THE ANONYMOUS AGE

In Spain, as in all countries where it is possible to observe the
origin and the development of letters, the earliest literature bears
the stamp of influences which are either epic or religious. These
primitive pieces are characterised by a vein of popular, unconscious
poetry, with scarce a touch of personal artistry; and the ascription
which refers one or other of them to an individual writer is, for
the most part, arbitrary. Insufficiency of data makes it impossible
to identify the oldest literary performance in Spanish Romance. Jews
like Judah ben Samuel the Levite, and _trovadores_ like Rambaud de
Vaqueiras, arabesque their verses with Spanish tags and refrains;
but these are whimsies. Our choice lies rather between the _Misterio
de los Reyes Magos_ (Mystery of the Magian Kings) and the so-called
_Poema del Cid_ (Poem of the Cid). Experts differ concerning their
respective dates; but the liturgical derivation of the _Misterio_
inclines one to hold it for the elder of the two. If Lidforss were
right in attributing it to the eleventh century, the play would rank
among the first in any modern language. Amador de los Ríos dates it
still further back. As these pretensions are excessive, the known facts
may be briefly given. The _Misterio_ follows upon a commentary on
the Lamentations of Jeremiah, written by a canon of Auxerre, Gilibert
l'Universel, who died in 1134; and its existence was first denoted at
the end of the last century by Felipe Fernández Vallejo, Archbishop of
Santiago de Compostela between 1798 and 1800, who correctly classified
it as a dramatic scene to be given on the Feast of the Epiphany, and
considered it a version from some Latin original. Both conjectures
have proved just. Throughout Europe the Christian theatre derives from
the Church, and the early plays are but a lay vernacular rendering of
models studied in the sanctuary. Simplified as the liturgy now is,
the Mass itself, the services of Palm Sunday and Good Friday, are the
unmistakable _débris_ of an elaborate sacred drama.

The Spanish _Misterio_ proceeds from one of the Latin offices used at
Limoges, Rouen, Nevers, Compiègne, and Orleans, with the legend of the
Magi for a motive; and these, in turn, are dramatic renderings of pious
traditions, partly oral, and partly amplifications of the apocryphal
_Protevangelium Jacobi Minoris_ and the _Historia de Nativitate Mariæ
et de Infantiâ Salvatoris_. These Franco-Latin liturgical plays,
here mentioned in the probable order of their composition during the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, reached Spain through the Benedictines
of Cluny; and as in each original redaction there is a distinct advance
upon its immediate predecessor, so in the Spanish rendering these
primitive exemplars are developed. In the Limoges version there is
no action, the rudimentary dialogue consisting in the allotment of
liturgical phrases among the personages; in the Rouen office, the
number of actors is increased, and Herod, though he does not appear, is
mentioned; a still later redaction brings the shepherds on the scene.

The Spanish _Misterio_ reaches us as a fragment of some hundred and
fifty lines, ending at the moment when the rabbis consult their sacred
books upon Herod's appeal to

"_the prophecies
Which Jeremiah spake_."

Its _provenance_ is proved by the inclusion of three Virgilian lines
(_Æneid_, viii. 112-114), lifted by the arranger of the Orleans rite.

The Magi are mentioned by name, and one speech is given by Gaspar:
important points which help to fix the date of writing. A passage
in Bede speaks of Melchior, _senex et canus_; of Baltasar, _fuscus,
integre barbatus_; of Gaspar, _juvenis imberbis_; but this appears to
be interpolated. The names likewise appear in the famous sixth-century
mosaic of the Church of Sant' Apollinare della Città at Ravenna;
and here, again, the insertion is probably a pious afterthought. If
Hartmann be justified in his contention, that the traditional names of
the Magi were not in vogue till after the alleged discovery of their
remains at Milan in 1158, the Spanish _Misterio_ can be, at best, no
older than the end of the twelfth century.

Enough of it remains to show that the Spanish workman improved upon his
models. He elaborates the dramatic action, quickens the dialogue with
newer life, and gives his scene an ampler, a more vivid atmosphere.

Led by the heavenly star, the three Magi first appear separately, then
together; they celebrate the birth of Christ, whom they seek to adore,
at the end of their thirteen days' pilgrimage. Encountering Herod,
they confide to him their mission; the King conjures his "abbots"
(rabbis), counsellors, and soothsayers to search the mystic books, and
to say whether the Magis' tale be true. The passages between Herod
and his rabbis are marked by intensity and passion, far exceeding the
Franco-Latin models in dramatic force; and there is a corresponding
progress of mechanism, distribution, and rapidity.

There is even a breath of the critical spirit wholly absent from
all other early mysteries, which accept the miraculous sign of the
star with a simple, unquestioning faith. In our play, the first and
third Magi wish to observe it another night, while the second King
would fain watch it for three entire nights. Lastly, the scale of the
_Misterio_ is larger than that of any predecessor; the personages are
not huddled upon the scene at once, but appear in appropriate, dramatic
order, delivering more elaborate speeches, and expressing at greater
length more individual emotions. This fragmentary piece, written in
octosyllabics, forms the foundation-stone of the Spanish theatre; and
from it are evolved, in due progression, "the light and odour of the
flowery and starry _Autos_" which were to enrapture Shelley. Important
and venerable as is the _Misterio_, its freer treatment of the liturgy,
its effectual blending of realism with devotion, and its swiftness of
action are so many arguments against its reputed antiquity. It is still
old if we adopt the conclusion that it was written some twenty years
before the _Poema del Cid_.

This misnamed epic, no unworthy fellow to the _Chanson de Roland_, is
the first great monument of Spanish literature. Like the _Misterio
de los Reyes Magos_, like so many early pieces, the _Poema del Cid_
reaches us maimed and mutilated. The beginning is lost; a page in the
middle, containing some fifty lines following upon verse 2338, has
gone astray from our copy; and the end has been retouched by unskilful
fingers. The unique manuscript in which the _cantar_ exists belongs to
the fourteenth century: so much is now settled after infinite disputes.

The original composition is thought to date from about the middle third
of the twelfth century (1135-75), some fifty years after the Cid's
death at Valencia in 1099. Hence the _Poem of the Cid_ stands almost
midway between the _Chanson de Roland_ and the _Niebelungenlied_.

Nevertheless, in its surviving shape it is the result of innumerable
retouches which amount to botching. Its authorship is more than
doubtful, for the Per Abbat who obtrudes in the closing lines is,
like the Turoldus of _Roland_, the mere transcriber of an unfaithful
copy. Our gratitude to Per Abbat is dashed with regret for his
slapdash methods. The assonants are roughly handled, whole phrases are
unintelligently repeated, are transferred from one line to another, or
are thrust out from the text, and in some cases two lines are crushed
into one. The prevailing metre is the Alexandrine or fourteen-syllabled
verse, probably adopted in conscious imitation of that Latin chronicle
on the conquest of Almería which first reveals the national champion
under his popular title—

"_Ipse Rodericus, Mio Cid semper vocatus,
De quo cantatur, quod ab hostibus haud superatus._"

However that may be, the normal measure is reproduced with curious
infelicity. Some lines run to twenty syllables, some halt at ten, and
it cannot be doubted that many of these irregularities are results of
careless copying. Still, to Per Abbat we owe the preservation of the
Cid _cantar_ as we owe to Sánchez its issue in 1779, more than half a
century before any French _chanson de geste_ was printed.

The Spanish epic has a twofold theme—the exploits of the exiled Cid,
and the marriage of his two (mythical) daughters to the Infantes de
Carrión. Diffused through Europe by the genius of Corneille, who
conveyed his conception from Guillén de Castro, the legendary Cid
differs hugely from the Cid of history. Uncritical scepticism has
denied his existence; but Cervantes, with his good sense, hit the white
in the first part of _Don Quixote_ (chapter xlix.). Unquestionably
the Cid lived in the flesh: whether or not his alleged achievements
occurred is another matter. Irony has incidentally marked him for its
own. The mercenary in the pay of Zaragozan emirs is fabled as the
model Spanish patriot; the plunderer of churches becomes the flower of
orthodoxy; the cunning intriguer who rifled Jews and mocked at treaties
is transfigured as the chivalrous paladin; the unsentimental trooper
who never loved is delivered unto us as the typical _jeune premier_.

Lastly, the mirror of Spanish nationality is best known by his Arabic
title (_Sidi_ = lord). Yet two points must be kept in mind: the facts
which discredit him are reported by hostile Arab historians; and,
again, the Cid is entitled to be judged by the standard of his country
and his time. So judged, we may accept the verdict of his enemies, who
cursed him as "a miracle of the miracles of God and the conqueror of
banners." Ruy Diaz de Bivar—to give him his true name—was something
more than a freebooter whose deeds struck the popular fancy: he stood
for unity, for the supremacy of Castile over León, and his example
proved that, against almost any odds, the Spaniards could hold their
own against the Moors. In the long night between the disaster of
Alarcos and the crowning triumph of Navas de Tolosa, the Cid's figure
grew glorious as that of the man who had never despaired of his
country, and in the hour of victory the legend of his inspiration was
not forgotten. From his death at Valencia in 1099, his memory became a
national possession, embellished by popular poetic fancy.

In the _Poema_ the treatment is obviously modelled upon the _Chanson de
Roland_. But there is a fixed intent to place the Spaniard first. The
Cid is pictured as more human than Roland: he releases his prisoners
without ransom; he gives them money so that they may reach their homes.

Charlemagne, in the _Chanson_, destroys the idols in the mosques,
baptizes a hundred thousand Saracens by force, hangs or flays alive
the recalcitrant; the Cid shows such humanity to a conquered province
that on his departure the Moors burst forth weeping, and pray for his
prosperous voyage. The machinery in both cases is very similar. As the
archangel Gabriel appears to Charlemagne, he appears likewise to the
Cid Campeador. Bishop Turpin opens the battle in _Roland_, and Bishop
Jerome heads the charge for Spain. Roland and Ruy Diaz are absolved
and exhorted to the same effect, and the resemblance of the epithet
_curunez_ applied to the French bishop is too close to the _coronado_
of the Spaniard to be accidental. But allowing for the fact that the
Spanish _juglar_ borrows his framework, his performance is great by
virtue of its simplicity, its strength, its spirit and fire. Whether
he deals with the hungry loyalty of the Cid in exile, or his reception
into favour by an ingrate king; whether he celebrates the overthrow of
the Count of Barcelona or the surrender of Valencia; whether he sings
the nuptials of Elvira and Sol with the Infantes de Carrión, or the
avenging Cid who seeks reparation from his craven son-in-law, the touch
is always happy and is commonly final.

There is an unity of conception and of language which forbids our
accepting the _Poema_ as the work of several hands; and the division
of the poem into separate _cantares_ is managed with a discretion
which argues a single artistic intelligence. The first part closes
with the marriage of the hero's daughters; the second with the shame
of the Infantes de Carrión, and the proud announcement that the kings
of Spain are sprung from the Cid's loins. In both the singer rises to
the level of his subject, but his chiefest gust is in the recital of
some brilliant deed of arms. Judge him when, in a famous passage well
rendered by Ormsby, he sings the charge of the Cid at Alcocer:—

"_With bucklers braced before their breasts, with lances pointing low,
With stooping crests and heads bent down above the saddle-bow,
All firm of hand and high of heart they roll upon the foe.

And he that in a good hour was born, his clarion voice rings out,
And clear above the clang of arms is heard his battle-shout,
'Among them, gentlemen! Strike home for the love of charity!

The Champion of Bivar is here—Ruy Diaz—I am he!'
Then bearing where Bermuez still maintains unequal fight,
Three hundred lances down they come, their pennons flickering white;
Down go three hundred Moors to earth, a man to every blow;
And, when they wheel, three hundred more, as charging back they go.

It was a sight to see the lances rise and fall that day;
The shivered shields and riven mail, to see how thick they lay;
The pennons that went in snow-white come out a gory red;
The horses running riderless, the riders lying dead;
While Moors call on Muhammad, and 'St. James!' the Christians cry._"

Indubitably this (and it were easy to match it elsewhere in the
_Poema_) is the work of an original genius who redeems his superficial
borrowings of incident from _Roland_ by a treatment all his own. That
he knew the French models is evident from his skilful conveyance of the
bear episode in _Ider_ to his own pages, where the Cid encounters the
beast as a lion. But the language shows no hint of French influence,
and both thought and expression are profoundly national. The poet's
name is irrecoverable, but the internal evidence points strongly to
the conclusion that he came from the neighbourhood of Medina Celi.

The surmise that he was an Asturian rests solely upon the absence of
the diphthong _ue_ from his lines, an inference on the face of it
unwarrantable. Against this is the topographical minuteness with which
the poet reports the sallies of the Cid in the districts of Castejón
and Alcocer; his marked ignorance of the country round Zaragoza and
Valencia, his detailed description of the central episode—the outrage
upon the Cid's daughters in the wood of Corpes, near Berlanga; and
the important fact that the four chief itineraries in the _Poema_
are charged with minutiæ from Molina to San Esteban de Gormaz, while
they grow vague and more confused as they extend towards Burgos and
Valencia. The most probable conjecture, then, is that the unknown maker
of this primitive masterpiece came from the Valle de Arbujuelo; and
it is worth adding that this opinion is supported by the authority
of Sr. Menéndez Pidal. Perhaps the greatest testimony to the early
poet's worth is to be found in this: that his conception of his hero
has outlived the true historic Cid, and has forced the child of his
imagination upon the acceptance of mankind.

Even more fantastic is the personality of Ruy Diaz as rendered by
the anonymous compiler of the _Crónica Rimada_ (Rhymed Chronicle of
Events in Spain from the Death of King Pelayo to Ferdinand the Great,
and more especially of the Adventures of the Cid). The composition
which bears this clumsy and inappropriate title is better named the
_Cantar de Rodrigo_, and consists of 1125 lines, preceded by a scrap
of rugged prose. Not till after digressions into other episodes,
and irrelevant stories of Miro and Bernardo, Bishops of Palencia,
probably fellow-townsmen of the compiler, does the Cid appear. He is
no longer, as in the _Poema_, a popular hero, idealised from historic
report; he is a purely imaginary figure, incrusted with a mass of
fables accumulated in course of time. At the age of twelve he slays
Gómez Górmaz (an almost impossible style, compounded of a patronymic
and the name of a castle belonging to the Cid), is claimed by the
dead man's daughter, weds her, vanquishes the Moors, and leads his
King's—Fernando's—troops to the gates of Paris, defeating the Count
of Savoy upon the road. One legend is heaped upon another, and the
poem, the end of which is lost, breaks off with the Pope's request
for a year's truce, which Fernando, acting as ever upon the Cid's
advice, magnanimously extends for twelve years. It is hard to say
whether the _Cantar de Rodrigo_ as we have it is the production of
a single composer, or whether it is a patchwork by different hands,
arranged from earlier poems, and eked out by prose stories and by oral
traditions. The versification is that of the simple sixteen-syllabled
line, each hemistich of which forms a typical _romance_ line. This
in itself is a sign of its later date, and to this must be added
the traces of deliberate imitation of the _Poema_, and the writer's
familiarity with such modern devices as heraldic emblems. Further,
the use of a Provençal form like _gensor_, the unmistakable tokens of
French influence, the anticipation of the metre of the clerkly poems,
the writer's frank admission of earlier songs on the same subject,
the metamorphosis of the Cid into a feudal baron, and, above all, the
decadent spirit of the entire work: these are tokens which imply a
relative modernity. Much of the obscurity of language, which has been
mistaken for archaism, is simply due to the defects of the manuscript;
and the evidence goes to show that the _Rodrigo_, put together in the
last decade of the twelfth century or the first of the thirteenth, was
retouched in the fourteenth by Spanish _juglares_ humiliated by the
recent French invasions. Even so, much of the primitive _pastiche_
remains, and the _Rodrigo_, which is mentioned in the _General
Chronicle_, interests us as being the fountain-head of those _romances_
on the Cid whose collection we owe to that enthusiastic and most
learned investigator, Madame Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. Far
inferior in merit and interest to the _Poema_, the _Rodrigo_ ranks with
it as representative of the submerged mass of _cantares de gesta_, and
is rightly valued as the venerable relic of a lost school.

To these succeed three anonymous poems, the _Libro de Apolonio_ (Book
of Apollonius), the _Vida de Santa María Egipciaqua_ (Life of St. Mary
the Egyptian), and the _Libre dels Tres Reyes dorient_ (Book of the
Three Eastern Kings), all discovered in one manuscript in the Escurial
Library by Pedro José Pidal, and first published by him in 1844. The
story of Apollonius, supposed to be a translation of a Greek _romance_,
filters into European literature by way of the _Gesta Romanorum_,
is found even in Icelandic and Danish versions, and is familiar to
English readers of _Pericles_. The nameless Spanish arranger of the
thirteenth century (probably a native of Aragón) gives the story of
Apollonius' adventures with force and clearness, anticipating in the
character of Tarsiana the type of Preciosa, the heroine of Cervantes'
_Gitanilla_ and of Weber's opera. Unfortunately the closing tags of
moralisings on the vanity of life destroy the effect which the writer
has produced by his free translation. His text is suffused with
Provençalisms, and his mono-rhymed quatrains of fourteen syllables
are evidence of French or Provençal origin. This metrical novelty,
extending over more than six hundred stanzas, is properly regarded by
the author as his chief distinction, and he implores God and the Virgin
to guide him in the exercise of the new mastery (_nueva maestría_). It
is fair to add that his experiment has the interest of novelty, that
it succeeded beyond measure in its time, and that its monotonous vogue
endured for some two hundred years.

To the same period belongs the _Vida de Santa María Egipciaqua_, the
earliest Castilian example of verses of nine syllables. In substance it
is a version of the _Vie de Saint Marie l'Egyptienne_, ascribed without
much reason to the veritable Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste (?

1175-1253), among whose _Carmina Anglo-Normannica_ the French original
is interpolated. The Spanish version follows the French lead with
almost pedantic exactitude; but the metre, new and well suited to the
common ear, is handled with an easy grace remarkable in a first effort.

As happens with other works of this time, the title of the short _Libre
dels Tres Reyes dorient_ is misleading. The visit of the Magi is
briefly dismissed in the first fifty lines, the poem turning chiefly
upon the Flight into Egypt, the miracle wrought upon the leprous child
of the robber, and the identification of the latter with the repentant
thief of the New Testament. Like its predecessor, this legend is given
in nine-syllabled verse, and is undoubtedly borrowed from a French or
Provençal source not yet discovered.

In the _Disputa del Alma y el Cuerpo_ (Argument betwixt Body and Soul),
a subject which passes into all mediæval literatures from a copy of
Latin verses styled _Rixa Animi et Corporis_, there is a recurrence,
though with innumerable variants of measure, to the Alexandrine type.

Thus it is sought to reproduce the music of the model, an Anglo-Norman
poem, written in rhymed couplets of six syllables, and wrongly
attributed to Walter Map. With it should go the _Debate entre el Agua
y el Vino_ (Debate between Water and Wine), and the first Castilian
lyric, _Razón feita d'Amor_ (the Lay of Love). Composed in verses of
nine syllables, the poem deals with the meeting of two lovers, their
colloquy, interchanges, and separation. Both pieces, discovered within
the last seventeen years by M. Morel-Fatio, are the productions of a
single mind. It is tempting to identify the writer with the Lope de
Moros mentioned in the final line, "_Lupus me feçit de Moros_"; still
the likelihood is that, here as elsewhere, the copyist has but signed
his transcription. Whoever the author may have been—and the internal
evidence tends to show that he was a clerk familiar with French,
Provençal, Italian, or Portuguese exemplars—he shines by virtue
of qualities which are akin to genius. His delicacy and variety of
sentiment, his finish of workmanship, his deliberate lyrical effects,
announce the arrival of the equipped artist, the craftsman no longer
content with rhymed narration, the singer with a personal, distinctive
note. Here was a poet who recognised that in literature—the least
moral of the arts—the end justifies the means; hence he transformed
the material which he borrowed, made it his own possession, and
conveyed into Castile a new method adapted to her needs. But time and
language were not yet ripe, and the Spanish lyric flourished solely
in Galicia: it was not to be transplanted at a first attempt. Yet the
attempt was worth the trial; for it closes the anonymous period with
a triumph to which, if we except the _Poema del Cid_, it can show no
fellow.