History of Spanish Literature, vol. 1 (of 3)

by George Ticknor

The political relations between Spain and Sicily were, however, earlier and more close than those between Spain and Italy, and tended to the same results. Giovanni da Procida, after long preparing his beautiful island to shake off the hated yoke of the French, hastened, in 1282, as soon as the horrors of the Sicilian Vespers were fulfilled, to lay the allegiance of Sicily at the feet of Peter the Third of Aragon, who, in right of his wife, claimed Sicily to be a part of his inheritance, as heir of Conradin, the last male descendant of the imperial family of the Hohenstauffen.[574] The revolution thus begun by a fiery patriotism was successful; but from that time Sicily was either a fief of the Aragonese crown, or was possessed, as a separate kingdom, by a branch of the Aragonese family, down to the period when, with the other possessions of Ferdinand the Catholic, it became a part of the consolidated monarchy of Spain.

The connection with Naples, which was of the same sort, followed later, but was no less intimate. Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon, a prince of rare wisdom and much literary cultivation, acquired Naples by conquest in 1441, after a long struggle;[575] but the crown he had thus won was passed down separately in an indirect line through four of his descendants, till 1503, when, by a shameful treaty with France, and by the genius and arms of Gonzalvo of Córdova, it was again conquered and made a direct dependence of the Spanish throne.[576] In this condition, as fiefs of the crown of Spain, both Sicily and Naples continued subject kingdoms until after the Bourbon accession; both affording, from the very nature of their relations to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, constant means and opportunities for the transmission of Italian cultivation and Italian literature to Spain itself.

But the language of Italy, from its affinity to the Spanish, constituted a medium of communication perhaps more important and effectual than any or all of the others. The Latin was the mother of both; and the resemblance between them was such, that neither could claim to have features entirely its own: Facies non una, nec diversa tamen; qualem decet esse sororum. It cost little labor to the Spaniard to make himself master of the Italian. Translations, therefore, were less common from the few Italian authors that then existed, worth translating, than they would otherwise have been; but enough are found, and early enough, to show that Italian authors and Italian literature were not neglected in Spain. Ayala, the chronicler, who died in 1407, was, as we have already observed, acquainted with the works of Boccaccio.[577] A little later, we are struck by the fact that the “Divina Commedia” of Dante was twice translated in the same year, 1428; once by Febrer into the Catalan dialect, and once by Don Enrique de Villena into the Castilian. Twenty years afterwards, the Marquis of Santillana is complimented as a person capable of correcting or surpassing that great poet, and speaks himself of Dante, of Petrarch, and of Boccaccio as if he were familiar with them all.[578] But the name of this great nobleman brings us at once to the times of John the Second, when the influences of Italian literature and the attempt to form an Italian school in Spain are not to be mistaken. To this period, therefore, we now turn.

The long reign of John the Second, extending from 1407 to 1454, unhappy as it was for himself and for his country, was not unfavorable to the progress of some of the forms of elegant literature. During nearly the whole of it, the weak king himself was subjected to the commanding genius of the Constable Alvaro de Luna, whose control, though he sometimes felt it to be oppressive, he always regretted, when any accident in the troubles of the times threw it off, and left him to bear alone the burden which belonged to his position in the state. It seems, indeed, to have been a part of the Constable’s policy to give up the king to his natural indolence, and encourage his effeminacy by filling his time with amusements that would make business more unwelcome to him than the hard tyranny of the minister who relieved him from it.[579]

Among these amusements, none better suited the humor of the idle king than letters. He was by no means without talent. He sometimes wrote verses. He kept the poets of the time much about his person, and more in his confidence and favor than was wise. He had, perhaps, even a partial perception of the advantage of intellectual refinement to his country, or at least to his court. One of his private secretaries, to please his master and those nearest to the royal influence, made, about the year 1449, an ample collection of the Spanish poetry then most in favor, comprising the works of about fifty authors.[580] Juan de Mena, the most distinguished poet of the time, was his official chronicler, and the king sent him documents and directions, with great minuteness and an amusing personal vanity, respecting the manner in which the history of his reign should be written; while Juan de Mena, on his part, like a true courtier, sent his verses to the king to be corrected.[581] His physician, too, who seems to have been always in attendance on his person, was the gay and good-humored Ferdinand Gomez, who has left us, if we are to believe them genuine, a pleasing and characteristic collection of letters; and who, after having served and followed his royal master above forty years, sleeping, as he tells us, at his feet and eating at his table, mourned his death, as that of one whose kindness to him had been constant and generous.[582]

Surrounded by persons such as these, in continual intercourse with others like them, and often given up to letters to avoid the solicitation of state affairs and to gratify his constitutional indolence, John the Second made his reign, though discreditable to himself as a prince, and disastrous to Castile as an independent state, still interesting by a sort of poetical court which he gathered about him, and important as it gave an impulse to refinement perceptible afterwards through several generations.

There has been a period like this in the history of nearly all the modern European nations,—one in which a taste for poetical composition was common at court, and among those higher classes of society within whose limits intellectual cultivation was then much confined. In Germany, such a period is found as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the unhappy young Conradin, who perished in 1268 and is commemorated by Dante, being one of the last of the princely company that illustrates it. For Italy, it begins at about the same time, in the Sicilian court; and though discountenanced both by the spirit of the Church, and by the spirit of such commercial republics as Pisa, Genoa, and Florence,—no one of which had then the chivalrous tone that animated, and indeed gave birth, to this early refinement throughout Europe,—it can still be traced down as far as the age of Petrarch.

Of the appearance of such a taste in the South of France, in Catalonia, and in Aragon, with its spread to Castile under the patronage of Alfonso the Wise, notice has already been taken. But now we find it in the heart and in the North of the country, extending, too, into Andalusia and Portugal, full of love and knighthood; and though not without the conceits that distinguished it wherever it appeared, yet sometimes showing touches of nature, and still oftener a graceful ingenuity of art, that have not lost their interest down to our own times. Under its influence was formed that school of poetry which, marked by its most prominent attribute, has been sometimes called the school of the Minnesingers, or the poets of love and gallantry;[583] a school which either owed its existence everywhere to the Troubadours of Provence, or took, as it advanced, much of their character. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, its spirit is already perceptible in the Castilian; and, from that time, we have occasionally caught glimpses of it, down to the point at which we are now arrived,—the first years of the reign of John the Second,—when we find it beginning to be colored by an infusion of the Italian, and spreading out into such importance as to require a separate examination.

And the first person in the group to whom our notice is attracted, as its proper, central figure, is King John himself. Of him his chronicler said, with much truth, though not quite without flattery, that “he drew all men to him, was very free and gracious, very devout and very bold, and gave himself much to the reading of philosophy and poetry. He was skilled in matters of the Church, tolerably learned in Latin, and a great respecter of such men as had knowledge. He had many natural gifts. He was a lover of music; he played, sung, and made verses; and he danced well.”[584] One who knew him better describes him more skilfully. “He was,” says Fernan Perez de Guzman, “a man who talked with judgment and discretion. He knew other men, and understood who conversed well, wisely, and graciously; and he loved to listen to men of sense, and noted what they said. He spoke and understood Latin. He read well, and liked books and histories, and loved to hear witty rhymes, and knew when they were not well made. He took great solace in gay and shrewd conversation, and could bear his part in it. He loved the chase, and hunting of fierce animals, and was well skilled in all the arts of it. Music, too, he understood, and sung and played; was good in jousting, and bore himself well in tilting with reeds.”[585]

How much poetry he wrote we do not know. His physician says, “The king recreates himself with writing verses”;[586] and others repeat the fact. But the chief proof of his skill that has come down to our times is to be found in the following lines, in the Provençal manner, on the falsehood of his lady.[587]