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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Spain, during the fifteenth century, was very prolific in writers of verse, as a glance at the Cancioneros of Baena, Castillo, Estuñiga, and a number of other early collections, both printed and manuscript, will show. That these were not all poets by divine right, no one perhaps will gainsay, nor would the world have suffered any great loss, if much of their verse had disappeared forever. In the time of Don Juan II. (1407-1454), himself a poet, it seemed to have been considered a necessary accomplishment of every courtier to write poetry, and as the Spanish language falls into measure and rhyme at the slightest provocation, the practice of such an accomplishment was fraught with little difficulty. Still, despite what has been said above, there is a charm about much of the poetry in these Cancioneros that is undeniable, and among their poets many names occur that will always occupy an honorable place in the literature of Spain. With perhaps a few exceptions, the best poetry in these collections is found in the short lyrical pieces. They are often delightfully naive, but necessarily suffer from sameness, love being the theme of most of them, and even this may become wearisome. But there were also poets, though in much lesser number, who turned their thoughts to things spiritual. Of these, two of the most famous were the Marquis of Santillana, and his kinsman Fernan Perez de Guzman, some of whose religious poems are here published for the first time. They are among the best verses that he has written, and are very fairly illustrative of his style and ability as a poet.
page 251 note 1 The poems of Don Juan II., King of Castile, have been printed by Pidal in the Appendix to the Cancionero of Baena, Madrid, 1851, p. lxxxi. One of the manuscript collections alluded to above has since been published by the writer: Der Spanische Cancionero des Brit. Mus. (ms. Add. 10431) in Vollmöller's Romanische Forschungen, Bd. x, Erlangen, 1895.
page 251 note 2 They are collected under the rubric “Obras devotas,” in Amador de los Rios, Obras del Marques de Santillana, Madrid, 1882, p. 299 ff. With the religious poems of a later poet, Juan Tallante, a Valencian, begin all the editions of the Cancionero of Hernando del Castillo, from 1511 to 1573.
page 252 note 1 The best sketch of the life and works of Fernan Perez de Guzman, to which all later accounts have been more or less indebted, is the one prefixed to his Generaciones y Semblanzas (Madrid, 1775), and written, I think, by D. Eugenio Llaguna y Amirola, the name not being given anywhere in the copy I have, which contains also the Centon Epistolario of Fernan Gomez de Cibdareal, and the Claros Varones de Castilla of Fernando del Pulgar. See also Ticknor, Hist. of Span. Lit., i, 420. The latter's statement, however, that the father of Fernan Perez was a brother of the Marquis of Santillana, is a mistake. See Amador de los Rios, Obras, etc., p. x. Amirola, l. c., gives no date of the birth of our author. Some account of the Guzman family is given in Salazar de Mendoza, Origen de las dignidades seglares de Castilla y Leon, Madrid, 1794, pp. 362, 363, and also Fernandez de Navarrete, Vida del celebre poeta Garcilaso de la Vega, Madrid, 1850, p. 145. Garcilaso was a descendant, in the female line, of Fernan Perez.
page 252 note 2 See below, p. 254, note 1.
page 253 note 1 Amador de los Rios, Obras, p. 16. The Constable of Portugal (1429-66), afterwards King of Aragon for a brief period, was also a poet, whose verses are printed in the Cancioneiro de Resende, ed. Kausler, vol. i, pp. 67-69. See Romania, xi, p. 155, and Gröber's Grundriss, vol. ii, pp. 135 and 231-232.
page 253 note 2 According to Amador, Obras del Marques de Santillana, p. 592, Villasandino was born in 1340, and died about 1420.
page 254 note 1 It was not until long after the above was written that I was enabled to consult Amador de los Rios, Historia Critica de la Literatura Española, vol. vi, p. 212, where a portion of the will of Pero Suarez de Guzman, the father of Fernan Perez, is quoted, dated January 9, 1381, in which he mentions his three children, Ferrando, Maria and Aldonza, and says of them “son pequeños menores de edat;” also that his wife was already dead. So, if Ferrando was the oldest child, he must have been born about 1376, at the latest.
page 254 note 2 Centon Epistolario. Epistola li. Ed. 1775, p. 92.
page 255 note 1 Histoire comparée des Littératures Espagñole et Française. Paris, 1843. Vol. i, p. 417. The source of Puibusque's information is unknown to me. In the Chronicle of D. Juan II., p. 310, the Portuguese ambassador is called Pero Gomez Malafaya.
page 255 note 2 This Introduction is printed in: Paz y Melia, Cancionero de Gomez Manrique. Madrid, 1885. Vol. ii, pp. 230 ff. The rubric is as follows: Introduçion al dezir que conpuso el noble cauallero Gomez Manrique, que yntitula: Exclamaçion e querella de la Gouernaçion, al muy noble e muy reuerendo señor, su syngular señor, Don Alfonso Carillo, por la gracia de Dios Arçobispo de Toledo, por el Doctor Pero Diaz. Diaz says (p. 233): En la nuestra lspaña a avido assy mesmo grandes varones de conponer en metro, entre los quales fue Fernand Perez de Guzman en aquesta nuestra hedad, que fue cauallero bien enseñado, e conpuso notables obras, assy quanto alla forma del conponer como ala sentençia de las cosas conpuestas. He then speaks of the Marquis of Santillana (died in 1458), as though he too were already dead. Perhaps much faith cannot be put in the words of the Toledan Doctor, who says, on the next page that Gomez Manrique (born 1415) is beginning to write verses, and that if time spare him, he will equal the poets already named. Supposing that this was even no later than 1458, it will be seen that Don Gomez must have courted the muse rather late in life.
page 256 note 1 These lines are quoted by Llaguno, l. c., p. 188, as being in the Introduction to the “Quatro Virtudes Cardinales” of Fernan Perez. The Cancionero General, i, p. 139, contains the poem, but evidently the Introduction is there missing, as these verses cannot be found.
page 257 note 1 The date of this letter has been quite clearly established by Rios, Obras del Marques de Santillana, p. xc, note.
page 257 note 2 Rios, l. c., p. 16.
page 257 note 3 Cancionero General, i, p. 167.
page 258 note 1 Catalogue des Manuscrits Espagnols et des Manuscrits Portugais, par M. A. Morel-Fatio, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1892, p. 192. These poems are found likewise in the Cancionero de Ixar. See Gallardo, Ensayo de una Biblioteca Española, etc., Madrid, 1863, vol. i, col. 586; also in a Cancionero in the private library of the King of Spain. See Pidal, in the introduction to the Cancionero de Baena, Madrid, 1851, p. lxxxvii.
Since the above was written, I have had an opportunity to examine the Cancionero de Ixar, now in the National Library at Madrid. The “Cient Trinadas” begin on folio 295, and the other poems of Fernan Perez here printed, on folios 66 ff. The readings of this MS. agree, except in a very few instances, with B; the variants are marked I. It may be mentioned here that the Cancionero de Ixar is composed of at least three separate collections, made at various times, and bound together in one volume. The first and earliest portion of this Cancionero ends on the verso of folio 329, where the date is given as follows: “A nueve dias de Março Año mcccclxx.” In the additional poems that follow, two handwritings are easily distinguishable; the first being probably as late as the middle of the sixteenth century; the last, perhaps, even of the seventeenth century. The poems here printed are likewise contained in volumes iii and iv of a ms. Canciónero del Siglo XV, in ten volumes, also in the National Library at Madrid: No. 9 in vol. iii, the others in vol. iv. All of these volumes are recent copies, the verses in volume iii being copied from the Cancionero de Fray Iñigo de Mendoza, now in the private library of the King; those in volume iv, from the Cancionero de Fernan Perez de Guzman, likewise in the King's library. The variants of the latter ms. are marked N, in the few cases that my notes give them.
An examination of the mss. (except N, my collation of this copy being imperfect, and my attempt to consult the original, unsuccessful) shows that they fall into two divisions: BI and CF,—though other differences show that neither one was copied from the other. The sequence of the stanzas in i and the next to the last stanza of No. xi, are evidence, moreover, that B and I do not derive from the same copy, while other differences between C and F show that the same holds good for these. To properly edit the poetry of Fernan Perez, the ms. in the King's library, would, of course, have to be consulted, while the date of the Cancionero de Ixar, which was written probably within ten years of our poet's death, would alone entitle it to much credit; still, the evident care with which B is written, together with the fact that it is perhaps equally as old as I, has induced me to adhere to my original intention of merely publishing B, always indicating the variants of the other mss. and making only such obvious corrections as they afforded.
page 259 note 1 It is true that most of the variations from the Castilian, that are noted, might be due to Aragonese influence; linatge, however, in F is decisive for Catalan. Two others, at least, of the Spanish manuscript Cancioneros, in the National Library, are of Catalan origin. See Romania, iii, p. 416.
page 266 note 1 Here, and in the following poems, the orthography of B is given.
page 276 note 1 Ymnos a santos e a santa Elisabel de U.; C Ysabel; F Elisabet.