Footnote:
[1] See Milá y Fontanals, Los Trovadores en España (Barcelona, 1889), and the same writer's Resenya histórica y crítica dels antichs poetas catalans in the third volume of his Obras completas (Barcelona, 1890).
CHAPTER II
THE ANONYMOUS AGE
1150-1220
In Spain, as in all countries where it is possible to observe the origin and the development of letters, the earliest literature bears the stamp of influences which are either epic or religious. These primitive pieces are characterised by a vein of popular, unconscious poetry, with scarce a touch of personal artistry; and the ascription which refers one or other of them to an individual writer is, for the most part, arbitrary. Insufficiency of data makes it impossible to identify the oldest literary performance in Spanish Romance. Jews like Judah ben Samuel the Levite, and trovadores like Rambaud de Vaqueiras, arabesque their verses with Spanish tags and refrains; but these are whimsies. Our choice lies rather between the Misterio de los Reyes Magos (Mystery of the Magian Kings) and the so-called Poema del Cid (Poem of the Cid). Experts differ concerning their respective dates; but the liturgical derivation of the Misterio inclines one to hold it for the elder of the two. If Lidforss were right in attributing it to the eleventh century, the play would rank among the first in any modern language. Amador de los Ríos dates it still further back. As these pretensions are excessive, the known facts may be briefly given. The Misterio follows upon a commentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah, written by a canon of Auxerre, Gilibert l'Universel, who died in 1134; and its existence was first denoted at the end of the last century by Felipe Fernández Vallejo, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela between 1798 and 1800, who correctly classified it as a dramatic scene to be given on the Feast of the Epiphany, and considered it a version from some Latin original. Both conjectures have proved just. Throughout Europe the Christian theatre derives from the Church, and the early plays are but a lay vernacular rendering of models studied in the sanctuary. Simplified as the liturgy now is, the Mass itself, the services of Palm Sunday and Good Friday, are the unmistakable débris of an elaborate sacred drama.
The Spanish Misterio proceeds from one of the Latin offices used at Limoges, Rouen, Nevers, Compiègne, and Orleans, with the legend of the Magi for a motive; and these, in turn, are dramatic renderings of pious traditions, partly oral, and partly amplifications of the apocryphal Protevangelium Jacobi Minoris and the Historia de Nativitate Mariæ et de Infantiâ Salvatoris.[2] These Franco-Latin liturgical plays, here mentioned in the probable order of their composition during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, reached Spain through the Benedictines of Cluny; and as in each original redaction there is a distinct advance upon its immediate predecessor, so in the Spanish rendering these primitive exemplars are developed. In the Limoges version there is no action, the rudimentary dialogue consisting in the allotment of liturgical phrases among the personages; in the Rouen office, the number of actors is increased, and Herod, though he does not appear, is mentioned; a still later redaction brings the shepherds on the scene. The Spanish Misterio reaches us as a fragment of some hundred and fifty lines, ending at the moment when the rabbis consult their sacred books upon Herod's appeal to
"the prophecies
Which Jeremiah spake."
Its provenance is proved by the inclusion of three Virgilian lines (Æneid, viii. 112-114), lifted by the arranger of the Orleans rite. The Magi are mentioned by name, and one speech is given by Gaspar: important points which help to fix the date of writing. A passage in Bede speaks of Melchior, senex et canus; of Baltasar, fuscus, integre barbatus; of Gaspar, juvenis imberbis; but this appears to be interpolated. The names likewise appear in the famous sixth-century mosaic of the Church of Sant' Apollinare della Città at Ravenna; and here, again, the insertion is probably a pious afterthought. If Hartmann be justified in his contention, that the traditional names of the Magi were not in vogue till after the alleged discovery of their remains at Milan in 1158, the Spanish Misterio can be, at best, no older than the end of the twelfth century.