo. The rest, however, should not be
entirely neglected. The poem on the “Signs which shall precede the
Judgment” is often solemn, and once or twice rises to poetry; the story
of María de Cisneros, in the “Life of San Domingo,” is well told, and
so is that of the wild appearance in the heavens of Saint James and
Saint Millan fighting for the Christians at the battle of Simancas,
much as it is found in the “General Chronicle of Spain.” But perhaps
nothing is more characteristic of the author or of his age than the
spirit of childlike simplicity and religious tenderness that breathes
through several parts of the “Mourning of the Madonna at the Cross,”--a
spirit of gentle, faithful, credulous devotion, with which the Spanish
people in their wars against the Moors were as naturally marked as they
were with the ignorance that belonged to the Christian world generally
in those dark and troubled times.[35]
[35] For example, when the Madonna is represented looking at the
cross, and addressing her expiring son:--
Fiio, siempre oviemos · io è tu una vida;
Io à ti quisi mucho, · è fui de ti querida;
Io sempre te crey, · è fui de ti creida;
La tu piedad larga · ahora me oblida?
Fiio, non me oblides · è lievame contigo,
Non me finca en sieglo · mas de un buen amigo;
Juan quem dist por fiio · aqui plora conmigo:
Ruegote quem condones · esto que io te digo.
St. 78, 79.
I read these stanzas with a feeling akin to that with which I
should look at a picture on the same subject by Perugino. They
may be translated thus:--
My son, in thee and me · life still was felt as one;
I loved thee much, and thou lovedst me · in perfectness, my son;
My faith in thee was sure, · and I thy faith had won;
And doth thy large and pitying love · forget me now, my son?
My son, forget me not, · but take my soul with thine;
The earth holds but one heart · that kindred is with mine,--
John, whom thou gavest to be my child, · who here with me doth
pine;
I pray thee, then, that to my prayer · thou graciously incline.
* * * * *
I cannot pass farther without offering the tribute of my homage to two
persons who have done more than any others in the nineteenth century to
make Spanish literature known, and to obtain for it the honors to which
it is entitled beyond the limits of the country that gave it birth.
The first of them, and one whose name I have already cited, is
Friedrich Bouterwek, who was born at Oker in the kingdom of Hanover,
in 1766, and passed nearly all the more active portion of his life at
Göttingen, where he died in 1828, widely respected as one of the most
distinguished professors of that long favored University. A project
for preparing by the most competent hands a full history of the arts
and sciences from the period of their revival in modern Europe was
first suggested at Göttingen by another of its well-known professors,
John Gottfried Eichhorn, in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
But though that remarkable scholar published, in 1796-9, two volumes
of a learned Introduction to the whole work which he had projected,
he went no farther, and most of his coadjutors stopped when he did,
or soon afterwards. The portion of it assigned to Bouterwek, however,
which was the entire history of elegant literature in modern times,
was happily achieved by him between 1801 and 1819, in twelve volumes
octavo. Of this division, “The History of Spanish Literature” fills the
third volume, and was published in 1804;--a work remarkable for its
general philosophical views, and by far the best extant on the subject
it discusses; but imperfect in many particulars, because its author
was unable to procure a large number of Spanish books needful for his
task, and knew many considerable Spanish authors only by insufficient
extracts. In 1812, a translation of it into French was printed, in two
volumes, by Madame Streck, with a judicious preface by the venerable
M. Stapfer;--in 1823, it came out, together with its author’s brief
“History of Portuguese Literature,” in an English translation, made
with taste and skill, by Miss Thomasina Ross;--and in 1829, a Spanish
version of the first and smallest part of it, with important notes,
sufficient with the text to fill a volume in octavo, was prepared by
two excellent Spanish scholars, José Gomez de la Cortina, and Nicolás
Hugalde y Mollinedo,--a work which all lovers of Spanish literature
would gladly see completed.
Since the time of Bouterwek, no foreigner has done so much to promote a
knowledge of Spanish literature as M. Simonde de Sismondi, who was born
at Geneva in 1773, and died there in 1842, honored and loved by all
who knew his wise and generous spirit, as it exhibited itself either
in his personal intercourse, or in his great works on the history of
France and Italy,--two countries, to which, by a line of time-honored
ancestors, he seemed almost equally to belong. In 1811, he delivered in
his native city a course of brilliant lectures on the literature of the
South of Europe, and in 1813, published them at Paris. They involved an
account of the Provençal and the Portuguese, as well as of the Italian
and the Spanish;--but in whatever relates to the Spanish Sismondi was
even less well provided with the original authors than Bouterwek had
been, and was, in consequence, under obligations to his predecessor,
which, while he takes no pains to conceal them, diminish the authority
of a work that will yet always be read for the beauty of its style
and the richness and wisdom of its reflections. The entire series of
these lectures was translated into German by L. Hain in 1815, and into
English with notes by T. Roscoe in 1823. The part relating to Spanish
literature was published in Spanish, with occasional alterations and
copious and important additions by José Lorenzo Figueroa and José
Amador de los Rios, at Seville, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1841-2,--the notes
relating to Andalusian authors being particularly valuable.
None but those who have gone over the whole ground occupied by Spanish
literature can know how great are the merits of scholars like Bouterwek
and Sismondi,--acute, philosophical, and thoughtful,--who, with an
apparatus of authors so incomplete, have yet done so much for the
illustration of their subject.
CHAPTER III.
ALFONSO THE WISE.--HIS LIFE.--HIS LETTER TO PEREZ DE GUZMAN.--HIS
CÁNTIGAS IN THE GALICIAN.--ORIGIN OF THAT DIALECT AND OF THE
PORTUGUESE.--HIS TESORO.--HIS PROSE.--LAW CONCERNING THE
CASTILIAN.--HIS CONQUISTA DE ULTRAMAR.--OLD FUEROS.--THE FUERO
JUZGO.--THE SETENARIO.--THE ESPEJO.--THE FUERO REAL.--THE SIETE
PARTIDAS AND THEIR MERITS.--CHARACTER OF ALFONSO.
The second known author in Castilian literature bears a name much more
distinguished than the first. It is Alfonso the Tenth, who, from his
great advancement in various branches of human knowledge, has been
called Alfonso the Wise, or the Learned. He was the son of Ferdinand
the Third, a saint in the Roman calendar, who, uniting anew the crowns
of Castile and Leon, and enlarging the limits of his power by important
conquests from the Moors, settled more firmly than they had before been
settled the foundations of a Christian empire in the Peninsula.[36]
[36] Mariana, Hist., Lib. XII. c. 15, ad fin.
Alfonso was born in 1221, and ascended the throne in 1252. He was a
poet, much connected with the Provençal Troubadours of his time,[37]
and was besides so greatly skilled in geometry, astronomy, and the
occult sciences then so much valued, that his reputation was early
spread throughout Europe, on account of his general science. But, as
Mariana quaintly says of him, “He was more fit for letters than for the
government of his subjects; he studied the heavens, and watched the
stars, but forgot the earth, and lost his kingdom.”[38]
[37] Diez, Poesie der Troubadours, pp. 75, 226, 227, 331-350. A
long poem on the influence of the stars was addressed to Alfonso
by Nat de Mons (Raynouard, Troub., Tom. V. p. 269); and besides
the curious poem addressed to him by Giraud Riquier of Narbonne,
in 1275, given by Diez, we know that in another poem this
distinguished Troubadour mourned the king’s death. Raynouard,
Tom. V. p. 171. Millot, Histoire des Troubadours, Paris, 1774,
12mo, Tom. III. pp. 329-374.
[38] Historia, Lib. XIII. c. 20. The less favorable side of
Alfonso’s character is given by the cynical Bayle, Art.,
_Castile_.
His character is still an interesting one. He appears to have
had more political, philosophical, and elegant learning than any
other man of his time; to have reasoned more wisely in matters of
legislation; and to have made further advances in some of the exact
sciences;--accomplishments that he seems to have resorted to in the
latter part of his life for consolation amidst unsuccessful wars with
foreign enemies and a rebellious son. The following letter from him
to one of the Guzmans, who was then in great favor at the court of
the king of Fez, shows at once how low the fortunes of the Christian
monarch were sunk before he died, and with how much simplicity he could
speak of their bitterness. It is dated in 1282, and is a favorable
specimen of Castilian prose at a period so early in the history of the
language.[39]
[39] This letter, which the Spanish Academy calls “inimitable,”
though early known in MS., seems to have been first printed by
Ortiz de Zuñiga (Anales de Sevilla, Sevilla, 1677, fol., p.
124). Several old ballads have been made out of it, one of which
is to be found in the “Cancionero de Romances,” por Lorenço de
Sepúlveda (Sevilla, 1584, 18mo, f. 104). The letter is found in
the preface to the Academy’s edition of the Partidas, and is
explained by the accounts in Mariana, (Hist., Lib. XIV. c. 5,)
Conde, (Dominacion de los Árabes, Tom. III. p. 69,) and Mondejar
(Memorias, Lib. VI. c. 14). The original is said to be in the
possession of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. Semanario Pintoresco,
1845, p. 303.
“Cousin Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman: My affliction is great, because
it has fallen from such a height that it will be seen afar; and as it
has fallen on me, who was the friend of all the world, so in all the
world will men know this my misfortune, and its sharpness, which I
suffer unjustly from my son, assisted by my friends and by my prelates,
who, instead of setting peace between us, have put mischief, not under
secret pretences or covertly, but with bold openness. And thus I find
no protection in mine own land, neither defender nor champion; and yet
have I not deserved it at their hands, unless it were for the good
I have done them. And now, since in mine own land they deceive, who
should have served and assisted me, needful is it that I should seek
abroad those who will kindly care for me; and since they of Castile
have been false to me, none can think it ill that I ask help among
those of Benamarin.[40] For if my sons are mine enemies, it will not
then be wrong that I take mine enemies to be my sons; enemies according
to the law, but not of free choice. And such is the good king Aben
Jusaf; for I love and value him much, and he will not despise me or
fail me; for we are at truce. I know also how much you are his, and
how much he loves you, and with good cause, and how much he will do
through your good counsel. Therefore look not at the things past, but
at the things present. Consider of what lineage you are come, and that
at some time hereafter I may do you good, and if I do it not, that
your own good deed shall be its own good reward. Therefore, my cousin,
Alonzo Perez de Guzman, do so much for me with my lord and your friend,
that, on pledge of the most precious crown that I have, and the jewels
thereof, he should lend me so much as he may hold to be just. And if
you can obtain his aid, let it not be hindered of coming quickly; but
rather think how the good friendship that may come to me from your
lord will be through your hands. And so may God’s friendship be with
you. Done in Seville, my only loyal city, in the thirtieth year of my
reign, and in the first of these my troubles.
Signed, THE KING.”[41]
[40] A race of African princes, who reigned in Morocco, and
subjected all Western Africa. Crónica de Alfonso XI., Valladolid,
1551, fol., c. 219. Gayangos, Mohammedan Dynasties, Vol. II. p.
325.
[41] Alonzo Perez de Guzman, of the great family of that name,
the person to whom this remarkable letter is addressed, went
over to Africa in 1276, with many knights, to serve Aben Jusaf
against his rebellious subjects, stipulating that he should not
be required to serve against Christians. Ortiz de Zuñiga, Anales,
p. 113.
The unhappy monarch survived the date of this very striking letter
but two years, and died in 1284. At one period of his life, his
consideration throughout Christendom was so great, that he was elected
Emperor of Germany; but this was only another source of sorrow to
him, for his claims were contested, and after some time were silently
set aside by the election of Rodolph of Hapsburg, upon whose dynasty
the glories of the House of Austria rested so long. The life of
Alfonso, therefore, was on the whole unfortunate, and full of painful
vicissitudes, that might well have broken the spirit of most men, and
that were certainly not without an effect on his.[42]
[42] The principal life of Alfonso X. is that by the Marquis
of Mondejar (Madrid, 1777, fol.); but it did not receive its
author’s final revision, and is an imperfect work. (Prólogo de
Cerdá y Rico; and Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Madrid, 1790, 4to,
Tom. II. pp. 304-312.) For the part of Alfonso’s life devoted to
letters, ample materials are to be found in Castro, (Biblioteca
Española, Tom. II. pp. 625-688,) and in the Repertorio Americano
(Lóndres, 1827, Tom. III. pp. 67-77); where there is a valuable
paper, written, I believe, by Salvá, who published that journal.
So much the more remarkable is it, that he should be distinguished
among the chief founders of his country’s intellectual fame,--a
distinction which again becomes more extraordinary when we recollect
that he enjoys it not in letters alone, or in a single department, but
in many; since he is to be remembered alike for the great advancement
which Castilian prose composition made in his hands, for his poetry,
for his astronomical tables, which all the progress of science since
has not deprived of their value; and for his great work on legislation,
which is at this moment an authority in both hemispheres.[43]
[43] The works attributed to Alfonso are:--IN PROSE: 1. Crónica
General de España, to be noticed hereafter. 2. A Universal
History, containing an abstract of the history of the Jews. 3.
A Translation of the Bible. 4. El Libro del Tesoro, a work on
general philosophy; but Sarmiento, in a MS. which I possess, says
that this is a translation of the Tesoro of Brunetto Latini,
Dante’s master, and that it was not made by order of Alfonso;
adding, however, that he has seen a book entitled “Flores de
Filosofía,” which professes to have been compiled by this king’s
command, and may be the work here intended. 5. The Tábulas
Alfonsinas, or Astronomical Tables. 6. Historia de todo el Suceso
de Ultramar, to be noticed presently. 7. El Espéculo ó Espejo
de todos los Derechos; El Fuero Real, and other laws published
in the Opúsculos Legales del Rey Alfonso el Sabio (ed. de la
Real Academia de Historia, Madrid, 1836, 2 tom., fol.). 8. Las
Siete Partidas.--IN VERSE: 1. Another Tesoro. 2. Las Cántigas.
3. Two stanzas of the Querellas. Several of these works, like
the Universal History and the Ultramar, were, as we know, only
compiled by his order, and in others he must have been much
assisted. But the whole mass shows how wide were his views, and
how great must have been his influence on the language, the
literature, and the intellectual progress of his country.
Of his poetry, we possess, besides works of very doubtful genuineness,
two, about one of which there has been little question, and about the
other none; his “Cántigas,” or Chants, in honor of the Madonna, and his
“Tesoro,” a treatise on the transmutation of the baser metals into gold.
Of the Cántigas, there are extant no less than four hundred and one,
composed in lines of from six to twelve syllables, and rhymed with a
considerable degree of exactness.[44] Their measure and manner are
Provençal. They are devoted to the praises and the miracles of the
Madonna, in whose honor the king founded in 1279 a religious and
military order;[45] and in devotion to whom, by his last will, he
directed these poems to be perpetually chanted in the church of Saint
Mary of Murcia, where he desired his body might be buried.[46] Only a
few of them have been printed; but we have enough to show what they
are, and especially that they are written, not in the Castilian,
like the rest of his works, but in the Galician; an extraordinary
circumstance, for which it does not seem easy to give a satisfactory
reason.
[44] Castro, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 632, where he speaks of the
MS. of the Cántigas in the Escurial. The one at Toledo, which
contains only a hundred, is the MS. of which a fac-simile is
given in the “Paleographía Española,” (Madrid, 1758, 4to, p.
72,) and in the notes to the Spanish translation of Bouterwek’s
History (p. 129). Large extracts from the Cántigas are found in
Castro, (Tom. II. pp. 361, 362, and pp. 631-643,) and in the
“Nobleza del Andaluzia” de Argote de Molina, (Sevilla, 1588,
fol., f. 151,) followed by a curious notice of the king, in Chap.
19, and a poem in his honor.
[45] Mondejar, Memorias, p. 438.
[46] Mondejar, Mem., p. 434. His body, however, was in fact
buried at Seville, and his heart, which he had desired should
be sent to Palestine, at Murcia, because, as he says in his
testament, “Murcia was the first place which it pleased God I
should gain in the service and to the honor of King Ferdinand.”
Laborde saw his monument there. Itinéraire de l’Espagne, Paris,
1809, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 185.
The Galician, however, was originally an important language in Spain,
and for some time seemed as likely to prevail throughout the country as
any other of the dialects spoken in it. It was probably the first that
was developed in the northwestern part of the Peninsula, and the second
that was reduced to writing. For in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
just at the period when the struggling elements of the modern Spanish
were disencumbering themselves from the forms of the corrupted Latin,
Galicia, by the wars and troubles of the times, was repeatedly
separated from Castile, so that distinct dialects appeared in the
two different territories almost at the same moment. Of these, the
Northern is likely to have been the older, though the Southern proved
ultimately the more fortunate. At any rate, even without a court, which
was the surest centre of culture in such rude ages, and without any of
the reasons for the development of a dialect which always accompany
political power, we know that the Galician was already sufficiently
formed to pass with the conquering arms of Alfonso the Sixth, and
establish itself firmly between the Douro and the Minho; that country
which became the nucleus of the independent kingdom of Portugal.
This was between the years 1095 and 1109; and though the establishment
of a Burgundian dynasty on the throne erected there naturally brought
into the dialect of Portugal an infusion of the French, which never
appeared in the dialect of Galicia,[47] still the language spoken in
the two territories under different sovereigns and different influences
continued substantially the same for a long period; perhaps down to
the time of Charles the Fifth.[48] But it was only in Portugal that
there was a court, or that means and motives were found sufficient for
forming and cultivating a regular language. It is therefore only in
Portugal that this common dialect of both the territories appears with
a separate and proper literature;[49] the first intimation of which,
with an exact date, is found as early as 1192. This is a document
in prose.[50] The oldest poetry is to be sought in three curious
fragments, originally published by Faria y Sousa, which can hardly be
placed much later than the year 1200.[51] Both show that the Galician
in Portugal, under less favorable circumstances than those which
accompanied the Castilian in Spain, rose at the same period to be a
written language, and possessed, perhaps, quite as early, the materials
for forming an independent literature.
[47] J. P. Ribeiro, Dissertaçoes, etc., publicadas per órdem da
Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, Lisboa, 1810, 8vo, Tom. I.
p. 180. A glossary of French words occurring in the Portuguese,
by Francisco de San Luiz, is in the Memorias da Academia
Real de Sciencias, Lisboa, 1816, Tom. IV. Parte II. Viterbo
(Elucidario, Lisboa, 1798, fol., Tom. I., Advert. Preliminar.,
pp. viii.-xiii.) also examines this point.
[48] Paleographía Española, p. 10.
[49] A. Ribeiro dos Santos, Orígem, etc., da Poesía Portugueza,
in Memorias da Lett. Portugueza, pela Academia, etc., 1812, Tom.
VIII. pp. 248-250.
[50] J. P. Ribeiro, Diss., Tom. I. p. 176. It is _possible_ the
document in App., pp. 273-275, is older, as it appears to be
from the time of Sancho I., or 1185-1211; but the next document
(p. 275) is _dated_ “Era 1230,” which is A. D. 1192, and is,
therefore, the oldest _with a date_.
[51] Europa Portugueza, Lisboa, 1680, fol., Tom. III. Parte IV.
c. 9; and Diez, Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen, Bonn, 1836,
8vo, Tom. I. p. 72.
We may fairly infer, therefore, from these facts, indicating the vigor
of the Galician in Portugal before the year 1200, that, in its native
province in Spain, it is somewhat older. But we have no monuments
by which to establish such antiquity. Castro, it is true, notices a
manuscript translation of the history of Servandus, as if made in 1150
by Seguino, in the Galician dialect; but he gives no specimen of it,
and his own authority in such a matter is not sufficient.[52] And in
the well-known letter sent to the Constable of Portugal by the Marquis
of Santillana, about the middle of the fifteenth century, we are told
that all Spanish poetry was written for a long time in Galician or
Portuguese;[53] but this is so obviously either a mistake in fact, or
a mere compliment to the Portuguese prince to whom it was addressed,
that Sarmiento, full of prejudices in favor of his native province, and
desirous to arrive at the same conclusion, is obliged to give it up as
wholly unwarranted.[54]
[52] Bibl. Española, Tom. II. pp. 404, 405.
[53] Sanchez, Tom. I., Pról., p. lvii.
[54] After quoting the passage of Santillana just referred to,
Sarmiento, who was very learned in all that relates to the
earliest Spanish verse, says, with a simplicity quite delightful,
“I, as a Galician, interested in this conclusion, should be glad
to possess the grounds of the Marquis of Santillana; but I have
not seen a single word of any author that can throw light on the
matter.” Memorias de la Poesía y Poetas Españoles, Madrid, 1775,
4to, p. 196.
We must come back, therefore, to the “Cántigas” or Chants of Alfonso,
as to the oldest specimen extant in the Galician dialect distinct from
the Portuguese; and since, from internal evidence, one of them was
written after he had conquered Xerez, we may place them between 1263,
when that event occurred, and 1284, when he died.[55] Why he should
have chosen this particular dialect for this particular form of poetry,
when he had, as we know, an admirable mastery of the Castilian, and
when these Cántigas, according to his last will, were to be chanted
over his tomb, in a part of the kingdom where the Galician dialect
never prevailed, we cannot now decide.[56] His father, Saint Ferdinand,
was from the North, and his own early nurture there may have given
Alfonso himself a strong affection for its language; or, what perhaps
is more probable, there may have been something in the dialect itself,
its origin or its gravity, which, at a period when no dialect in Spain
had obtained an acknowledged supremacy, made it seem to him better
suited than the Castilian or Valencian to religious purposes.
[55]
Que tolleu
A Mouros Neul e Xeres,
he says (Castro, Tom. II. p. 637); and Xerez was taken in 1263.
But all these Cántigas were not, probably, written in one period
of the king’s life.
[56] Ortiz de Zuñiga, Anales, p. 129.
But however this may be, all the rest of his works are in the language
spoken in the centre of the Peninsula, while his Cántigas are in the
Galician. Some of them have considerable poetical merit; but in general
they are to be remarked only for the variety of their metres, for an
occasional tendency to the form of ballads, for a lyrical tone, which
does not seem to have been earlier established in the Castilian, and
for a kind of Doric simplicity, which belongs partly to the dialect he
adopted and partly to the character of the author himself;--the whole
bearing the impress of the Provençal poets, with whom he was much
connected, and whom through life he patronized and maintained at his
court.[57]
[57] Take the following as a specimen. Alfonso beseeches the
Madonna rather to look at her merits than at his own claims, and
runs through five stanzas, with the choral echo to each, “Saint
Mary, remember me!”
Non catedes como
Pequei assas,
Mais catad o gran
Ben que en vos ias;
Ca uos me fesestes
Como quen fas
Sa cousa quita
Toda per assi.
Santa Maria! nenbre uos de mi!
Non catedes a como
Pequey greu,
Mais catad o gran ben
Que uos Deus deu;
Ca outro ben se non
Uos non ei eu
Nen ouue nunca
Des quando naci.
Santa Maria! nenbre uos de mi!
Castro, Bibl., Tom. II. p. 640.
This has, no doubt, a very Provençal air; but others of the
Cántigas have still more of it. The Provençal poets, in fact, as
we shall see more fully hereafter, fled in considerable numbers
into Spain at the period of their persecution at home; and that
period corresponds to the reigns of Alfonso and his father. In
this way a strong tinge of the Provençal character came into the
poetry of Castile, and remained there a long time. The proofs of
this early intercourse with Provençal poets are abundant. Aiméric
de Bellinoi was at the court of Alfonso IX., who died in 1214,
(Histoire Littéraire de la France, par des Membres de l’Institut,
Paris, 4to, Tom. XIX. 1838, p. 507,) and was afterwards at the
court of Alfonso X. (Ibid., p. 511.) So were Montagnagout, and
Folquet de Lunel, both of whom wrote poems on the election of
Alfonso X. to the throne of Germany. (Ibid., Tom. XIX. p. 491,
and Tom. XX. p. 557; with Raynouard, Troubadours, Tom. IV. p.
239.) Raimond de Tours and Nat de Mons addressed verses to
Alfonso X. (Ibid., Tom. XIX. pp. 555, 577.) Bertrand Carbonel
dedicated his works to him; and Giraud Riquier, sometimes called
the last of the Troubadours, wrote an elegy on his death, already
referred to. (Ibid., Tom. XX. pp. 559, 578, 584.) Others might be
cited, but these are enough.
The other poetry attributed to Alfonso--except two stanzas that remain
of his “Complaints” against the hard fortune of the last years of his
life[58]--is to be sought in the treatise called “Del Tesoro,” which
is divided into two short books, and dated in 1272. It is on the
Philosopher’s Stone, and the greater portion of it is concealed in an
unexplained cipher; the remainder being partly in prose and partly in
octave stanzas, which are the oldest extant in Castilian verse. But the
whole is worthless, and its genuineness doubtful.[59]
[58] The two stanzas of the Querellas, or Complaints, still
remaining to us, are in Ortiz de Zuñiga, (Anales, p. 123,) and
elsewhere.
[59] First published by Sanchez, (Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I.
pp. 148-170,) where it may still be best consulted. The copy he
used had belonged to the Marquis of Villena, who was suspected
of the black art, and whose books were burnt on that account
after his death, temp. John II. A specimen of the cipher is
given in Cortinas’s translation of Bouterwek (Tom. I. p. 129).
In reading this poem, it should be borne in mind that Alfonso
believed in astrological predictions, and protected astrology by
his laws. (Partida VII. Tít. xxiii. Ley 1.) Moratin the younger
(Obras, Madrid, 1830, 8vo, Tom. I. Parte I. p. 61) thinks that
both the Querellas and the Tesoro were the work of the Marquis
of Villena; relying, first, on the fact that the only manuscript
of the latter known to exist once belonged to the Marquis; and,
secondly, on the obvious difference in language and style between
both and the rest of the king’s known works,--a difference which
certainly may well excite suspicion, but does not much encourage
the particular conjecture of Moratin as to the Marquis of
Villena.
Alfonso claims his chief distinction in letters as a writer of prose.
In this his merit is great. He first made the Castilian a national
language by causing the Bible to be translated into it, and by
requiring it to be used in all legal proceedings;[60] and he first, by
his great Code and other works, gave specimens of prose composition
which left a free and disencumbered course for all that has been done
since,--a service perhaps greater than it has been permitted any other
Spaniard to render the prose literature of his country. To this,
therefore, we now turn.
[60] Mariana, Hist., Lib. XIV. c. 7; Castro, Bibl., Tom. I.
p. 411; and Mondejar, Memorias, p. 450. The last, however, is
mistaken in supposing the translation of the Bible printed at
Ferrara in 1553 to have been that made by order of Alfonso, since
it was the work of some Jews of the period when it was published.
And here the first work we meet with is one that was rather compiled
under his direction, than written by himself. It is called “The Great
Conquest beyond Sea,” and is an account of the wars in the Holy Land,
which then so much agitated the minds of men throughout Europe,
and which were intimately connected with the fate of the Christian
Spaniards still struggling for their own existence in a perpetual
crusade against misbelief at home. It begins with the history of
Mohammed, and comes down to the year 1270; much of it being taken from
an old French version of the work of William of Tyre, on the same
general subject, and the rest from other less trustworthy sources. But
parts of it are not historical. The grandfather of Godfrey of Bouillon,
its hero, is the wild and fanciful Knight of the Swan, who is almost as
much a representative of the spirit of chivalry as Amadis de Gaul, and
goes through adventures no less marvellous; fighting on the Rhine like
a knight-errant, and miraculously warned by a swallow how to rescue
his lady, who has been made prisoner. Unhappily, in the only edition of
this curious work,--printed in 1503,--the text has received additions
that make us doubtful how much of it may be certainly ascribed to
the time of Alfonso the Tenth, in whose reign and by whose order the
greater part of it seems to have been prepared. It is chiefly valuable
as a specimen of early Spanish prose.[61]
[61] La Gran Conquista de Ultramar was printed at Salamanca, by
Hans Giesser, in folio, in 1503. That additions are made to it
is apparent from Lib. III. c. 170, where is an account of the
overthrow of the order of the Templars, which is there said to
have happened in the year of the Spanish era 1412; and that it
is a translation, so far as it follows William of Tyre, from an
old French version of the thirteenth century, I state on the
authority of a manuscript of Sarmiento. The Conquista begins
thus:--
“Capitulo Primero. Como Mahoma predico en Aravia: y gano toda la
tierra de Oriente.
“En aql. tiēpo q̄ eraclius emperador en Roma q̄ fue buē Xpiano,
et mātuvo gran tiēpo el imperio en justicia y en paz, levantose
Mahoma en tierra de Aravia y mostro a las gētes necias sciēcia
nueva, y fizo les creer q̄ era profeta y mensagero de dios, y que
le avia embiado al mundo por saluar los hombres qēle creyessen,”
etc.
The story of the Knight of the Swan, full of enchantments, duels,
and much of what marks the books of chivalry, begins abruptly
at Lib. 1. cap. 47, fol. xvii., with these words: “And now the
history leaves off speaking for a time of all these things, in
order to relate what concerns the Knight of the Swan,” etc.;
and it ends with Cap. 185, f. lxxx., the next chapter opening
thus: “Now this history leaves off speaking of this, and turns
to relate how three knights went to Jerusalem,” etc. This story
of the Knight of the Swan, which fills 63 leaves, or about a
quarter part of the whole work, appeared originally in Normandy
or Belgium, begun by Jehan Renault and finished by Gandor or
Graindor of Douay, in 30,000 verses, about the year 1300. (De
la Rue, Essai sur les Bardes, etc., Caen, 1834, 8vo, Tom. III.
p. 213. Warton’s English Poetry, London, 1824, 8vo, Vol. II. p.
149. Collection of Prose Romances, by Thoms, London, 1838, 12mo,
Vol. III., Preface.) It was, I suppose, inserted in the Ultramar,
when the Ultramar was prepared for publication, because it was
supposed to illustrate and dignify the history of Godfrey of
Bouillon, its hero; but this is not the only part of the work
made up later than its date. The last chapter, for instance,
giving an account of the death of Conradin of the Hohenstauffen,
and the assassination in the church of Viterbo, at the moment
of the elevation of the host, of Henry, the grandson of Henry
III. of England, by Guy of Monfort,--both noticed by Dante,--has
nothing to do with the main work, and seems taken from some later
chronicle.
Castilian prose, in fact, can hardly be said to have existed earlier,
unless we are willing to reckon as specimens of it the few meagre
documents, generally grants in hard legal forms, that begin with the
one concerning Avilés in 1155, already noticed, and come down, half
bad Latin and half unformed Spanish, to the time of Alfonso.[62]
The first monument, therefore, that can be properly cited for this
purpose, though it dates from the reign of Saint Ferdinand, the father
of Alfonso, is one in preparing which, it has always been supposed,
Alfonso himself was personally concerned. It is the “Fuero Juzgo,” or
“Forum Judicum,” a collection of Visigoth laws, which, in 1241, after
his conquest of Córdova, Saint Ferdinand sent to that city in Latin,
with directions that it should be translated into the vulgar dialect,
and observed there as the law of the territory he had then newly
rescued from the Moors.[63]
[62] There is a curious collection of documents, published by
royal authority, (Madrid, 1829-33, 6 tom. 8vo,) called “Coleccion
de Cédulas, Cartas, Patentes,” etc., relating to Biscay and
the Northern provinces, where the Castilian first appeared.
They contain nothing in that language so old as the letter of
confirmation to the Fueros of Avilés by Alfonso the Seventh
already noted; but they contain materials of some value for
tracing the decay of the Latin, by documents dated from the year
804 downwards. (Tom. VI. p. 1.) There is, however, a difficulty
relating both to the documents in Latin and to those in the
early modern dialect; e. g. in relation to the one in Tom. V. p.
120, dated 1197. It is, that we are not certain that we possess
them in precisely their _original_ form and integrity. Indeed,
in not a few instances we are sure of the opposite. For these
Fueros, Privilegios, or whatever they are called, being but
arbitrary grants of an absolute monarch, the persons to whom they
were made were careful to procure confirmations of them from
succeeding sovereigns, as often as they could; and when these
confirmations were made, the original document, if in Latin, was
sometimes translated, as was that of Peter the Cruel, given by
Marina (Teoría de las Cortes, Madrid, 1813, 4to, Tom. III. p.
11); or, if in the modern dialect, it was sometimes copied and
accommodated to the changed language and spelling of the age.
Such confirmations were in some cases numerous, as in the grant
first cited, which was confirmed thirteen times between 1231 and
1621. Now it does not appear from the published documents in
this Coleccion what is, in each instance, the true date of the
particular version used. The Avilés document, however, is not
liable to this objection. It is extant on the original parchment,
upon which the confirmation was made in 1155, with the original
signatures of the persons who made it, as testified by the most
competent witnesses. See _post_, Vol. III., Appendix (A), near
the end.
[63] Fuero Juzgo is a barbarous phrase, which signifies the
same as Forum Judicum, and is perhaps a corruption of it.
(Covarrubias, Tesoro, Madrid, 1674, fol., _ad verb._) The first
printed edition of the Fuero Juzgo is of 1600; the best is that
by the Academy, in Latin and Spanish, Madrid, 1815, folio.
The precise time when this translation was made has not been decided.
Marina, whose opinion should have weight, thinks it was not till the
reign of Alfonso; but, from the early authority we know it possessed,
it is perhaps more probable that it is to be dated from the latter
years of Saint Ferdinand. In either case, however, considering the
peculiar character and position of Alfonso, there can be little doubt
that he was consulted and concerned in its preparation. It is a regular
code, divided into twelve books, which are subdivided into titles and
laws, and is of an extent so considerable and of a character so free
and discursive, that we can fairly judge from it the condition of the
prose language of the time, and ascertain that it was already as far
advanced as the contemporaneous poetry.[64]
[64] See the Discurso prefixed to the Academy’s edition, by Don
Manuel de Lardizabal y Uribe; and Marina’s Ensayo, p. 29, in Mem.
de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. IV., 1805. Perhaps the most curious
passage in the Fuero Juzgo is the law (Lib. XII. Tít. iii. Ley
15) containing the tremendous oath of abjuration prescribed to
those Jews who were about to enter the Christian Church. But
I prefer to give as a specimen of its language one of a more
liberal spirit, viz., the eighth Law of the Primero Titolo, or
Introduction, “concerning those who may become kings,” which in
the Latin original dates from A. D. 643: “Quando el rey morre,
nengun non deve tomar el regno, nen facerse rey, nen ningun
religioso, nen otro omne, nen servo, nen otro omne estrano, se
non omne de linage de los godos, et fillo dalgo, et noble et
digno de costumpnes, et con el otorgamiento de los obispos, et
de los godos mayores, et de todo el poblo. Asi que mientre que
fórmos todos de un corazon, et de una veluntat, et de una fé,
que sea entre nos paz et justicia enno regno, et que podamos
ganar la companna de los angeles en el otro sieglo; et aquel que
quebrantar esta nuestra lee sea escomungado por sempre.”
But the wise forecast of Saint Ferdinand soon extended beyond the
purpose with which he originally commanded the translation of the
old Visigoth laws, and he undertook to prepare a code for the
whole of Christian Spain that was under his sceptre, which, in its
different cities and provinces, was distracted by different and often
contradictory _fueros_ or privileges and laws given to each as it
was won from the common enemy. But he did not live to execute his
beneficent project, and the fragment that still remains to us of what
he undertook, commonly known by the name of the “Setenario,” plainly
implies that it is, in part at least, the work of his son Alfonso.[65]