THE ARCHPRIEST OF HITA
Many of the earliest poems extant in Castilian are anonymous,
impersonal compositions, more or less imitative. The _Misterio de
los Reyes Magos_, for instance, is suggested by a Latin Office
used at Orleans; the _Libro de Apolonio_, the _Vida de Santa María
Egipciacqua_, the _Libro dels tres Reyes dorient_, and the _Libro
de Alixandre_ are from French sources. French influence is likewise
visible in the work of Gonzalo de Berceo, the earliest Spanish poet
whose name we know for certain; writing in the first half of the
thirteenth century, Berceo draws largely on the _Miracles de Nostre
Dame_, a collection of edifying legends versified by Gautier de Coinci,
Prior of the monastery at Vic-sur-Aisne. As Gautier died in 1236,
the speed with which his version of these pious stories passed from
France to Spain goes to show that literary communication had already
been established between the two countries. At one time or another
during the Middle Ages all Western Europe followed the French lead
in literature. From about 1130, when Konrad wrote his _Rolandslied_,
French influence prevailed in Germany for a century, affecting poets so
considerable as Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried
von Strassburg. French influence was dominant in Italy from before the
reign of Frederick II., the patron of the Provençal poets and the chief
of the Sicilian school of poetry, till the coming of Dante; French
versions of tales of Troy, Alexander, Cæsar and Charlemagne were
translated; so also were French versions of the Arthurian legend, as we
gather from the celebrated passage in the fifth canto of the _Inferno_:—
La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante:
Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse:
Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.
You all know that French influence was most noticeable in England
from Layamon’s time to Chaucer’s, and that Chaucer himself, besides
translating part of the _Roman de la Rose_, borrowed hints from
Guillaume de Machault and Oton de Granson—two minor poets whose
works, by the way, were treasured by the Marqués de Santillana, of
whom I shall have something to say in the next lecture. Wherever
we turn at this period, sooner or later we shall find that French
literature has left its mark. Scandinavian scholars inform us that the
_Strengleikar_ includes translations of Marie de France’s _lais_; and
_Floire et Blanchefleur_ was also done into Icelandic at the beginning
of the fourteenth century when the Archpriest of Hita—who refers
appreciatively to this French romance—was still young. Jean Bodel’s
well-worn couplet is a trite statement of fact:—
Ne sont que trois matières à nul homme attendant,
De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome le grant.
This rapid summary is enough to prove that Spain, in copying French
originals, was doing no more than other countries. The work of her
early singers has the interest which attaches to every new literary
experiment, but the great mass of it necessarily lacks originality and
force. It was not until the fourteenth century was fairly advanced that
Spain produced two authors of unmistakable individual genius. One of
these was the Infante Don Juan Manuel, the earliest prose-writer of
real distinction in Castilian, and the other was Juan Ruiz, Archpriest
of Hita, near Guadalajara. We know scarcely anything certain about Ruiz
except his name and status which he gives incidentally when invoking
the divine assistance in writing his work:—
E por que de todo bien es comienço e rays
la virgen santa marja por ende yo Joan Rroys
açipreste de fita della primero fis
cantar de los sus goços siete que ansi dis.
In one of the manuscripts[2] which contain his poems, his messenger
Trotaconventos seems to state his birthplace:—
Fija, mucho vos saluda uno que es de Alcalá.
It has been inferred from this that the Archpriest was a native of
Alcalá de Henares, and therefore a fellow-townsman of Cervantes. It
is possible that he may have been, but the Gayoso manuscript gives a
variant on the reading in the Salamanca manuscript:—
Fija, mucho vos saluda uno que mora en Alcalá.
The truth is that we do not know where and when Juan Ruiz was born, nor
where and when he died. It is thought that he was born towards the end
of the thirteenth century, and Sr. Puyol y Alonso in his interesting
monograph suggests 1283 as a likely date: but these are conjectures.
Many persons, however, find it difficult to resign themselves to
humble agnosticism, and, by drawing on imagination for fact, endeavour
to construct what we may call hypothetical biographies. Ruiz is an
unpromising subject, yet he has not escaped altogether. A writer of
comparatively modern date—Francisco de Torres, author of an unpublished
_Historia de Guadalajara_—alleges that the Archpriest was living at
Guadalajara in 1410. It is difficult to reconcile this statement with
the assertion made by Alfonso Paratinén who seems to have been the
copyist of the Salamanca manuscript. At the end of his copy Paratinén
writes: ‘This is the Archpriest of Hita’s book which he composed, being
imprisoned by order of the Cardinal Don Gil, Archbishop of Toledo.’
This refers to Don Gil de Albornoz, an able, pushing prelate who was
Archbishop of Toledo from 1337 till his death in 1367. It is known
that Don Gil de Albornoz was exiled from Spain by Peter the Cruel in
1350, and that on January 7, 1351, one Pedro Fernández had succeeded
Juan Ruiz as Archpriest of Hita. Now, according to stanza 1634 in the
Salamanca manuscript, Ruiz finished his work in 1381 of the Spanish
Era:—
Era de mjll e tresjentos e ochenta e vn años
fue conpuesto el rromançe, por muchos males e daños
que fasen muchos e muchas aotras con sus engaños
e por mostrar alos synplex fablas e versos estraños.
The year 1381 of the Spanish Era corresponds to 1343 in our reckoning,
and we may accept the statement in the text that Juan Ruiz wrote his
poem at this date. We may further take it that the poem was written in
jail. We might refuse to believe this on the sole authority of Alfonso
Paratinén whose copy was not made till the end of the fourteenth
(or the beginning of the fifteenth) century; but the copyist is
corroborated by the author who, in each of his first three stanzas,
begs God to free him from the prison in which he lies:—
libra Amj dios desta presion do yago.
It is reasonable to assume that Juan Ruiz was well past middle age
when he wrote his book; hence it is almost incredible that, as Torres
states, he survived his imprisonment by nearly sixty years. There is
nothing, except the absence of proof, against the current theory that
the Archpriest died in prison—possibly at Toledo—shortly before January
7, 1351, when Pedro Fernández took his place at Hita; but there is
nothing, except the same absence of proof, against a counter-theory
that he was released before this date, that he followed Don Gil
Albornoz into exile, and that he died at Avignon. All such theories
are, I repeat, in the nature of hypothetical biography. We have no
data, and are left to ramble in the field of conjecture.
Some idea of the Archpriest’s personality may, however, be gathered
from his work. We are not told how long he was in jail, nor what his
offence was. He himself declares in his _Cántica, de loores de Santa
María_ that his punishment was unjust:—
Santa virgen escogida ...
del mundo salud e vida ...
de aqueste dolor que siento
en presion syn meresçer,
tu me deña estorcer
con el tu deffendjmjento.
His testimony in his own favour is not conclusive. Possibly, as Sr.
Puyol y Alonso suggests, Juan Ruiz may have offended some of the
upper clergy by ridiculing them in much the same way as he satirises
the Dean and Chapter in his _Cántica de los clérigos de Talavera_
where influential dignitaries are most disrespectfully mentioned by
name, or perhaps made recognisable under transparent pseudonyms.
The Archpriest is more likely to have been imprisoned for some such
indiscretion than for loose living. Clerical morality was at a low
point in Spain during the fourteenth century, and, though Juan Ruiz was
a disreputable cleric, he was no worse than many of his brethren. But
he was certainly no better than most of them. His first editor, Tomás
Antonio Sánchez, acting against the remonstrances of Jove-Llanos and
the Spanish Academy of History, contrived to lend Juan Ruiz a false
air of respectability by omitting from the text some objectionable
passages and by bowdlerising others. Sánchez did not foresee that his
good intentions would be frustrated by José Amador de los Ríos, who
thoughtfully collected the scandalous stanzas which had been omitted,
and printed them by themselves in the _Ilustraciones_ to the fourth
volume of his _Historia de la literatura española_. If Sánchez had
made Juan Ruiz seem better than he was, Ríos made him seem worse. Yet
Ríos had succeeded somehow in persuading himself that Juan Ruiz was an
excellent man who voluntarily became ‘a holocaust of the moral idea
which he championed.’ Few who read the Archpriest’s poem are likely
to share this view. It would be an exaggeration to say that he was
an unbeliever, for, though he indulges in irreverent parodies of the
liturgy, his verses to the Blessed Virgin are unmistakably sincere; he
was a criminous clerk like many of his contemporaries who had taken
orders as the easiest means of gaining a livelihood; but, unlike
these jovial goliards, the sensual Archpriest had the temperament
of a poet as well as the tastes of a satyr. It is as a poet that he
interests us, as the author of a work the merits of which can scarcely
be overestimated as regards its ironical, picaresque presentation of
scenes of clerical and lay life. The Archpriest was no literary fop,
but he was dimly aware that he had left behind him a work that would
keep his memory alive:—
ffis vos pequeno libro de testo, mas la glosa,
non creo que es chica antes es byen grand prosa,
que sobre cada fabla se entyende otra cosa,
syn la que se alega en la rason fermosa.
De la santidat mucha es byen grand lycionario,
mas de juego e de burla chico breujario,
per ende fago punto e çierro mj almario,
sea vos chica fabla solas e letuario.
The very name of his book, which has but recently become available in a
satisfactory form, has long been doubtful. About a century after it was
written, Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, the Archpriest of Talavera, called
it a _Tratado_; a few years later than the Archpriest of Talavera,
Santillana referred to it curtly as the _Libro del Arcipreste de Hita_;
Sánchez entitled it _Poesías_ when he issued it in 1790, and Florencio
Janer republished it in 1864 as the _Libro de Cantares_. But, as Wolf
pointed out in 1831,[3] Ruiz himself speaks of it as the _Libro de buen
amor_. However, we do not act with any indecent haste in these matters,
and it was not till just seventy years later that Wolf’s hint was taken
by M. Ducamin. We can at last read the _Libro de buen amor_ more or
less as Ruiz wrote it; or, rather, we can read the greater part of it,
for fragments are missing, some passages having been removed from the
manuscripts, perhaps by over-modest readers. Yet much remains to do. A
diplomatic edition is valuable, but it is only an instalment of what
we need. If any one amongst you is in search of a tough piece of work,
he can do no better for himself and us than by preparing a critical
edition of the _Libro de buen amor_ with a commentary and—above all—a
vocabulary.
The Archpriest of Hita was an original genius, but his originality
consists in his personal attitude towards life and in his handling
of old material. No literary genius, however great, can break
completely with the past, and the Archpriest underwent the influence
of his predecessors at home. It is the fashion nowadays to say that
he was not learned, and no doubt he poses at times as a simpering
provincial ignoramus, especially as regards ecclesiastical doctrine and
discipline:—
Escolar so mucho rrudo, njn maestro njn doctor,
aprendi e se poco para ser demostrador.
But the Archpriest does not wish to be taken at his word, and, to
prevent any possible misunderstanding, in almost the next breath he
slyly advises his befooled reader to consult the _Espéculo_ as well as
los libros de ostiense, que son grand parlatorio,
el jnocençio quarto, vn sotil consistorio,
el rrosario de guido, nouela e diratorio.
He dabbles in astrology, notes (with something like a wink) that a
man’s fate is ruled by the planet under which he is born, and cites
Ptolemy and Plato to support a theory which is so comfortable an
excuse for his own pleasant vices. We shall see that he knew much of
what was best worth knowing in French literature, and that he knew
something of colloquial Arabic appears from the Moorish girl’s replies
to Trotaconventos. Probably enough his allusions to Plato and Aristotle
imply nothing more solid in the way of learning than Chaucer’s allusion
to Pythagoras in _The Book of the Duchesse_. Still he seems to have
known Latin, French, Arabic, and perhaps Italian, besides his native
language, and we cannot lay stress on his ignorance without appearing
to reflect disagreeably on the clergy of to-day. The Archpriest was
not, of course, a mediæval scholiast, much less an exact scholar in the
modern sense; but, for a man whose lot was cast in an insignificant
village, his reading and general culture were far above the average. A
brief examination of the _Libro de buen amor_ will make this clear: it
will also show that the Archpriest had qualities more enviable than all
the learning in the world.
He opens with forty lines invoking the blessing of God upon his work,
and then he descends suddenly into prose, quoting copiously from
Scripture, insisting on the purity of his motives, and asserting that
his object is to warn men and women against foolish or unhallowed love.
Having lulled the suspicions of uneasy readers with this unctuous
preamble, he parenthetically observes: ‘Still, as it is human nature
to sin, in case any should choose to indulge in foolish love (which
I do not advise), various methods of the same will be found set out
here.’ After thus disclosing his real intention, he announces his
desire to show by example how every detail of poetry should be executed
artistically—_segund que esta çiencia requiere_—and returns to verse.
He again commends his work to God, celebrates the joys of Our Lady, and
then proceeds to write a sort of picaresque novel in the metre known as
the _mester de clerecía_—a quatrain of monorhymed alexandrines.
The Archpriest begins by quoting Dionysius Cato[4] to the effect
that, though man may have his trials, he should cultivate a spirit
of gaiety. And, as no man in his wits can laugh without cause, Juan
Ruiz undertakes to provide entertainment, but hopes that he may not
be misunderstood as was the Greek when he argued with the Roman.
This allusion gives the writer his opportunity, and he relates a
story which recalls the episode of Panurge’s argument with Thaumaste,
‘ung grand clerc d’Angleterre.’ Briefly, the tale is this. When the
Romans besought the Greeks to grant them laws, they were required to
prove themselves worthy of the privilege, and, as the difference of
language made verbal discussion impossible, it was agreed that the
debate should be carried on by signs (Thaumaste, you may remember,
preferred signs because ‘les matières sont tant ardues, que les
parolles humaines ne seroyent suffisantes à les expliquer à mon
plaisir’). The Greek champion was a master of all learning, while
the Romans were represented by an illiterate ragamuffin dressed in
a doctor’s gown. The sage held up one finger, the lout held up his
thumb and two fingers; the sage stretched out his open hand, the lout
shook his fist violently. This closed the argument, for the wise Greek
hastily admitted that the Roman claim was justified. On being asked to
interpret the gestures which had perplexed the multitude, the Greek
replied: ‘I said that there was one God, the Roman answered that there
were three Persons in one God, and made the corresponding sign; I said
that everything was governed by God’s will, the Roman answered that the
whole world was in God’s power, and he spoke truly; seeing that they
understood and believed in the Trinity, I agreed that they were worthy
to receive laws.’ The Roman’s interpretation differed materially: ‘He
held up one finger, meaning that he would poke my eye out; as this
infuriated me, I answered by threatening to gouge both his eyes out
with my two fingers, and smash his teeth with my thumb; he held out
his open palm, meaning that he would deal me such a cuff as would make
my ears tingle; I answered back that I would give him such a punch as
he would never forget as long as he lived.’ The humour is distinctly
primitive, but Juan Ruiz bubbles over with contagious merriment as
he rhymes the tale, and goes on to warn the reader against judging
anything—more especially the _Libro de buen amor_—by appearances:—
la bulrra que oyeres non la tengas en vil,
la manera del libro entiendela sotil;
que saber bien e mal, desjr encobierto e donegujl,
tu non fallaras vno de trobadores mjll.
Then, in his digressive way, the Archpriest avers that man, like
the beasts that perish, needs food and a companion of the opposite
sex, adding mischievously that this opinion, which would be highly
censurable if he uttered it, becomes respectable when held by Aristotle.
Como dise Aristotiles, cosa es verdadera,
el mundo por dos cosas trabaja: por la primera
por aver mantenençia; la otra cosa era
por aver juntamjento con fenbra plasentera.
Sylo dixiese de mjo, seria de culpar;
diselo grand filosofo, non so yo de rebtar;
delo que dise el sabio non deuemos dubdar,
que por obra se prueva el sabio e su fablar.
Next the Archpriest, confessing himself to be a man of sin like the
rest of us, relates how he was once in love with a Lady of Quality (too
wary to be trapped by gifts) who rebuffed his messenger by saying that
men were deceivers ever, and by quoting from ‘Ysopete’ an adaptation
of the fable concerning the mountain in labour. The form ‘Ysopete’
suggests that the Archpriest used some French version of Æsop or
Phaedrus, though not that of Marie de France, in whose translation (as
edited by Warnke) this particular fable does not appear.
Undaunted by this check, the Archpriest does not lose his equanimity,
reflects how greatly Solomon was in the right in saying that all is
vanity, and determines to speak no ill of the coy dame, since women
are, after all, the most delightful of creatures:—
mucho seria villano e torpe pajes
sy dela muger noble dixiese cosa rrefes,
ca en muger loçana, fermosa e cortes,
todo bien del mundo e todo plaser es.
A less squeamish beauty—_otra non santa_—attracted the fickle
Archpriest, who wrote for her a _troba cazurra_, and employed Ferrand
García as go-between. García courted the facile fair on his own
account, and left Juan Ruiz to swear (as he does roundly) at a second
fiasco. However, the Archpriest philosophically remarks that man cannot
escape his fate, and illustrates this by telling how a Moorish king
named Alcarás called in five astrologists to cast his son’s horoscope:
all five predicted different catastrophes, and all five proved to be
right. Comically enough, Juan Ruiz remembers at this point that he is
a priest, disclaims all sympathy with fatalistic doctrine, and smugly
adds that he believes in predestination only so far as it is compatible
with the Catholic faith. But he forgets his orthodoxy as conveniently
as he remembered it, rejoices that he was born under the sign of Venus
(a beautifying planet which not only keeps young men young, but takes
years off the old), and, since even the hardest pear ripens at last, he
hopes for better luck. Yet he is disappointed in his attempt to beguile
another Lady of Quality who proves to be (so to say) a _bonâ fide_
holder for value, and the recital of this third misadventure ends with
the fable of the thief and the dog.
At this point his neighbour Don Amor or Love comes to visit the
chagrined Archpriest, and is angrily reproached for promising much and
doing little beyond enfeebling man’s mental and physical powers—a
point exemplified by a Spanish variant of that most indecorous
_fableau_, the _Valet aux douze femmes_. After listening to fable upon
fable, introduced to prove that he is in alliance with the Seven Deadly
Sins, Love gently explains to the Archpriest that he is wrong to flare
into a heat, that he has attempted to fly too high, that fine ladies
are not for him, that he should study the Art of Love as expounded by
Pamphilus and Ovid, that beauty is more than rank, and that he should
enlist the services of an ingratiating old woman. Love quotes the
tale of the two idlers who wished to marry, supplements this with the
obscene story of Don Pitas Payas, and recommends the Archpriest to put
money in his purse when he goes a-wooing. Part of this passage may be
quoted in Gibson’s rendering:—
O money meikle doth, and in luve hath meikle fame,
It maketh the rogue a worthy wight, a carle of honest name,
It giveth a glib tongue to the dumb, snell feet unto the lame,
And he who lacketh both his hands will clutch it all the same.
A man may be a gawkie loon, and eke a hirnless brute,
But money makes him gentleman, and learnit clerk to boot;
For as his money bags do swell, so waxeth his repute,
But he whose purse has naught intill’t, must wear a beggar’s suit.
With money in thy fist thou need’st never lack a friend,0
The Pope will give his benison, and a happy life thou’lt spend,
Thou may’st buy a seat in paradise, and life withouten end,
Where money trickleth plenteouslie there blessings do descend.
I saw within the Court of Rome, of sanctitie the post,
That money was in great regard, and heaps of friends could boast,
That a’ were warstlin’ to be first to honour it the most,
And curchit laigh, and kneelit down, as if before the Host.
It maketh Priors, Bishops, and Abbots to arise,
Archbishops, Doctors, Patriarchs, and Potentates likewise,
It giveth Clerics without lair the dignities they prize,
It turneth falsitie to truth, and changeth truth to lies....
O Money is a Provost and Judge of sterling weight,
A Councillor the shrewdest, and a subtle Advocate;
A Constable and Bailiff of importance very great,
Of all officers that be, ’tis the mightiest in the state.
In brief I say to thee, at Money do not frown,
It is the world’s strong lever to turn it upside down,
It maketh the clown a master, the master a glarish clown,
Of all things in the present age it hath the most renown.
Finally Love sets to moralising, and departs after warning his client
against over-indulgence in either white wine or red, holding up as
an awful example the hermit who, after years of ascetic practices,
got drunk for the first time in his life, and committed atrocious
crimes which brought him to the gallows. The Archpriest ponders over
Love’s seductive precepts, finds that his conduct hitherto has been in
accordance with them, determines to persevere in the same crooked but
pleasant path, and looks forward to the future with glad confidence. He
straightway consults Love’s wife—Venus—concerning a new passion which
(as he says) he has conceived for Doña Endrina, a handsome young widow
of Calatayud. Whatever may be the case with the Archpriest’s other
love affairs, this episode in the _Libro de buen amor_ is imaginative,
being an extremely brilliant hispaniolisation of a dreary Latin play
entitled _De Amore_, ascribed to a misty personage known as Pamphilus
Maurilianus—apparently a monk who lived during the twelfth century.
The old crone of the Latin play reappears in the _Libro de buen amor_
as Urraca (better recognised by her nickname of Trotaconventos),
Galatea becomes Doña Endrina, and Pamphilus becomes Don Melón de la
Uerta. There are passages in which Don Melón de la Uerta seems, at
first sight, to be a pseudonym of the Archpriest’s; but the source
of the story is beyond all doubt, for Juan Ruiz supplies a virtuous
ending, and carefully explains that for the licentious character of the
narrative Pamphilus and Ovid are responsible:—
doña endrina e don melon en vno casados son,
alegran se las conpañas en las bodas con rrason;
sy vjllanja ha dicho aya de vos perdon,
quelo felo de estoria dis panfilo e nason.
In order that there may be no misconception on this point, the
Archpriest returns to it later, averring that no such experience ever
befell him personally, and that he gives the story to set women on
their guard against lying procuresses and bland lechers:—
Entyende byen mj estoria dela fija del endrino,
dixela per te dar ensienpro, non por que amj vjno;
guardate de falsa vieja, de rriso de mal vesjno,
sola con ome non te fyes, njn te llegues al espjno.
He resumes with an account of an enterprise which narrowly escaped
miscarriage owing to a quarrel with Trotaconventos, to whom he had
applied an uncomplimentary epithet in jest; but, seeing his blunder, he
pacified his tetchy ally, and carried out his plan. Cast down by the
sudden death of his mistress, he consoled himself by writing _cantares
cazurros_ which delighted all the ladies who read them (a privilege
denied to us, for these compositions are not included in the existing
manuscripts of the _Libro de buen amor_). Having recovered from his
dejection, in the month of March the Archpriest went holiday-making in
the mountains, where he met with a new type of women whose coming-on
dispositions and robust charms he celebrates satirically. These
_cantigas de serrana_,—slashing parodies on the Galician _cantos de
ledino_,—perhaps the boldest and most interesting of his metrical
experiments, are followed by copies of devout verses on Santa María
del Vado and on the Passion of Christ.
The next transition is equally abrupt. While dining at Burgos with Don
Jueves Lardero (the last Thursday before Lent), the Archpriest receives
a letter from Doña Quaresma (Lent) exhorting her officials—more
especially archpriests and clerics—to arm for the combat against Don
Carnal who symbolises the meat-eating tendencies prevalent during
the rest of the year. Then follows an allegorical description of the
encounter between Doña Quaresma and Don Carnal who, after a series of
disasters, recovers his supremacy, and returns in triumph accompanied
by Don Amor (Love). On Easter Sunday Don Amor’s popularity is at its
height, and secular priests, laymen, monks, nuns, ladies and gentlemen,
sally forth in procession to meet him:—
Dia era muy ssanto dela pascua mayor,
el sol era salydo muy claro e de noble color;
los omes e las aves e toda noble flor,
todos van rresçebir cantando al amor....
Las carreras van llenas de grandes proçesiones,
muchos omes ordenados que otorgan perdones,
los legos segrales con muchos clerisones,
enla proçesion yua el abad de borbones.
ordenes de çisten conlas de sant benjto,
la orden de crus njego con su abat bendjto,
quantas ordenes son nonlas puse en escripto:
‘¡ venite, exultemus!’ cantan en alto grito....
los dela trinjdat conlos frayles del carmen
e los de santa eulalya, por que non se ensanen,
todos manda que digan que canten e que llamen:
‘¡ benedictus qui venjt!’ Responden todos: ‘amen.’
Rejecting the invitations of irreverent monks, priests, knights and
nuns, Love lodges with the Archpriest, and sets up his tent close
by till next morning, when he leaves for Alcalá. The Archpriest
becomes enamoured of a rich young widow, and—later—of a lady whom he
saw praying in church on St. Mark’s Day; but his suit is rejected by
both, and his baffled agent Trotaconventos recommends him to pay his
addresses to a nun. The beldame takes the business in hand, and finds a
listener in Doña Garoza who, after much verbal fencing and interchange
of fables, asks for a description of her suitor. Thanks to her natural
curiosity, we see Juan Ruiz as he presented himself to Trotaconventos’s
(that is to say, his own) sharp, unflattering sight, and the portrait
is even more precise and realistic than Cervantes’s likeness of
himself. Juan Ruiz was tall, long in the trunk, broad-shouldered
but spare, with a good-sized head set on a thick neck, dark-haired,
sallow-complexioned, wide-mouthed with rather coarse ruddy lips,
long-nosed, with black eyebrows far apart overhanging small eyes, with
a protruding chest, hairy arms, big-boned wrists, and a neat pair of
legs ending in small feet: though given to strutting like a peacock
with deliberate gait, he was a man of sound sense, deep-voiced, and a
skilled musician:—
Es ligero, valiente, byen mançebo de djas,
sabe los instrumentos e todas juglerias,
doñeador alegre para las çapatas mjas,
tal ome como este, non es en todas crias.
Doña Garoza allows the Archpriest to visit her, makes him acquainted
with the charm of Platonic love—_lynpio amor_—prays for his spiritual
welfare, and might have persuaded him to renounce all carnal
affections, had she not died within two months of meeting him.
Forgetting her virtuous teaching, the Archpriest tries to set afoot
an intrigue with a Moorish girl, to whom he sends Trotaconventos with
poems; but his luck is out. The Moorish girl is deaf to his entreaties,
and Trotaconventos is taken from him by death. Saddened by this loss,
and by the thought that many a door which her ingratiating arts had
forced open for him will now be closed, he utters a long lament over
the transitoriness of mortal life, moralises at large, denounces the
inexorable cruelty of death, and at last resigns himself with the
reflection that the old wanton, who so nobly did such dirty work, is
honourably placed in heaven between two martyrs:—
!ay! mj trota conventos, mj leal verdadera!
muchos te sigujan biua, muerta yazes señera;
¿ado te me han leuado? non cosa çertera;
nunca torna con nueuas quien anda esta carrera.
Cyerto, en parayso estas tu assentada,
con dos martyres deues estar aconpañada,
sienpre en este mundo fuste per dos maridada;
¿quien te me rrebato, vieja par mj sienpre lasrada?
The Archpriest adds an impudent epitaph on Trotaconventos, who is
represented as saying that, though her mode of life was censurable,
she made many a happy marriage; as begging all who visit her grave
to say a _Pater Noster_ for her; and as wishing them in return the
conjoint joys of both heavenly and earthly love. After this sally of
blasphemous irony comes advice as to the arms which Christians should
use against the devil, the world, and the flesh—a tedious exhortation
from which the author breaks away to declare that he has always wished
everything (including sermons) to be short, and with this he digresses
into a panegyric on little women. But another March has come round,
and, as usual, in the spring the Archpriest’s fancy lightly turns to
thoughts of love. In default of the gifted Trotaconventos, he employs
Don Furón, a liar, drunkard, thief, mischief-maker, gambler, bully,
glutton, wrangler, blasphemer, fortune-teller, debauchee, trickster,
fool and idler: apart from the defects inherent to these fourteen
characters, Don Furón is as good a _fa tutto_ as one can hope to
have. But he fails in the only embassy on which he is sent, and,
with a good-humoured laugh at his own folly, the Archpriest narrates
his last misadventure as a lover. With an elaborate exposition of
the saintly sentiments which actuated the author (for whom every
reader is entreated to say a _Pater Noster_ and an _Ave Maria_), the
_Libro de buen amor_ ends. What seems to be a supplement contains
seven poems addressed to the Virgin (a begging-song for poor students
being interpolated between the second and third poem). The Salamanca
manuscript closes with an amusingly impertinent composition in which a
certain archpriest unnamed—possibly Juan Ruiz himself—is described as
being sent by Don Gil Albornoz, the Archbishop of Toledo, with a brief
from the Pope inculcating celibacy on the Dean and Chapter of Talavera.
What follows has all the air of being a personal experience. The brief
is no sooner read in church than the Dean is on his legs, threatening
to resign rather than submit; the Treasurer wishes that he could lay
hands on the meddling Archbishop, and both the Precentor Sancho and the
Canon Don Gonzalo join in an indignant protest against the attempt to
curtail clerical privileges. The Gayoso manuscript, which omits this
_Cántica de los clérigos de Talavera_, includes two songs for blind
men, and these are printed by M. Ducamin as a sort of last postscript
to the _Libro de buen amor_.
Having analysed the contents of the work, we are now in a better
position to form a judgment on the conclusion implied by an incidental
question in M. Alfred Jeanroy’s admirable book, _Les Origines de la
poésie lyrique en France au moyen âge_:—‘Mais qui ne sait que l’œuvre
de Hita est une macédoine d’imitations françaises, qui témoignent du
reste de la plus grande originalité d’esprit?’ The proposition may be
too broadly put, but it is fundamentally true. The Archpriest borrows
in all directions. The sources of between twenty and thirty of his
fables have been pointed out by Wolf, and may be followed up a little
higher in the works of M. Hervieux and Mr. Jacobs. Orientalists no
doubt could tell us, if they chose, the origin of the story of King
Alcarás and his doomed son:—
Era vn Rey de moros, Alcarás nonbre avia;
nasçiole vn fijo bello, mas de aquel non tenja,
enbjo por sus sabios, dellos saber querria
el signo e la planeta del fijo quel nasçia.
Once at least the Archpriest hits on a subject which also attracted
his contemporary the Infante Don Juan Manuel: the _Libro de buen amor_
and the _Conde Lucanor_ both relate the story of the thief who sold
his soul to the devil. But the differences between the two men are
more marked than the resemblances. The Archpriest has nothing of the
Infante’s imposing gravity and cold disdain; his temperament is more
exuberant, the note of his humour is more incorrigibly picaresque,
and he seeks his subjects further afield. The tale of the pantomimic
dispute between the learned Greek and the illiterate Roman is thought
by Wolf to derive probably from some mediæval Latin source, and Sr.
Puyol y Alonso particularises with the ingenious suggestion that the
Archpriest took it from a commentary by Accursius on Pomponius’s
text of the Digest (_De origine juris_, Tit. ii.). Perhaps: but this
is just the sort of story that circulated orally in the Middle Ages
from one country to another as smoking-room jests float across the
Atlantic now, and Ruiz is quite as likely to have picked it up from a
tramping tinker, or a tumbler at a booth, as from the famous juridical
_glossator_ of the previous century.
We cannot tell who his friends were nor where he went; but the
_Libro de buen amor_ shows that he had acquaintances in all
classes—especially in the least starched of them—and it would not
surprise me to learn that he had wandered as far as Italy or France.
Life was brighter, more full of opportunities, for a clerical picaroon
in the fourteenth century than it is to-day. Now he would be suspended
as a scandal: then the world was all before him where to choose.
Of Italian I am not so sure: certainly the Archpriest knew French
literature better than we should expect. Observe that the Treasurer of
the Talavera Chapter mentions Blanchefleur, Floire and Tristan, and (of
course) finds their trials less pathetic than his own and the worthy
Teresa’s.
E del mal de vos otros amj mucho me pesa,
otrosi de lo mjo e del mal de teresa,
pero dexare atalauera e yr me aoropesa
ante quela partyr de toda la mj mesa.
Ca nunca fue tan leal blanca flor a flores
njn es agora tristan con todos sus amores;
que fase muchas veses rrematar los ardores,
e sy de mi la parto nunca me dexaran dolores.
How did the Archpriest come to hear the tale of Tristan, not yet widely
diffused in Spain? Was it through _Le Chèvrefeuille_, one of Marie de
France’s lais? His previous reference to ‘Ysopete’ might almost tempt
some to think so:—
esta fabla conpuesta, de ysopete sacada.
However this may be, there is no doubt as to where the Archpriest found
his _exemplo_ of the youth who wished to marry three wives, and thought
better of it: this, as already stated, is a variant on the _fableau_
known as _Le Valet aux douze femmes_. Sr. Puyol y Alonso hints at a
Spanish origin for the story of the two sluggards who, when they went
a-courting, tried to make a merit of their sloth; but Wolf notes the
recurrence of something very similar in other literatures, and it most
likely reached Ruiz from France in some collection of supposititious
Æsopic fables. The _Exemplo de lo que conteció á don Payas, pintor de
Bretaña_—an indecent anecdote which follows immediately on the tale of
the rival sluggards—betrays its provenance in its diction. Note the
Gallicisms in such lines as:—
Yo volo yr afrandes, portare muyta dona ...
Yo volo faser en vos vna bona fygura ...
Ella dis: monseñer, faset vuestra mesura ...
dis la muger: monseñer, vos mesmo la catat ...
en dos anos petid corder non se faser carner....
Can we doubt that these are free translations from a French original
not yet identified? It is significant that, as the story of the Greek
and the _ribaldo_ reappears long afterwards in Rabelais, so the story
of Don Payas reappears in Béroalde de Verville’s _Le Moyen de parvenir_
and in La Fontaine’s salacious fable _Le Bât_:—
Un peintre étoit, qui, jaloux de sa femme
Allant aux champs, lui peignit un baudet
Sur le nombril, en guise de cachet.
Again, compare the Archpriest’s stanzas (already quoted) on the power
of money with our English _Song in praise of Sir Penny_:—
Go bet, Peny, go bet [go],
For thee makyn bothe frynd and fo.
Peny is a hardy knyght,
Peny is mekyl of myght,
Peny of wrong, he makyt ryght
In every cuntré qwer he goo.
[Go bet, etc.]
Ritson quotes a companion poem from ‘a MS. of the 13th or 14th century,
in the library of Berne’:—
Denier fait cortois de vilain,
Denier fait de malade sain,
Denier sorprent le monde a plain,
Tot est en son commandement.
And no doubt he is right in supposing that these variants (together
with the Archpriest’s version) come from _Dom Argent_, a story—not, as
Ritson thought, a _fableau_—given in extract by Le Grand d’Aussy in
the third volume of the _Fabliaux, Contes, Fables et Romans du XII^e
et du XIII^e siècle_ published in 1829. Once more, take the story of
the abstemious hermit who once got drunk, went from bad to worse,
and finally fell into the hangman’s hands. As Wolf points out, this
episode was introduced earlier in the _Libro de Apolonio_; but the
Archpriest develops it more fully, amalgamating the tale of _L’Eremite
qui s’enyvra_ with _L’Ermyte que le diable conchia du coc et de la
geline_. Lastly, the combat between Don Carnal and Doña Quaresma is
most brilliantly adapted from the _Bataille de Karesme et de Charnage_:—
Seignor, ge ne vos quier celer,
Uns fablel vueil renoveler
Qui lonc tens a esté perdus:
Onques mais Rois, ne Quens, ne Dus
N’oïrent de millor estoire,
Par ce l’ai-ge mis en mémoire.
But the Archpriest’s genial reconstruction outdoes the original at
every point. And this is even more emphatically true of _Pamphilus
de Amore_, which also no doubt, like the _fableaux_ and _contes_,
drifted into Spain from France. At moments Juan Ruiz is content to be
an admirable translator. Read, for instance, what Pamphilus says to
Galatea in the First Act (sc. iv.) of the Latin play—
Alterius villa mea neptis mille salutes
Per me mandavit officiumque tibi:
Hec te cognoscit dictis et nomine tantum,
Et te, si locus est, ipsa videre cupit—
and compare it with Don Melón’s address to Doña Endrina in the _Libro
de buen amor_:—
Señora, la mj sobrina, que en toledo seya,
se vos encomjenda mucho, mjll saludes vos enbya;
sy ovies lugar e tienpo, por quanto de vos oya,
desea vos mucho ver e conosçer vos querria.
And you will find from thirty to forty points of resemblance duly noted
in Sr. Puyol y Alonso’s valuable study. But what does it matter if a
more microscopic scrutiny reveals a hundred parallelisms? Ruiz proceeds
as Shakespeare proceeded after him. He picks up waste scraps of base
metal from a dunghill, and by his wonder-working touch transforms
them into gold. He breathes life into the ghostly abstractions of
the pseudonymous Auvergnat, creates a man and a woman in the stress
of irresistible passion, and evokes a dramatic atmosphere. You read
_Pamphilus de Amore_: you find it dull when it is not licentious, and
you most often find it both dull and licentious at the same time. Not a
solitary character, not a single happy line, not one memorable phrase
remains with you to redeem its tedious pruriency. The Archpriest’s two
lovers are unforgettable: they are not saints—far from it!—but they are
human in their weakness, and in their downfall they are the sympathetic
victims of disaster. And the vitality of the other personage in this
concentrated narrative of illicit love is proved by its persistence
in literature. A feminine Tartufe, with a dangerous subtlety and
perverse enjoyment of immorality for its own sake, Trotaconventos is
the ancestress of Celestina, of Regnier’s Macette, and of the hideous
old nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_. Turn to the end of the _Libro de
buen amor_, and observe the predatory figure of Don Furón: he, too,
is unforgettable as the model of the ravenous fine gentleman who
condescended to share Lazarillo’s plate of trotters. What matter if
the Archpriest lays hands on a _fableau_, or a _conte_, or a wearisome
piece of lubricity ‘veiled in the obscurity of a learned language’?
What matter if he pilfers from the _Libro de Alixandre_, or steals an
idea from the _Roman de la Rose_? He makes his finds his own by right
of conquest, like Catullus or Virgil before him, like Shakespeare and
Molière after him.
The sedentary historian, like a housemaid, dearly loves a red coat, and
tells us far more than we care to know of arms and the men, drums and
trumpets, and the frippery of war. Juan Ruiz gives us something better:
a tableau of society in Spain during the picturesque, tumultuous reigns
of Alfonso XI. and Peter the Cruel. While other writers sought their
material in monastic libraries, he was content with joyous observation
in inns, and booths, and shady places. He mingled with the general
crowd, having his preferences, but few exclusions. He does not, indeed,
seem to have loved Jews—_pueblo de perdiçion_—but his heart went out
with a bound to their wives and daughters. For Jewish and Moorish
dancing-girls he wrote countless songs—not preserved, unfortunately—to
be accompanied by Moorish music. So, also, he composed ditties to be
sung by blind men, by roystering students, by vagrant picaroons, and
other birds of night. He records these artistic exploits with an air of
frank self-satisfaction:—
Despues fise muchas cantigas de dança e troteras,
para judias e moras e para entenderas,
para en jnstrumentos de comunales maneras:
el cantar que non sabes, oylo acantaderas.
Cantares fis algunos de los que disen los siegos
e para escolares que andan nochernjegos
e para muchos otros por puertas andariegos,
caçurros e de bulrras, non cabrian en dyes priegos.
Few men have anything to fear from their enemies, but most are in
danger of being made ridiculous by their admirers. Puymaigre was no
blind eulogist, and yet in an unwary moment he suggests a dangerous
comparison when he quotes the passage describing the emotion of Doña
Endrina’s lover on first meeting her:—
Pero tal lugar non era para fablar en amores:
amj luego me venjeron muchos mjedos e tenblores,
los mis pies e las mjs manos non eran de si senores,
perdi seso, perdi fuerça, mudaron se mjs colores.
And he ventures to place these lines beside the evocation in the _Vita
Nuova_:—
Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare
La donna mia quand’ ella altrui saluta,
Ch’ ogni lingua divien tremando muta,
E gli occhi non l’ardiscon di guardare.
The suggested parallel does little credit to Puymaigre’s undoubted
critical instinct. It is, moreover, damaging to the Archpriest who, in
this particular passage, is simply translating from the First Act of
_Pamphilus de Amore_ (sc. iii.):—
Quantus adesset ei nunc locus inde loqui!
Sed dubito. Tanti michi nunc venere dolores!
Nec mea vox mecum, nec mea verba manent.
Nec michi sunt vires, trepidantque manusque pedesque.
Comparisons are odious, but, if they must be made, let us compare like
to like. No breath of Dante’s hushed rapture plays round the libidinous
Archpriest. The Spaniard never stirs in his reader a flicker of mystic
ardour; he is of the world, of the flesh, and sometimes of the devil;
his realism is irrepressible, his view of human nature is cynical, and
his interpretation is pregnant with a constant irony. But he enjoys
life, such as it is, while he can. He gives us to understand that
people and things are what they are because they cannot be otherwise,
and he makes the most of both by describing in a spirit of bacchantic
pessimism the ludicrous spectacle of the world. Learning is most
excellent, but the Archpriest finds as much wisdom in a _proverbio
chico_ as in the patter of the schools; a _cantar de gesta_ has its
place in the scheme of literature, for it lends itself to parody;
soldiers slash their way to glory, but, though they fascinate the
ordinary timorous literary man, the Archpriest sees through them, and
humorously exhibits them as sharpers more punctual on pay-day than in
the hour of battle. His whole book, and especially his catalogue—_De
las propriedades que las dueñas chicas han_—bespeak an incurable
susceptibility to feminine charm; but he leaves you under no delusion
as to the seductiveness of the women on the hillsides:—
Las orejas mayores que de añal burrico,
el su pescueço negro, ancho, velloso, chico,
las narises muy gordas, luengas, de çarapico,
beueria en pocos djas cavdal de buhon rico.
He thinks nothing beneath his notice, takes you with him into
convent-kitchens and lets you listen to Trotaconventos while she
rattles off the untranslatable names of the dainties which mitigate the
nuns’ austerities:—
Comjnada, alixandria, conel buen diagargante,
el diaçitron abatys, con el fino gengibrante,
mjel rrosado, diaçimjnjo, diantioso va delante,
e la rroseta nouela que deujera desjr ante.
adraguea e alfenjque conel estomatricon,
e la garriofilota con dia margariton,
tria sandalix muy fyno con diasanturion,
que es, para doñear, preciado e noble don.
And, in the same precise way, he satisfies your intelligent curiosity
as to musical instruments:—
araujgo non quiere la viuela de arco,
çiufonja, gujtarra non son de aqueste marco,
çitola, odreçillo non amar caguyl hallaço,
mas aman la tauerna e sotar con vellaco.
albogues e mandurria caramjllo e çanpolla
non se pagan de araujgo quanto dellos boloña....
The medley is sometimes incoherent, but even when most diffuse it never
fails to entertain. To us the vivid rendering of small, characteristic
particulars is a source of delight. The Archpriest threw it off as a
matter of course; but he piqued himself on the boldness of his metrical
innovations, and he had good reason to be proud. Most of his verses
are written in the quatrain of the _mester de clerecía_, or _quaderna
vía_—an adaptation of the French alexandrine or ‘fourteener’—but he
imparts to the measure a new flexibility, and he attempts rhythmical
experiments, moved by a desire to transplant to Castile the metrical
devices which had already penetrated into Portugal and Galicia from
Northern France and Provence. But the Archpriest has higher claims to
distinction than any based on executive skill. He lends a distinct
personal touch to all his subjects. He has an intense impression of
the visible world, an imposing faculty of evocation, and what he saw
we are privileged to see in his puissant and realistic transcription.
Some modern Spaniards, with a show of indignation which seems quaint
in countrymen of Cervantes and Quevedo, reject the notion that humour
is a characteristic quality of the Spanish genius. We must bear these
sputterings of storm with such equanimity as we can, and hope for finer
weather. The fact remains: Juan Ruiz is the earliest of the great
Spanish humourists; he is also the most eminent Spanish poet of the
Middle Ages, and, all things considered, the most brilliant literary
figure in Spanish history till the coming of Garcilaso de la Vega.
Those of you who have read _Carlos VI. en la Rápita_—one of the latest
volumes in the series of _Episodios Nacionales_—will call to mind
another Juan Ruiz, likewise an Archpriest, known to his parishioners as
‘Don Juanondón,’ and you may remember that this Archpriest of Ulldecona
quotes his namesake, the Archpriest of Hita:—
Tu, Señora, da me agora
la tu graçia toda ora,
que te sirua toda vja.
As the _Libro de buen amor_ had been in print for some seventy years
before the Pretender made the laughable fiasco described by Pérez
Galdós, it is quite possible that Don Juanondón had read the first
of the _Goços de Santa Maria_ in the supplement. But it is not very
likely: for, though the Archpriest’s poems are mentioned in an English
book published nine years before they appeared in Spain,[5] they
never were, and perhaps never will be, popular in the ordinary sense.
Juan Ruiz was far in advance of his age. He lived and died obscure.
No contemporary mentions him by name, and the only thing that can be
construed into a rather early allusion is found in a poem by Ferrant
Manuel de Lando in the _Cancionero de Baena_ (No. 362):—
Señor Juan Alfonso, pintor de taurique
qual fue Pitas Payas, el de la fablilla.
But this, at the best, is indirect. Santillana merely refers to the
Archpriest incidentally. Argote de Molina, in the next century, does
indeed quote one of the Archpriest’s _serranillas_ (st. 1023-27);
but he is misinformed as to the author, and ascribes the verses to
a certain ‘Domingo Abad de los Romances’ whose name occurs in the
_Repartimiento de Sevilla_. Still there is evidence to prove that
Juan Ruiz found a few readers fit to appreciate him. A fragment of
his work exists in Portuguese; the great Chancellor, Pero López de
Ayala, imitates him in the poem generally known as the _Rimado de
Palacio_; Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Archpriest of Talavera and a
kindred spirit in some respects, speaks of him by name, and lays him
under contribution in the _Reprobación del amor mundano_. The famous
pander who lends her name to the _Celestina_ is closely related to
Trotaconventos, and Calixto and Melibea in that great masterpiece are
developed from Don Melón de la Uerta and Doña Endrina de Calatayud.
The Archpriest’s influence on his successors is therefore undeniable.
But, leaving this aside, and judging him solely by his immediate,
positive achievement, he is not altogether unworthy to be placed near
Chaucer,—the poet to whom he has been so often compared.