PROPHECY IN GONÇALO MARTÍNEZ DE MEDINA

Abstract

We are dealing, of course, with prophecies of a type well known and very widely diffused in Europe throughout the whole of the Middle Ages. As Games hints, the immediate source of Medina's predictions is most probably the Profecías, de Merlin attached to the Baladro del sabio Merlin or some Merlin-material very much like it. We will have more to say presently about these profecías. For the moment, let us observe that behind these prophecies lie the writings of one of the most remarkable prophets of the later Middle Ages, the French Franciscan John of Rupescissa— known as Roquetaillade in France, as Rocatallada in Catalonia and as Rocaçisa in Castile.

BSS Subject Index:

• MARTÍNEZ DE MEDINA, GONÇALO (fl. 15th cent.)
• PROPHECY/PREDICTION [AS LITERARY/CULTURAL THEME]

Notes

¹ Cancionero de Baena, No. 335 (numbering of Marquis of Pidal's edition, Buenos Aires, 1949). References henceforth to the poems in Baena will be in the form ‘cb 335’, ‘cb 226’, etc.

² El Victorial, Crónica de don Pero Niño, ed. J. de Mata Carriazo (Madrid 1940), 68.

³ Cf. Bonilla y San Martín, Libros de caballerías, NBAE, VI, 155–62.

¹ Cf. Jeanne Bignanni-Odier, Etudes sur Jean de Roquetaillade (Paris 1952), and J. Pou y Martí, Visionarios, beguinos y fraticelos catalanes (Vich 1930), 291 ff.

² Cf. W. J. Entwistle, The Arthurian Legend in the Literature of the Spanish Peninsula (London, Toronto, New York, 1925), 60.

³The Latin text of the Vademecum is in Brown, Fasciculus rerum expetendarum et fugiendarum (London 1690). It is paraphrased in Bignanni-Odier, op. cit., 158ff. and quotationsappear in Pou, op. cit., 29iff. A Castilian translation is mentioned in K. Pietsch, ‘The Madrid Manuscript of the Spanish Grail Fragments’, MPh, XVIII (1920–21), 147–56, 591–96.

¹ Cf. Bonilla, op. cit., 161–62.

² Cf. R. Taylor, The Political Prophecy in England (New York 1911), 4 ff.

¹ Cf. Bignanni-Odier, 73–74.

¹‘Ensayo de interpretación de la poesía de Villasandino, núm. 199 del Cancionero de Baena’, RFE, XV (1928), 354–74.

¹For this episode cf. the chronicle of John II, fourteenth year, chapters 2–27, BAE LXVIII, 380–90.

² For this episode cf. the chronicle of John II, fourteenth year, chapters 2–27, BAE LXVIII, 380–90. chapter 2, p. 380.

¹Once again CB 333.

¹The Pidal notes to the Cancionero de Baena (p. 710) identify ‘el de oçidente’ as possibly a king of Fez and Morocco. But the mention of the sorry state of France in the next octave suggests that the reference is to England, who, as is well known, enjoyed victories in France during these years.

¹ Cf. Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones y semblanzas, ed. Domínguez Bordona (Madrid 1924) and the appendix to the chronicle of Henry III, BAE LXVIII, 263.

¹ Cancionero castellano del siglo XV, NBAE XIX, 200.

² Cancionero de Baena, ed. cit., 712.

³‘Juan de Mena, poeta del prerrenacimiento español (Mexico 1950), 107–8.