SPAIN
196
SPAIN
later degraded after being defeated in the lists by the
Cid's rhampinns. The poem breathes throughout
llir ^|li^il 'if w.ii ; I'aitle scenes are always described
with great zest and
the various con-
quests of the hero
in his victorious
progress through
Moordom are enu-
merated fully. To
t he thirteenth cen-
tuiy there may be
iM ribcd another
I pic poem treating
f,t the Cid This,
iKo preser\ ed in a
--mgle late and gar-
bled MS, lb called
1)\ scholars the
Cr6nica rimada"
<ii the "Rodrigo".
It deals w it hwhol-
h imaginarj ex-
liloitbof thejouth-
I'ul Cid. Here we
find the germs of
the story of Rodrigo and Ximena which grew into the
plot of "Guillen de Castro's Golden-Age play, "Las
Mocedades del Cid", and passed thence to Pierre
Corneille's famous French tragi-comedy, "Le Cid"
(1636). The original metrical and rhyming scheme
of the Rodrigo was probably that which we have
assumed for the "Poema del Cid".
Another and earlier Castilian hero is the protago- nist of a thirteenth-century epic poem, the " Poema de Ferndn Gonzdlez", found in a defective fifteenth-cen- tury MS. As we have it, this " Poema" seems to be a redaction, made by a monk of the monastery of Ar- lanza, of an older popular epic. It is in the verse form called cuaderna via, i. e. raonorhymed quatrains of Alexandrines, a form much utilized by the didactic writers of the thirteenth century, when the Alexandrine was imported from France. The adventures of the battlesome tenth-century Count Ferndn Gonzdlez in conflict with Moor and Christian and especially with the hated suzerain, the King of Leon, are described in detail. The latter part of the poem is missing, but we have the whole of its story narrated in an exceed- ingly important document, the "Cronica general" (or ""Cr6nica de Espana") of Alfonso X (thirteenth century).
This ostensibly historical compilation became, in the form given to it by Alfonso and his assistants and in the later redactions made of it, a veritable store- house of Old Spanish epic poetry. Dealing with his- torical or legendarj- figures, the "Cronica" will give what is regarded as the true record of fact in connex- ion with them and then proceeds to tell what the min- strels (juglarcs) sing about them, thus providing us with the matter of a number of lost poems. The "Cronica" is in prose, but in the portions concerned with the accoimts attributed by it to the minstrels it has been discovered that the seeming prose will, in places, readily break up into assonanced verses of the epic t_vpe. So. while the " Poema del Cid ", the " Rod- rigo" and the "Fernan Gonzdlez" are the only monu- ments of Old Spanish epic verse preserved in compo- Bitions of any length, the "Cr6nica general" has snatches of other epic poems whose plots it has taken over into its prose. Interesting among these is the account which it contains of the fictitious Bernardo del Carpio, whose epic legend would appear to have been a Spanish re-fashioning of the story of the French epic hero, Roland. On this account some scholars have assumed that the Old Spanish epic was modelled from the in<'ei>tion on the French epopee; but it is probable that there were Spanish epics antedating the period
of French influence (e. g. the Ferndn Gonzdlez).
French influence aided doubtless in the artistic de-
velopment of the later Spanish epic legends. Ele-
ments of fact ha\'e been discovered in the Leyenda
or "Legend of the Infantes of Lara", whose tragic
deaths, as well as the revenge wrought for them by
their Moorish half-brother, are described in the
"Cr6nica general". The brilliant Spani.sh savant,
Menendez Pidal, has succeeded in re-ca,sting in verse
form an appreciable part of the "Cr6nica" narrative.
Probably once made the subject of poetic treatment
were Roderick the Goth and the foreign hero, Charle-
magne, who had had much to do with Spain; the
"Cr6nica" has no little to say of them. Before leav-
ing this matter it is meet to advert to the theory once
ex])loited that the Spanish epic was the outgrov.th of
of short epico-lyric songs of the t3Tje of certain of the
extant ballads {romances) some of which deal with the
heroes celebr.ated in the epics. But it has been
shown that the ballads hardly go back of the four-
teenth century and that the oldest among them were
derived, in all likelihood, from episodes in the epic
poem or were based upon the chronicle accounts.
In the thirteenth century a considerable amount of religious and didactic verse appeared. Now we meet with the first Spanish poet known to us by name, the priest Gonzalo de B6rceo, who was active during the first half of the century. Adopting the cuaderna via as his verse form, he wrote several lives of Saints ("Vida de Sto. Domingo de Silos", "Estoria de S. MUldn ", etc.), a series of homely but interesting narra- tions of miracles performed by the Blessed Virgin (Milagros de Nuestra Seflora), and other devout docu- ments. In all of these he speaks in iilain terms with the express purpose of reaching the common man. Of late there has been ascribed to him, but not with cer- tainty, a lengthy poem in cudiierna r'm. the "Libro de Alexandre", which brings together many of the ancient and medieval stories about the Macedonian warrior. A number of the writings of this period re- flect, more or less faithfully, French or Provencal models. They include the "Libro de Apolonio", which may primarily have been of Byzantine origin, the "Vida de Santa Maria Egipciaqua" (dealing with the notorious sin- ner and later holy hermitess,St.Mary of Egvpt), the "Book of the Three Kings of the East" (erroneously so called, and better termed the "Leg- end of the Good Thief": the MS. has no Castilian title),andthe"Dis- puta del Alma yel Cuerpo" (a form of the frequent me- dieval debates be- tween body and soul). Doubtless also borrowed from
Gallic sources is a .
"Debate del Agua y el Vino", which is combined with a more lyrical composition, the "Raz6n feita d'.\mor".
Prose composition on anv large scale is posterior to that of verse. Apart from the " Fuero Juzgo" (1241 : a Castilian version of the old Gothic laws) and some minor documents, no notable works in prose appeared before the advent of Alfonso X (1220-84), who began to reign in 1252. An unwise ruler, he was a great scholar and patron of scholarship, so much so as to be called cl Sahio (the Learned) and he made his Court a great centre of scientific and literary activity, gather-
