The Empire Strikes Back: Hagiographic Imagery in the Poema de Fernán González
2008; Volume: 36; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/cor.2008.0004
ISSN1947-4261
AutoresTaran Sarah Christine Johnston,
Tópico(s)Classical Studies and Legal History
ResumoTHE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: HAGIOGRAPHIC IMAGERY IN THE POEMA DE FERNÁN GONZÁLEZ Taran Johnston University of Texas at Austin The long introduction to the thirteenth-century Poema de Fernán González (PFG) recounts the history of the Visigoths from their earliest pagan beginnings through their victories over Rome, their rule on the Iberian Peninsula, and their subsequent downfall at the hands ofMuslim invaders. This historical overture casts the events from the Visigoths' pre-Roman origins to Castillas independence as a single, divinely guided narrative. In effect, the rise and independence ofCastilla is represented as the restoration ofa "lost" Visigothic kingdom. In the opening invocation, the poem explains, Commo cobro s' la tierra toda de mar a mar Contar vos he primero de commo la perdieron Nuestros antecessores, en qual coita visquieron; Commo omnes deserdados fuidos andodieron; Essa rabia llevaron que ende non morieran! (stanzas 2-3) The Visigoths lose their land (deserdados) and become exiles (fuidos andodieron) but survive nevertheless. The Count Fernán Gonzalez's triumph concludes the Visigoths' cycle of loss and search for recovery: La corónica 36.2 (Spring 2008): 393-413 394Taran JohnstonLa corónica 36.2, 2008 En tanto, desde tienpo ir vos he yo contando commo fueron la tierra perdiendo e cobrando, [line missing] fasta que todas fueron al conde don Fernando, (stanza 5) Here the narrator summarizes the work by describing how the Visigoths' exile (fueron la tierra) and loss of Iberian lands (perdiendo) are eventually reversed (cobrando) by Count Fernán González. "Todas" here refers to the lands (tierras) that the Count adds to his Castilian holdings (ed. Juan Victorio 42). Although the introductory material of the PFG claims that Castilla, alone ofall the Iberian Christian kingdoms, constitutes the reestablishment of Visigothic reign, the rest of the work appears not to support this claim. This apparent discontinuity is especially striking since the historical Visigothic material consists of 157 stanzas, or one fifth of the extant verses. Granted, the hero can assert preeminence among his rivals for many reasons other than a connection to the former Visigothic rulers: he alone refuses to make treaties with the Muslims (stanzas 396-97); he surpasses the other kings in military victories (stanzas 311-30, 371-75, 691-700); he outflanks the king of León in the matter of the horse and the hawk (pp. 184-85)1 and the king of Navarra in dynastic politics (stanzas 688-90). Any of these achievements might present more than sufficient basis for Castillas independence, but none fulfills the promise of the introductory material, which describes the hero as the redeemer of the Visigothic disgrace. Of course we do not know how the mester de clerecía version of the work ends and we must rely on Alfonso X's prose version, which suppresses and distorts aspects of the PFG's main character (Matthew Bailey 31-34, Lawrence Rich 103-05). It is certainly possible that the end of the poet's composition returned explicitly to the theme of Castillas independence constituting the successful conclusion of the Visigothic historical trajectory, but we will never know unless a complete copy of the verse version is found. In the meantime, I propose that this theme is discernable in the extant work. By using hagiographie imagery, the 1 Parenthetical citations that specify page numbers refer to the prose sections of the PFG, as opposed to the citations that follow the more conventional format, which refer to the verse sections. The Empire Strikes Back395 action scenes in the PFG substantiate the introductory assertion that victorious Castilla represents the restoration of the Visigoths' rule; furthermore, this integration of the Visigothic and Castilian histories endorses the case for Castilian imperialism. J. P. Keller and others have explored the religious resonance of some of the hero's exploits such as the hunting episode, which echoes a similar incident in the Life of St. Eustace (253-54). Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce expands on this aspect of the PFG when he observes that the composition was "concebido, en muchos sentidos, con criterio hagiográfico" (70). Likewise, Rich illustrates the hero's likeness to both Moses and David (104), while Beverly West reveals the...
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