CHAPTER XXIII

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THE CANCIONEROS OF BAENA, ESTUÑIGA, AND MARTINEZ DE BURGOS.--THE CANCIONERO GENERAL OF CASTILLO.--ITS EDITIONS.--ITS DIVISIONS, CONTENTS, AND CHARACTER.

The reigns of John the Second and of his children, Henry the Fourth and Isabella the Catholic, over which we have now passed, extend from 1407 to 1504, and therefore fill almost a complete century, though they comprise only two generations of sovereigns. Of the principal writers who flourished while they sat on the throne of Castile we have already spoken, whether they were chroniclers or dramatists, whether they were poets or prose-writers, whether they belonged to the Provençal school or to the Castilian. But, after all, a more distinct idea of the poetical culture of Spain during this century, than can be readily obtained in any other way, is to be gathered from the old Cancioneros; those ample magazines, filled almost entirely with the poetry of the age that preceded their formation.

Nothing, indeed, that belonged to the literature of the fifteenth century in Spain marks its character more plainly than these large and ill-digested collections. The oldest of them, to which we have more than once referred, was the work of Juan Alfonso de Baena, a converted Jew, and one of the secretaries of John the Second. It dates, from internal evidence, between the years 1449 and 1454, and was made, as the compiler tells us in his preface, chiefly to please the king, but also, as he adds, in the persuasion that it would not be disregarded by the queen, the heir-apparent, and the court and nobility in general. For this purpose, he says, he had brought together the works of all the Spanish poets who, in his own or any preceding age, had done honor to what he calls “the very gracious art of the _Gaya Ciencia_.”

On examining the Cancionero of Baena, however, we find that quite one third of the three hundred and eighty-four manuscript pages it fills are given to Villasandino,--who died about 1424, and whom Baena pronounces “the prince of all Spanish poets,”--and that nearly the whole of the remaining two thirds is divided among Diego de Valencia, Francisco Imperial, Baena himself, Fernan Perez de Guzman, and Ferrant Manuel de Lando; while the names of about fifty other persons, some of them reaching back to the reign of Henry the Third, are affixed to a multitude of short poems, of which, probably, they were not in all cases the authors. A little of it, like what is attributed to Macias, is in the Galician dialect; but by far the greater part was written by Castilians, who valued themselves upon their fashionable tone more than upon any thing else, and who, in obedience to the taste of their time, generally took the light and easy forms of Provençal verse, and as much of the Italian spirit as they comprehended and knew how to appropriate. Of poetry, except in some of the shorter pieces of Ferrant Lando, Alvarez Gato, and Perez de Guzman, the Cancionero of Baena contains hardly a trace.[706]

[706] Accounts of the Cancionero of Baena are found in Castro, “Biblioteca Española” (Madrid, 1785, folio, Tom. I. pp. 265-346); in Puybusque, “Histoire Comparée des Littératures Espagnole et Française” (Paris, 1843, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 393-397); in Ochoa, “Manuscritos” (Paris, 1844, 4to, pp. 281-286); and in Amador de los Rios, “Estudios sobre los Judios” (Madrid, 1848, 8vo, pp. 408-419). The copy used by Castro was probably from the library of Queen Isabella, (Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., Tom. VI. p. 458, note,) and is now in the National Library, Paris. Its collector, Baena, is sneered at in the Cancionero of Fernan Martinez de Burgos, (Memorias de Alfonso VIII. por Mondexar, Madrid, 1783, 4to, App. cxxxix.,) as a Jew who wrote vulgar verses.

The poems in this Cancionero that are probably not by the persons whose names they bear are short and trifling,--such as might be furnished to men of distinction by humble versifiers, who sought their protection or formed a part of their courts. Thus, a poem already noticed, that bears the name of Count Pero Niño, was, as we are expressly told in a note to it, written by Villasandino, in order that the Count might present himself before the lady Blanche more gracefully than such a rough old soldier would be likely to do, unless he were helped to a little poetical gallantry.

Many similar collections were made about the same time, enough of which remain to show that they were among the fashionable wants of the age, and that there was little variety in their character. Among them was the Cancionero in the Limousin dialect already mentioned;[707] that called Lope de Estuñiga’s, which comprises works of about forty authors;[708] that collected in 1464 by Fernan Martinez de Burgos; and no less than seven others, preserved in the National Library at Paris, all containing poetry of the middle and latter part of the fifteenth century, often the same authors, and sometimes the same poems, that are found in Baena and in Estuñiga.[709] They all belong to a state of society in which the great nobility, imitating the king, maintained poetical courts about them, such as that of the Marquis of Villena at Barcelona, or the more brilliant one, perhaps, of the Duke Fadrique de Castro, who had constantly in his household Puerto Carrero, Gayoso, Manuel de Lando, and others then accounted great poets. That the prevailing tone of all this was Provençal we cannot doubt; but that it was somewhat influenced by a knowledge of the Italian we know from many of the poems that have been published, and from the intimations of the Marquis of Santillana in his letter to the Constable of Portugal.[710]

[707] See _ante_,