CHAPTER IX


THE MIDDLE AGES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Epic Poems: _Romanceros_. Didactic Books, Romances of Chivalry


COMMENCEMENTS OF SPANISH LITERATURE.--Known Spanish literature does not
go back beyond the twelfth century. Like that of the French it began with
a _chanson de geste_, and if France has Roland, Spain has the Cid.
The _Poem of the Cid_, or _The Song of the Cid_, dates from the
commencement of the thirteenth century; in rude but expressive language
it narrates the ripe years and old age of the famous captain.

ALPHONSO X; JOHN MANUEL.--At the close of this century, Alphonso X, King
of Castile, surnamed the Sage or the Wise, versed in all the knowledge of
his time, produced, no doubt with collaborators, the universal chronicle,
history mingled with legends, of all peoples on the earth, and the
_Seven Parts_, a philosophical, moral, and legal encyclopaedia. His
nephew, Don John Manuel, regent of Castile during the minority of
Alphonso XI, a very pure and erudite writer, collated the code of the
kingdom in his _Book of the Child_, and the code of chivalry in his
_Book of the Knight and Squire_, with a series of apologues in the
volume known under the title of _The Count Lucanor_.