Romances del Cid
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Historical Background Edición digital de Alexander J. McNair This edition of Cidian Ballads has been designed for intermediate to advanced college-level students of Spanish literature. These ballads (they are called romances in Spanish) are meant to complement/enrich a reading of the more universally recognized Poema de Mío Cid, the first epic of the Spanish language. The romances and the Poema harken back to the Spain of Reconquest and the dramatic historical changes of the decades leading up to the year 1100. In AD 1000, almost three centuries after the Moorish invasion of the Iberian peninsula, Islamic civilization had reached its peak and Christian Spain was still no more than a handful of small, often bickering kingdoms north of the Duero and Ebro rivers. As late as AD 997 the Andalusian king Almanzor could lead Muslim troops as far north as Santiago de Compostela without threat of serious retribution from Christian forces. By the end of the first century of the second millennium, however, Christian Spain had extended its territory south to Toledo (in the center of the peninsula) and the Christian kings had managed to bring most of the Islamic lords under their sway, exacting annual tributes. At the time of the Cid's birth (sometime shortly after AD 1040), Fernando I had been king of Castile for almost a decade and emperor of the combined kingdoms of León-Galicia-Castile since 1037-1038. Christian Spain now presented a semi-unified, formidable political force on the peninsula, the largest since AD 711. But this unity was tenuous at best. Castile was a sparsely populated borderland between the Duero and Ebro rivers, constantly threatened because of its proximity to the Islamic kingdoms to the south. León and Galicia were older more established kingdoms in the Northwest corner of the Peninsula, both under the control of Bermudo III when Fernando (his brother-in-law) inherited Castile in 1035. Fernando took Galicia and León by force, killing Bermudo in battle, so the three kingdoms were united more by mutual distrust than any higher purpose. When Fernando died in 1065, understanding perhaps the difficulty of keeping some of the regional rivalries in check, he partitioned his empire into three separate kingdoms and bequethed them to his sons. His oldest, Sancho, would retain Castile, Alfonso would take León, and Galicia went to García. A fratricidal struggle would ensue: Sancho defeated García and forced Alfonso into exile, but was killed trying to take the city of Zamora away from his sister Urraca. When Alfonso (Alfonso VI when he assumed the throne) returned from exile in Muslim Toledo, the three kingdoms were again brought under one leader. Yet the tension between the Leonese and Castilian nobility was still great; this tension is something that both the Poema de Mío Cid and the singers of the romances manage to preserve. Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, el Cid: Rodrigo Díaz, who would later be called "the Cid" (from the arabic sayyid or sidi meaning lord or leader), was born c. AD 1042 a few miles north of Burgos in Vivar, as we are reminded time and again in the verses of the Poema de Mío Cid ("Mío Cid el de Bivar" is a common formula, cf. v295; v550). This area was the heart of old Castile, just south of the Ebro and at the time of Rodrigo's birth perhaps only a hard day's ride north of the contested borderlands. Rodrigo's grandfather, Laín Calvo, was a respected Castilian noble and according to some sources was related by marriage to the family of Fernando I. The romances refer often to the honor of the house of Laín Calvo into which the Cid was born. Laín Calvo's son, Rodrigo's father, was Diego Laínez. The similarities in names and lack of a paternal last name may be confusing to modern readers, but one can easily surmise the geneology by remembering that the suffix "-ez" came from the arabic and meant something like "son of"; thus Rodrigo Díaz would be Rodrigo, son of Diego, and Diego Laínez would be Diego, son of Laín. The Cid--like many heroic figures of the Middle Ages such as Beowulf, Roland, Arthur, and Robin Hood--is an amalgam of history and legend, though perhaps more historic and less exagerrated than his counterparts elsewhere in Europe. And more complete in historic documentation, so that we can actually peel off some of the layers of legend that accumulated over the generations through oral transmission and literary embellishment. We know, for example, that the weddings of the Cid's daughters in the Poema de Mío Cid and the family honor plot that follows are fictitious; however, it is difficult to say how much of the romantic and political intrigues of the ballads has any historical basis, or how much is simply the result of the exagerration and embellishment of strolling minstrels--inevitable as legend grew and the historical man faded into the past. Historical documents in Latin, Arabic, and Old Spanish make reference to the Cid: a valued warrior for Fernando I, henchman of Fernando's son Sancho, the sometime favorite/sometime banished scapegoat of Alfonso VI's court, and the conqueror of Valencia. A measure of the Cid's true strength may be taken simply by reviewing Spanish history: shortly after the Cid's death (c. 1099) Valencia fell back under Islamic control and would not be Christian again for more than a century and a half. As we know, the Poema de Mío Cid exists in a sole manuscript of a very early date. Some place the epic's date of composition as far back as AD 1140--only a generation and a half after the Cid's death--while more conservsative estimates look to the years immediately prior to 1207, the date of Per Abbat's explicit. The only extant copy of the manuscript to survive the Middle Ages is in a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century hand, perhaps a scribal transcription of Per Abbat's original. Such early copies of the romances, however, are not to be found. Most of the Cidian romances come from cancioneros (songbooks) or romanceros (ballad collections) of the mid-sixteenth century through the early seventeenth century. Nevertheless, we know that these ballads are much older; some believe them to be the scattered remnants of some other lost epic(s) about the Cid. What is certain is that these romances were passed by word of mouth and memory from generation to generation by singers and townspeople in a society where very few could read or write. Even fewer had access to the extremely expensive parchment books that held Latin and Old Spanish documents and chronicles. The printing press was not introduced into Spain until the late fifteenth century and the parchment for a single large book could require the skins of 150-300 calves; needless to say not much ink was spilled on "frivolous," popular works. By the time these popular romances came to press for the first time they had accumulated literally centuries of legend and bardic improvisation. And yet each ballad is a dramatic reenactment of one or another episode of eleventh-century Spanish history. We have only to compare the ballads with the older chronicle texts to confirm this; some of the names have changed, and the motives/actions seem more developed in the ballads. Indeed, when we read the chronicles we may find ourselves asking how much the chroniclers themselves were influenced by some very early oral, popular versions of the events they sought to record. There was without a doubt a great deal of cross-pollination. But the romances, it should be remembered, are not history per se; rather, they are "dramatic" in two very specific senses of the word. They are dramatic because (1) they are the surviving written evidence of texts that were meant to be performed for an audience; and (2) they each elaborate on an action rather than simply record an event--these romances provide glimpses of character and motive, and a sense of conflict, climax and resolution. The Spanish ballad--and this is true of all types, not just the romances del cid--is truly dramatic in this sense, each poem is a moving drama of its own. It has been said that the anonymous romance is born not of individual poetic genius but out of the Spanish pueblo itself. The ballad may or may not have sprung spontaneously out of the Spanish collective, but it was indeed the Spanish people that insured the texts would survive through generation after generation of anonymous singers and audiences. They have been solidified in print now for 400 years and now they find their way into cyberspace. One of the advantages of reading a text in cyberspace is the ability to bring together aids for reading on a single screen. When I first read Spanish ballads as an undergraduate, I found a table or carrel in the library, spread the text (or texts) in front of me, took out my woefully inadequate Spanish-English dictionary, and went in search of the big reference dictionaries complete with etymologies; all to aid in a basic understanding of the poems. Later, as a graduate student, I went looking for editions of the chronicles in order to compare them with the ballads and to understand the historical context. This digital edition of the Cidian romances is an attempt to recreate/synthesize on one screen all of the materials that I took into that lonely carrel deep in the stacks of the library. Here are some of the features: (1) Alphabetical
listing of first lines linked to the poems. At the top of the edition
you will find a listing of the first line of each poem, which is how many
of them are commonly known; if you are looking for a specific ballad,
simply find the first line and click on the number that follows. Features under construction: Click here to go TO THE TEXTS
All Rights Reserved, 2003, Alexander J. McNair, The University of Wisconsin-Parkside. |