The Song of the Cid (31 page)

“Spain”
(23):
España
is used here to mean what we would call Islamic Spain, or al-Andalus, as it was called in Arabic.

Pedro Bermúdez
(30): Plays the role of the Cid's nephew and standard-bearer, although no documentary evidence of such a historical character exists.

King of Valencia
(32): Identified a few lines later as Tamín, this is a fictitious ruler, as are many of the poem's Muslim leaders (although some may be very loosely based on historical figures, or allude to them via vaguely reminiscent names), including Fáriz and Galvé, Tamín's visitors in this episode.

Saint James
(36): Santiago, patron saint of Spain, whose remains are traced in legend to an eighth-century discovery by a monk (who found the apostle's body washed up on the Galician shores, covered in scallop shells) and whose burial site in what would become the cathedral city of Compostela constitutes the center of one of Europe's most popular and enduring pilgrimage routes, also known in English as the Way of Saint James. In medieval representations Santiago is known sometimes as the Pilgrim but also—as here—as Santiago Matamoros, Saint James the Moorslayer.

Félix Muñoz
(37): Another fictional character identified in the poem as the Cid's cousin and thus, of particular importance in later developments in the poem, as devoted first cousin to the Warrior's daughters.

Count of Barcelona
(55): Berenguer Ramón II, known as the Fratricide, for the murder, in 1082, of his brother, who was himself a count of Barcelona, and whose name is the rather confusing mirror-image (Ramón Berenguer) and thus almost certainly mistakenly named later in the poem (137). The historical Cid did in fact defeat Berenguer Ramón twice—in 1082, while the Cid was working for the Taifa of Saragossa, and in 1090, during his campaign to take control of Valencia. María, one of the Cid's daughters (in life they were named María and Cristina), in fact married the nephew and son of the count brothers of Barcelona, Ramón Berenguer III.

Colada
(59): This name is said to derive from
acero colado
(cast steel). The sword itself is lost (although “replicas” are available everywhere in Spain today). The Cid eventually bequeaths both Colada and Tizón (the sword he wins from the Moor Búcar, see note below) to his unworthy sons-in-law, who must eventually surrender these symbols of honor back to him. In the end, the two swords are awarded to far better men, Martín Antolínez and Pedro Bermúdez, who have proven their loyalty and devotion to the Cid—and who ultimately use these same weapons to challenge, humiliate, and defeat Diego and Fernando in battle.

King of Morocco
(72): One of the clearest references to a historical ruler, Yusuf Ibn Tashufin, first Almoravid caliph of Morocco (1059-1106). It is, however, not at all clear just who the other king is with whom he is at war, but there may be a historical confusion in the reference to the king of the Atlas mountains: the poem uses the later, Almohad term
Montes Claros
to refer to the Atlas mountain region, suggesting this is an anachronistic reference to the later rivalry and war between Almoravids of the Cid's lifetime and their successors, the Almohads, who arose as a power in the Atlas region in the 1120s and eventually defeated the Almoravids in 1145.

lord of Seville
(75): Although he is not named specifically here, this is likely an allusion to the king of Seville during this period, the memorable poet-king al-Mutamid, whose court the historical Cid almost certainly visited, to collect
parias
on behalf of Alfonso. Al-Mutamid's accomplished poetry as well as his role as the patron of many other poets of this era earn him an important role in the literary history of the period. He was also a pivotal political figure, instrumental in the invitation to the Almoravids to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and aid the Andalusian Muslims against Alfonso, after the Castilian took Toledo, only to be eventually imprisoned by his erstwhile allies.

Bishop Don Jerónimo
(78): Jerome of Perigord was brought to Spain by Bernard of Sedirac, the first archbishop of Toledo after its Castilian conquest in 1085, to take part in the Cluniac reform. In 1098, four years after Rodrigo's capture of Valencia, Jerome was made bishop of Valencia by Bernard—at the behest of the Cid himself, according to some.

“He asked for Alfonso, and where he might find him”
(80): This reminds us explicitly that the medieval capitals were often completely moveable, and that kings were rarely to be found in one permanent residence. In this instance Alfonso is found in Carrión, but later on, the king is in residence in Sahagún (133) and when he ultimately convenes his court to judge the Carrión brothers, it is in Toledo.

Saint Isidore
(82): Immensely learned church father known for his voluminous
Etymologiae
, an encyclopedic compilation of knowledge including medicine, law, geography, theology, and much else. Canonized in 1598, he has in recent years been further elevated, by the Vatican, into the patron saint of the Internet. He served as bishop of Seville from 599 to 636 and is most frequently referred to as Isidore of Seville, although the poem also refers to him as Isidore of León (100), alluding to the important church (the Real Colegiata) dedicated to Saint Isidore in León, where many of the early kings and queens of Castile and León are buried.

Count García Ordóñez
(82): This historical count of Nájera was in fact an important figure at Alfonso's court, who may have been influential in the Cid's exile in 1081. In the poem he is unambiguously the leader of anti-Cid sentiment at the court.

nobles of Carrión
(82): Diego and Fernando González, grandsons of counts of Carrión and part of a politically powerful family of the period in both Castile and León, although their characters and roles in the poem appear to be highly fictionalized: they are named as
infantes
(younger sons of kings, destined to never ascend to power) yet they held no such title, nor is there any historical record of their ever having married the Cid's daughters or having had any other connection with Rodrigo Díaz. Occasionally referred to by their surname (González) in the poem, Diego and Fernando are also often called the Carrións in this translation.

Abengalbón
(83): There are records of a Muslim ruler on which the character of Abengalbón of Molina, the literary Cid's faithful and highly trusted ally (the Cid more than once relies on him for safe transport of his wife and daughters), may be based, although once again the dramatic events of the poem, and the pivotal role in the domestic drama of the Cid's family, are certainly fictionalized.

“Babieca was famous all over Spain”
(86): Indeed, the Cid's horse has even been immortalized in a legend recounted by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-1870), in which Babieca falls to its knees before the mosque of Bab al-Mardum in Toledo, thus revealing that there was a church where the mosque was later built; legend also had it that the horse was eventually buried at San Pedro de Cardeña along with the rest of the family, although there is no indication the horse's remains were later transferred to the cathedral of Burgos along with Rodrigo and Jimena.

King Búcar
(113): Unclear if any specific historical character is an intended allusion, although it is clear that Búcar is the Hispanized form of the rather common Arabic name Abu Bakr, and among the possible historical figures whose name does echo here is Abu Bakr ibn Abd al-Aziz, the ruler of Valencia who appears as Tamín earlier in the poem.

Tizón
(118): The other famous sword, together with Colada, which comes into the Cid's possession through battle. Unlike the assumed-lost Colada, however, a sword that some claimed to be Tizón was long displayed at the Military Museum in Madrid and was sold to the cathedral of Burgos in 2007, only to have its authenticity officially questioned by the state.

“a Moor who understood Spanish”
(126): Multilingualism was widespread in medieval Spain, and just as the very name of the Cid reveals commonplace familiarity with Arabic among some Christians (and this includes some communities, such as the Mozarabs, whose native language was in fact Arabic), the
moro latinado
here alludes to the access that many Muslims had to “Latin”—that is, to the variety of spoken languages that derive from Latin, of which Castilian was but one.

“where [Alamos] left Elpha in chains”
(128): The provenance and meaning of these toponyms have never been discovered.

“What shame falls upon us is small, / Compared to that directed against my lord”
(133): The dishonor done by the Carrión brothers is far greater to the king, for it was Alfonso who sanctioned their marriage, and the Cid's own reservations were such that although he obeyed his monarch in agreeing to the arrangement, he had Alvar Fáñez stand in for him in the public ceremony.

Don Enrique
(135): Grandson of Robert I, duke of Burgundy and nephew of Queen Constanza, Alfonso VI's wife, and by 1095, he had married Alfonso's illegitimate daughter Teresa and was governor of Portugal. This is the beginning of a parade of nobles all intimately connected to each other through marriages as well as interfamily rivalries, and also includes Don Ramón, count of Amous, Enrique's cousin and sometimes bitter rival. Ramón had married Alfonso's legitimate daughter, Urraca, and was made governor of Galicia; their son would inherit the throne as Alfonso VII.

San Servando
(136): The fortified castle outside Toledo's city walls, transformed into a fortified monastery by Alfonso, after his conquest of the city in 1085, and in the possession of Cluny at the time of the Cid. The imposing building is located directly across the Tagus from the entrance to Toledo, across the Alcántara bridge (and note that the name of the bridge derives directly from
al-qantara
, the word for “bridge” in Arabic).

“Two messenger knights suddenly entered the court. / One was Ojarra, from the Prince of Navarre, / The other, Iñigo Jiménez, from the Prince of Aragon”
(149): These are much more prestigious and honorable marriages for the Cid's daughters, who would now be queens (and, as is soon pointed out, the Carrión brothers would then have to serve their former wives). Although the daughters' first, failed marriages to the infantes are fully fictionalized, these second, successful marriages certainly echo the historical daughters' marriages into the highest royal ranks of Navarre and Barcelona. At stake, in the poem's hagiography of the Warrior, was not only the prestige of his daughters' alliances—which of course speaks to his own restored prestige inside the Castilian court—but the role he thus played in bringing together a number of rivalrous families and warring Christian principalities and kingdoms.