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The Death of the Count: Novelesque Invention in the Crónica de Fernán Gonzalez

1992; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 69; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382922000369321

1469-3550

John S. Geary,

Galician and Iberian cultural studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. On the history of the *Estoria and its relationship to other texts from Cardeña, see W. J. Entwistle, ‘Remarks Concerning the Order of the Spanish Cantares de Gesta’, Romance Philology, I (1947), 113–23, and ‘La Estoria del noble varon el Cid Ruy Díaz el Campeador, Sennor que fue de Valencia’, Hispanic Review, XV (1947), 206-11 ; P. E. Russell, ‘San Pedro de Cardeña and the Heroic History of the Cid’, Medium Aevum, XXVII (1958), 57–79; and especially, C. Colin Smith, ‘The Cid as Charlemagne in the * Leyenda de Cardeña’, Romania, XCVII (1976), 509–31; ‘The Diffusion of the Cid Cult: A Survey and Little-known Document’, Journal of Medieval History; VI (1980), 37–60; ‘Leyendas de Cardeña’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, CLXXIX (1982), 485–523. Also useful is his ‘Historiadores de Cardeña’, in Studia in honorem Prof. M. de Riquer (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1986), II, 433–52.2. All references to the Primera Crónica General are from the two-volume edition by R. Menéndez Pidal (Madrid: Gredos, 1955).3. ‘The Cid as Charlemagne’, 509–31.4. See Smith, ‘Historiadores de Cardeña’, 437.5. See the recent study by Joseph J. Duggan, The ‘Cantar de mio Cid’: Poetic Creation in its Economic and Social Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1989).6. Poema de Fernán González, ed. Zamora Vicente, Clásicos Castellanos, CXXVIII, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1954), 225; Poema de Fernán González, trans. M. A. Pérez Priego, Clásicos Modernizados Alhambra, VII (Madrid: Alhambra, 1986), 16, 135; D. G. Pattison, From Legend to Chronicle: The Treatment of Epic Material in Alphonsine Historiography (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1983), 24; María Eugenia Lacarra, ‘El significado histórico del Poema de Fernán González’, Studi Ispanici, X (1979), 9–41, at 13–14; Alan D. Deyermond, ‘Uses of the Bible in the Poema de Fernán González’, in Cultures in Contact in Medieval Spain: Literary and Historical Essays in Honour of L. P. Harvey, eds. David Hook and Barry Taylor (London: King's College London Medieval Studies, 1990), 47–70.7. Crónica General de España de 1344, eds. D. Catalán and M. S. de Andrés (Madrid: Universidad, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1970), I. See also D. Catalán, De Alfonso X al Conde de Barcelos: cuatro estudios sobre el nacimiento de la historiografía romance en Castilla y Portugal (Madrid: Gredos, 1962); R. Menéndez Pidal, Crónicas generales de España, 3rd ed. (Madrid: Blass y Cía., 1918), 45–85, 155–61. The various sources of the Crónica de 1344 are identified in detail by F. Lindley Cintra in the Crónica Geral de Espanha de 1344 (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1951), I, 415–16. Cintra notes that ‘o compilador da Crónica de 1344 aproveitou mais largamente o poema de clerecía de Fernão Gonçalves, do que os redactores da Primeira Crónica Geral’ (82).8. José Gómez Pérez provides a detailed codicological description of the Crónica in its various versions in ‘Una crónica de Fernán González escrita por orden del emperador Carlos V, Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, LXIV (1950), 551–81. On the life and works of Arredondo, see Nicolás José Toscano, ‘Edición crítica de los versos inéditos de Arredondo sobre Fernán González’, Boletín de la Institución Fernán González, CXCV (1980), 273–326; continued in CXCVI (1981), 53–110 and CXCVII (1982), 321–60.9. See ‘Una crónica de Fernán González’, 555–56.10. Pattison, From Legend to Chronicle, notes that the chronicles of Spain are ‘seldom if ever truly original in terms of authorial viewpoint’ (1).11. The Crónica consists of four books, each based on a Classical model. The configuration or sequence of events narrated in each book conforms to the imperatives of several different plot structures. In the prologue to his chronicle, the author refers to the first of the four books as a ‘tragedica escriptura’. Book II, which contains the biography of Fernán González, was conceived as an ‘escriptura sátira’. Befitting the style of Horace and Juvenal, its goal is to ‘reprehender los viçios, honrar y glorificar e dar gloria a los buenos’. The third book on the political turmoil that followed in the wake of the Count's death as well as the deeds of his son, Garçi Fernández, betrays the comical style of Terence, and the last book is written in the tradition of Pérez de Guzmán's biographical sketches.12. Another possibility, and an extremely plausible one at that, is that some of the interpolated material was borrowed from a fifteenth-century MS. version (MS. o) of the Crónica de 1344. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Historia arlantina’ because it is thought to have been composed in 1492 by a certain García Martínez Moreno of the abbey at Arlanza, the MS. is currently in private hands (see Bibliography of Old Spanish Texts, 3rd ed. [Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1984], 263). According to D. Catalán (Crónica General de España): ‘Este manuscrito copia los capítulos de la segunda versión de la Crónica de 1344 dedicados a Fernán González, Garci Fernández y los Siete Infantes de Salas. Al parecer, es el propio original de la “Historia arlantina” de Fernán González y de los Siete Infantes de Lara’ (80). This MS. is also discussed by Gómez Pérez, ‘Una crónica’, 565–67.13. See, for example, his España Sagrada, XXVII (Madrid: José del Collado, 1824), 58.14. ‘El significado histórico’, 13–14.15. From Legend to Chronicle, 34–41.16. ‘Notas para el Romancero del Conde Fernán González’, in Homenaje a Menéndez y Pelayo (Madrid: Suárez, 1899), I, 445–48; see also his Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas (Madrid: Gredos, 1963), 11–15.17. These are included in ‘Notas para el Romancero’, 437– 45.18. See L. P. Harvey and David Hook, ‘The Affair of the Horse and Hawk in the Poema de Fernán González’, Modern Language Review, LXXVII (1982), 840–47.19. ‘Notas para el Romancero’, 440–41.20. Ibid., 441.21. I am at a loss to explain this name. The various pseudo-historical works that offer a catalogue of Arlanza's abbots do not mention this figure. It is conceivable that Gundio is a scribal error for Gaudio, who, according to at least one historian, was abbot in the year 1200 (Fernán González supposedly died in 970). Arredondo himself provides a list of the house's abbots elsewhere in the Crónica, but Gundio is not among them. The disparate catalogues are discussed by E. Flórez, España Sagrada, 50–55 (see n. 13).22. Unless otherwise indicated, all direct references to the Crónica are from MS. UCB 143, vol. 25 at the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. I have occasionally punctuated the text for easy reading, but the graphemes reflect the original.23. This ballad and its variant forms are discussed in ‘Notas para el Romancero’, 7–17.24. See Reliquias de la poesía épica española (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1951), lxviii.25. From Legend to Chronicle, 40–41.26. See chapters 721–24 of the Primera Crónica General.27. Lacarra, ‘El significado histórico’, notes a discrepancy between Lucas de Tuy's chronicle and the Primera Crónica General: ‘Tras la muerte de Sancho, la Primera Crónica General cita a Lucas de Tuy como su fuente en el relato de los dos primeros años del hijo y sucesor del rey de León, Ramiro III. Sin embargo, se aparta del Tudense en lo que concierne a Fernán González. Según Lucas de Tuy, Fernán González murió de muerte natural durante la invasión de Castilla y León por los moros, y le sucedió su hijo García Fernández, quien hizo frente a los invasores. En cambio, en la Primera Crónica General fue Fernán González quien obtuvo su última victoria en esa ocasión’ (13).28. Might this dissimilarity have originated in the particular version of the Crónica de 1344 utilized by the author?29. Gómez Pérez (op. cit.) writes of Arredondo's own contribution in very general terms: ‘Arredondo se vale, en efecto, de las crónicas anteriores para componer su historia, pero al mismo tiempo da cabida en ella a las noticias que obtiene del poema sobre el héroe, inventa victorias y hazañas de sus personajes, admite numerosas fábulas y leyendas populares e incluye muchos milagros que una piedad indiscreta atribuía al conde castellano’ (555).30. Here one is reminded of Gómez Pérez's reaction to the moral aspect of Arredondo's prose: ‘[Arredondo] se extiende demasiado en consideraciones morales relacionadas con los hechos reales o fantásticos aducidos, e ilustra las reflexiones de orden moral con múltiples ejemplos sacados de diversas historias sagradas o profanas, de vidas de santos, de la Biblia y del Libro de Patronio, por lo que al lado del historiador aparece el moralista, que aprovecha las lecciones de la historia real o fantástica para ofrecer al mundo un espejo de principes y de caballeros … Todo esto, asociado a un estilo ampuloso y rebuscado, hace la obra de enojosa lectura’ (op. cit., 555–56).31. Margarita Zamora, Language, Authority, and Indigenous History in the ‘Comentarios reales de los incas’ (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1988), 14.32. Pérez Priego, op. cit., 18–19 (see n. 6).33. These rubrics are taken from N. Toscano, ‘Edición crítica’, 327 (see n. 8).34. Poema de Fernán González, strophe 592 (see n. 6).35. In ‘The Historical Text as Literary Artefact’ (see The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understanding [Madison: The Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1978]), the historian Hayden White defines ‘emplotment’ as ‘the encodation of the facts contained in the chronicle as components of specific kinds of plot-structures …’ (46).36. In the Prologue to the Crónica (Escorial, MS. Y-III-2, fols. 2v. and 3r.), Arredondo refers to the Emperor's request: ‘considerando vuestra sacra çesarea catholica magestad por serujr al soberano dios Rey ynmortal e ynvisible y por la vtilidad y pro común de todos mando declarar y publicar las proposiçiones y notables echos de los antiguos donde la esclareçida y rreal stirpe de España y de vuestra magestad proçedia’ (see N. Toscano, ‘Edición crítica’, 310).