Michael Harney Class Conflict and Primitive Rebellion in the Poema de Mio Cid The Poema de Mio Cid has frequently been characterized as a tale of class conflict within a hierarchically stratified society, with the Cid a representative of the lesser nobility (infanzones) in its struggle against the higher nobility (condes, ricos nombres). In an early study that set the tone for most subsequent treatments of social themes in the poem, Eduardo de Hinojosa enumerated the levels of the 12th-century social hierarchy, from the condes and ricos hombres ("nobles por excelencia"), through potestades and infanzones, down to the level of the ordinary caballero and escudero. Pointing out the poem's emphasis on the opposition between cuendes and infanzones (vv. 2072, 2964, 3479), he stressed elements which seem to indicate the presence of centralized political and military authority. The "subordination del soldado al caudillo," he observed, is evident in numerous lines (249, 376, 568, 806, 1853, 2278).1 In addition, he argued that vasallo is used not in the strictly feudal sense, but rather to indicate "el vínculo de los súbditos con el rey" (vv. 1847, 2905, 2948, 2982). Menéndez Pidal, influential on this as on many other topics, considers the principal theme of the poem to be one of a class

1Eduardo de Hinojosa, "El derecho en el Poema del Cid" in Homenaje a Menéndez y Pelayo (Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Suárez, 1899), 1: 541-55. The edition of the Poema used in this discussion is that of Ian Michael, Poema de Mio Cid, 2nd rev. ed. (Madrid: Castalia, 1984). The poem itself, as opposed to Michael's edition, is referred to throughout the article by the siglum PMC. Additional sigla, including some referring to journals infrequently consulted by literary historians: ARA (Annual Review of Anthropology); CHE (Cuadernos de Historia de España); CSSH (Comparative Studies in Society and History); IESS (International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills, 17 vols., New York: Macmillan, 1968); JIES (Journal of Indo-European Studies); MCS (Mio Cid Studies, ed. Alan Deyermond, London: Tamesis, 1977); P&P (Past and Present). 172 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 struggle between inferior nobles, the infanzones, and the "jerarquía superior de los ricos hombres." At the same time he allows for a fluidity of boundaries between the two classes: the daughters of infanzones often married into the families of ricos nombres, while the daughters of the latter could marry their children into the families of kings: "En esta intercomunicación surge el drama político y familiar de nuestro poema."2 Ubieto Arteta and Rodríguez-Puértolas, among many others, have accentuated class conflict in the PMC, seeking to demonstrate an anti-noble bias in the poem.3 Alternative class orientations have also been suggested. Ubieto Arteta and Rafael Lapesa, for example, agree on the possibility of a bourgeois viewpoint, or at least of a pro-bourgeois attitude on the part of the poet (although they disagree on the geographical origin of these sentiments).4 Still others have, following Hinojosa, emphasized the importance of social hierarchy in the work. Thomas R. Hart sees the Cid as an example of "Christian soldiership" in service of a social hierarchy which reflects the relationship between man and God. Roger M. Walker, in a study of the relationship between the king and the Cid, considers the poem to be about the restoration of a "natural hierarchical harmony."5 Yet another approach is that taken by María Eugenia Lacarra and Diego Catalán, who, while not denying the

2 Ramón Menéndez Pidal, En torno al Poema del Cid (Barcelona: E.D.H.A.S.A., 1963) 211-12.

3 Antonio Ubieto Arteta, El "Cantar de Mio Cid" y algunos problemas historicos (Valencia: Anúbar, 1973) 11-15; Julio Rodríguez-Puértolas, "El Poema de Mio Cid: nueva épica y nueva propaganda," MCS 149-53.

4 Ubieto Arteta, 11-15; 141-42; seconded by Joan Ramon Resina, "El honor y las relaciones feudales en el PMC," REH 18 (1984): 417-28, 427; see also Rafael Lapesa, Estudios de historia linguística española (Madrid: Colección Filológica Paraninfo, 1985) 32-33.

5 Thomas R. Hart, "Hierarchical Patterns in the CMC," RR 53 (1962): 162-64; Roger M. Walker, "The Role of the King and the Poet's Intentions in the PMC" Alan Deyermond, ed., Medieval Hispanic Studies Presented to Rita Hamilton (London: Tamesis, 1976) 260. See also Peter N. Dunn, "Levels of Meaning in the PMC," MLN 85(1970): 109-19. Harney / Mio Cid 173 presence of class confrontation and social hierarchy, emphasize the poet's response to the specific political background and environment of his time: the antipathies of the audience are directed not toward nobles as a class, but only to certain factions among the nobility. 6 While terms such as "class," "status," and "social mobility" are repeatedly encountered in the critical literature on the PMC, little reference has been made to the extensive sociological and anthropological literature on class structure and social stratification. In his bibliographic survey of PMC scholarship, Alan Deyermond confirms "the patchy state of scholarship" in the area of social mobility and related topics.7 Consultation of the literature in the social sciences suggests, surprisingly, that the traditional view of the poem as a dramatization of class conflict, and of its protagonist as a self-made man or social climber of the modern type, is in need of revision. Class conflict and social mobility do occur in the PMC, but are quite different from homologous phenomena in the modern context. While the society of the poem is not a simple egalitarian one, and does show elementary ranking and a rudimentary class awareness, it is not truly "class-stratified." This "pre-stratified" mentality is a valuable indicator of the poem's intended audience. The real social world contemporary to the historical Cid, and to the composition of the PMC, might well have exhibited the class structures described by Hinojosa and many others. However, as the present study will demonstrate, social classes in the modern sense are not found in this poem. To demonstrate this I will digress from

6 María Eugenia Lacarra, El Poema de Mio Cid: Realidad histórica e ideología (Madrid: Ediciones Jose Porrúa Turanzas, 1980) 134-57; Diego Catalan, "El Mio Cid: Nueva lectura de su intencionalidad política ," in José L. Melena, ed., Symbolae Ludovico Mitxelena Septuagenario Oblatae (Vitoria: Institute de Ciencias de la Antigüedad, 1985) 811; 813-19.

7 Alan Deyermond, "Tendencies in Mio Cid Scholarship, 1943-73," MCS 28. I am indebted to professors Joe R. Feagin and James Brow of the University of Texas, Departments of Sociology and Anthropology respectively. What is good social science in the following discussion is largely due to their generous help and advice; any inaccuracies, over-simplications, or faulty interpretations of anthropological and sociological concepts are, of course, the result of my imperfect mastery of those fields. 174 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 time to time in order to clarify such terms as "class," "status," "social stratification," and "social mobility," as they bear upon the PMC. In so doing I will need to summarize the opinions of numerous social scientists, no two of whom agree completely on the definition of the terms in question. The implied theoretical synthesis that emerges from this approach is designed not as a definitive treatment of these topics, but rather as the outline of a sociological reading of the poem. To begin with, it should be pointed out that "social class" is in many ways anachronistic when applied to the PMC or to any other medieval literary work. The term "class" did not come to take on the modern sense of "social group or division," with names for particular classes (e.g. lower, middle, upper) until the late eighteenth century. Nor did "class"—despite the influence of Marx and other social theorists— supplant older terms, such as "rank," "estate," "degree," and "order," until well into the twentieth century. It may in fact be argued that the development of "class" as an element in the sociological vocabulary is itself a symptom of the evolution of modem society; a term had to be invented or adapted to account for new social phenomena. The term is used to refer both to ranks or orders (e.g. "upper class," "middle class"), as well as to "effective economic groupings" (e.g. "bourgeoisie," "working 8 class"). However, the presence in the poem of named social categories, (e.g. fijos d'algo, infanzones, ricos omes, etc.) is undeniable. Do these terms refer to social classes in the sense either of "hierarchically ranked group" or of "effective economic grouping?" Although Marx assigned great importance to shared economic interests as a defining characteristic of social class, he also stressed the significance of psychological criteria. The Marxian concept of class has been summarized by Ossowski: An aggregate of people which satisfies the economic criteria of a social class becomes a class in the full meaning of this term

8 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976) 51-54. Harney / Mio Cid 175

only when its members are linked by the tie of class consciousness, by the consciousness of common interests, and by the psychological bond that arises out of common class antagonisms. Marx. . . (thus) makes a terminological distinction between Klasse an sich and Klasse für sich.... 9 Weber also approaches the problem of dividing social reality into two dimensions: "the social and the economic order." The latter he defines as "merely the way in which economic goods and services are distributed and used." Both orders reciprocally influence each other. "Classes" are, in his view, social groups set off one from the other by differing "market situation" (i.e., by differing access to goods, property, living conditions, etc.). Classes are thus not "communities" but only potential "bases for communal action." Such action—necessarily based on a sense of common interests and an awareness of "the connections between the causes and the consequences of a (shared) 'class situation'"—is by no means universal; more often than not it is "merely an amorphous communal action." Only when people achieve communal awareness of class situation do they "react. . . against the class structure not only through acts of intermittent and irrational protest, but in the form of rational association." Real class structure, moreover, only emerges from this "communalization": "The communal action that brings forth class situations. . . is not basically action between members of the identical class; it is an action between members of different classes."10 Like both Marx and Weber, Anthony Giddens accentuates the importance of social and psychological factors: ". . .if classes become social realities, this must be manifest in the formation of common patterns of behaviour and attitude." Within this process he distinguishes between "class awareness" and "class consciousness." The first "does not involve a recognition that these attitudes and

9 Stanislav Ossowski, Class Structure in the Social Consciousness, trans. Sheila Patterson (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963) 72-73.

10 Max Weber, "Class, status, party," in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans., eds., H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946) 183-88. Weber specifically defines social class, while Marx does not, a fact discussed by Ossowski, 71-74. 176 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 beliefs signify a particular class affiliation, or the recognition that there exist other classes, characterised by different attitudes, beliefs, and styles of life; 'class consciousness,' by contrast, . . . does imply both of these." This difference between "class awareness" and "class consciousness" is "fundamental," insists Giddens, "because class awareness may take the form of a denial of the existence or reality of classes." This denial, he affirms, can be observed in the "class awareness of the middle class, in so far as it involves beliefs which place a premium upon individual responsibility and achievement. ..." True class consciousness at the most "undeveloped" level "simply involves a conception of class identity and therefore of class differentiation." At a higher level (recalling Weber's "communalization") there is "a conception of class conflict: where perception of class unity is linked to a recognition of opposition of interest with another class or classes" [emphasis Giddens].11 A common denominator in the many divergent approaches to the problem of class and class identity is the assumption that the mere presence of shared economic circumstances ("market situation") does not constitute class. There must also be a "psychology of class." Richard Centers has described the effect of class sensibility on the personality: "... a man's class is a part of his ego, a feeling on his part of belongingness to something; an identification with something larger than himself." Maurice Halbwachs goes further, holding that social category determines individual conduct and motivation, and "stamps each category with such a peculiar and distinctive mark. . . that men of different classes... sometimes strike us as belonging to different classes of humanity."12

11 Anthony Giddens, "Class Structuration and Class Consciousness," in Classes, Power, and Conflict, eds. Giddens and David Held (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) 157-64 (from The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies, 2nd ed., London: Hutchinson, 1980, 105-17, 296-311). 12 Richard Centers, The Psychology of Social Classes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949) 27; Maurice Halbwachs, The Psychology of Social Classes (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958) 4. Both quoted by Robert A. Nisbet, "The Decline and Fall of Social Class," in Edward O. Laumann, Paul M. Siegel and Robert W. Hodge, eds., The Logic of Social Hierarchies (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1970) 570-71. Harney / Mio Cid 177

The additional factor of "consciousness of class interest" leading to political action allows class structure to emerge most fully. Summarizing the Marxian distinction between "classes in themselves" and "classes for themselves," Gerald Berreman speaks of social categories which are merely "analytically discernible" (by theorists and other observers), and those which are "bounded, self- aware interest groups." The question to be asked in connection to the PMC is whether we may detect only "analytically discernible" groupings (as we could, presumably, in any narrative from any society), or whether anything like fully developed class conscious- ness appears in the text.13 Whether or not we agree completely with the various psychological formulations summarized to this point, we cannot deny that some such symptoms of a "psychology of class" must be present in the text if we are to speak of "class conflict' (and various related factors such as social mobility) with regard to the PMC. Are there signs of a hierarchy of "bounded, self-aware interest groups?" Do the characters in the poem display a sense of "belongingness" to something bigger than themselves—a "something" we could reasonably define as "social class" in terms of communalization and inter-class confrontation as defined by Weber? Existence of such phenomena defines political sensibility in the modern sense: their presence in the poem would justify viewing the PMC as a tale of class conflict. On die other hand, an attitude of "every-man-for-himself," or at most of "amorphous communal action" and "intermittent and irrational protest" rather than "rational association," would indicate an "a-political," or "pre-political" mentality in the poet, and, presumably, in his audience. Despite its references to categories of persons, the poem does not reveal class structuration in the modern sense of that term.

13 Gerald Berreman, "Social Inequality: A Cross-Cultural Analysis," Intro, to Berreman, ed., Social Inequality: Comparative and Developmental Approaches (New York: Academic Press, 1981) 18-19. In his own summary of such writers as Marx, Weber, and Veblen, Seymour Lipset (in his article on "Social Class," IESS 15: 298-300) also assigns great importance to "conscious- ness of kind" in the definition of social class. 178 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

We may, of course, discern classes in the Weberian sense of societal segments based on "market situation" (these are present wherever "economy" is present) as, perhaps, in the distribution of spoils, which none of the Cid's men disputes ('Assí lo fazen todos, ca eran acordados,' 2488). However, there is little hint of class consciousness, let alone of class solidarity. For example, the scene in which the Cid embraces counts Anrrich and Remond, then invites them, along with all those taking his side in the dispute, to take as much as they like of riches (3495-504), is entirely in keeping with a "man-to-man," rather than a class-structured view of society. We would suspect that a truly class-conscious poet would not so readily depict friendship between the Cid and his nominal betters (the presumable class allies of the Infantes and their faction). María Eugenia Lacarra, exploring the historical, political, and institutional background of the poem, minimizes the role of anti- noble themes. She suggests that hostility in the poem is directed not at nobility in general, but rather at a specific noble family, that of the Beni-Gómez. While there was no historical rivalry between the Cid and this noble lineage, a patriotic Castilian poet of the late twelfth century would have had reason to denigrate the Beni-Gómez, ancestors of the pro-Leonese Castro family. Her findings would support the notion that the rivalry and conflict in the poem centers on the relationships between individuals (or between kin groups), not between social classes.14 Certainly if we take degree of acceptance or understanding of the ranking system as a measure of the "maturity" or "complexity" of a class hierarchical system, then the society depicted in the PMC (again, a separate dimension from the "real- life" world inhabited by its author and its audience) represents at best an "immature" or "rudimentary" stratification system. There is no "system-wide" acceptance of stratification by group, nor is deference toward the "upper classes" anywhere in evidence. The Cid's deference toward the king is a function of a relationship of "man-to-man," not "baronet-to-royalty." Absence of "class- determined" deference, on the other hand, is seen in the Cid's reluctance to form an alliance with the family of the Infantes (2082-

14 Lacarra 147-55. Harney/MioCid 179

2110) and in his contemptuous treatment of Count García Ordóñez (3281-90). 15 "Status" is another term inevitably used in reference to the career of both the poetic and the historical Cid. From its eighteenth- century (non-scalar) meaning of "rights, duties, capacities," status has come to be (somewhat problematically, notes Raymond Williams), through frequent sociological usage "a more precise and measurable term... [whose] real significance is that it is a new and modernizing term for rank (losing the inherited and formal associations of that term)." More recently the term has been used to designate the position of a person or group in relation to other similar entities within the same "social system." This implies "a competitive and hierarchical view of society." The term as used "has the double advantage of appearing to cancel class in the sense of formation or even broad group, and of providing a model of society which is not only hierarchically and individually competitive but is essentially defined in terms of consumption and display...."16 Additionally, one may distinguish between "non-scalar" or "non-evaluative" status (that is, referring to "a position in a social system") and "scalar" status (i.e., "implying evaluation"). Status in the first sense consists chiefly of the complex or set of attributed expectations, privileges, rights and duties determined, say, by one's position in a kinship network. "Scalar" status may refer to individual honor or prestige, or to those derived from one's membership in a group such as a race, caste, or social class (i.e., to one's "social standing"). This, notes Williams, is the preponderant modern usage of the term. "Membership" in this latter sense is determined by "culturally specific criteria of differential honor, prestige, and privilege."17 Both scalar and non-scalar status may be

15 See Edward A. Shils, "Deference," in The Logic of Social Hierarchies 420-48.

16 Williams, Keywords 252.

17 Berreman, "Social Inequality," 12-13. 180 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 ascribed or achieved, with achieved scalar-status the natural province of individual effort.18 Many writers on class and social stratification (and many of those writing about the PMC) tend to conflate the sense of "class" in the Weberian sense (as a function of "market situation") with what he called "status groups." For Weber, status groups (in contrast to classes) have a sense of communal interest and principles of group membership "determined by a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor." Although status distinctions are influenced by class distinctions in many ways, property of itself is not always a "status qualification"—in fact, "it normally stands in sharp opposition to the pretensions of sheer property. . . " (although "in the long run. . . and with extraordinary regularity" property does contribute to status honor). A vital component of status honor is "a specific style of life," along with "restrictions on social intercourse" and, in extreme cases, "complete endogamous closure." Stratification according to status groups is characterized by "monopolization of ideal and material goods or opportunities" and by a host of "honorific preferences" (vestimentary regulations, right to bear arms, etc.). Another element in the style of life appropriate to status honor is an aversion to "physical labor"—indeed, for "every rational economic pursuit, and especially 'entrepreneurial activity.'" These activities are "status disqualifiers" because they yield "mere economic acquisition and naked economic power." In the context of status stratification "all groups having interest in the status order react with special sharpness precisely against the pretensions of purely economic acquisition." Status honor "absolutely abhors that which is essential to the market: higgling." Indeed, "almost any kind of overt participation in economic acquisition is absolutely stigmatizing." Finally, in terms of the relationship between class and stratification, Weber declares that '"classes' are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods; whereas

18 Morris Zelditch ("Social Status," IESS 15: 250-57) notes that current usage tends toward scalar status as a synonym for "esteem, prestige, honor, respect." See also Ralph Linton's classic discussion of ascribed vs. achieved status in his The Study of Man (New York: Appleton-Century, 1936) 113-31. Harney / Mio Cid 181

'status groups' are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented by special 'styles of life.'"19 Do we see evidence in the PMC of "status groups" in the Weberian sense? While the Infantes certainly show themselves aware of a concept of "social estimation of honor," this awareness is not accompanied by notions of "communal interest" such as those described by Weber. The Infantes, like the Cid, live in a world still dominated by kinship. They view the conflict mainly as a confrontation between the Cid and the members of their clan, as we see from the poem's frequent mention of their collaboration with their parientes (2988, 2996, 3162, 3538-41). Thus "pretensions of sheer property" cannot be a "status disqualifier" in the PMC because there can be no question of the Cid's being "accepted" into the Infantes' "group," which is not a status group in the Weberian sense, but a kinship group in which membership is a matter of ascribed status. Neither do we see indications of a "specific style of life" monopolized by a given class, nor of stratification marked by "monopolization of ideal and material goods or opportunities." Likewise absent are "honorific preferences" such as vestimentary regulations. There is no evidence of the right to bear arms as the privilege of a single group. Certainly there is nothing like "complete endogamous closure": the idea for the Infantes' marriage to the Cid's daughters comes from the Infantes themselves (1888, 1901- 02). Classes in the Weberian sense (based on the relation to the production and acquisition of goods) are discernible. But to say that they are "stratified" is probably incorrect. There are two different economies at work in the poem. The Infantes' property appears to consist chiefly of land (as we see from their bride gift of villas in 2570). Cash, however, is in short supply: 'Averes monedados non tenemos nos,' they confess in 3236. Having spent the "tres mil marcos de plata" of the dowry, they are obliged to pay it back in kind (3240 ff.). The Cid's wealth, of course, is largely in averes monedados and movable goods. We may thus speak of variable

19 Weber 186-87; 190-92. 182 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

"styles of life," each marked by different modes of consumption. However, these life styles are not clearly stratified; they are merely different. We do find what might be construed as an aversion to physical labor and "every rational economic pursuit," especially "entrepreneurial activity." But that aversion is shared by both the Cid and his enemies. None of them can be expected to embrace lifestyles appropriate to a post-capitalist society which would not fully emerge for several more centuries. However the Cid's "mere economic acquisition and naked economic power," the result of his military success, are not taken lightly by his adversaries: they are both a cause for envy and a primary attraction in the Infantes' marital calculations. But the Infantes cannot regard the property they find so attractive as a "status disqualifier," nor can they react against "the pretensions of purely economic acquisition" (as pretensions to membership in their status group). They have no interest in a clearly established status order; there is no such order in the poem. Furthermore, as we will see in a moment, the Cid has no pretensions. His wealth is not a means to an end but an end in itself. He is certainly not seeking admission to any group of which the Infantes are members; for them he has absolute contempt. Moreover, the Cid engages in that which status honor "absolutely abhors," namely "higgling." In the person of his agent Martín Antolínez, the hero drives a very hard, shrewd (and dishonest) bargain in the negotiations with Raquel and Vidas (100- 190). He is, in other words, not at all afraid of bargaining or of "overt participation in economic acquisition," nor does he worry about the "absolutely stigmatizing" effects of such activities (in terms of any presumed social climbing intentions). However, as we will see, frank acceptance of the need to "earn one's bread," eagerness to acquire wealth and power, and emphasis on "individual responsibility and achievement " (Giddens's characterization of class awareness in the modern middle class) do not necessarily indicate a "bourgeois" attitude on the part of the poet. Conflict in the PMC is not among various status groups in the same stratified system, but rather between representatives of a rudimentary ideology of stratification by status group (the Infantes and their faction) and one of classless individualism (the Cid and his followers). The "status ideologues" espouse a system of ascribed Harney / Mio Cid 183 status honor as a function of birth-ascribed entitlement rather than personal achievement, as we see in the Infantes' declaration:

De natura somos de condes de Carrión deviemos casar con fijas de rreyes o de enperadores, ca non perteneçién fijas de ifançones (3296-98) They rationalize their conduct in the oakgrove of Corpes on the basis of what we would call their status honor: 'De nuestros casamientos agora somos vengados; non las deviemos tomar por varraganas | si non fuéssemos rrogados, pues nuestras pareias non eran pora en braces.' (2758-61) An indication of something approaching status group solidarity may perhaps be seen in the alliance between García Ordóñez and the Infantes (2997, 3007, 3160, and esp. 3720 ff.). As Colin Smith points out, there is no historical evidence "for the poetic alliance of this Castilian with the Leonese Vani-Gómez." 20 Of far greater importance in the PMC, however—in terms of a psychology of "group belongingness"—is the non-scalar status of kinship categories. Thomas Glick, in Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages, reports a trend in Northern Spain from the ninth century on, away from ancient Germanic bilateral kinship structures toward "a patrilocal, patrilineal, agnatic kinship system." The PMC, however, adheres to traditional Germanic kinship. Glick cites both the historical and the poetic Cid as examples of conservatism in matters of kinship. The presence in the Cid's mesnada of four nephews and the husband of his sister-in-law, Glick points out, clearly indicates retention of bilateral kinship.21 Despite historical inaccuracies (examples: Albar Albarez, historically the Cid's nephew, appears in the poem but is not

20 Colin Smith, ed., Poema de Mio Cid (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) Appendix I,167.

21 Thomas Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) 141-3. 184 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 recognized as the Cid's relative; Pero Vermúdez, described in the poem as a nephew, was not historically related to the hero), the presence of characters described as nephews (Pero, 2351; Félez Muñoz, 741) in the poetic Cid's mesnada appears to conform to very ancient patterns of avunculate and fosterage characteristic of Indo-European and Germanic bilateral kinship.22 Additional proof of immunity from any presumed trend toward agnation may be seen in the hint of a uxorilocal (i.e., "going- to-live-with-wife's-lineage") pattern of residence shown by the Infantes de Carrión. Uxorilocal residence as a regular occurence in a strictly patrilineal context has been characterized as "virtually non- existent."23 After their marriage to the Cid's daughters, the Infantes, clearly "marrying in" to their brides' lineage, stay in Valencia to live in the household of their father-in-law. There they are treated as members of the Cid's family (2270-73). The Cid declares: 'Mios fijos sodes amos quando mis fijas vos do' (2577). His solemn gift to them of the precious swords Colada and Tizón demonstrates that his words are no mere formula of welcome (indeed, even as such they would, as we will see shortly, carry much greater weight than in our society). The Cid has recruited sons (i.e., surrogate male heirs) into his family. This corresponds to ancient patterns of spousal recruitment still observable in some parts of the Indo- European world (e.g. rural France and Greece), and paralleled in other cultures as well. Retention of such practices, however, is by

22 For recent accounts of the Cidian entourage in history and in the poem, see Louis Chalon, L'Histoire et l'épopée castillane du Moyen Age: le Cycle du Cid, le cycle des comtes de Castille (Paris: Champion, 1976) 35-45, and AlessandroBarbero, "Lignaggio,famiglia ed entourage signorile nel CMC," Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore ai Pisa: Classe di Lettere e Filosofia 14 (1984): 45-117. On Germanic kinship, avunculate, and fosterage, see Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Manyon (2 vols., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961) 1: 137-41; Stephen B. Barlau, "Germanie Kinship," JIES 4 (1976): 97-129; Robert S.P. Beekes, "Uncle and Nephew," JIES 4 (1976): 43- 63; Jan Bremmer, "Avunculate and Fosterage," JIES 4 (1976): 65-75.

23 Edmund Leach, "Social Structure. The History of the Concept," IESS 14: 486. For a discussion of the complexities of residence patterns in cognatic societies see Robin Fox, Kinship and Marriage (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967) 156-63. Harney / Mio Cid 185 no means unique to "upper classes" (as Glick and others suggest), but is in fact common among the peasantries of the societies in which it occurs. 24 The poem's conservatism in matters of kinship illuminates its use of certain "relationship" terms. Marc Bloch observes that the most prevalent term for relatives, whether by blood or marriage, is "friend" (Fr. ami, Germ. Freund). D. A. Bullough confirms this use of amici and its vernacular derivatives as a synonym for propinqui, parentes. Thus, when Muño Gustioz declares to Assur González, 'Non dizes verdad [a] amigo ni a señor' (3386), he is very possibly using amigo as a synonm for pariente. Although the poem does not mention the fact that Muño was historically the Cid's brother-in-law, there is perhaps a hint that the poet was aware of this in 3388: 'en tu amistad non quiero aver rración.'25 In other contexts in the poem the word amigo is used to express relationships in the pseudo-kinship system of feudalism. The ties of vassalage, as Bloch demonstrates, constituted a kind of fictive kinship.26 This conforms to a pattern occurring in many societies. One uses the "idiom" of kinship to forge links in non- kinship contexts:

Kinship nomenclature always involves a symbolic process. In the escalation of kinship from a set of interpersonal relations to

24 Julian Pitt-Rivers, "Pseudo-Kinship," IESS 8: 409; Jack Goody, "Strategies of Heirship," CSSH 15 (1973): 3-20.

25 Bloch, Feudal Society 1: 123 ff.; D. A. Bullough, "Early Medieval Social Groupings: the Terminology of Kinship," P&P 45 (1969): 12. 26 Bloch, Feudal Society 1: 224-27. For cross-cultural studies of the concept of fictive- or pseudo-kinship, see Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, "Ritualized Personal Relations," Man 56 (1956): 90-95; and Pitt-Rivers, "Pseudo-Kinship," 408-13. The ".. .otros muchos que crió el Campeador" (2514) refers to vasallos de criazón, indicating another kind of extended fictive kinship. See Joseph F. O'Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975) 93. 186 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

the political order, kinship becomes a governing ideological element in the allocation of political power.27 A word like "friend," already functioning as a kinship term, was readily adaptable to the context of feudal relations, which were those of extended fictive kinship. In line 76 (where Martín Antolínez declares 'aún çerca o tarde el rrey querer me ha por amigo') and 1464 (the Cid refers to Avengalbón as "mio amigo... de paz;" see also 1479, 2636), we may detect a use of the word "friend" in a quite different sense from the modern meaning of "pal," "chum." It very probably functions as a synonym for "vassal." At the same time, we recall Hinojosa's observation that vasallo in the PMC is used not in the strictly feudal sense but rather as a virtual synonym for "subject of the king."28 The significance of the poem's notion of vassalage—in terms of class structuration—will be demonstrated shortly. Fred Eggan has noted that the "basic logic" of kinship terminology is that "particular terms do not imply a status position so much as a relationship: the use of a particular term implies its reciprocal." Thus "father" is a prompt for "son," and so on.29 If we assume that the terminology of feudal pseudo-kinship behaves in analogous manner, we have a clue to the meaning of the famous line 20 ('¡Dios, que buen vasallo, si oviesse buen señor!'), and a confirmation of Spitzer's interpretation of it. 30 The terms "vassal"

27 Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) 93.

28 Hinojosa, "El derecho en el Poema del Cid," 549-50.

29 Fred Eggan, "Kinship. Introduction," IESS 8: 392.

30 Leo Spitzer, "¡Dios, qué buen vasallo, si oviesse buen señor!," RFH 8 (1946): 132-36. For other opinions on this controversial line (in addition to those expressed in studies already referred to, as in Walker, "The Role of the King," and Dunn, "Levels of Meaning"), see Amado Alonso, "¡Dios, que buen vasallo! Si oviesse buen señor!," RFH 6 (1944): 187-91; Edmund de Chasca, "The King-Vassal Relationship in the PMC," HR 21 (1953): 183-92; Miguel Garci-Gómez, Mio Cid. Estudios de Endocrítica (Barcelona: Planeta, 1975) 62- 77; Joan Ramon Resina, "El honor y las relaciones feudales en el PMC," REH 18 (1984): 417-28. Barney / Mio Cid 187 and "lord" imply a kind of dyadic symbiosis: neither is complete or even meaningful without the other. We recall that the lord functioned as a pater familias within the pseudo-kinship network.31 The Cid is striving, therefore (in the context of the poem's feudalism, different from classical feudalism but employing the same vocabulary and apparently subject to the same logic of kinship terminology), not for any merely legalistic reinstatement, but rather to restore a precious personal relationship: that between vasallo and señor, as intense— perhaps more intense—as that between son and father. We see this intensity in the Cid's eagerness to know the king's reaction to the visit of the emissaries, Minaya and Pero Vermúdez. Hearing of their return, the Cid rides forth to meet them:

'¿Cómmo son las saludes de Alfonso mio señor? ¿Si es pagado o rreçibió el don?' Dixo Minaya: 'D'alma e de coraçón es pagado e davos su amor.' Dixo Mio Çid: '¡Grado al Criador!' (1921-25) The paternal aspect of the king's role is seen in Alfonso's arrangement of the marriage between the Cid's daughters and the Infantes (1886-93). The filial component of the vassal's role is the Cid's compliance, however reluctant, with the will of his lord in this matter:

'A Dios lo gradesco que del rrey he su graçia e pídenme mis fijas pora los ifantes de Carrión. Ellos son mucho urgullosos e an part en la cort, d'este casamiento non avría sabor, mas pues lo conseia el que más vale que nós, fablemos en ello, en la poridad seamos nós. Afé Dios del çielo que nos acuerde en lo miior.' (1936-42) In this passage the Cid expresses not only an eagerness for reconciliation, but—a factor which will take on particular importance later in the present discussion—a humble acceptance of Alfonso's authority. The Cid perceives this inequality in terms of man-to-man

31 Bloch, Feudal Society 1: 224-7. 188 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 relationships, not in terms of hierarchized social categories. His humility, moreover, is no mere rhetorical expostulation. At the vistas on the banks of the Tagus, the Cid speaks to Alfonso (2031- 32b) with the intensity of a son asking his father's forgiveness: 'Merçed vos pido a vós, mio natural señor, assí estando, dédesme vuestra amor, que lo oyan quantos aquí son.' The Cid's concern for the opinion of all those present at the vistas ('que lo oyan quantos aquí son') is an indication of the poem's concept of "status," in both the scalar and non-scalar sense. In a society dominated by traditional kinship categories, or by their feudalistic surrogations, "public opinion" plays a preponderant role. The meaning of "status" in such a context is summarized by Elman R. Service:

Very powerful forces of social control inhere in small face-to-face societies... where the individual normally spends his whole life among his kinsmen. Since escape is impossible he cannot recover by moving to some new group the esteem he might have lost by a social mistake in his own group. Cooperation, alliance, love, reciprocities of all kinds are totally important to the survival of any individual in primitive society. This must be why such people seem so extraordinarily sensitive to the reactions of the group to any social action. Praise and blame, affection and withdrawal, and other such socio-psychological sanctions are extremely powerful reinforcers in small societies of stable membership, and it has been noted over and over by many observers of egalitarian societies how carefully social customs, especially in etiquette, are observed—"custom is king."32 The above description, allowing for a context of extended fictive kinship, elucidates the behavior and motivations of the poetic Cid. His world is certainly a "face-to-face society," in which a man lives always among either his kinsmen or the members of the extended pseudo-kinship networks of feudalism and the warrior

32 Elman R. Service, Origins of the State and Civilization. The Process of Cultural Evolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975) 83. Harney / Mio Cid 189 band. The victim of malos mestureros, the Cid has been unjustly subjected to extreme "socio-psychological sanctions": he has been made the object of royal blame, has suffered the withdrawal of royal esteem and royal love. These sanctions are accompanied by the supreme punishment of expulsion from the group—always the ultimate penalty in traditional societies. Ascribed non-scalar status in the PMC thus consists of kinship categories and the pseudo-kinship categories of feudalism (as the poem portrays it). Ultra-conservative in terms of ascribed kinship status, the Cid assumes with equal seriousness, as we have seen, the roles of foster parent and father-in-law. He is also conservative on the issue of vassalage, not only in his relationship with his own lord, but in the relationship between himself and his own vassals. The severest penalties—confiscation of booty and death by hanging—are stipulated to insure that his followers take leave of him in the correct manner: véelo Mio Çid que con los averes que avién tomados que sis' pudiessen ir fer lo ien de grado. Esto mandó Mio Çid, Minaya lo ovo conseiado, que ningún omne de los sos ques' le non spidiés, o [nol' besás la ma[no], sil' pudiessen prender o fuesse alcançado, tomássenle el aver e pusiéssenle en un palo. (1249-54) It is significant that the Cid is not troubled by the departure of his troops (a modern general would say, by their desertion), but rather is concerned with what we would consider the "mere" etiquette of their leave-taking. Equally significant is the seventy of the penalties prescribed: confiscation of property and hanging as punishments for discourtesy would be unthinkable atrocities in a society for which courtesy is merely a question of manners, of the amenities. In the world of the poetic Cid, as in the societies discussed by Service, etiquette is all important and "custom is king." The Cid, equally rigorous in his observance of his own vassalic duties toward his lord, goes far beyond the letter of the law, in that he remains loyal even though his lord has unjustly severed the feudal bond. Consistently and with great formality the Cid reaffirms the pseudo-kinship categories of feudalism. This is dramatized in the scene where Alfonso seeks to honor the hero: 190 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

El rrey dixo al Çid: 'Venid acà ser, Campeador, en aqueste escaño quem' diestes vós en don; maguer que [a] algunos pesa, meior sodes que nós.' Essora dixo muchas merçedes el que Valençia gañó: 'Sed en vuestro escaño commo rrey e señor, acà posaré con todos aquestos míos. '(3114-19) Scalar or evaluative status is expressed in the poem by the term ondra. This is usually achieved status, as we see in the declaration of García Ordóñez: '¡Maravilla es del Cid que su ondra creçe tanto! / En la ondra que el ha nos seremos abiltados;' (1861-2). Similar examples are found in 1883 ('...creçremos en nuestra ondra e iremos adelant'), 1888 ('casar queremos con ellas a su ondra e a nuestra pro'), 1905 ('abrá y ondra e creçrá en onor'), and in numerous other places (1929, 1952, 2174, 2233, 3262, 3413, 3453, etc.). In most instances the term means "prestige," "honor," "respect," or "that which brings prestige or honor" (as in the sense of "doing honor" to someone, cf. 2852).33 In these instances, the term suggests not an ascribed attribute, but rather a variable personal quality subject not only to enhancement but to deterioration as well. For the Cid and his men (and, we may assume, for the author and his audience) ondra as achieved personal status accrues to the individual only, and is not transmissible to subsequent generations. Or, to be more precise, ondra consists of a lineal component (based on the deeds of heroic ancestors) and an individual component (based on one's own performance). One may take a legitimate pride in the ondra accruing to one's family from the actions of forebears. But every man is responsible for his own ondra in the second, individual sense, as we see in Alfonso's

33 In the introduction to his ed. (64-65) Colin Smith discusses the concept of ondra as status, and of desondra as "loss of face." Menéndez Pidal glosses ondra as "honra, gloria, esplendor" (numerous citations); as "honores ó demostración de respeto" (1280,1609, 3111); as "suceso honroso" (ironically in 2941; straightforwardly in 3400, 3421, 3439). See also his entries under ondrado, ondrança, and ondrar. Ramon Menéndez Pidal, ed., Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, rev. ed., 3 vols. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1944- 1946) 3: 775-76. Harney / Mio Cid 191

admonition to the Infantes before their combat with the Cid's champions: Si del campo bien salides, gran ondra avredes vós, e si fuére[de]s vençidos, non rrebtedes a nós, ca todos lo saben que lo buscastes vós.' (3565-67) The Infantes, however, perceive honor and prestige not as something achieved but only as a quality inherent to their ascribed kinship status. Sensing only dimly the concept of ondra enhanced by achievement, they think of increased honor in terms not of valorous deeds but of vicarious (and materially advantageous) participation in the Cid's glory, through marriage to the latter's daughters: 'Las nuevas del Cid mucho van adelant, demandemos sus fijas pora con ellas casar, creçremos en nuestra ondra e iremos adelant.' (1881-83) The most important component of their own personal ondra corresponds to what we would call "ascribed scalar status." They are what they are by birthright: podremos casar con fijas de rreyes o de enperadores, ca de natura somos de condes de Carrión. (2553-54) The poem implies that the Infantes and the members of their clan feel that they need do nothing to enhance the status already ascribed to them as members of their kinship group. Honor for them is a matter of birth-ascribed entitlement rather than personal achievement: although they may express jealousy at the increased ondra of the Cid, they do not understand the true meaning of honor as achieved status. The notion of ondra as inhering to the person as a function of group membership is reaffirmed by García Ordóñez, as he denies any wrongdoing by the Infantes in the Afrenta de Corpes:

Los de Carrión son de natura tal no ge las devién querer sus fijas por varraganas, o ¿quién ge las diera por pareias o por veladas? (3275-77) 192 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

Speaking for the Cid (as well, we may assume, as for the poet and his audience), Minaya Albar Fáñez declares, issuing his challenge to the Infantes: De natura sodes de los de Vanigómez onde salién condes de prez e de valor; mas bien sabemos las mañas que ellos han. (3443-45) While allowing that the deeds of illustrious ancestors may bring prestige to a lineage, Minaya reminds us that a man is nonetheless responsible for his own actions and his own personal honor. Again, the poet is quite aware of ondra as accruing to a lineage through the deeds of a heroic member: 'Oy los rreyes d'España sos parientes son, / a todos alcança ondra por el que en buen ora naçió' (3724-25). But to rely solely on this ascribed ondra for one's sense of personal honor, while behaving in a manner unworthy of one's ancestors—this is the supreme disgrace. The Infantes arrogate to themselves the ondra won by their ancestors, just as they seek to "get ahead" and "grow in honor" (1883, cited above) by partaking vicariously in the Cid's hard-won glory and riches. The poet subjects them to humiliation because they are unworthy men who live on the "borrowed" ondra of worthy ancestors and a worthy father-in-law. Closely linked to the poet's understanding of ondra is his sense of the term menos valer. 34 The meaningful outcome of the poem's climactic judicial combat is not any "legal" confirmation of menos valer in the juridical sense, but the biltança, the total loss of face, meted out to the Infantes and their clan: por malos los dexaron a los ifantes de Carrión, conplido han el debdo que les mandó so señor, alegre fue d'aquesto Mio Çid el Campeador. Grant es la biltança de ifantes de Carrión: (3702-05) After the combat, no mention is made of any punishment, which we would expect if menos valer were taken in the strictly

34 Glossed by Michael, ed., n. to 3268,3334, 3346, as "an accusation of dishonorable conduct." Harney / Mio Cid 193 legalist sense. Although defeated and thus convicted of being traidores, alevosos, and de menos valer, the Infantes are subjected to none of the severe penalties prescribed, by all the Fueros, for such grave offenses.35 To employ the jargon of the legalistic twentieth century, there is no "follow-up" to the case. That is because in the poem it is the humiliation, the biltança, that matters. The poem's humiliation of the Infantes illuminates one of the most frequently mentioned points of contrast between the PMC and other epics. This divergence of the poem from epic tradition is aptly summarized by Diego Catalán, who refers to the reproach often leveled at the poet: "...el haber abandonado la norma épica que exigía conceder a los traidores grandeza heroica, trágica, y haberlos empequeñecido hasta convertirlos en figuras cómicas."36 The poet's intention is to ridicule the Cid's opponents, not to exterminate them. The absence of formally prescribed punishment after the combat, and the emphasis on humiliation, are reminiscent of the mentality of "counting coup" encountered in many primitive societies. In such societies humiliating a live enemy is far more meaningful than wounding or killing him. The injury or "social demotion" that really

35 Chalon 168-70. Viewing menos valer as biltança, as I suggest that we must, makes a "legalist" interpretation of the poem exceedingly inappropriate: the poet may use an apparently "legal" vocabulary, but he is not thinking like a lawyer (in our modern, "professionalized" sense of that term), nor is he showing any particular regard for "legal realism" as we might construe it in a medieval context Colin Smith's theory that the PMC poet was a lawyer is expressed in his The Making of the Poema de Mio Cid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 74-86. Ruth Webber, countering Smith's theory, points out that the great legal compilations were not written down until much later in the thirteenth century; that Spanish law in the early thirteenth century was still local, customal, and orally transmitted; that a legal profession did not yet exist because "the whole community participated in judicial procedures, which were public, and decisions were oral;" that the sabidores and coñosçedores mentioned in the poem (3005, 3070, 3137) were simply "men who knew the law and whose responsibility it was to distinguish right from wrong." The legal knowledge displayed by the poem is no more than what "an alert minstrel would have routinely acquired during the course of his wanderings." See Webber, "The Cantar de Mio Cid: Problems of Interpretation," in John Miles Foley, ed., Oral Tradition in Literature (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1986) 85.

36 Catalán 809. 194 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 matters, in this context, is the loss of face.37 Another depiction of "counting coup" occurs in the poem's reference to "beard-pulling" (an additional sign, be it noted, of the importance of etiquette and breaches thereof). In the Cid's mocking reminder (3284-90) of the incident in Cabra, when the Cid himself and many others present ('non í ovo rrapaz que non messó su pulgada') pulled the count's beard, we see depicted a far more telling vengeance than any mere act of violence. That which pertains to a man by ascription—his non-scalar kinship status—is inmutable, hors de combat. That which pertains to him by achievement—his ondra—is all that he can call his own. To lose it as completely as the Infantes do is to be stripped of everything "loseable" in the way of personal status.

-o-oOo-o- Here we may examine, in additional clarification of the poem's notion of "status," another aspect of the hero's career, namely that of his apparent "social mobility." Whatever the specific approach to issues of class conflict and social hierarchy in the PMC, critics and scholars have tended to view the poetic Cid as a "self- made man" who rises from the condition of disgraced, impoverished exile and outcast to that of ruler over a kingdom of his own, the equal of the monarchs into whose families his daughters marry. In light of the poem's notions of class and status, may we in fact characterize the Cid as a practitioner of social mobility in the modern sense? In the highly stratified society of modern type, characterized by an ideology of membership in hierarchized class groups, ranking is by behavior and attributes (income, occupation, life style, etc.). A concommitant of such a system is the possibility of mobility between ranked groups: if one acquires the appropriate behavior and attributes, as well as consensus acceptance by the target group, one may "move into" the class of which the behavior and attributes are indicators (although, as we shall see, fully recognized membership in the new group may accrue not to the social climber himself but to his descendants). In a "birth-ascribed" system of ranking, by

37 Elman R. Service, Profiles in Ethnology (New York: Harper and Row, 1963) 123. Harney / MioCid 195 contrast, "one behaves and exhibits attributes in accord with his rank."38 Berreman explains the contrast between class systems and birth-ascribed ranking systems (such as the Indian caste system) in the following terms: in class systems individual mobility is "legitimate," although usually difficult. In birth-ascribed systems social mobility is "explicitly forbidden." Class systems "prescribe the means to social mobility; systems of ascribed rank proscribe them." In birth-ascribed ranking systems "the strata are named, publicly recognized, clearly bounded." In a class system "individuals regard themselves as potentially able to change status legitimately within the system through fortune, misfortune, or individual and family efforts."39 Paradoxically, it is the presence of hierarchy and class stratification which permits social mobility: where there is no ladder, there can be no climb (or descent). In the terminology developed by Sorokin, the pioneer of systematic analysis of social mobility, there must be a "social space" within which the individual can move "up" or "down."40 This is not to say that stratified social hierarchy automatically implies social mobility (it does not in the birth-ascribed Indian caste system). But, while stratification does not necessarily imply social mobility, the latter phenomenon can only occur in a context of class stratification.41 In a stratified class system group categorization is rigid, while group membership is not. One may achieve, as it were, a reclassification of ascribed status. This is the case of the modern social climber popularized in such works as John Brain's Room at the Top and the film based on it. The essential thing here is that the

38 Gerald D. Berreman, "Race, Caste, and other Invidious Distinctions in Social Classsification," Race 13 (1972): 398-99.

39 Berreman, "Race, Caste," 398-99.

40 Pitirim A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Mobility (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959) 3-19,133-63.

41 Herbert Goldhamer, "Social Mobility," IESS 14: 429-38; Anthony Heath, Social Mobility (London: Fontana, 1981) 78-106,167-92, 224-46. 196 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 social climber enjoys increased status not for his personal qualities, nor for the prodigious exploit of getting where he gets, but for the new status itself. Even then it is often not the climber himself but his descendants who benefit from the change of status, in terms of recognized "membership" in the new class:

Precisely because of the rigorous reactions against the claims of property per se, the 'parvenu' is never accepted, personally and without reservation, by the privileged status groups, no matter how completely his style of life has been adjusted to theirs. They will only accept his descendants who have been educated in the conventions of their status group and who have never besmirched its honor by their own economic labor.42 Social mobility, in terms of meaningful reclassification of status, occurs in many societies and historical contexts. There is ample evidence, for example, that in the "real world" of the Spanish and European middle ages, incipient stratification and social mobility were present, and even, in some cases, prevalent. More often than not, however, social mobility, particularly in "kin-ordered" societies, is of an "intergenerational" type such as that analyzed by Weber. Moreover, real-life instances of social mobility were characterized by an obsession with the terminology of class—with being granted recognition of such titles as caballero and hidalgo.43

42 Weber 192.

43 For cross-cultural discussions, see Judah Matras, "Comparative Social Mobility," AnnRevS 6 (1980): 401-31; Frank Cancian, "Social Stratification," ARA 5 (1976): 227-48; Raymond T. Smith, "Anthropology and the Concept of Social Class," ARA 13 (1984): 467-94. Bloch, Feudal Society 2: 320-25, discusses the resistance of the European nobility of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to admission into its ranks of descendants of non-nobles. He also describes both the growing (and irresistible) numbers of those seeking noble status, and customal and legislative methods of regulating admission to knightly status: "... the evolution of legal opinion during the feudal period tended much less to impose a strict ban on new admissions than to subject them to rigorous control" (322). See also Edouard Perroy, "Social Mobility among the French noblesse in the Late Middle Ages," P&P 21 (1962): 25-38; W. G. Runciman, "Accelerating Social Mobility: the Case of Anglo-Saxon England," P&P 104 (1984): 3-30. For the Spanish context see Carmela Pescador, "La caballería popular en León y Castilla," CHE 33-34 (1961): 101-238 (follow-up articles in Harney / Mio Cid 197

Referring to the "special conditions" of early medieval Spanish frontier society, Guglielmi speaks of an almost "exclusive" trend toward "movilidad vertical ascensional."44 At the same time she notes, somewhat contradictorily, that the Cid of the poem does not really change his status:

El Cid logra una posición eminente, un encumbramiento que lo aleja de su primitive status, aunque no lo modifique... el Cid continua siendo el primitive hidalgo, es decir, ocupa siempre el grado más humilde de la jerarquía nobiliaria. Han aumentado, sí, considerablemente, su prestigio y su riqueza que le permitirán el cambio de status.45 María Eugenia Lacarra, disputing the conventional "democratic" vision of the PMC's social world, suggests that the

CHE, nos. 35-36 [pp. 56-201] , 37-38 [88-198], 39-40 [169-260]); María del Carmen Carle, "Infanzones e hidalgos," CHE 33-34 (1961): 56-100; José María Lacarra, "En torno a la propagación de la voz 'hidalgo,'" in Homenaje a Agustín Millares Carlo (Gran Canaria: Caja Insular de Ahorros de Gran Canaria, 1975) 2: 43-53; Reyna Pastor de Togner, Conflictos sociales y estancamiento económico en la España medieval (Barcelona: Ariel, 1973); Maria del Carmen Carlé, "Caminos del ascenso en la Castilla bajo-medieval," CHE 65-66 (1981): 207-76; Susana Royer de Cardinal, "Tensiones sociales en la baja edad media española," CHE 65-66 (1981): 277-358. For a literary example of the obsession with social mobility as social reclassification and recognition of titles, see El libra del cauallero Zifar (ed. Charles Philip Wagner, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1929). In that work (composed early in the fourteenth century), we have a good deal of class-conscious, "status-affirming" dialogue of a type wholly alien to the PMC, as in the exchange between Zifar and the gatekeeper of Galapia ("'Amigo, sodes fidalgo?' 'Çertas sy,' dixo el Cauallero Zifar. 'E sodes cauallero?' 'Sy,' dixo el," p. 43); that between Grima and the man who comes aboard her ship ('"E vos sodes cauallero?' dixo ella. 'Çertas,' dixo el, 'non.' E por ende non se quiso leuantar a el."); that between the queen of Menton and Grima ('"Sodes dueña fija dalgo?'... 'Çertas señora... sy so...,'" p. 175-76); and many other instances too numerous to cite.

44 Nilda Guglielmi, "Cambio y movilidad social en el CMC" Anales de Historia antigua y medieval 12 (1963-64): 44 n6.

45 Guglielmi 53. 198 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

Valencian society founded by the Cid is at least as hierarchic as that of Castile and León.46 Only the perpetual warfare of the frontier, she affirms, allows for a greater social mobility. At the same time, she observes—correctly—that this social mobility does not extend to a change of one's "estamento jurídico." In her view, the primary characteristic of the poem's social mobility

...es que... la adquisición de bienes por medio del esfuerzo propio es la base de la movilidad social, sin que se altere la condición jurídica de los estamentos. En la [sociedad] de Alfonso, por el contrario, hay una resistencia a la movilidad expresada por una minoría de nobles poderosos que se oponen al cambio por méritos personales.47 While she is right in denying the poem a "democratic" mentality (democracy being, I would think, an anachronism in a medieval context), she over-emphasizes the hierarchical structure of the society depicted in the poem (whether in León-Castile or in Valencia). The inequalities observed in the Cid's group are those to be expected in a context of raiding warrior bands governed by a lord viewed by his followers as a war leader, provider, and pater familias. In this context of kinship and fictive kinship, honor of position in battle and preference in the distribution of booty are the chief indicators of ranking. Presumably, honor earned in battle will distinguish some men more than others. But each must continue to show himself worthy of honor earned. Each man, meanwhile, sees himself not as a member of one group among many stratified groups ("social classes"), but as the vassal of the Cid. This was seen in the reference to the requirement that each and every member of the besieging army is expected to kiss the Cid's hand in proper observance of the ritual of vassalic leave-taking. We remember as well Hinojosa's observation that "vassal" was a synonym of "royal subject." There is, then, inequality and hierarchy in this society, but it is not organized in "layered" groups. It is a person-to-person inequality, subject-to-

46 Lacarra 115-16; 160-63.

47Lacarra l63. Harney/Mio Cid 199 king, vassal-to-lord, implicitly based on the model of kinship relations. The PMC's society is thus neither class-structured, nor organized along lines of hierarchized birth-ascribed groupings or of social classes. The principal relationships and confrontations in the poem are between individuals or between kin groups. In the final scenes of the poem, for example, the Infantes consult with their parientes (2988, 2996), not simply with other ricos omes. The readiness of García Ordóñez to counsel them in 2997 perhaps shows, as suggested earlier, a hint of incipient status-group solidarity. On the other hand, the count's hatred of the Cid—a man- to-man grudge if ever there was one—is a logical motive for his collaboration with the Infantes. Lacarra's findings, which do not substantially contradict the classic view of the relatively open frontier society of medieval Spain, are in essential agreement with mine, if we take "social mobility" to mean simply improved material circumstances, accompanied by enhanced personal prestige, and providing a potential basis for inter-generational mobility.48 In sociological terms, however, social mobility in the fullest sense only occurs when there is a change of recognized status (in the sense of "recognized social standing"). This change, as both Guglielmi and Lacarra accurately observe, does not occur in the PMC. The famous line 1213 (los que fueron de pie caualleros se fazen') would seem at first reading to indicate social mobility: peons become knights. But it is more properly viewed, when taken into consideration with the other social factors discussed so far, as straightforward "occupational" mobility, as simple military promotion dictated by the fortunes of war. Again, as Lacarra points out, this promotion is not accompanied by juridical reclassification of status. Similarly, the increase in the Cid's wealth and personal prestige does not constitute "social mobility" in the modern sense of

48 For a highly influential expression of the frontier theory, see Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, España: un enigma histórico, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1956) 2: 77 ff. See also Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire (London: MacMillan Press, 1977 47-50; Glide, Islamic and Christian Spain 154-60. 200 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

"social reclassification." He himself is aware of increased ondra and; of a progression "from rags to riches:"

'¡Grado a Dios que del mundo es señor! Antes fu minguado, agora rrico só, que he aver e tierra e oro e onor e son mios yernos ifantes de Carrión.'(2493-96) The Cid is quite conscious, then, of real and spectacular improvement in his circumstances. However, as noted earlier, he himself rejects the opportunity to overstep his status as vassal. At the end of the poem he remains an infanzón and aspires to nothing more. In the context of the traditional kinship that appears to pertain in the poem, his exultation at the marriage of his daughters to the Infantes is perhaps not so much at the "upward-bound" nature of the match from the viewpoint of the girls, but on the mere fact of having recruited sons-in-law. A social climbing father-in-law would never have shown reluctance at the marriage in the first place and would, moreover, have placed great emphasis on the alliance between the two families. This the Cid does not do. Above all, two vital traits of the arriviste—the intention of arriving in a new status group, and the awareness of having arrived—are absent. The Cid's improved standing is "analytically discernible" in terms of real gains in money, power, and security. But it is not recognized or understood as social mobility in the complete sense by either the Cid or his community. The historical Cid's marriage to Jimena was indeed "upward bound." The great-granddaughter of Alfonso V of León, she was thus Alfonso VI's second cousin. Here we might have made a case for social climbing by marriage. But, as Chalon rightly points out, if the poet knew of this prestigious connection to the royal family, he almost certainly would have the Cid mention it when the Infantes and Ordóñez impugn the social standing of the Cid's daughters (3276-77, 3296-3300, 3354-56).49 The poem thus gives no hint that the Cid has improved his socially recognized status through his own marriage.

49 Chalon 22. Harney / Mio Cid 201

The poem's concept of social mobility is most completely conveyed in a famous passage treating of the second marriages of the daughters: fizieron sus casamientos con don Elvira e con doña Sol. Los primeros fueron grandes, mas aquestos son miiores; a mayor ondra las casa que lo que primero fue. ¡Ved cuál ondra creçe al que en buen ora naçió, cuando señoras son sus fijas de Navarra e de Aragón. Oy los rreyes d'España sos parientes son, a todos alcança ondra por el que en buen ora naçió. (3719-25) The above passage depicts a long-term, inter-generational mobility (vicarious from the viewpoint of the instigator) suggestive of the pattern analyzed by Weber. This phenomenon is not uncommon in traditional societies, in which social mobility, in so far as it is perceived at all, is regarded as a benefit to the lineage, of whose honor the individual is considered a caretaker.50 In this also the poem remains conservative and "pre-political." Prestige does accrue to the Cid through the "good marriage" of his offspring, and to the kinship group he represents. However honor in the fullest sense, honor as an exalter of lineages, must be earned through heroic deeds. The flow of prestige is thus less from the kings who are the Cid's eventual descendants, than from him to them. It is they who benefit from membership in a lineage exalted by the exploits of an illustrious ancestor. 'A todos alcança ondra por el que en buen ora nacicó,' says the poem. With his usual perspicacity, Menéndez Pidal points out that the Cid does not wish a marital alliance with the higher nobility, nor does he himself aspire to membership in "la nobleza de linaje": "No le puede honrar el emparentar con reyes; los que se honran son los reyes...."51 Once again I must emphasize the discontinuity between the social reality in which the poet and his audience lived, and the social universe of the poem. The poet, conscious of "real-world" social

50 Roger Pearson, "Some Aspects of Social Mobility in Early Historic Indo-European Societies," JIES I (1973): 155-62.

51 Menéndez Pidal, En torno al Poema del Cid 212-13. 202 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 inequality and of what we would call incipient class structuration, had not the advantage of having read Marx and Weber. He could use the vocabulary of class distinctions without fully comprehending its sociological implications. Thus he conveys the Cid's awareness of making a good match for his daughters: 'De grandes nuevas son los ifantes de Carrión, / perteneçen pora mis fijas e aun pora meiores' (2084-85). Yet even as the Cid assures his daughters that he has found them excellent husbands ('¡gradídmelo, mis fijas, ca bien vos he casadas!' 2189), he shows himself apologetic, subject to profound misgivings: 'd'este vu[e]stro casamiento creçremos en onor, / mas bien sabet verdad que non lo levanté yo;' (2198-99). Here onor; means not "honor," but "property": the Cid accentuates the material benefits to his lineage (note the first person plural creçremos), even as he pronounces a disclaimer, attributing sole responsibility for the marriage to Alfonso (2200-2204). A truly class-conscious, social climbing father would not express such scruples: for such a father, a good match for his daughters is itself an achievement. But the Cid, a man of "kin-ordered," "pre-class" sensibility, can only feel uneasy at the prospect of an imposed alliance between his lineage and that of his enemies. Social mobility, then, does occur in the PMC, but is of a traditional, inter-generational type. While there is "analytically discernible" enhancement of material circumstances and personal prestige, individual social mobility in terms of recognized change in status group membership—such as that found in modern class- stratified societies—does not take place. The society of the poem is therefore not class-structured in the modern sense (since social mobility in the "complete" sense is diagnostic of such class structuration). On the other hand, it is not a society of primordial egalitarianism. How then may we characterize the poem's approach to social inequality? The distinction is often made between relatively simple "pre- state" or "stateless" societies, and the more complex, territorially centralized, bureaucratic societies associated with nation states.52 There is, as Berreman phrases it, a "watershed" difference "between

52 Lawrence Krader, Formation of the State (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968) 11-28; Aidan Southall, "Stateless Society," IESS 15: 157- 68; Elman R. Service, Origins of the State and Civilization 47-102. Harney / Mio Cid 203 stratified and nonstratified societies; between state and non-state." Social inequality in the state is based not on dyadic contrasts but on membership in hierarchized categories which are "differentially powerful, esteemed, and rewarded." These systems of "collective social ranking" possess various sorts of "ideological support systems" and show great variety in the "distinctiveness, number and size of the ranked categories."53 The contrast between the two types of society is embodied in perceptions of social inequality. In the stateless or "pre-state" context, affirms Lloyd Fallers, "thought and action about inequality center much more upon interpersonal relations of superiority and inferiority." Inequality in non-Western (or pre-modern) societies is expressed not through class membership but through dyadic (i.e., person-to-person) relationships.54 Morton H. Fried has suggested a three-stage evolution from relatively egalitarian societies, through what he calls "ranked societies," to the thoroughly hierarchical "stratified society."55 "Ranked society" falls, in his model, in an intermediate zone in the "inequality spectrum" running from absolute (and thus fictive) egalitarianism to absolute stratification (as in. an idealized caste system). In this classification of societies, Fried suggests— emphasizing the mildness of the transition from egalitarian society to ranked society—that it is the ranked society which is most

53 Berreman, "Race, Caste," 385-86. He suggests a three-stage development, with an intermediate phase he characterizes as one of "kin/role ranking." In such a context "ranking depends on position in the kin system," as well as on religious or military roles (Berreman, "Social Inequality," 9-10). For another approach and additional discussion of the evolution from egalitarian society through various stages to the complex society of the advanced state, see Lucy Mair, Primitive Government, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth and Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964) 35-122. 54 Lloyd A. Fallers, Inequality: Social Stratification Reconsidered (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973) 29.

55 Morton H. Fried, "On the Evolution of Social Stratification and the State," in Stanley Diamond, ed., Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) 713-31; The Evolution of Political Society (New York: Random House, 1967) 27-196. See also his article on "State. The Institution," IESS 15: 143-50. 204 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 dominated by kinship classifications. Egalitarian, or "band" society, subscribes to an ideology of co-residence; stratified society is dominated by an ideology of class and bureaucratically administered territory.56 The medievalist seeking a clearer understanding of depictions of the social world in literary works need not subscribe to (usually controversial) theories of social evolution. Most of these imply a progression from simplicity to complexity, or a governing mechanism such as the dichotomy differentiation/integration (to cite an influential concept proposed by Talcott Parsons). The latter concept is among those listed by Charles Tilly as the "Eight Pernicious Postulates of twentieth-century social thought." Other items in the list include the notion of societies as autonomous entities, the idea of social change as a "coherent general phenomenon," and the concept of large-scale social change as "a succession of standard stages, each more advanced than the previous stage."57 However it is possible to avoid Tilly's "pernicious postulates" and still make use of some elements of the conceptual apparatus offered by Fried and other social evolutionists. The social configurations described—as opposed to the interpretations based on them—derive from well documented anthropological observations. It is the evolutionist interpretation that chiefly provokes controversy. The "phases" described in social evolutionary studies may, after all, correspond to real mentalities and real social practices. These may characterize not "system-wide"

56 Fried, The Evolution of Political Society 102-108.

57 Talcott Parsons's highly influential (and provocative) theory of social evolution is summarized in the collection The Evolution of Societies, ed. Jackson Toby (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1977). See Toby's intro., 1-23. See also (especially) chapters 2 ("Primitive Societies: the Emergence of Social Stratification") and 9 ("The Central Problem of Modern Societies: Integration"). For Tilly's recent critique of the theory of social evolution as a dynamic of integration/differentiation, see his Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984) 10-13. Social evolutionary theory has also been extensively critiqued by (among many others) Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History: Aspects of the Western Theory of Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). His approach has been answered by Gerhard Lenski, "History and Social Change," American Journal of Sociology 82 (1976): 548-64. Harney / Mio Cid 205 stages in the development of a problematic "total society," but rather social and economic attitudes and practices in given segments of society. These attitudes and practices may be contemporary to other, apparently more "advanced" or "complex" sets of attitudes and practices within other social segments. The social world of the PMC does not seem to have crossed the threshold between stratified and non-stratified societies, between "state and non-state." As in Fried's model of the intermediate level or "ranked" society, kinship (and its surrogate forms) is the dominant factor. Inequality in the poem is expressed, as we have seen, not through membership in status groups or social classes, but through dyadic relationships of authority/obedience (between the Cid and the members of his family and entourage; between the Cid and the men under his command; between the king and the Cid) or of personal superiority/inferiority (between the Cid and his enemies). The latter kind of inequality is indicated by the achieved status of personal honor. Thus we may detect signs of a system of ranking in the poem, but not of the hierarchized stratification—with its many legal, institutional, and political implications—which typifies the modern state. The struggle between the Cid and his adversaries only adumbrates the state-stratified society. The poem shows only a vague awareness of "monarchy," "administration," "bureaucracy," or—most significantly of all—"law and order" and "centralized nation state." There is, for instance, no hint of an interiorized "law of the land" that the Beni-Gómez feel constrained to obey. Alfonso must personally guarantee the safety of the Cid's champions (3476-79), spiriting them away by night after their victory (3698-99), for fear of violence from the Beni-Gómez clan. What we would call the "cruel and unusual" penalties prescribed for seemingly minor offenses are further indication of a very poorly interiorized sense of civil obedience in the inhabitants of the poem's social universe: the burgesses of line 17 are threatened with losing not only property but "los ojos de la cara" (27) if they give shelter to the Cid. The Cid, otherwise a father to his people, must, as we have seen, threaten confiscation of booty and hanging in order to insure that his followers take their leave of him in the correct manner (1251-54). Again, the mentality we may construe from these features of the narrative does not necessarily correspond to any phase in the development of Spanish society. Rather it reflects what we have 206 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 referred to above as a "pre-political" mentality. Dominated by traditional kinship, by feudal pseudo-kinship, and by notions of personal honor, this set of attitudes represents the naive sensibility of the common people, uninfluenced by coherent ideological agendas. Tolerant of inequality among men as an element of the human condition, but profoundly intolerant of injustice and its perpetrators, it is a complex of attitudes that can endure for centuries, co-existing with the centralizing, hierarchical, legalistic mentalities that "officially" define the encompassing society.

-o-oOo-o- This pre-political mentality is that of the populations which support Hobsbawm's "primitive rebellion" in its various real-life guises (e.g. "social banditry") and form the primary, or at least the most appreciative, audience for fictional and folkloric portrayals of primitive rebellion, especially of social banditry—the most individualistic, the "most primitive" and "least ambitious" of primitive social movements.58 Social banditry and analogous

58 The following discussion of primitive rebellion in the PMC is based on: E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels. Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965) 1- 29; Bandits, rev. ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981) 17-57; "Peasants and Politics," Journal of Peasant Studies 1 (1973): 3-22; "Social Banditry," in H. W. Landsbergen, ed., Rural Protest. Peasant Movements and Social Change (London: MacMillan, 1974) 142-57. For differing views on banditry and primitive rebellion as they find expression in the legend of Robin Hood, see R. H. Hilton, "The Origins of Robin Hood," P&P 14 (1958): 30-44; Maurice Keen, "Robin Hood, A Peasant Hero," History Today 8 (1958): 684-9; "Robin Hood—Peasant or Gentleman?" P&P 19 (1961): 7-15; The Outlaws of Medieval Legend (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), esp. chaps. 1 and 8-12; J. C. Holt, "The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood," P&P 18 (1960): 89-110; "Robin Hood. Comments," P&P 19 (1961): 16-19; also chaps. 2, 3, 4, and 6 of his Robin Hood (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982); T. H. Aston, "Robin Hood," P&P 20 (1961): 7-9; J. B. Bessinger Jr., "Robin Hood: Folklore and Historiography, 1377-1500," Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 61-9; D. Parker, "Popular Protest in 'A Gest of Robyn Hode'," Modern Language Quarterly 32 (1971): 3-20; R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, "The Medieval Origins of the Robin Hood Legend: A Reassessment," Northern History 8 (1972): 1-30; Dobdon and Taylor, eds., Rymes of Robyn Hood. An Introduction to the English Outlaw (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), esp. their intro., 1-67; J. R. Maddicott, "The Birth and Settings of the Harney / Mio Cid 207 phenomena are modest and exceedingly non-programmatic: their aim is not revolution or "a new and perfect world," but rather "a traditional world in which men are justly dealt with." Little more than an expression of "endemic peasant unrest against oppression and poverty," social banditry focuses on "vengeance on the rich and the oppressors," and the "righting of individual wrongs."59 Social banditry, states Hobsbawm, is concerned with "the defence or restoration of the traditional order of things 'as it should be.'"60 Maurice Keen, characterizing the mentality of the peasant audience of the Robin Hood ballads, affirms that such an audience resents not social inequality in general, but "the abuse of official or social position." The peasants, he maintains, "did not see their grievances in economic or systematic terms; they saw them rather in the personal viciousness of individual lords."61 Like the ballads of Robin Hood, the PMC is about the conflict between the defender of a disrupted order and disrupters of

Ballads of Robin Hood," English Historical Review 93 (1978): 276-99; John Bellamy, Robin Hood. An Historical Enquiry (London: Croom Helm, 1985), esp. chaps. 1, 2, and 5. For broader treatments of banditry and primitive rebellion, including critiques of Hobsbawm (covering topics whose controversial aspects cannot be resolved in the present study), see A. Blok, "The Peasant and the Brigand: Social Banditry Reconsidered," CSSH 14 (1972): 494-503, and Pat O'Malley, "Social Bandits, Modern Capitalism and the Traditional Peasantry: A Critique of Hobsbawm," Journal of Peasant Studies 6 (1979): 489-501. For Hobsbawm's reply to Blok see "Social Bandits. Reply," CSSH 14 (1972): 503- 5. See also the postscript to Bandits (esp. 139-56), in which Hobsbawm answers Blok, O'Malley, and others. For banditry in other historical contexts, consult Brent D. Shaw, "Bandits in the Roman Empire," P&P 105 (1984): 3-52. One of the main criticisms aimed at Hobsbawm is his failure to distinguish clearly between social realities in past societies and depictions of primitive rebels in literature and folklore. He himself, however, has in fact repeatedly underlined the need to distinguish between the fictive and the real-world dimensions. Moreover, the patterns and themes he discusses are undeniable factors in the literary and folkloric texts to which he refers.

59 Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels 5.

60 Hobsbawm, Bandits 26.

61 Keen, "Robin Hood—Peasant or Gentleman?" 8. 208 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 that order. Like Robin Hood and other "social bandits," the Cid regards money lenders (Rachel and Vidas) as fair game, and abusers of political influence (malos mestureros) as his primary adversaries.62 What is more, the Cid and his men do not work for a living. In order to obtain pan e vino for himself and his followers, the Cid, like the typical social bandit, resorts to extorsion. In his treatment of the various towns and cities he besieges or intimidates, he is a practitioner of what MacKay has aptly termed "the protection racket" of the parias system.63 I have no intention here of reviving the old controversy between "Cido-philes" and "Cido-phobes," nor to engage in a debunking of the Cid's reputation. Still less do I intend to cite Dozy and his impressive (and still fascinating) documentation of Arab views of the Cid.64 The PMC, however, speaks for itself. It is a tale of brigandage, in which a besieger of cities, in ruthless pursuit of his aims, is capable both of hanging impolite vassals, and of subjecting whole populations to suffering and death. The violently predatory nature of the Cid's attitude, and his awareness of the unprovoked nature of his agression, are seen in his frank description of his actions in the Valencian kingdom:

En sus tierras somos e fémosles todo mal, bevemos so vino e comemos el so pan; si nos çercar vienen, con derecho lo fazen. ( 1103-05) As in the case of many a social bandit, the Cid represents not a triumph in the struggle between classes, but personal vindication and the "righting of individual wrongs." While he is, as we have seen, determined to derive maximum profit from his conquests

62 Hilton, "The Origins of Robin Hood," 30-35; Keen, "Robin Hood—Peasant or Gentleman?" 8-10; Maddicott, "Birth and Settings of the Ballads of Robin Hood," 294-95.

63 MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages 15-35.

64 Reinhart Dozy, Recherches sur l'histoire et la littérature de l'Espagne pendant le moyen age, 3rd. ed., 2 vols. (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1881) 2: 110-94. Harney / Mio Cid 209

(2493-96), he does not practice social mobility in the fullest sense, and is in fact obsessed with restoring the status quo (the vassalic relationship with Alfonso). Nowhere does he indicate a desire to be a conde or rico hombre. On the other hand, the limited material social mobility he exhibits is significant. Successful bandits, in the view of A. Blok, "stand out as men who evolved from poverty to relative wealth, and who acquired power." As the Sicilian expression would have it, they are "the men who make themselves respected." The notion of personal honor which guides such men recalls the ondra of the PMC: it is "expressed in a person's control over resources by means of physical force." Typical of medieval European and contemporary Mediterranean society, it indicates "a relatively low level of state formation." Moreover, brigandage actually retards the emergence of genuine class consciousness and class structure since, by allowing for individual social mobility (Blok uses the term in my suggested broader sense of "analytically discernible improvement of circumstances"), it "tends to weaken class solidarity" and "class tensions."65 In the case of the poetic Cid, brigandage is still more a safety valve because it is a phenomenon of the frontier, directed not at those close to home, but at alien populations far removed from the hero's home base. Despite numerous differences between the Cid and Hobsbawm's social bandit, a "wide-angle" comparison shows the discrepancies to be perhaps less important than the parallels.66 Indeed, examination of apparent differences between the Cid and Robin Hood reveals the fundamental affinity between the two figures. The Cid is active far from home, while the typical social bandit rarely wanders far from his home base. This difference is merely circumstantial: what really matters is the marginalized status of both the Cid and the social bandit with regard to "official" authority. The victims of both the Cid and the social bandit are

65 Blok 496-501. Hobsbawm (Bandits 35) also refers to "the stiffnecked and recalcitrant, the individual rebels," as those who "make themselves respected."

66 For Hobsbawm's nine defining points of that variant of social banditry which he calls "the noble bandit," see Bandits 42-43. 210 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 outsiders from the viewpoint of the exile/outlaw's home community. As Blok points out, some outlaws and bandits are "glorified. . . in their native districts while feared as raiders far outside of those areas."67 The social bandit often needs to stay close to home because his fellow villagers are his chief means of (clandestine) support. At the same time, he must confine his depradations to those perceived as outsiders by his people, because the inhabitants of his home community are his allies and his supporters—to victimize them would be to bite the hand that feeds him, both morally and materially. The Cid's depradations are likewise directed against such legitimate prey as money lenders (Rachel and Vidas) and the inhabitants of the various Moorish cities he attacks or from which he demands tribute ('posaremos en sus casas e d'elles nos serviremos,' 622). The Cid leads an army, while the social bandit heads a "band." We might point out that the reduced size of the typical social bandit's group is a function of his necessarily clandestine operation close to a home base. The Cid, operating far from home in alien territory, is free to welcome openly all who wish to join him, both because there is more room on the frontier, and because there is more booty to support a larger (and more variegated) band of followers:

grandes yentes se le acojen de la buena cristiandad. (1199)

Sonando va[n] sus nuevas todas a todas partes, más le vienen a Mio Çid sabet, que nos' le van. (1206-07) The dynamics of recruitment are similar in both cases: an unjustly outlawed or exiled leader, word of his whereabouts going out far and wide, the continual arrival of new volunteers.68 Although the Cid does not really "right wrongs" in the altruistic style of Robin Hood, he does stand for justice and fair play, in direct and dramatic contrast to his enemies. And, while he is not materially helped and supported by his community in the way

67 Blok 499.

68Maddicott 294. Harney / Mio Cid 211 that the social bandit is, the poem makes it clear that the people of Burgos would indeed help the Cid were it not for the dire penalties prescribed by Alfonso (21-28). The same sort of penalities are of course prescribed in the case of social bandits; that is the reason why popular support for such persons is clandestine. One has the impression that had the Cid stayed close to home, he would have become a typical social bandit, secretly supported by the people. The presence of the frontier makes exile a convenient punishment (looking at things from the viewpoint of the offended monarch). Hobsbawm makes the point that it is not only food and shelter that are offered to the bandit, but sympathy and admiration as well. This moral support the Cid clearly enjoys, as we see from the famous verses: Exiénlo ver mugieres e varones, burgeses e burgesas por las finiestras son, plorando de los oios, tanto avién el dolor; ( 16b-18) It is true that the Cid, unlike the folkloric soical bandit, is not considered "invisible and invulnerable," coming and going freely, often in disguise, beneath the noses of those who would hunt him down. But here again the apparent contrast may conceal an underlying similarity: both figures are clearly considered larger than life, the charismatic beneficiaries of a good luck which is a function of their heroic stature. As in the case of the size of their following, this difference may also derive from the pragmatic differences between the two distinct spheres of operation. The Cid is a hero of the wide-open frontier; the social bandit frequently must work "behind the lines." The last point of contrast—that the Cid does not, like the typical bandit, die a victim of treachery—is an irreducible difference between the two figures. The PMC has a happy ending, while the ballads sung about bandits, and indeed the biographies of real-life bandits, all too often end in treachery and death. Having looked at the differences between the Cid and the social bandit, we may now examine some striking similarities. The social bandit becomes an outlaw not because he is guilty of a real crime, but because he has offended a powerful man, or has been falsely accused, or is persecuted by the authorities for an act 212 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 viewed by them—but not by him or his people—as a criminal offense (i.e., poaching, smuggling, etc.). This recalls the case of the Cid, victimized by the false witness of malos mestureros and enemigos malos. The social bandit is a good man, in that he never kills but in self-defence or just revenge. This condition is perhaps not so clearly met by the Cid, since he might be accused of wanton violence (as in the attacks on the various cities, including Valencia). However his actions against these and other victims of his predatory activities would not count as gratuitous or unjust violence in the minds of the Cid's "constituency" (i.e., of the poem's audience): a bandit must earn bread for himself and his men somehow, and outsiders are fair game—indeed, the only legitimate game. The notions of "self- defence" and "just revenge" are thus always interpreted very broadly by the populations that support social banditry. An "us-against-the- world" attitude allows great latitude to the bandit in his choice of victims and methods. The Cid's gallant treatment of the captured count Remont of Barcelona (1024-76) is entirely in keeping with the generosity toward worthy adversaries that typifies the noble bandit of folklore (although not the Robin Hood of earlier ballads, who shows, in Hilton's words, a "primitive ferocity" toward his enemies). The Cid's standing as a lesser noble is very much in keeping with the frequently encountered tradition of the "gentleman bandit," an unjustly disgraced lesser noble (like Robin Hood in later versions of the ballads) who, though not of "the people," is their protector and their champion.69

69 Hilton suggests ("Origins of Robin Hood," 31-2) that the notion of the famous outlaw as a nobleman fallen on hard times originated in the 16th and 17th centuries. A point of controversy among students of the Robin Hood ballads cycle centers on the intended audience: in the view of Keen, that audience must have been the peasants; in the view of Holt, the ballads were intended for the gentry. Yet Holt (1961) nuances the views expressed in his 1960 article by insisting that, while the intended audience might have been the gentry, the Robin Hood ballads "are not class literature." Aston suggests a "mixed audience": in his opinion, the absence of a detailed agenda of peasant complaints confirms that this is not a literature of peasant revolt. Maddicott (1978) affirms that the ballads would have had an appeal to many levels of society: peasant, free holder, yeoman, minor gentry, knight. He points out that by the mid-fifteenth Harney / Mio Cid 213

The social bandit who survives "returns to his people as an honourable citizen and member of the community." This would seem to indicate an important difference between the Cid and the social bandit. The poetic Cid never returns to Castile: his sphere of activity is the frontier, a place where one can escape the constraints and limitations of the closed, face-to-face society. The frontier however is the place where social banditry is ideally practiced— where Robin Hood and his men would have gone, perhaps, if they had had the means. Both the frontier and the greenwood are "outlaw" space where life is freer, opportunities more numerous. In this lawless zone there is never any danger of exercising force illegitimately or inappropriately—where everyone is an outsider, there are no inauspicious victims. As we have seen, banditry may be practiced far from home, and against "outsider" populations. Thus, the "triumphant return" condition is met by taking "community" in a broad sense, and by taking the concept of a "return to his people" as a metaphor for "social vindication." The latter process is seen in the Cid's triumphant recovery of his lord's favor, in the affectionate support he receives from the apparent majority of those at court, and in the second marriages of his daughters. Again, this is a difference determined by the frontier. The Cid is really the bandit that every bandit dreams of becoming, and Valencia the utopie dream kingdom, free from money lenders and malos mestureros, that every social bandit dreams of founding. The social bandit, states Hobsbawm, "is not the enemy of the king or emperor, who is the fount of justice, but only of the local gentry, clergy or other oppressors." In Primitive Rebels, Hobsbawm explains that the traditional enemies of the peasant and the poor in general (lawyers, prelates and idle monks, money- lenders—in short, all those "who upset the traditional life of the peasant") do not include the king because

In pre-industrial and pre-political societies... the sovereign... is remote and stands for justice. Indeed, the legend frequently shows the sovereign pursuing the bandit, failing to suppress century, Robin Hood exercised a "near-universal attraction" (292-93). I maintain that much the same thing might be said about the PMC: a variegated audience, a very wide appeal. 214 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

him, and then asking him to court and making his peace with him, thus recognizing that in a profound sense his and the sovereign's interest, justice, is the same.70 In the PMC the king's eagerness to meet with the Cid, once the latter has regained his lord's favor, reflects perhaps a similar view of the sovereign as conciliator, guardian of justice, father of his people (we have already pointed out his probable function of pater familias within the pseudo-kinship of feudalism). Just as the king in the Robin Hood ballads comes to meet the outlaw on the latter's home ground, in the greenwood, so does Alfonso of the Spanish epic show a magnanimous desire to accomodate the Cid: 'Dezid a Rruy Díaz, el que en buen ora nasco, quel' iré a vistas dó fuere aguisado, dó él dixiere í sea el moión. (1910-12) The Cid's vindication is foreshadowed when his king publicly censures the hero's old enemy: 'Dexad essa rrazón,' warns Alfonso, interrupting Garcí Ordóñez's sarcastic remarks about the Cid's exploits, 'que en todas guisas miior me sirve que vós (1348-49). Essentially good, the monarch sooner or later comes to his senses and learns to recognize his real friends. As in the folklore of social banditry, the fact that the PMC's sovereign is not in the wrong, but is instead cozened and misled by malos mestureros—is, in effect, absolved of responsibility for the Cid's exile—reveals, again, the pre-political mentality described by Hobsbawm and others. One may speak of the "innocent faith" of the people in royal justice: "The people were confused, they had no powerful protectors, so they invented one."71 This "idealizing distance" in the folkloric concept of the king recalls a fundamental aspect of primitive rebellion as defined by Hobsbawm and as practiced, I believe, in the PMC: primitive rebellion is not against the social order, nor least of all against "sanctified" authority: it is against

70 Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels 22.

71 The significance of the king's going to visit the outlaw in the latter's haunts is pointed out by Hilton, "Origins of Robin Hood," 33; for a discussion of the popular faith in transcendant royal justice, ibid., 41-42. Harney / MioCid 215 subverters of the order, betrayers and misleaders of that legitimate authority. Finally, we come to the best-known attribute of the social bandit, namely that he takes from the rich to give to the poor. Although the poem does not explicitly state that the Cid performs this precise function, we may deduce that this is what is taking place. Many of the men who follow him into exile leave everything behind: 'unos dexan casas e otros onores' (289). We may also presume that the swarms of volunteers who arrive to swell the ranks of the Cid's host are most probably motivated by a desire to escape penury rather than any "crusading spirit" (a spirit never mentioned or expressed by the poet). In any case, it is not the "giving to the poor" which is the significant element in the case of both the Cid and the social bandit, but rather the redistributive nature of the economic practices depicted. Fried correlates the transition from egalitarian to ranked society (the intermediate stage between egalitarian and stratified society—the stage to which the society of the poem appears to correspond) with a movement away from reciprocal toward redistributive concepts of economic exchange. Redistribution (contrasted with the reciprocity of egalitarian society, and the accumulation and exchange of stratified society) involves "a characteristic flow of goods into and out from a finite center." This center, Fried affirms, is invariably "the pinnacle of the rank hierarchy." By contrast, in a truly stratified society, market pricing, accumulation of money and goods, and "impaired access to raw materials" are the pattern.72 In this, Fried draws on Polanyi, the first to explicate the importance of redistribution in the history of economic practices.73

72 Fried, Evolution of Political Society 116-17, 187-89.

73 Karl Polanyi, "The Economy as Instituted Process," in Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson, eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957) 250-6; see also Polanyi's article "Redistribution: the State Sphere in Eighteenth-Century Dahomey," in Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies, ed. George Dalton (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968) 207-37. Reprinted from chap. 3 of Dahomey and the Slave Trade (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966). Very instructive as well in connection to economic patterns in pre-state or pre-political contexts is the 216 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

The poem's attitude toward money and property corresponds to the patterns of ranking/redistribution proposed by Fried. We see this in scenes of distribution of booty, as after the battle of Alcócer (799-807), where all receive a share of the oro e plata, horses, and movable goods: ¡Dios, qué bien pagó a todos sus vasallos, a los peones e a los encavalgados! (806-07) Redistribution, rather than simple lordly generosity, also occurs in 2113-18, where, after the enactment of the marriage vows the Cid distributes mules, palfreys, horses, and costly garments to all those who wish them: 'cada uno lo que pide nadi nol' dize de no' (2117). The hero's redistributive function is most dramatically presented in the scene in which the Cid distributes averes to Anrrich Remond, and many others, including Alfonso himself:

adeliño a él el conde don Anrrich e el conde don Rremond. Abraçólos tan bien e rruégalos de coraçón que prendan de sus averes quanto ovieren sabor. A éssos e a los otros que de buena parte son, a todos los rrogava assí como han sabor, tales í à que prenden, tales í á que non. Los dozientos marcos al rrey los soltô, de lo ál tanto priso quant ovo sabor. (3496-3503) For the Cid, there is never any question of mere accumulation of personal wealth. A father to his people, the Cid is the focal point and "allocative center," the "pinnacle of the rank hierarchy," through which plunder and property are redistributed.74

chapter on "Modes of Production" in Wolf, Europe and the People without History 73-100.

74 Earlier I cited Elman R. Service's description of "egalitarian" society as dominated by custom and etiquette, and sought to show that the world of the PMC was a society so dominated. At the same time, it will be clear to the reader by now that the PMC's social world is not one of actual egalitarianism, but rather of the "elementary ranking" described by Fried as an intermediate stage between the truly egalitarian society of the band, and the highly stratified society of the modern state. The two authors cited are thus using "egalitarian" in Harney / Mio Cid 217

Again, while I have emphasized that the poem has no clear sense of social class, it does have a clear sense of paternalistic authority and person-to-person inequality. Economic redistribution in such a context is as much an element of leadership as courage or military ability. The redistributive function of leadership is illustrated in the description of the generous disposition of rewards after the taking of Valencia: Los que exieron de tierra de rritad son abondados, a todos les dio en Valençia casas, e heredades | de [que son pagados. El amor de Mio Çid ya lo ivan provando, los que fueron con él e los de después todos son pagados; (1245-48)

-o-oOo-o- To summarize our analysis of society in the PMC: 1. It is a world dominated by traditional bilateral Germanic kinship and the pseudo-kinship categories of feudalism (in its peninsular variant, and as the poet conceives that variant). 2. Ascribed status consists chiefly of non-scalar categories such as kinship, both genealogical and fictive. Scalar status is mainly the achieved status of personal prestige, expressed by the term ondra. Only the Infantes view the ascribed status of their membership in a kin group as a kind of scalar status, conferring personal prestige. 3. Clearly defined and understood categories of social class, as manifested through class solidarity or "communalization" in the Weberian sense, are absent. At the same time, the mentality of the "bad guys"—a mentality vaguely understood and unsympathetically portrayed by the poet— suggests the presence of class ideologies and class conflict in the

different ways. Service's use of the term would appear to encompass most societies which might be viewed as "pre-state," including those falling into Fried's category of "elementary ranking." In that broader sense of "pre-stratified," or "pre-class-structured," "egalitarian" (a necessarily relative term, since no society—as all anthropologists readily admit—is completely devoid of social inequality) may be applied to the society of the PMC. As I have indicated, it is a society in which inequality, authority, and hierarchy do exist. They are simply not organized along lines of class, but rather as a "system-wide" set of dyadic relations, between each and every subject and the señor (whether Alfonso or the Cid). 218 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987 real world exterior to the poem. 4. Social mobility in the modern sense of that term (i.e., that of a recognized change of social category, or of a conscious change from one social group to another) does not occur. 5. We note a generally conservative, "pre- political" and individualistic view of society, which accepts the social status quo (in terms of person-to-person inequalities) but which does not tolerate corruption and injustice. 6. Numerous parallels with the folkloric world of the social bandit are evident in the text 7. The economy appears to be redistributive. All these features imply a society of elementary ranking (to employ Fried's terminology) but not of finely gradated class stratification. The poem's view of society can be explained not as a reflection of composition during a certain phase in the evolution of Spanish society, but rather as a complex of traditional attitudes surviving among the common people as a kind of "folkloric substratum," and coexisting with the "innovative" ideologies of the dominant classes. These features of the PMC's society are not a random assemblage of attitudes and practices. Instead they represent a "systemic cluster"—i.e., a coherent, although non-ideological, "non-agenda-driven," view of the social universe. That social world view is an important indicator of the poem's intended audience Although I have not addressed the issue of orality vs. literacy in this article, I believe it will be clear by now that the systemic cluster underlying this narrative is as "pre-literate" as it is "pre-political." Rather than list the segments of society included within the intended audience, it might be more useful to suggest those few that are logically excluded. Above all these would include all most which strongly identified with "modernizing" trends toward social stratification and centralized political power—in other words, "class ideologues" as exemplified in the poem by the Infantes. Anyone who might resent the tale of a hero triumphing at the expense of perceived class allies would presumably dislike the PMC. On the other hand, all those in the audience who could identify with the Cid or those who join him in exile, or cheer the hero in his suit before the cones, can be assumed to have enjoyed the poem. This would include, potentially, all those still subscribing to the old system of status as a matter of kinship and pseudo- Harney / Mio Cid 219 kinship, and "man-to-man" relationships. The poet's antipathies are not aligned according to social class, but are instead directed at only a certain faction among the nobility (in Keen's words, those guilty of "personal viciousness"). If the society at the time of composition was, in its majority, "conservative" (in the anthropological sense), then the poem's appeal must indeed have been universal. Michael Harney University of Texas

-o-oOo-o- Second Pennsylvania Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies On October 28-29, 1988, the Second Pennsylvania Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies will be held at the University of Pittsburgh. The symposium rotates annually among Pennsylvania State University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Pennsylvania. The theme for 1988 is "Pilgrimage and Crusade in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance." Principal speakers will be Ian Short and Jean-Pierre Poly. For further information, write to Prof. Barbara N. Sargent-Baur, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, 1328 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. (This symposium will be followed in a week's time by one on the Codex Calixtinus. Write to Prof. John Williams, Department of Art History, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.) 220 Olifant / Vol. 12, Nos. 3 & 4 / Fall & Winter 1987

Personalia M. J. Hanak (East Texas State Univ.) has contributed to The Surrealist Angel. Festschrift for Salvador Dali (Heidelberg, 1984- 85) and is working on the third volume of Romantic Poetry on the European Continent, devoted to the Austrians and the Western and Eastern Slavs.

-o-oOo-o- Steven M. Taylor (Marquette) has an article in press at Romance Quarterly on the epic: "Comic Incongruity in Medieval French Enfances"

-o-oOo-o- Jean-Paul Carton (Georgia Southern) has recently served as Vice- President of the Georgia Chapter of the AATF.

-o-oOo-o- Recent articles by Paul Zumthor (Montréal) include "Jongleurs et diseurs: interprétation et création poétique au moyen âge," Medio evo romano 11 (1986): 3-26; "Poétique de la voix," in M. Szzabolcsi et al, eds., Change in Language and Literature (Budapest, 1986) 57-68; "Dizione e armonie. Note sul ritmo medievale," Intersezioni 6, 2 (1986): 209-224; and "Mittelalterlicher Stil: Plädoyer für eine anthropologishe Konzeption," in H. U. Gumbrecht and L. Pfeiffer, eds., Stil: Geschichte und Funktionen eines kulturwissentschaftlichen Diskurselements (Frankfurt, 1986) 483-96.

-o-oOo-o-