Dating Cantigas
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Dating cantigas William S. Kurtz Museo Arqueológico Provincial Badajoz, Spain 2018 Dating cantigas Kurtz Dating Galician-Portuguese cantigas may seem futile. Too many uncertainties, too many suppositions pepper the corpus of academic research into the subject. They will necessarily affect any approach we may devise, relativise any result or conclusion we may reach. But, that said, it must be done. Why? Well, not only because-it's-there, which is as good a reason as any other, but if cantigas are to be used as the historical documents they definitely are, they must be placed in time. Otherwise they will be 1 useless in this sense, mere aesthetic word-plays, which they definitely are not P0F P. Understanding this poetic phenomenon requires that we may place it in time, not only in vague chronological brackets, but in terms as precise as possible. To understand the history of the western Iberian Peninsula (let us be vague on the geography here) we must understand this literature. It is an invaluable resource for looking into the minds and attitudes of many of the main political actors of the time, kings Alfonso the Wise and don Dinis obviously; but it also illustrates the minds and attitudes of many who were not so important politically, though they were not too far from the centres of power: mere jograes, simple itinerant musicians, high and low clergymen (mostly secular, some regular), powerful aristocrats, very minor members of the aristocracy (with needs quite different from their more powerful brethren) and younger sons that had to carve out a living, burghers on the rise, court bureaucrats; quite th th a selection of XIIP P to XIVP P society, at least of that part of society that could exercise power and make its mark on the rest. No women, all men, as would be expected in a male dominated society. Let me qualify the previous affirmation. I am under the impression that in no other time in Spanish or Portuguese history have women occupied the higher echelons of power so consistently and unrestrictedly, or at least with no more obstructions than those suffered by their male counterparts: Berenguela, mother of Fernando III, unified León and Castile and was during many years co-regent with her son (and the factual governor on the home front while he spent most of his time on the front lines conquering the south); Isabel de Portugal, Dinis' wife, was constant mediator in the civil wars between her husband and son (the story of how she stopped the Battle of Alvalade, whether true or not, is indicative of the importance of her figure); Beatriz, Alfonso X's daughter and mother of Dinis, who frequently intermediated between them; not to forget María de Molina, whose role in Castilian-Leonese politics and culture awaits a definitive reassessment. Let us remember as an example how Beatriz, her daughter Blanca, Isabel and María de Molina negotiated, in Badajoz in 1287, a truce between the parties: that of Dinis-Sancho IV and that of Alfonso of Portugal-Alvar Núñez de Lara who had joined forces in their respective rebellions against the kings, a 1 López Aydillo (1923) and Beltrán (in many publications, notoriously his series of Notas and Temas Trovadorescos, reedited and revised in Beltrán 2005 and 2007) have amply proven that Galician- Portuguese lyrics can be used in this sense, or, viceversa, that history can be used as an explanation of the cantigas' not apparent meaning. Even Michaëlis' seminal work on the genre (Cancioneiro de Ajuda, Halle 1904, I use the 1990 reprint) and her Randglossen (1901 to 1905) are full of historical references and historically based readings of specific poems. 2 © 2018 Virtual Center for the Study of Galician-Portuguese Lyric Dating cantigas Kurtz 2 truce negotiated after many months of military deadlock in the siege of Arronches P1F P. th Women, at least high society women, could be very powerful in XIIIP P century Hispania. And this at a time when, according to current academic consensus, family structures were in the process of being transformed from generally cognatic to agnatic (which they seemingly were), relegating women to the boudoir, which I personally consider an ideologically motivated exaggeration. We must remember, besides, that most cantigas have to do with the relation between men and women: cantigas de amor from a male point of view; cantigas de amigo in a female voiced medium; and many cantigas d'escarnho from a parodic, at times obscene, perspective. In fact, the mere existence of female voiced (as written by men) poems is quite significant in itself, infrequent in the universal history of literature. Therefore, the corpus of Galician-Portuguese lyrics is an invaluable document for the study of gender relations (at least in this limited part of the planet) and its history. But undated poems are of very limited historical value. Also, dating the poems will be an aid in understanding their meaning. A simple example, using a poetic interchange that does not in itself pose too many textual or interpretative problems will suffice to illustrate my point. Pero de Armea wrote a 3 satirical piece against an unnamed belle, Donzela, quem quer entenderiaP2F P, claiming that should he make up and decorate his ass (cuu) as much as she makes up herself, his behind would be as pretty as she. Pero García de Ambroa contested him with Pero 4 d'Armea, quando composestes / o vosso cuu,P3F P in which he asserts that, effectively his behind is as beautiful as a maid, adding in the last stanza that he should nonetheless be 5 careful, for should Fernando d'Escalho P4F P see this, he, who is at present single would end up married, an obviously homosexual reference not uncommon in cantigas de escarnho. The point I would like to make is that if we do not take chronology into account, we would miss something. Dates assigned to Ambroa are 1228 to 1260, and those of Armea would be 1250 to 1275, so the exchange must have happened somewhere between 1250 and 1260. Ambroa was the older man, close to the end of his production, and Armea, unmarried, at the beginning. Therefore, the former's poem contains an admonition to beware of the unintended consequences of actions, an admonition quite common for older men (in the role of the old gaffer) to impart to younger ones (in the role of the whippersnapper who needs a talking-to), an overtone that could quite easily escape our attention. In my opinion, this is a case of palabras encobertas, as nothing of this is put explicitly into words. The not so irrelevant question of dates, is, in this case, a fact to be taken into account in the general understanding of these poems. How to date cantigas is the problem. Strictly speaking very few can be dated, and only in the relatively few cases where explicit mentions in the text can be identified by other means. Some are rather straightforward, such as Airas Peres Vuiturom's A lealdade da 6 Bezerra, que pela Beira muit'andaP5F P (its rubrica does help) or Gil Peres Conde's Bem 2 Gaibrois de Ballesteros 1922, vol. I, pp. 158-173. 3 B 1602, V 1134 (C 1602). 4 B 1603, V 1135 (C 1603). 5 Beltrán 2000, pp. 13-20, summarizes most of what is known (really, not known) about this Fernand'Escalho, and suggests he may be identified with Esteban Fernández de Castro. One wonders whether this person may be somehow related to the fi d'Escallola mentioned in the tençāo between Vasco Peres Pardal and Pedro Amigo de Sevilla, Pedr'Amigo, quero de vós saber (B 1509 (C 1508)), considered a descendant or member of the Banû Ashqîlûla. 6 B 1477, V 1088. 3 © 2018 Virtual Center for the Study of Galician-Portuguese Lyric Dating cantigas Kurtz 7 sabedes senhor reiP6F P with its reference to how he served the king ... outrossi em Toledo, quand[o] i filhaste corõa... (vv. 11-12), which places the poem sometime after April- May 1284, when Sancho IV was crowned in that city (the only king of the time to do 8 soP7F P), to mention but two examples. Other poems are much more difficult to place, such as Alfonso X's O genete, that speaks of how the North African marinid light cavalry frightened Christian coteifes to their dishonour, and is generally placed in the context of the 1264 mudéjar uprising. Which is perfectly possible, but if we stick to the literal text nothing is said of mudejares, only of genetes and coteifes. Considering that Banu Marin military presence is well documented in the Peninsula in 1264, 1275 and 1282-4 (when they aided Alfonso against Sancho), and probably in other moments in between, this 9 poem could be just as well be assigned to any of these other datesP8F P. Another supposedly easy to date poem is Pero da Ponte's pranto in honour of Beatriz of 10 SuabiaP9F P, Alfonso X's mother, who died in 1235. This date is firmly established as one of the oldest of da Ponte's. Literally considered, no problem. Of the five prantos in Galician-Portuguese lyrics (six if we consider da Ponte's mock-pranto Mort'é Dom 11 Martim Marcos, ai Deus! P10F P) four (five) were composed by this same poet, two of them 12 13 for people who died in 1236P11F P and 1238P12F P, so the usual dating is perfectly possible. But allow me a dose of scepticism. Other contexts for the poem can be put forward: of the 14 aforementioned prantos one, Que bem se soub'acompanharP13F P, was composed in honour st of Fernando III, who died on May 31 P P 1252, on which occasion his son Alfonso occupied the throne.