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:--

“