It ends with bad Latin, denouncing excommunication on any person who shall attempt to infringe its provisions, and declaring him “cum Datam et Abiron in infernum damnatus.” Ibid., p. 329.
By the general consent of those who have examined it, this Carta Puebla of Avilés is determined to be the oldest document now known to exist in the Castilian or vulgar dialect of the period, which dialect, in the opinion of Don Rafael Gonzalez Llanos, received its essential character as early as 1206, or six years before the decisive battle of the Navas de Tolosa, (see, ante, Vol. I. p. 9, note,) though not a few documents, after that date, abound in Latin words and phrases. Revista, ut supra, Tom. VIII. p. 197.
I am aware that two documents in the Spanish language, claiming to be yet older, have been cited by Mr. Hallam, in a note to Part II. c. 9 of his Middle Ages, London, 1819, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 554, where he says: “The earliest Spanish that I remember to have seen is an instrument in Martene, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, Tom. I. p. 263; the date of which is 1095. Persons more conversant with the antiquities of that country may possibly go farther back. Another of 1101 is published in Marina’s Teoria de las Cortes, Tom. III. p. 1. It is in a Vidimus by Peter the Cruel, and cannot, I presume, have been a translation from the Latin.” There can be no higher general authority than Mr. Hallam for any historical fact, and this statement seems to carry back the oldest authentic date for the Spanish language sixty years earlier than I have ventured to carry it. But I have examined carefully both of the documents to which Mr. Hallam refers, and am satisfied they are of later date than the charter of Avilés. That in Martene is merely an anecdote connected with the taking of “the city of Exea,” when it was conquered, as this story states, by Sancho of Aragon. Its language strongly resembles that of the “Partidas,” which would bring it down to the middle of the thirteenth century; but it bears, in truth, no date, and only declares at the end that the city of Exea was taken on the nones of April, 1095, from the Moors. Of course, there is some mistake about the whole matter, for Sancho of Aragon, here named as its conqueror, died June 4th, 1094, and was succeeded by Peter I., and the person who wrote this account, which seems to be, after all, only an extract from some monkish chronicle, did not live near enough to that date to know so notorious a fact. Moreover, Exea is in Aragon, where it is not probable the earliest Castilian was spoken or written. Thus much for the document from Martene. That from Marina’s Teoria is of a still later and quite certain date. It is a charter of privileges granted by Alfonso VI. to the Mozárabes of Toledo, but translated in 1340, when it was confirmed by Alfonso XI. Indeed, it is so announced by Marina himself, who in the table of contents says especially, that it is “translated into Castilian.”
[453] Marina, Ensayo, p. 19.
[454] The most striking proof, perhaps, that can be given of the number of Latin words and constructions retained in the modern Spanish, is to be found in the many pages of verse and prose that have, from time to time, been so written that they can be read throughout either as Latin or as Spanish. The first instance of this sort that I know of is by Juan Martinez Siliceo, Archbishop of Toledo and preceptor to Philip II., who, when he was in Italy, wrote a short prose dissertation that could be read in both languages, in order to prove to some of his learned friends in that country that the Castilian of Spain was nearer to the Latin than their Italian;—a jeu-d’esprit, which he printed in his treatise on Arithmetic, in 1514. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 737.) Other examples occur afterwards. One may be found in a Spanish Grammar, published at Louvain in 1555, and entitled “Util y Breve Institution para aprender Lengua Hespañola”; a curious book, which treats the Castilian as only one of several languages then spoken in the Spanish Peninsula, and says of it, “no es otra cosa que Latin corrupto,”—adding that many letters had been written in Spanish words that were yet Latin letters, one of which he proceeds to give in proof. Other examples occur in a Dialogue by Fern. Perez de Oliva, and an Epistle of Ambrosio Morales, the historian, printed in 1585, with the works of the first; in a Sonnet published by Rengifo, in his “Arte Poética,” in 1592; and, finally, in an excessively rare volume of terza rima, by Diego de Aguiar, printed in 1621, and entitled “Tercetos en Latin congruo y puro Castellano,” of which the following is a favorable specimen:—
Scribo historias, graves, generosos
Spiritus, divinos Heroes puros,
Magnanimos, insignes, bellicosos;
Canto de Marte, defensores duros
Animosos Leones, excellentes,