They are not found to any excess in the work of the earliest poets who sang the Cid’s feats-of-arms. They do not occur in the Latin poem, already quoted, which speaks enthusiastically of his exploits as being numerous enough to tax the resources of Homer’s genius:—
Tanti victoris nam si retexere,
Coeperim cuncta, non haec libri mille
Capere possent, Homero canente,
Summo labore.
This cannot have been written much later than 1120, about a score of years after the Cid’s death. The theme, like many another theme of the same kind, was too alluring to be left to monks who wrote in a learned language for a small circle, and it was soon treated in the speech of the people by juglares—not necessarily laymen—who recited their compositions in palaces, castles, monasteries, public squares, markets, or any other place where an audience could be got together. In this way a body of epical poems came into existence. You may say that this is late, and so it is if you are thinking of Beowulf and Waldhere which, in their actual shapes, certainly existed before the reign of Alfred, and have even been assigned to the sixth century. But we must make a radical distinction. Beowulf and Waldhere are, we may say, sagas in verse, and have no immediate relation to England, so far as subject goes: the French and Spanish epics are conspicuously national in theme and sentiment. We know that Spain possessed many epics which have not survived: epics on Roderick, on Bernardo del Carpio, on Fernán González, on Garci-Fernández, on Sancho García, perhaps on Alvar Fáñez Minaya, the Cid’s lieutenant. Only three of these ancient cantares de gesta have been saved, and among them is the epic known as the Poema del Cid, Possibly it was not the first vernacular poem on the subject, though it was composed about the middle of the twelfth century, some fifty years after the Cid’s time; but, as we shall see presently, there is a long interval between the [13]date of composition and the date of transcription. As to the author of the Poema nothing is known. On the ground that some two hundred lines relate to events occurring at the monastery of Cardeña near Burgos, it has been conjectured that the author was a monk attached to this monastery. It has also been thought, owing to his warlike spirit, that he was a layman, and that he came from the Valle de Arbujuelo: this is inferred from his minute knowledge of the country between Molina and San Esteban de Gormaz, and from the relative vagueness of such knowledge as the itinerary extends to Burgos and Saragossa. These, however, are but surmises. It is further surmised that the substance of the Poema del Cid may be derived from earlier epic poems. That may be: but, as it stands, it has a unity of its own.
The Gesta Ruderici Campidocti survives in a unique manuscript which was stolen during the last century from the Monastery of St. Isidore at León, was bought in Lisbon by Gotthold Heyne two years before he died on the Berlin barricades of 1848, and is now, after many wanderings, in the Academy of History at Madrid. The Poema del Cid also reaches us in a unique manuscript, the work of a certain Per Abbat who in 1307 wrote out the text from a pre-existing copy; this manuscript is not known to have passed through any such adventures as the Gesta, but it has evidently had some narrow escapes from destruction: the beginning of the Poema del Cid is missing, a page is wanting after verse 2337, and another page is wanting after verse 3307. Had Per Abbat not taken the trouble to write out the Poema, or had his manuscript disappeared before October 1596 (when it was transcribed by Juan Ruiz de Ulibarri), the epic on the Cid would be as unknown to us as the epics on Roderick, Bernardo del Carpio, and the rest. Per Abbat seems to have followed an unfaithful copy in an uncritical fashion, but the defects in the existing text cannot all be laid at his door. There are passages in the Poema del Cid which are almost universally regarded as interpolations, and for these Per Abbat is not likely to be responsible. It is more probable that he continued in the bad way of his predecessors, who apparently took it upon themselves to abridge the poem. This desire for greater brevity is answerable for transpositions and corruptions which are the despair of editors and translators; but, mutilated as it is, the Poema del Cid is a primitive masterpiece, the merits of which have been increasingly recognised since the text was first published by Tomás Antonio Sánchez in 1779.
The interest in the literary monuments of the Middle Ages was not then what it is now. We are talking of a period more than half a century before any French chanson de geste was printed, and the taste for mediævalism had still to be created. The Spanish poet, Quintana, who died only fifty years ago, and was a lad when the Poema del Cid was published, could see nothing to admire in it; and yet Quintana’s taste in literature was far more catholic than that of most of his contemporaries. Still the Poema slowly made its way in the world of letters. One illustration will suffice to show that it was closely studied within a few years of its appearance in print. John Hookham Frere, the British Minister at Madrid, read the Poema del Cid on the recommendation of the Marqués de la Romana, who had praised it as ‘the most animated and highly poetical as well as the most ancient and curious poem in the language.’ In verse 2348 of the Poema:—
Aun vea el hora que vos merezca dos tanto—
the curt reply of Pero Bermuez to the Infantes of Carrión—Frere [15]proposed to read merezcades for merezca dos, and his conjectural emendation was approved by Romana to whom alone he mentioned it. Some years later Romana was destined to hear it again in striking circumstances. He was then serving with the French in Denmark, and it became necessary for Frere to communicate with him confidentially. It was indispensable that Frere’s messenger should be fully accredited; it was of the utmost importance that, in case of arrest, he should not be found in possession of any paper which might suggest his mission. The emended verse of the Poema del Cid, easily remembered, formed his sole credentials. Romana at once knew that the agent must come from Frere, who—apart from his fragmentary translation of the Poema, now superseded by Ormsby’s version—thus began in a small amateurish way the work of critical reconstitution which has been continued by Damas-Hinard and Bello, by Cornu and Restori, by Vollmöller and Lidforss, by Sr. D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Mr. Archer Milton Huntington.