The Socio-Political Context of Cantar de Mio Cid
Cantar de Mio Cid is the oldest preserved epic poem in the Spanish language. It is the story of El Cid, the knight who recaptured Valencia from the moors, it is 3730 verses long and details the epic struggle of El Cid to reclaim his honor and fortify the kingdom of Alfonzo VI of Leon and Castile. Cantar de Mio Cid is based on true events and El Cid in the Poem was a real person by the name of Rodrigo Díaz (Montaner Frutos). Díaz was the man who led the charge to oust the moors from Valencia (Montaner Frutos). While not all of the events detailed by the poem are true, it remains an incredibly important and influential Spanish text (Montaner Frutos). Part of the reason the poem is so important is because it helped craft an imagining of Spanish nationalism, which is why it remains so relevant today (Leaños).
Cantar de Mio Cid was first recorded during the period of the Reconquista. The Reconquista is a historical period within the region of the Iberian Peninsula dating from 718-1492. The Reconquista was a period of time in which the Christian European forces were attempting to “reclaim” the Iberian peninsula from the Islamic Moorish forces that were occupying the land as a part of the Umayyad Caliphate. The Caliphate arrived in 711 and held a varying me sure of control over the Iberian Peninsula for centuries until they were expelled in 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella won the Granada war. The period of the Reconquista was a period of political instability in the region. The countries now known as Spain and Portugal were divided into a series of smaller kingdoms ruled by either Christian or Islamic powers which were engaged in an ongoing power struggle with each other. The events chronicled in Cantar de Mio Cid took place between 1077 and 1109 during the reign of Alfonzo VI. The conquest of Valencia by El Cid is documented by both Moorish texts and European texts as having occurred in the year 1094 (Montaner Frutos). Scholars have calculated that the poem itself was originally written sometime between 1140 and 1200 (Montaner Frutos). The authorship of the poem is greatly contested. Some claim it was originally written by a minstrel as early as 1140 (less than 50 years after the death of El Cid) and transcribed soon after. Others claim a Lawyer named Per Abbat wrote it nearly a hundred years later in 1207, however it is more likely that he merely transcribed it and did not write it himself (Montaner Frutos). No scholars have been able to provide sufficient evidence thus the mystery as to who originally authored the poem persists. (Montaner Frutos)
Cantar de Mio Cid is the story of the life and struggles of Spanish knight Rodrigo Díaz or Rodrigo the Battler or El Cid. According to the poem Cantar de Mio Cid, among other sources, El Cid is the knight who successfully recaptured Valencia from Moorish forces (Montaner Frutos). Rodrigo Díaz was a member of the court of Alfonzo VI of Leon and Castile; unfortunately, he fell out favor with the king after being wrongly accused of thievery. El Cid then sets out to reclaim his honor he becomes a mercenary. Over time he gains respect as a military strategist and warrior, he thus conquers Valencia reclaiming it from the Moors. El Cid’s great feats in battle and his recovery of Valencia lead Alfonzo VI to issue a royal pardon restoring El Cid’s titles and honor. In the poem, to cement El Cid’s status, Alfonzo VI arranges for the marriage of El Cid’s two daughters to Los Infates de Carrión. However, his daughters are beaten, raped and left for dead by their new husbands. Upon the mistreatment of his daughters by Los Infantes, El Cid is forced to campaign for the restoration of his and his family’s honor once again. He is successful Alfonzo VI agrees to help EL Cid by stripping Los Infantes of their titles, the marriages are annulled and his daughters and then remarried to Los Principes Narrave y Aragon.
In many ways, Cantar de Mio Cid can be read and understood as early Spanish propaganda. The poem is designed to encourage the Christian communities and kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula to rise up against the Moorish forces and push them out of what is now Spain (Leaños). In the poem, El Cid is unceremoniously and wrongly stripped of his land and titles. He is then banished from his homeland dishonoring him and his family. EL Cid is then forced to set out on a path to reclaim what he has lost at all costs. This leads him to conquer Valencia thus crafting a new and better name for himself as the man who defeated and exiled the Moorish forces “occupying” the city. At its core, Cantar de Mio Cid is a story about the reclamation of honor and homeland despite the odds (Leaños). Given the socio-political state of the region at the time it is no stretch to imagine that Cantar de Mio Cid was designed and sung with the intention of encouraging Christian people to rise up against the moors, and reclaim their land and bringing honor to their kingdoms and their heritage (Leaños).
Cantar de Mio Cid differentiates in a variety of ways from other European texts written during the same epoch. Cantar de Mio Cid lacks the mystical quality that many other texts of the epoch had (Hook). While other texts from the era had mystical qualities with their hero’s and villain’s posses magical qualities (religious or otherwise) El Cid and his adversaries are simply portrayed as human (Hook). In Cantar De Mio Cid, El Cid accomplishes everything without any special or superhuman qualities; this feeds into the use of the poem to mobilize the psyche of the Christian population in order to oust the Islamic forces (Leaños). Although during the period in which Cantar de Mio Cid was written Spain was not yet even a dream and Spanish as we know it did not yet exist, the process of nation-building is a long one, and the poem is a marker in the lengthy proses of crafting the nation-state.
The story recounted by Cantar de Mio Cid has maintained its relevance for centuries. The poem continues to be relevant in pop culture with El Cid being a featured character in Video games and film (Montaner Frutos). Tourists can travel el Camino del Cid and explore the historical and archeological spaces related to him and his feats recorded by the epic poem (Montaner Frutos). The poem itself continues to be an integral part of Spanish education and historical memory dedicated to the emergence of Spain and Spanish nationalism (Leaños).
Bibliography
“El Cantar Del Mio Cid.” Classicspanishbooks.com. N.p., 2011. Web. 5 Feb. 2019.
Montaner Frutos, Alberto. “The Author Of The Spanish Epic Poem The Song Of My Cid.” En.caminodelcid.org. N.p., 2019. Web. 5 Feb. 2019.
Montaner Frutos, Alberto. “El Cid Campeador / Literature Legend Romanticism & Myth.” En.caminodelcid.org. N.p., 2019. Web. 5 Feb. 2019.
Leaños, Jamie. “El Cid redentor: Propaganda anti-islámica en el Cantar de Mio Cid.” Rocky Mountain Review. Vol. 72 Issue 2 (2018,), p280-299. 2/11/19
Hook, David. “El Cantar de Mio Cid y el Contexto Europeo” Olivar. Issue 8 2007, p 313-325. 2/11/19
Girón Alconchel, José Luis, and María Virginia Pérez Escribano. Cantar De Mio Cid. 2nd ed. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 2009. Print.