LITERACY resources or the men to assault it, but when a fleet conquer Lisbon in 1142–1143. In March 1147 he took carrying an expeditionary force of the Second Crusade Santare´m by a surprise attack. St. Bernard had put in at Oporto, the bishop of the city negotiated with launched the Second Crusade, for which men from the crusaders for their participation in the king’s plan England, the Low Countries, and southern Germany to take Lisbon. They agreed and sailed up the Tagus gathered at Dartmouth in 164 ships. On their putting River on 28 June 1147. The siege, a joint operation in at Oporto, Bishop John Peculiar persuaded them to that involved Portuguese, Flemings, Germans, Nor- join Afonso before Lisbon, which held out unrelieved mans, and English lasted seventeen weeks. Weakened for nearly four months. The crusaders went on to Pales- by war, hunger, and pestilence, the Moors surrendered tine in the spring, but some remained to settle, and an after putting up a ferocious resistance. English priest, Gilbert of Hastings, became bishop of In Christian hands, Lisbon became no less a cov- the new see. R.’s letter shows the part played by Her- eted prey for marauders and invaders in view of its vey de Glanvill, constable for the East Anglian contin- wealth and geographical position. Portuguese kings gent, in this. were eager to develop Lisbon as a maritime and com- The feat assured the continuity of the Portuguese mercial center. Afonso III (r. 1248–1279) made Lisbon monarchy, greatly increased the authority of Afonso the capital of the kingdom. He promoted a large market Henriques, and almost doubled the territory of Portu- of stall-holders, renting booths that rendered good gal, which until then consisted of the old county and profits to the crown. Lisbon grew in prosperity and that of Coimbra, annexed in 1064. It provided Portugal soon its merchants were trading with the main ports of with the physical base for the fourteenth-century enter- Europe. King Fernando (1367–1383), after successive prise of the voyages of discovery. The taking of Lisbon and unsuccessful sieges of the city by the Castilians, was followed at once by the annexation of Sintra and had its walls rebuilt between 1373 and 1376. It was Palmela. R. s letter survives in the unique copy at Cor- behind these walls that the people of Lisbon fought pus Christi College, Cambridge, and was first edited off a nine-month Castilian siege in 1384. With the voy- by Herculano in Portugaliae Monumenta Historica ages of discovery, Lisbon became an international em- (1861). porium, being one of the most beautiful cities in Eu- H. V. LIVERMORE rope. LUIS REBELO Bibliography The Conquest of Lisbon. Ed. C. W. David, New York, 1936. Bibliography Livermore, H. “The Conquest of Lisbon and Its Author.” Caetano, M. A Administrac¸a˜o Municipal de Lisboa durante Portuguese Studies 6 (1990), 1–6. a Primeira Dinastia (1179–1383). Lisbon, 1951. Castilho, J. de. Lisboa Antiga. Coimbra, 1884. LITERACY David, C. W. De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi: The Conquest of Lisbon. New York, 1936. Western Christendom has been literate, in the sense Go´is, D. de. Vrbis Olisiponis Descriptio. Evora, 1554. of depending upon written records for the essential Livermore, H. “The Conquest of Lisbon and Its Author.” transactions of its civil and religious life, without inter- Portuguese Studies 6 (1990), 1–6. ruption since Roman times. But in the Middle Ages the dissemination of literacy rested on radically different postulates from those that obtained in antiquity, or in LISBON, CONQUEST OF early modern Europe: training and skill in letters Afonso Henriques, king of Portugal, accompanied by (grammatica) was the highly specialized professional a large force of crusaders recruited by St. Bernard for preserve of a unique social group known as the clergy, the Second Crusade, took the city after a lengthy siege whose distinctive function was “scripture”—the on 24 October 1147. The feat is described by a crusader guardianship of the written religious law and liturgy. known only as R. in a letter to Osbert of Bawdsey, De This intimate connection between literacy and scrip- Expugnatione Lyxbonensi. ture was also fundamental to the culture and education Lisbon had formed part of the Berber state of of the Jewish and (after 711) Muslim communities of Badajoz, whose ruler had offered it to Alfonso VI of Iberia; what made the Christian case unique was its Leo´n in return for protection from the Almoravids, restriction (probably deriving from primitive Ger- who, however, seized Badajoz. Alfonso could not hold manic notions of the sacral power of runes and spells, Lisbon: Santare´m and the Tagus River valley were also and from a caste system that separated bards from war- lost to the Christians in 1111. On becoming king, Al- riors) to a closed community of celibate males who, fonso Henriques made a first unsuccessful attempt to from early puberty, wore distinctive haircuts and vest-

495 LITERACY ments and used a special hieratic language, Latin. Con- Early Middle Ages (to 1080) sequently the word litteratus itself, and its Romance Visigothic Spain in the age of Isidore (bishop of derivatives letrado and Iletrat, meant not “literate” but Seville, 602–636) had the most sophisticated literary “Latinate.” Reading was taught exclusively through culture in the Latin West. Clerical monopolization of the medium of Latin, using as a primer (cartilla) the literacy, however, had taken place; the teaching of common prayers, Ten Commandments, and catechism, reading was entirely in the hands of the church and and the aim was to train clerics to recite aloud the Latin the aristocracy were, in our modern sense, illiterate. It liturgy (psalterium discere). At seven, the canonical is clear from the abundant liturgical texts of this period, age of discretion, boys memorized the alphabet with and from Isidore’s own voluminous lexicographical simple phonic exercises and then proceeded directly works, that the vulgar Latin spoken by the Goths (who to reading aloud from the primer (which need not be were Romanized before they conquered the Iberian understood, only accurately recited). Explicit Spanish Peninsula in 589) had evolved many Romance features testimony of this process is given by a vernacular anno- not reflected in orthography; writing and reading were tation in a fifteenth-century grammar book and glos- moving inexorably away from the spoken language, sary (Madrid, BPal MS 1344, fol. 116v): “Item nota el although it is doubtful whether even Isidore was yet orden que has de tener en ensen˜ar a ler; lo primero aware of the conceptual distinction. After the Muslim ense´n˜ale la sen˜al de la crux e los X mandamientos en conquest in 711, this separation advanced further: the romanc¸e . . .; lo segundo IV orac¸iones dominicales Aue daily languages of Christians were Arabic and Mozara- Maria, Patemoster, Credo, Salue Regina vulgarmente bic Romance, while formal Latin remained as a liturgi- [in the vernacular], porque todo fiel christiano siete cal Schriftsprache, preserved (along with the Visi- an˜os pasados es obligado . . .; lo terc¸ero el ABC, con- gothic rite and script) with fervid but inefficacious zeal osc¸er las letras ansı´ vocales como consonantes e juntar by the clergy. Even in the most accomplished literary e por sı´llabas deletrear, scilicet ba be bi bo bu, e las circle of this period, which the caliphs tolerated to IV orac¸iones sobredichas en Latino sermone”(Item: gather round Eulogius in ninth-century Co´rdoba, Pau- Note the order in which you should teach reading; first lus Alvarus complained that his Christian flock were teach the sign of the cross and the Ten Commandments better versed in Arabic poetry and rhetoric than in in Romance; second, the four Sunday prayers, Ave Latin letters (Indiculus luminosus, c. 850). In the Chris- Maria, Paternoster, Credo, Salve Regina in the ver- tian petty kingdoms of Asturias, Leo´n, Navarre, and nacular because every faithful Christian above the age the Frankish March, literacy was confined to the mon- of seven is obliged to know them; third, the ABC, to asteries, where the influence of French Benedictinism know the letters and the vowels and consonants and produced flourishing schools, first in Catalonia (at Ri- to join and spell by syllables, namely ba be bi bo bu.) poll, ninth–tenth centuries), and then in La Rioja (in the abbeys of Albelda and San Milla´n de la Cogolla, Training in the skill of writing was a separate process, late tenth century). An important development oc- undertaken later by professional scribes who had to curred when monastic manuscripts began to be fur- learn not only the Gothic scripts and their complex nished with interlinear Romance glosses, marking a systems of abbreviation but also the various technicali- recognition of the distinction between “literate” and ties of penmanship, ink manufacture, and preparation spoken forms; the most celebrated example, a ninth- of manuscript codices. More competent students might century sermonary from San Milla´n de la Cogolla, in- proceed to study ecclesiastical Latin grammar and cludes among its glosses (inserted around 1020–1045) composition, but this remained a subsidiary require- a transcription of the doxology commonly cited as the ment; throughout the Middle Ages the proof of literacy first extant example of Spanish prose: “Cono ajutorio that conferred benefit of clergy (exemption from secu- de nuestro dueno, dueno Christo, dueno Salbatore, qual lar legal jurisdiction) remained, not the ability to con- dueno get ena honore e qual duenno tienet ela mandat- strue the Sacred Page, but the ability to read out a Latin jone cono Patre cono Spiritu Sancto enos sieculos de- passage (in England the “neck-versel,” Ps. 51:1; in losieculos, facanos Deus omnipotes tal serbitio fere ke Spain more often the Creed or Paternoster). The history denante ela sua face guadioso segamus, Amen” (With of medieval literacy therefore concerns the processes help from our lord, lord Christ, lord Savior, Who is that loosened the clergy’s stranglehold on literate honored and shares dominion with the Father and the skills, and then opened reading and writing to lay soci- Holy Ghost for ever and ever, give us omnipotent God ety in general. Among these processes two stand out: the gift that we may be before your face and share joy the rise of vernacular literature, and the growing pres- among us.) (Madrid, RAH Ms. 60, fol. 72). Glosses tige and professionalism of lawyers and bureaucrats. such as ibi: obe or sicitates: seketates, saltare: sotare

496 LITERACY

(the latter from an eleventh-century manuscript from adapting orthography and script to the vernacular; the Santo Domingo de Silos, London BL Add. 25,600) first datable documents in undisguised Portuguese are show that their purpose was not to help monkish read- the charters of Vaira˜o (1192) and Galician-Portuguese ers construe the text, but to facilitate oral delivery for cancioneiro lyrics were perhaps written down as early the benefit of the laity. The other significant develop- as the reign of Sancho I (1185–1211). In Castile the ment in these northern kingdoms occurred, however, decade around 1200 marks the full recognition of the not in the monastic scholae but in the field of civil law, written vernacular not only by the crown (Treaty of where the remarkable preservation of the Visigothic Cabreros, 1206), but also in literature (Auto de los Forum iudicum (the basis of judicial process down to reyes magos, Cantar de Mio Cid, Libro de Alexandre, the thirteenth century), brought literacy into everyday followed in 1220–1245 by the works of Gonzalo de life; for although lawsuits were still conducted by the Berceo). The chief motor for the spread of vernacular Germanic procedures of oral testimony, oath-helping, writing was the official adoption of the national lan- and ordeal, the Forum attached fundamental impor- guages by royal chanceries, a process that reached its tance to written title, records, and codified enactments. culmination in the reigns of Alfonso X of Castile and Everyday disputes thus generated a copious documen- Jaime I of Arago´n; the Castilian and Catalan ortho- tation of charters, formally subscribed to by witnesses; graphies designed at this period have lasted, with only the instruments themselves were redacted by profes- superficial changes, to modern times. By 1300, there- sional notaries, and although we have no evidence of fore, while the clergy still retained their monopoly on how these men were taught, their orthography and lan- Latin literacy (now highly technical, and taught not in guage, heavily Romance in phonology, phrasing, and monastic or episcopal schools but in the new universi- vocabulary, was clearly designed, despite its Latin for- ties), there had grown up a parallel group of court bu- mulae, to be intelligible when read aloud to the liti- reaucrats who were no less skilled, trained in Roman gants—evidence of a training in functional literacy as well as foral law, but whose literacy was firmly quite distinct from the clerical literacy of the monas- vernacular. teries. The Late Middle Ages, 1300–1450 Central Middle Ages (1080–1300) The inevitable next stage was the spread of liter- At the Council of Burgos (1080), King Alfonso acy skills among the amateur laity. Non–professional VI of Castile abolished the Visigothic liturgy in favor literacy, however, could mean anything from the mere of the Roman (similar measures had been taken in Ara- ability to spell one’s name to deep book-learning, with go´n in 1474 and Navarre in 1076). According to the wide discrepancies in distribution between regions, chronicles the king also banned Visigothic script (To- classes, town, and country. In the fourteenth century letana littera, supposedly invented by Ulfilas) and en- the normal method of diffusion remained oral, by so- joined the use of Carolingian minuscule (Gallica lit- cial reading: The Libro de buen amor, for example, tera, from which modern roman scripts are derived). contains frequent addresses to an audience that in- Although the definitive abandonment of the Visigothic cluded duen¯as, and there are abundant testimonies heritage took time (so that a Leonese charter as late reaching the fifteenth century of texts being read aloud as 1155 might be written in Visigothic script with a to groups of nobles (as Cervantes was later to portray conversion table of Carolingian letter-forms at the foot, the romances of chivalry being read to harvesters in and the recopying of San Milla´n de la Cogolla’s Visi- the posadas of La Mancha). Likewise, when a non- gothic manuscripts into the new script did not take professional engaged in literary composition he dic- place until around 1200), 1080 marked a watershed in tated the text to professional amanuenses, as the In- the history of Iberian literacy. The direct effect was to fante Juan Manuel, for example, states at the end of provoke a reform of Latinity in favor of more classical each exemplum in his Libro del conde Lucanor—al- orthography and accidence; the indirect consequence though autograph documents show that he himself was to clarify the conceptual distinction between this could write. But as increasing prosperity, leisure, and reformed ecclesiastical Latin and the Romance of new forms of privacy in the architecture of private everyday speech. Before long, therefore, we find texts houses provided the conditions for lay study, these oral consciously transcribed in the vernacular. In Catalonia substitutes for reading and writing began slowly to co- Homilies d’Organya` and a version of Forum iudicum exist, for the first time since antiquity, with the novel (both twelfth century) and in Navarre Fueros of Noven- practice of private (silent) reading. By 1440 invento- era (c. 1170) and Coro´nicas navarras (co. 1206), show ries of private libraries, evidence of lay patronage and that scribes turned to Provenc¸al for inspiration in authorship, and a large increase in the range of works

497 LITERACY available in the vernacular, as well the growing number Bibliography of manuscript copies, indicate the rise of what we may Berger, P. “La Lecture a` Valence de 1474 a` 1504. quelques properly call a lay reading public. Literacy, even in donne´es nume´riques.” Me´langes de la Casa de Vela´z- theory, was no longer thought of as the preserve of the quez 11 (1975), 99–118. clerici; a Jewish writer, R. Moshe Arragel of Guadala- Dı´azyDı´az, M. C. et al. Libros y librerı´as en la Rioja jara, noted in the 1430s that “la sc¸ienc¸ia e lengua lat- altomedieval. Logron˜o, 1979. ina” was so widespread that even “cavalleros e escud- MMM. Livre et lecture en Espagne et en France sous l’An- eros e c¸ibdadanos han dexado el puro castellano e con cien Re´gime: Colloque de la Casa de Vela´zauez. Paris, ello han mixto mucho latino” (Biblia de Alba, Pro´logo, 1981. V), while the Salamanca-trained canonist and bishop Lawrance, J. “The Spread of Lay Literacy in Late Medieval of Burgos Alfonso de Cartagena, in a Latin epistle to Castile,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 62 (1985), 79–94. the count of Haro around 1441, enthusiastically argued Sa´nchez Albornoz, C. “Nota sobre los libros leı´dos en el for the desirability of noblemen learning “the language reino de Leo´n hace mil an˜os.” Cuadernos de Historia of literacy which we call grammatical [that is, Latin] de Espan˜a 1–2 (1944), 222–38. speech” (idioma litterale quod grammatice locutionem uocamus—Haro himself, he informs us, learned Latin LITERARY THEORY AND POETICS in a school at the court of John II). Cartagena men- In the romance vernaculars of Iberia, the composition tioned as a matter of course that most knights pos- of poetic treatises began around 1200 with the desire to sessed “an abundant store of books”; his only concern codify and transmit the literary practices of the earlier was that their “unbridled passion for reading [made Occitan troubadours for the benefit of courtiers in the them] rush to read and hear any book, without discrimi- kingdom of Arago´n. Of the first group of six treatises, nation of subject-matter.” Cartagena’s solution was to the three most significant are Raimon Vidal’s Razos propose a discreet form of censorship; growing eccle- de trobar (c. 1200) Jofre de Foixa`’s Regles de trobar siastical opposition to lay literacy was to become a (c. 1286–1291), and Berenguer d’Anoya’s Mirall de feature of the age, beginning in 1434 with the cause trobar (early fourteenth century). Though they differed ce´le`bre of the burning of the libros vedados (chiefly in scope and emphasis, taken together these treatises of Arabic science and supposed “black arts”) in the offered grammatical instruction in Occitan (which was private library of the most learned man in Castile, the the poetic language of Arago´n until the later Middle nobleman Enrique de Villena, and culminating in at- Ages), and explained the form and function of the most tempts to suppress the vernacular versions of the Scrip- authoritative fixed verse forms, illustrated by examples tures that had hitherto flourished in Iberia (despite the from classical troubadours. There are also scattered ban on Bibles in Romancio imposed by the the Fourth remarks on the nature of poetry itself; for example, Lateran Council, 1215). But this belated clerical back- both Vidal and Foixa` claim the universality of poetry lash in defense of their monopoly of literacy was swept away by the last development in medieval literacy, the as a defining human activity (an idea that would resur- invention of the serially printed book. The first native face in Santillana’s writings, see below). However, the Iberian presses date from the early 1470s, and they primary theoretical underpinning of these treatises is issued nearly a thousand incunable editions, almost all that poetry is a rhetorical display of courtliness. in the vernaculars and frequently in runs of four Similar concerns are a feature of the fourteenth- hundred or more copies. By 1500 the archival evidence century treatises, associated with the “Poetic consisto- from wills of book ownership and the statistics of the ries” of Toulouse (1323 onward), Le´rida ([Lleida], book trade show that literacy (defined simply as the 1338) and Barcelona (1394 onward). These consisto- ability to read and write) was general among the upper ries were competitive assemblies designed to conserve aristocracy and urban patriciate (men and women), and regulate the traditions of Occitan troubadour verse common in the merchant classes of large cities, by within an orthodox moral and religious framework. no means unknown among humble artisans, and even The need to award prizes objectively generated poetic occasionally found among rural hidalgos and parish treatises that defined linguistic and metrical standards. priests. This gradual permeation of society by book- The largest, and most popular, of these was Guilhem culture through printing meant the end of the medieval Molinier’s vast grammatical Leys d’amors, which ex- clerical monopoly. Iberia, like the rest of preindustrial ists in three redactions (1328–1355), and among texts Europe, reached by 1520 the overall rate of literacy were a rhyming dictionary by Jacme March (1371), (perhaps 30 to 40 percent) that was to obtain, more or and the Torcimany (The Interpreter) by Lluis d’Averc¸o´ less unchanged, until the educational revolution of the (c. 1400), which, drawing on Molinier’s Leys and industrial nineteenth century. Johan de Castelnou’s Compendi, combines grammati- JEREMY N.H. LAWRANCE cal and metrical instruction with a rhyme dictionary.

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