GONZALO DE BERCEO AND THE CANTARES DE GESTA

Abstract

It has been noted that Gonzalo de Berceo, while writing in the mester de clerecía and using as his material Latin Vitae Sanctorum, exegetic treatises and devotional works, reveals a degree of familiarity with the language and style of the epics and the mester de juglaría. My present studies on the sources of the Votos de San Millán (SMill. 362–481) indicate that Berceo had possibly gone further than the use of turns of phrase and epithets from the epics. There are, I believe, a considerable number of reminiscences of, and references to, the content as well as the stylistic form of the Cantares de Gesta. By far the greater number seem to refer to the Fernán González epic, which has left little trace since its more learned form in the mester de clerecía, the Poema de Fernán González (PFG), excluded the primitive epic from the consideration of most chroniclers who wrote in the vernacular. My examples of these reminiscences are taken, with one notable exception, from the Vida de San Millán 362–481, Los Votos, where the special connexion with the liberator count offers greater grounds for surmising the influence of the epic.

BSS Subject Index:

• BERCEO, GONZALO DE (1198?–1264?)
• EPIC

Notes

¹R. Menéndez Pidal, Poesía jitglaresca (Madrid 1957) 274–76.

⁵ BAE 57. All subsequent quotations of Berceo are from this text.

²J. Horrent, “Sur deux témoignages espagnols de la Chanson de Roland,” BH, LVIII (1956), 48–50.

³In L. Sánchez Belda ed., Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris (Madrid 1950), 178.

⁴Menéndez Pidal, La Chanson de Roland (Madrid 1959), 353–55-

¹Menéndez Pidal, “Roncesvalles. Un nuevo cantar de gesta español ….”, RFE, IV (1917), 105–204.

³Menéndez Pidal, Reliquias de la poesía épica (Madrid 1951), 34–153. All subsequent quotations of the PFG are from this edition, and follow the manuscript readings, not the critical text.

²Since the payment of the “Votos de San Millán”, for example, applied to the whole of Castile, Berceo must have had this area in view when writing the Vida de San Millán. He urges the people to pay their dues to the monastery (SMill. 365, 467, 477–80) which would be pointless if restricted to the few living in the immediate vicinity of the monastery. The Privilegium (see note 1, page 199) ends by saying :Donatur offerta Sancto Aemiliano de flumine Carrionensi usque ad flumen Argam et de serra Araboya usque mare Vizcaiae.

¹J. A. Llorente, op. cit., 191.

¹Berceo (SMill. 363c–d) gives the date as Era de 972 (a.d. 934). The apocryphal Privilegium which was his main source gives the same date : “in era ter terna centena septiesque dena binaque super adaucta” For the text of the Privilegium see : J. A. Llorente, Noticias Historicas de las Tres Provincias Vascongadas, III (Madrid 1807), 191–98.

¹Menéndez Pidal, Poesía juglaresca, ed. cit. 255–57.

²R.Dozy, Recherches, 3rd. ed. (Leyden 1881), 156–70. cit. 161.

¹Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid, 5th ed. (Madrid 1956), 91 n. 2 ; and La Chanson de Roland (Madrid 1959), 185–86.

²R. Lapesa, Historia de la lengua española. 2nd ed. (Madrid 1950), 24.

¹I am at present working on the relationship of Berceo's Votos de San Millán to the Privilegium, which was forged c. 1200. See L. Serrano, Cartulario de San Millán (Madrid 1930), xxviii. My provisional conclusions are that while fully aware that it was a forgery, Berceo gave the document a Romance form as an act of propaganda with economic motives. Hence his lack of respect for the original, in contrast to his reverent fidelity to the Vita Beati Aemiliani of St. Braulio.