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Many of the earliest poems extant in Castilian are anonymous, impersonal compositions, more or less imitative. The Misterio de los Reyes Magos, for instance, is suggested by a Latin Office used at Orleans; the Libro de Apolonio, the Vida de Santa María Egipciacqua, the Libro dels tres Reyes dorient, and the Libro de Alixandre are from French sources. French influence is likewise visible in the work of Gonzalo de Berceo, the earliest Spanish poet whose name we know for certain; writing in the first half of the thirteenth century, Berceo draws largely on the Miracles de Nostre Dame, a collection of edifying legends versified by Gautier de Coinci, Prior of the monastery at Vic-sur-Aisne. As Gautier died in 1236, the speed with which his version of these pious stories passed from France to Spain goes to show that literary communication had already been established between the two countries. At one time or another during the Middle Ages all Western Europe followed the French lead in literature. From about 1130, when Konrad wrote his Rolandslied, French influence prevailed in Germany for a century, affecting poets so considerable as Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg. French influence was dominant in Italy from before the reign of Frederick II., the patron of the Provençal poets and the chief of the Sicilian school of poetry, till the coming of Dante; French 26versions of tales of Troy, Alexander, Cæsar and Charlemagne were translated; so also were French versions of the Arthurian legend, as we gather from the celebrated passage in the fifth canto of the Inferno:—

La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante:

Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse:

Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.

You all know that French influence was most noticeable in England from Layamon’s time to Chaucer’s, and that Chaucer himself, besides translating part of the Roman de la Rose, borrowed hints from Guillaume de Machault and Oton de Granson—two minor poets whose works, by the way, were treasured by the Marqués de Santillana, of whom I shall have something to say in the next lecture. Wherever we turn at this period, sooner or later we shall find that French literature has left its mark. Scandinavian scholars inform us that the Strengleikar includes translations of Marie de France’s lais; and Floire et Blanchefleur was also done into Icelandic at the beginning of the fourteenth century when the Archpriest of Hita—who refers appreciatively to this French romance—was still young. Jean Bodel’s well-worn couplet is a trite statement of fact:—

Ne sont que trois matières à nul homme attendant,

De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome le grant.

This rapid summary is enough to prove that Spain, in copying French originals, was doing no more than other countries. The work of her early singers has the interest which attaches to every new literary experiment, but the great mass of it necessarily lacks originality and force. It was not until the fourteenth century was fairly advanced that Spain produced two authors of unmistakable individual genius. One of these was the Infante Don Juan Manuel, the earliest prose-writer of real distinction in Castilian, and the other was Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, near Guadalajara. We know scarcely anything certain about Ruiz except his name and status which he gives incidentally when invoking the divine assistance in writing his work:—

E por que de todo bien es comienço e rays

la virgen santa marja por ende yo Joan Rroys

açipreste de fita della primero fis

cantar de los sus goços siete que ansi dis.

In one of the manuscripts2 which contain his poems, his messenger Trotaconventos seems to state his birthplace:—

Fija, mucho vos saluda uno que es de Alcalá.

It has been inferred from this that the Archpriest was a native of Alcalá de Henares, and therefore a fellow-townsman of Cervantes. It is possible that he may have been, but the Gayoso manuscript gives a variant on the reading in the Salamanca manuscript:—

Fija, mucho vos saluda uno que mora en Alcalá.

The truth is that we do not know where and when Juan Ruiz was born, nor where and when he died. It is thought that he was born towards the end of the thirteenth century, and Sr. Puyol y Alonso in his interesting monograph suggests 1283 as a likely date: but these are conjectures. Many persons, however, find it difficult to resign themselves to humble agnosticism, and, by drawing on imagination for fact, endeavour to construct what we may call hypothetical biographies. Ruiz is an unpromising subject, yet he has not escaped altogether. A writer of comparatively modern date—Francisco de Torres, author of an unpublished Historia de Guadalajara—alleges that the Archpriest was living at Guadalajara in 1410. It is difficult to reconcile this statement with the assertion made by Alfonso Paratinén who seems to have been the copyist of the Salamanca manuscript. At the end of his copy Paratinén writes: ‘This is the Archpriest of Hita’s book which he composed, being imprisoned by order of the Cardinal Don Gil, Archbishop of Toledo.’ This refers to Don Gil de Albornoz, an able, pushing prelate who was Archbishop of Toledo from 1337 till his death in 1367. It is known that Don Gil de Albornoz was exiled from Spain by Peter the Cruel in 1350, and that on January 7, 1351, one Pedro Fernández had succeeded Juan Ruiz as Archpriest of Hita. Now, according to stanza 1634 in the Salamanca manuscript, Ruiz finished his work in 1381 of the Spanish Era:—

Era de mjll e tresjentos e ochenta e vn años

fue conpuesto el rromançe, por muchos males e daños

que fasen muchos e muchas aotras con sus engaños

e por mostrar alos synplex fablas e versos estraños.

The year 1381 of the Spanish Era corresponds to 1343 in our reckoning, and we may accept the statement in the text that Juan Ruiz wrote his poem at this date. We may further take it that the poem was written in jail. We might refuse to believe this on the sole authority of Alfonso Paratinén whose copy was not made till the end of the fourteenth (or the beginning of the fifteenth) century; but the copyist is corroborated by the author who, in each of 29 his first three stanzas, begs God to free him from the prison in which he lies:—

libra Amj dios desta presion do yago.

It is reasonable to assume that Juan Ruiz was well past middle age when he wrote his book; hence it is almost incredible that, as Torres states, he survived his imprisonment by nearly sixty years. There is nothing, except the absence of proof, against the current theory that the Archpriest died in prison—possibly at Toledo—shortly before January 7, 1351, when Pedro Fernández took his place at Hita; but there is nothing, except the same absence of proof, against a counter-theory that he was released before this date, that he followed Don Gil Albornoz into exile, and that he died at Avignon. All such theories are, I repeat, in the nature of hypothetical biography. We have no data, and are left to ramble in the field of conjecture.

Some idea of the Archpriest’s personality may, however, be gathered from his work. We are not told how long he was in jail, nor what his offence was. He himself declares in his Cántica, de loores de Santa María that his punishment was unjust:—

Santa virgen escogida ...

del mundo salud e vida ...

de aqueste dolor que siento

en presion syn meresçer,

tu me deña estorcer

con el tu deffendjmjento.

His testimony in his own favour is not conclusive. Possibly, as Sr. Puyol y Alonso suggests, Juan Ruiz may have offended some of the upper clergy by ridiculing them in much the same way as he satirises the Dean and Chapter in his Cántica de los clérigos de Talavera where influential dignitaries are most disrespectfully mentioned by name, or perhaps made recognisable under transparent pseudonyms. The Archpriest is more likely to have been imprisoned for some such indiscretion than for loose living. Clerical morality was at a low point in Spain during the fourteenth century, and, though Juan Ruiz was a disreputable cleric, he was no worse than many of his brethren. But he was certainly no better than most of them. His first editor, Tomás Antonio Sánchez, acting against the remonstrances of Jove-Llanos and the Spanish Academy of History, contrived to lend Juan Ruiz a false air of respectability by omitting from the text some objectionable passages and by bowdlerising others. Sánchez did not foresee that his good intentions would be frustrated by José Amador de los Ríos, who thoughtfully collected the scandalous stanzas which had been omitted, and printed them by themselves in the Ilustraciones to the fourth volume of his Historia de la literatura española. If Sánchez had made Juan Ruiz seem better than he was, Ríos made him seem worse. Yet Ríos had succeeded somehow in persuading himself that Juan Ruiz was an excellent man who voluntarily became ‘a holocaust of the moral idea which he championed.’ Few who read the Archpriest’s poem are likely to share this view. It would be an exaggeration to say that he was an unbeliever, for, though he indulges in irreverent parodies of the liturgy, his verses to the Blessed Virgin are unmistakably sincere; he was a criminous clerk like many of his contemporaries who had taken orders as the easiest means of gaining a livelihood; but, unlike these jovial goliards, the sensual Archpriest had the temperament of a poet as well as the tastes of a satyr. It is as a poet that he interests us, as the author of a work the merits of which can scarcely be overestimated as regards its ironical, picaresque presentation of scenes of clerical and lay life. The Archpriest was no literary fop, but he was dimly aware that he had left behind him a work that would keep his memory alive:—

ffis vos pequeno libro de testo, mas la glosa,

non creo que es chica antes es byen grand prosa,

que sobre cada fabla se entyende otra cosa,

syn la que se alega en la rason fermosa.

De la santidat mucha es byen grand lycionario,

mas de juego e de burla chico breujario,

per ende fago punto e çierro mj almario,

sea vos chica fabla solas e letuario.

The very name of his book, which has but recently become available in a satisfactory form, has long been doubtful. About a century after it was written, Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, the Archpriest of Talavera, called it a Tratado; a few years later than the Archpriest of Talavera, Santillana referred to it curtly as the Libro del Arcipreste de Hita; Sánchez entitled it Poesías when he issued it in 1790, and Florencio Janer republished it in 1864 as the Libro de Cantares. But, as Wolf pointed out in 1831,3 Ruiz himself speaks of it as the Libro de buen amor. However, we do not act with any indecent haste in these matters, and it was not till just seventy years later that Wolf’s hint was taken by M. Ducamin. We can at last read the Libro de buen amor more or less as Ruiz wrote it; or, rather, we can read the greater part of it, for fragments are missing, some passages having been removed from the manuscripts, perhaps by over-modest readers. Yet much remains to do. A diplomatic edition is valuable, but it is only an instalment of what we need. If any one amongst you is in search of a tough piece of work, he can do no better for himself and us than by preparing a critical edition of the Libro de buen amor with a commentary and—above all—a vocabulary.

The Archpriest of Hita was an original genius, but his originality consists in his personal attitude towards life and in his handling of old material. No literary genius, however great, can break completely with the past, and the Archpriest underwent the influence of his predecessors at home. It is the fashion nowadays to say that he was not learned, and no doubt he poses at times as a simpering provincial ignoramus, especially as regards ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline:—

Escolar so mucho rrudo, njn maestro njn doctor,

aprendi e se poco para ser demostrador.

But the Archpriest does not wish to be taken at his word, and, to prevent any possible misunderstanding, in almost the next breath he slyly advises his befooled reader to consult the Espéculo as well as

los libros de ostiense, que son grand parlatorio,

el jnocençio quarto, vn sotil consistorio,

el rrosario de guido, nouela e diratorio.

He dabbles in astrology, notes (with something like a wink) that a man’s fate is ruled by the planet under which he is born, and cites Ptolemy and Plato to support a theory which is so comfortable an excuse for his own pleasant vices. We shall see that he knew much of what was best worth knowing in French literature, and that he knew something of colloquial Arabic appears from the Moorish girl’s replies to Trotaconventos. Probably enough his allusions to Plato and Aristotle imply nothing more solid in the way of learning than Chaucer’s allusion to Pythagoras in The Book of the Duchesse. Still he seems to have known Latin, French, Arabic, and perhaps Italian, besides his native 33 language, and we cannot lay stress on his ignorance without appearing to reflect disagreeably on the clergy of to-day. The Archpriest was not, of course, a mediæval scholiast, much less an exact scholar in the modern sense; but, for a man whose lot was cast in an insignificant village, his reading and general culture were far above the average. A brief examination of the Libro de buen amor will make this clear: it will also show that the Archpriest had qualities more enviable than all the learning in the world.

He opens with forty lines invoking the blessing of God upon his work, and then he descends suddenly into prose, quoting copiously from Scripture, insisting on the purity of his motives, and asserting that his object is to warn men and women against foolish or unhallowed love. Having lulled the suspicions of uneasy readers with this unctuous preamble, he parenthetically observes: ‘Still, as it is human nature to sin, in case any should choose to indulge in foolish love (which I do not advise), various methods of the same will be found set out here.’ After thus disclosing his real intention, he announces his desire to show by example how every detail of poetry should be executed artistically—segund que esta çiencia requiere—and returns to verse. He again commends his work to God, celebrates the joys of Our Lady, and then proceeds to write a sort of picaresque novel in the metre known as the mester de clerecía—a quatrain of monorhymed alexandrines.

The Archpriest begins by quoting Dionysius Cato4 to the effect that, though man may have his trials, he should cultivate a spirit of gaiety. And, as no man in his wits can laugh without cause, Juan Ruiz undertakes to provide entertainment, but hopes that he may not be misunderstood as was the Greek when he argued with the Roman. This allusion gives the writer his opportunity, and he relates a story which recalls the episode of Panurge’s argument with Thaumaste, ‘ung grand clerc d’Angleterre.’ Briefly, the tale is this. When the Romans besought the Greeks to grant them laws, they were required to prove themselves worthy of the privilege, and, as the difference of language made verbal discussion impossible, it was agreed that the debate should be carried on by signs (Thaumaste, you may remember, preferred signs because ‘les matières sont tant ardues, que les parolles humaines ne seroyent suffisantes à les expliquer à mon plaisir’). The Greek champion was a master of all learning, while the Romans were represented by an illiterate ragamuffin dressed in a doctor’s gown. The sage held up one finger, the lout held up his thumb and two fingers; the sage stretched out his open hand, the lout shook his fist violently. This closed the argument, for the wise Greek hastily admitted that the Roman claim was justified. On being asked to interpret the gestures which had perplexed the multitude, the Greek replied: ‘I said that there was one God, the Roman answered that there were three Persons in one God, and made the corresponding sign; I said that everything was governed by God’s will, the Roman answered that the whole world was in God’s power, and he spoke truly; seeing that they understood and believed in the Trinity, I agreed that they were worthy to receive laws.’ The Roman’s interpretation differed materially: ‘He held up one finger, meaning that he would poke my eye out; as this infuriated me, I answered by threatening to gouge both his eyes out with my two fingers, and smash his teeth with my thumb; he held out his open palm, meaning that he would deal me such a cuff as would make my ears tingle; I answered back that I would give him such a punch as he would never forget as long as he lived.’ The humour is distinctly primitive, but Juan Ruiz bubbles over with contagious merriment as he rhymes the tale, and goes on to warn the reader against judging anything—more especially the Libro de buen amor—by appearances:—

la bulrra que oyeres non la tengas en vil,

la manera del libro entiendela sotil;

que saber bien e mal, desjr encobierto e donegujl,

tu non fallaras vno de trobadores mjll.

Then, in his digressive way, the Archpriest avers that man, like the beasts that perish, needs food and a companion of the opposite sex, adding mischievously that this opinion, which would be highly censurable if he uttered it, becomes respectable when held by Aristotle.

Como dise Aristotiles, cosa es verdadera,

el mundo por dos cosas trabaja: por la primera

por aver mantenençia; la otra cosa era

por aver juntamjento con fenbra plasentera.

Sylo dixiese de mjo, seria de culpar;

diselo grand filosofo, non so yo de rebtar;

delo que dise el sabio non deuemos dubdar,

que por obra se prueva el sabio e su fablar.

Next the Archpriest, confessing himself to be a man of sin like the rest of us, relates how he was once in love with a Lady of Quality (too wary to be trapped by gifts) who rebuffed his messenger by saying that men were deceivers ever, and by quoting from ‘Ysopete’ an adaptation of the fable concerning the mountain in labour. The form ‘Ysopete’ suggests that the Archpriest used some French version of Æsop or Phaedrus, though not that of Marie de France, in whose translation (as edited by Warnke) this particular fable does not appear.

Undaunted by this check, the Archpriest does not lose his equanimity, reflects how greatly Solomon was in the right in saying that all is vanity, and determines to speak no ill of the coy dame, since women are, after all, the most delightful of creatures:—

mucho seria villano e torpe pajes

sy dela muger noble dixiese cosa rrefes,

ca en muger loçana, fermosa e cortes,

todo bien del mundo e todo plaser es.

A less squeamish beauty—otra non santa—attracted the fickle Archpriest, who wrote for her a troba cazurra, and employed Ferrand García as go-between. García courted the facile fair on his own account, and left Juan Ruiz to swear (as he does roundly) at a second fiasco. However, the Archpriest philosophically remarks that man cannot escape his fate, and illustrates this by telling how a Moorish king named Alcarás called in five astrologists to cast his son’s horoscope: all five predicted different catastrophes, and all five proved to be right. Comically enough, Juan Ruiz remembers at this point that he is a priest, disclaims all sympathy with fatalistic doctrine, and smugly adds that he believes in predestination only so far as it is compatible with the Catholic faith. But he forgets his orthodoxy as conveniently as he remembered it, rejoices that he was born under the sign of Venus (a beautifying planet which not only keeps young men young, but takes years off the old), and, since even the hardest pear ripens at last, he hopes for better luck. Yet he is disappointed in his attempt to beguile another Lady of Quality who proves to be (so to say) a bonâ fide holder for value, and the recital of this third misadventure ends with the fable of the thief and the dog.

At this point his neighbour Don Amor or Love comes to visit the chagrined Archpriest, and is angrily reproached for promising much and doing little beyond enfeebling man’s mental and physical powers—a point exemplified by a Spanish variant of that most indecorous fableau, the Valet aux douze femmes. After listening to fable upon fable, introduced to prove that he is in alliance with the Seven Deadly Sins, Love gently explains to the Archpriest that he is wrong to flare into a heat, that he has attempted to fly too high, that fine ladies are not for him, that he should study the Art of Love as expounded by Pamphilus and Ovid, that beauty is more than rank, and that he should enlist the services of an ingratiating old woman. Love quotes the tale of the two idlers who wished to marry, supplements this with the obscene story of Don Pitas Payas, and recommends the Archpriest to put money in his purse when he goes a-wooing. Part of this passage may be quoted in Gibson’s rendering:—

O money meikle doth, and in luve hath meikle fame,

It maketh the rogue a worthy wight, a carle of honest name,

It giveth a glib tongue to the dumb, snell feet unto the lame,

And he who lacketh both his hands will clutch it all the same.

A man may be a gawkie loon, and eke a hirnless brute,

But money makes him gentleman, and learnit clerk to boot;

For as his money bags do swell, so waxeth his repute,

But he whose purse has naught intill’t, must wear a beggar’s suit.

With money in thy fist thou need’st never lack a friend,0

The Pope will give his benison, and a happy life thou’lt spend,

Thou may’st buy a seat in paradise, and life withouten end,

Where money trickleth plenteouslie there blessings do descend.

I saw within the Court of Rome, of sanctitie the post,

That money was in great regard, and heaps of friends could boast,

That a’ were warstlin’ to be first to honour it the most,

And curchit laigh, and kneelit down, as if before the Host.

It maketh Priors, Bishops, and Abbots to arise,

Archbishops, Doctors, Patriarchs, and Potentates likewise,

It giveth Clerics without lair the dignities they prize,

It turneth falsitie to truth, and changeth truth to lies....

38

O Money is a Provost and Judge of sterling weight,

A Councillor the shrewdest, and a subtle Advocate;

A Constable and Bailiff of importance very great,

Of all officers that be, ’tis the mightiest in the state.

In brief I say to thee, at Money do not frown,

It is the world’s strong lever to turn it upside down,

It maketh the clown a master, the master a glarish clown,

Of all things in the present age it hath the most renown.

Finally Love sets to moralising, and departs after warning his client against over-indulgence in either white wine or red, holding up as an awful example the hermit who, after years of ascetic practices, got drunk for the first time in his life, and committed atrocious crimes which brought him to the gallows. The Archpriest ponders over Love’s seductive precepts, finds that his conduct hitherto has been in accordance with them, determines to persevere in the same crooked but pleasant path, and looks forward to the future with glad confidence. He straightway consults Love’s wife—Venus—concerning a new passion which (as he says) he has conceived for Doña Endrina, a handsome young widow of Calatayud. Whatever may be the case with the Archpriest’s other love affairs, this episode in the Libro de buen amor is imaginative, being an extremely brilliant hispaniolisation of a dreary Latin play entitled De Amore, ascribed to a misty personage known as Pamphilus Maurilianus—apparently a monk who lived during the twelfth century. The old crone of the Latin play reappears in the Libro de buen amor as Urraca (better recognised by her nickname of Trotaconventos), Galatea becomes Doña Endrina, and Pamphilus becomes Don Melón de la Uerta. There are passages in which Don Melón de la Uerta seems, at first sight, to be a pseudonym of the Archpriest’s; but the source of the story is beyond all doubt, for Juan Ruiz supplies a virtuous ending, and carefully explains that for the licentious character of the narrative Pamphilus and Ovid are responsible:—

doña endrina e don melon en vno casados son,

alegran se las conpañas en las bodas con rrason;

sy vjllanja ha dicho aya de vos perdon,

quelo felo de estoria dis panfilo e nason.

In order that there may be no misconception on this point, the Archpriest returns to it later, averring that no such experience ever befell him personally, and that he gives the story to set women on their guard against lying procuresses and bland lechers:—

Entyende byen mj estoria dela fija del endrino,

dixela per te dar ensienpro, non por que amj vjno;

guardate de falsa vieja, de rriso de mal vesjno,

sola con ome non te fyes, njn te llegues al espjno.

He resumes with an account of an enterprise which narrowly escaped miscarriage owing to a quarrel with Trotaconventos, to whom he had applied an uncomplimentary epithet in jest; but, seeing his blunder, he pacified his tetchy ally, and carried out his plan. Cast down by the sudden death of his mistress, he consoled himself by writing cantares cazurros which delighted all the ladies who read them (a privilege denied to us, for these compositions are not included in the existing manuscripts of the Libro de buen amor). Having recovered from his dejection, in the month of March the Archpriest went holiday-making in the mountains, where he met with a new type of women whose coming-on dispositions and robust charms he celebrates satirically. These cantigas de serrana,—slashing parodies on the Galician cantos de ledino,—perhaps the boldest and most interesting of his metrical experiments, are followed by copies of devout verses on Santa María del Vado and on the Passion of Christ.

The next transition is equally abrupt. While dining at Burgos with Don Jueves Lardero (the last Thursday before Lent), the Archpriest receives a letter from Doña Quaresma (Lent) exhorting her officials—more especially archpriests and clerics—to arm for the combat against Don Carnal who symbolises the meat-eating tendencies prevalent during the rest of the year. Then follows an allegorical description of the encounter between Doña Quaresma and Don Carnal who, after a series of disasters, recovers his supremacy, and returns in triumph accompanied by Don Amor (Love). On Easter Sunday Don Amor’s popularity is at its height, and secular priests, laymen, monks, nuns, ladies and gentlemen, sally forth in procession to meet him:—