Historia Roderici
Encyclopedia
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...
prose history of the Castilian
Kingdom of Castile
Kingdom of Castile was one of the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. It emerged as a political autonomous entity in the 9th century. It was called County of Castile and was held in vassalage from the Kingdom of León. Its name comes from the host of castles constructed in the region...
folk hero Rodrigo Díaz
El Cid
Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar , known as El Cid Campeador , was a Castilian nobleman, military leader, and diplomat...
, better known as El Cid Campeador.
It is generally written in a simple, unadorned Latin by an author who reveals no knowledge of a wide reading; his only reference to other literature is a Biblical reminiscence in chapter 28.
Modern editors have divided the work into seventy-seven chapters (not in the original). The author apparently knew little of Rodrigo's life before his marriage to Jimena
Jimena Díaz
Doña Ximena Díaz was the wife of El Cid from 1074 and her husband's successor as ruler of Valencia from 1099 to 1102.-References:*...
, and the whole of it is narrated in the first six chapters. The details of Rodrigo's career leading up to and including his exile in Zaragoza
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
(1081–86) are related with more confidence (chapters 7–24). The period of Rodrigo's return to the court of Alfonso VI of León and to Castile (1086–88) are passed over quickly (chapters 25–27), as are the years 1095–96, during which Rodrigo ruled Valencia. The largest portion of the history (chapters 28–64) is devoted to his second exile and conquest of Valencia (1089–95). The final section (chapters 65–75) covers the last two years of Rodrigo's life and a brief epilogue (chapters 76–77) describes the Christian evacuation of Valencia in 1102 under the direction of Jimena. The coverage is by no means even, as the author admits in chapter 27: "Not all the wars and warlike exploits which Rodrigo accomplished with his knights and companions are written in this book."
The earliest preserved manuscript of the work dates to the first half of the thirteenth century. It was found in the late eighteenth century in San Isidoro
Basilica of San Isidoro
The Basilica of San Isidoro is a church in León, Spain, located on the site of an ancient Roman temple. Its Christian roots can be traced back to the early 10th century when a monastery for Saint John the Baptist was erected on the grounds....
in León, but was probably originally copied in Castile or La Rioja. It is now MS 9/4922 in the library of the Real Academia de la Historia
Real Academia de la Historia
Real Academia de la Historia is a Spanish institution based in Madrid that studies history "ancient and modern, political, civil, ecclesiastical, military, scientific, of letters and arts, that is to say, the different branches of life, of civilisation, and of the culture of the Spanish...
in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
. This manuscript contains many examples of early Spanish historiography: Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville
Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...
's Historia Gothorum, Julian of Toledo
Julian of Toledo
Julian of Toledo was born to Jewish parents in Toledo, Hispania, but raised Christian. He was well educated at the cathedral school, was a monk and later abbot at Agali, a spiritual student of Saint Eugene II, and archbishop of Toledo...
's Historia Wambae, the Chronicle of Alfonso III
Chronicle of Alfonso III
The Chronicle of Alfonso III is a chronicle composed in the early tenth century on the order of King Alfonso III of León with the goal of showing the continuity between Visigothic Spain and the later Christian medieval Spain...
, the Chronica Naierensis
Chronica Naierensis
The Chronica Naierensis or Crónica najerense was a late twelfth-century chronicle of universal history composed at the Benedictine monastery of Santa María la Real in Nájera...
, and royal genealogies. Several errors in the Historia Roderici indicate that this manuscript is a copy. Possibly it is the copy mentioned in a document of 1239 as being copied at the priory of Carrión
Carrion
Carrion refers to the carcass of a dead animal. Carrion is an important food source for large carnivores and omnivores in most ecosystems. Examples of carrion-eaters include vultures, hawks, eagles, hyenas, Virginia Opossum, Tasmanian Devils, coyotes, Komodo dragons, and burying beetles...
in 1232/3 from an exemplar of the monastery of Nájera
Nájera
Nájera is a small town located in the "Rioja Alta" region of La Rioja, Spain on the river Najerilla. Nájera is a stopping point on the Way of St James.-History:...
, but this cannot be proved.
R. A. Fletcher tentatively dates the Historia to before 1125. In chapter 23, the scribe of the Madrid manuscript put "Súnchez" for the correct patronymic "Sánchez", an orthographic error that may originate in a misreading of Visigothic script
Visigothic script
Visigothic script was a type of medieval script that originated in the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania...
. The script, once common all over Spain, was disappearing in central Spain by 1125 and was all but extinct there by the 1140s, replaced by the script called francesa and adopted from France. Since the Visigothic 'a' had an open top, it resembled the French 'u'. The copyist was probably working from a Visigothic original (or faithful copy).