(1221-1284)
ing Alfonso," records the Jesuit historian, Mariana, "was a man of great sense, but more fit to be a scholar than a king; for whilst he studied the heavens and the stars, he lost the earth and his kingdom." Certainly it is for his services to letters, and not for political or military successes, that the meditative son of the valorous Ferdinand the Saint and the beautiful Beatrice of Swabia will be remembered. The father conquered Seville, and displaced the enterprising and infidel Moors with orthodox and indolent Christians. The son could not keep what his sire had grasped. Born in 1226, the fortunate young prince, at the age of twenty-five, was proclaimed king of the newly conquered and united Castile and Leon. He was very young: he was everywhere admired and honored for skill in war, for learning, and for piety; he was everywhere loved for his heritage of a great name and his kindly and gracious manners.
In the first year of his reign, however, he began debasing the coinage,--a favorite device of needy monarchs in his day,--and his people never forgave the injury. He coveted, naturally enough, the throne of the Empire, for which he was long a favorite candidate; and for twenty years he wasted time, money, and purpose, heart and hope, in pursuit of the vain bauble. His kingdom fell into confusion, his eldest son died, his second son Sancho rebelled against him and finally deposed him. Courageous and determined to the last, defying the league of Church and State against him, he appealed to the king of Morocco for men and money to reinstate his fortunes.
In Ticknor's 'History of Spanish Literature' may be found his touching letter to De Guzman at the Moorish court. He is, like Lear, poor and discrowned, but not like him, weak. His prelates have stirred up strife, his nobles have betrayed him. If Heaven wills, he is ready to pay generously for help. If not, says the royal philosopher, still, generosity and loyalty exalt the soul that cherishes them.
"Therefore, my cousin, Alonzo Perez de Guzman, so treat with your master and my friend [the king of Morocco] that he may lend me, on my richest crown and on the jewels in it, as much as shall seem good to him: and if you should be able to obtain his help for me, do not deprive me of it, which I think you will not do; rather I hold that all the good offices which my master may do me, by your hand they will come, and may the hand of God be with you.
"Given in my only loyal city of Seville, the thirtieth year of my reign and the first of my misfortunes.
"THE KING."
In his "only loyal city" the broken man remained, until the Pope excommunicated Sancho, and till neighboring towns began to capitulate. But he had been wounded past healing. There was no medicine for a mind diseased, no charm to raze out the written troubles of the brain. "He fell ill in Seville, so that he drew nigh unto death.... And when the sickness had run its course, he said before them all: that he pardoned the Infante Don Sancho, his heir, all that out of malice he had done against him, and to his subjects the wrong they had wrought towards him, ordering that letters confirming the same should be written--sealed with his golden seal, so that all his subjects should be certain that he had put away his quarrel with them, and desired that no blame whatever should rest upon them. And when he had said this, he received the body of God with great devotion, and in a little while gave up his soul to God."
This was in 1284, when he was fifty-eight years old. At this age, had a private lot been his,--that of a statesman, jurist, man of science, annalist, philosopher, troubadour, mathematician, historian, poet,--he would but have entered his golden prime, rich in promise, fruitful in performance. Yet Alfonso, uniting in himself all these vocations, seemed at his death to have left behind him a wide waste of opportunities, a dreary dearth of accomplishment. Looking back, however, it is seen that the balance swings even. While his kingdom was slipping away, he was conquering a wider domain. He was creating Spanish Law, protecting the followers of learning, cherishing the universities, restricting privilege, breaking up time-honored abuses. He prohibited the use of Latin in public acts. He adopted the native tongue in all his own works, and thus gave to Spanish an honorable eminence, while French and German struggled long for a learning from scholars, and English was to wait a hundred years for the advent of Dan Chaucer.
Greatest achievement of all, he codified the common law of Spain in 'Las Siete Partidas' (The Seven Parts). Still accepted as a legal authority in the kingdom, the work is much more valuable as a compendium of general knowledge than as an exposition of law. The studious king with astonishing catholicity examined alike both Christian and Arabic traditions, customs, and codes, paying a scholarly respect to the greatness of a hostile language and literature. This meditative monarch recognized that public office is a public trust, and wrote:--
"Vicars of God are the kings, each one in his kingdom, placed over the people to maintain them in justice and in truth. They have been called the heart and soul of the people. For as the soul lies in the heart of men, and by it the body lives and is maintained, so in the king lies justice, which is the life and maintenance of the people of his lordship....
"And let the king guard the thoughts of his heart in three manners: firstly let him not desire nor greatly care to have superfluous and worthless honors. Superfluous and worthless honors the king ought not to desire. For that which is beyond necessity cannot last, and being lost, and come short of, turns to dishonor. Moreover, the wise men have said that it is no less a virtue for a man to keep that which he has than to gain that which he has not; because keeping comes of judgment, but gain of good fortune. And the king who keeps his honor in such a manner that every day and by all means it is increased, lacking nothing, and does not lose that which he has for that which he desires to have,--he is held for a man of right judgment, who loves his own people, and desires to lead them to all good. And God will keep him in this world from the dishonoring of men, and in the next from the dishonor of the wicked in hell."
Besides the 'Siete Partidas,' the royal philosopher was the author, or compiler, of a 'Book of Hunting'; a treatise on Chess; a system of law, the 'Fuero Castellano' (Spanish Code),--an attempt to check the monstrous irregularities of municipal privilege; 'La Gran Conquista d'Ultramar (The Great Conquest Beyond the Sea), an account of the wars of the Crusades, which is the earliest known specimen of Castilian prose; and several smaller works, now collected under the general title of 'Opuscules Legales' (Minor Legal Writings). It was long supposed that he wrote the 'Tesoro' (Thesaurus), a curious medley of ignorance and superstition, much of it silly, and all of it curiously inconsistent with the acknowledged character of the enlightened King. Modern scholarship, however, discards this petty treatise from the list of his productions.
His 'Tablas Alfonsinas' (Alfonsine Tables), to which Chaucer refers in the 'Frankeleine's Tale,' though curiously mystical, yet were really scientific, and rank among the most famous of mediaeval books. Alfonso had the courage and the wisdom to recall to Toledo the heirs and successors of the great Arabian philosophers and the learned Rabbis, who had been banished by religious fanaticism, and there to establish a permanent council--a mediaeval Academy of Sciences--which devoted itself to the study of the heavens and the making of astronomical calculations. "This was the first time," says the Spanish historian, "that in barbarous times the Republic of Letters was invited to contemplate a great school of learning,--men occupied through many years in rectifying the old planetary observations, in disputing about the most abstruse details of this science, in constructing new instruments, and observing, by means of them, the courses of the stars, their declensions, their ascensions, eclipses, longitudes, and latitudes." It was the vision of Roger Bacon fulfilled.
At his own expense, for years together, the King entertained in his palace at Burgos, that their knowledge might enrich the nation, not only certain free-thinking followers of Averroës and Avicebron, but infidel disciples of the Koran, and learned Rabbis who denied the true faith. That creed must not interfere with deed, was an astonishing mental attitude for the thirteenth century, and invited a general suspicion of the King's orthodoxy. His religious sense was really strong, however, and appears most impressively in the 'Cantigas à la Vergen Maria' (Songs to the Virgin), which were sung over his grave by priests and acolytes for hundreds of years. They are sometimes melancholy and sometimes joyous, always simple and genuine, and, written in Galician, reflect the trustful piety and happiness of his youth in remote hill provinces where the thought of empire had not penetrated. It was his keen intelligence that expressed itself in the saying popularly attributed to him, "Had I been present at the creation, I might have offered some useful suggestions." It was his reverent spirit that made mention in his will of the sacred songs as the testimony to his faith. So lived and died Alfonso the Tenth, the father of Spanish literature, and the reviver of Spanish learning.
"WHAT MEANETH A TYRANT, AND HOW HE USETH HIS POWER IN A KINGDOM WHEN HE HATH OBTAINED IT"
"A tyrant," says this law, "doth signify a cruel lord, who, by force or by craft, or by treachery, hath obtained power over any realm or country; and such men be of such nature, that when once they have grown strong in the land, they love rather to work their own profit, though it be in harm of the land, than the common profit of all, for they always live in an ill fear of losing it. And that they may be able to fulfill this their purpose unincumbered, the wise of old have said that they use their power against the people in three manners. The first is, that they strive that those under their mastery be ever ignorant and timorous, because, when they be such, they may not be bold to rise against them, nor to resist their wills; and the second is, that they be not kindly and united among themselves, in such wise that they trust not one another, for while they live in disagreement, they shall not dare to make any discourse against their lord, for fear faith and secrecy should not be kept among themselves; and the third way is, that they strive to make them poor, and to put them upon great undertakings, which they never can finish, whereby they may have so much harm that it may never come into their hearts to devise anything against their ruler. And above all this, have tyrants ever striven to make spoil of the strong and to destroy the wise; and have forbidden fellowship and assemblies of men in their land, and striven always to know what men said or did; and do trust their counsel and the guard of their person rather to foreigners, who will serve at their will, than to them of the land, who serve from oppression. And moreover, we say that though any man may have gained mastery of a kingdom by any of the lawful means whereof we have spoken in the laws going before this, yet, if he use his power ill, in the ways whereof we speak in this law, him may the people still call tyrant; for he turneth his mastery which was rightful into wrongful, as Aristotle hath said in the book which treateth of the rule and government of kingdoms."
From 'Las Siete Partidas,' quoted in Ticknor's 'Spanish Literature.'
ON THE TURKS, AND WHY THEY ARE SO CALLED
The ancient histories which describe the early inhabitants of the East and their various languages show the origin of each tribe or nation, or whence they came, and for what reason they waged war, and how they were enabled to conquer the former lords of the land. Now in these histories it is told that the Turks, and also the allied race called Turcomans, were all of one land originally, and that these names were taken from two rivers which flow through the territory whence these people came, which lies in the direction of the rising of the sun, a little toward the north; and that one of these rivers bore the name of Turco, and the other Mani: and finally that for this reason the two tribes which dwelt on the banks of these two rivers came to be commonly known as Turcomanos or Turcomans. On the other hand, there are those who assert that because a portion of the Turks lived among the Comanos (Comans) they accordingly, in course of time, received the name of Turcomanos; but the majority adhere to the reason already given. However this may be, the Turks and the Turcomans belong both to the same family, and follow no other life than that of wandering over the country, driving their herds from one good pasture to another, and taking with them their wives and their children and all their property, including money as well as flocks.
The Turks did not dwell then in houses, but in tents made of skins, as do in these days the Comanos and Tartars; and when they had to move from one place to another, they divided themselves into companies according to their different dialects, and chose a cabdillo (judge), who settled their disputes, and rendered justice to those who deserved it. And this nomadic race cultivated no fields, nor vineyards, nor orchards, nor arable lands of any kind; neither did they buy or sell for money: but traded their flocks among one another, and also their milk and cheese, and pitched their tents in the places where they found the best pasturage; and when the grass was exhausted, they sought fresh herbage elsewhere. And whenever they reached the border of a strange land, they sent before them special envoys, the most worthy and honorable of their men, to the kings or lords of such countries, to ask of them the privilege of pasturage on their lands for a space; for which they were willing to pay such rent or tax as might be agreed upon. After this manner they lived among each nation in whose territory they happened to be.
From 'La Gran Conquista de Ultramar,' Chapter xiii.
From the 'Cantigas'
Welcome, O May, yet once again we greet thee!
So alway praise we her, the Holy Mother,
Who prays to God that he shall aid us ever
Against our foes, and to us ever listen.
Welcome, O May! loyally art thou welcome!
So alway praise we her, the Mother of kindness,
Mother who alway on us taketh pity,
Mother who guardeth us from woes unnumbered.
Welcome, O May! welcome, O month well favored!
So let us ever pray and offer praises
To her who ceases not for us, for sinners,
To pray to God that we from woes be guarded.
Welcome, O May! O joyous month and stainless!
So will we ever pray to her who gaineth
Grace from her Son for us, and gives each morning
Force that by us the Moors from Spain are driven.
Welcome, O May, of bread and wine the giver!
Pray then to her, for in her arms, an infant
She bore the Lord! she points us on our journey,
The journey that to her will bear us quickly!