King of Castile and patron of the arts and sciences,
Alfonso X, called El Sabio (the Wise, or the
Learned), was also a significant lyric poet and
composer in his own right, and in that role is best
known as the author of some 400 songs in praise of
the Virgin.
Alfonso was the son of Fernando III and Beatrice of Swabia. As a young man he seems to have
been well trained in military pursuits and educated in the arts and sciences. He ascended to the
throne of Castile and Leon on the death of his father in 1252. Alfonso married Violante, the
daughter of King Jaime I of Aragon, with whom
he shared an interest in the reconquest of Muslim Spain: Early in his reign he fought a number
of Moorish wars and conquered Cadiz in 1262.
Meanwhile, he had been elected Holy Roman
Emperor in 1254, but the election was disputed
and he was never crowned. Generally a weak sovereign, his indecision concerning his succession
after his first son Fernando died in 1275 led to
diplomatic problems with Aragon and France,
and to open revolt at home when his second son,
Sancho, led a rebellion in Alfonso’s final years,
ultimately seizing the throne when Alfonso died
in 1284.
Far more successful were Alfonso’s efforts to
make his court the intellectual and cultural center
of Iberia. Calling himself the King of the Three Religions, Alfonso drew to his court Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars to work on a program of
compilation, translation, and literary creation designed, in part, to encourage the use of the vernacular in learning and in poetry. He sponsored the
scholarly production of compilations in various
areas. His Las siete partidas was an anthology of
legal practices going back to Roman times, begun
with the hope of standardizing such practices—a
hope not realized until the following century. In
history, two great collections were begun under Alfonso’s patronage: One, the Crónica general, is a
vernacular history of Spain up to the 13th century;
the other, the Grande e general estoria, is a vast history of the world up to the time of the Virgin
Mary’s parents. In science, Alfonso’s court made
significant contributions to the study of astronomy and astrology, with three important works
translated or adapted from Arabic sources by Jewish scholars—one of these, a text of astronomic
tables, was a standard reference in Europe for hundreds of years.
In addition, Alfonso’s court was famous for his
literary contributions, for the king was both a generous literary patron and was himself a poet of
some distinction. Many poets had left the repressive court of the Portuguese king Alfonso III
(whose long feud with Alfonso X ended when the
Portuguese king married Alfonso X’s illegitimate
daughter—a union that produced another poetking, DINIS). Thus the Castilian court became the
center of Galician-Portuguese poetry, and Alfonso
X himself, moved by their lyric productions, chose
the Galician-Portuguese tongue as the vehicle for
his own verses.
Alfonso’s best-known work is a collection of
422 Cantigas de Santa Maria or songs in praise of
the Virgin Mary. Generally these take the form of
brief narratives relating miracles wrought by the
Blessed Virgin’s intercession. In Cantiga VII, for
example, an abbess who has slipped in her vows
finds herself pregnant and is summoned to appear
before the bishop. But Mary is miraculously able to
save the nun:
But the lady without delay
Began to call the Mother of God;
And, as from one who was dreaming,
Saint Mary had the child taken
And sent for rearing to Saxony.
(Keller 1962, 304)
Alfonso wrote five other religious poems concerning the life of Christ, in addition to some 45
secular lyrics. A few of these are love poems but
most are political lyrics. Of the secular poems, the
best known is Non me posso pagar tanto, in which
he expresses a desire to leave behind the pressures
of his world and take to sea as a merchant—a sentiment that any monarch might have felt occasionally, but perhaps would have been particularly
fitting during Alfonso’s turbulent final years:
Rather, I wish to travel alone
And go like a merchant
In search of a land
Where I cannot feel the sting
Of the black or the spotted scorpion.
(Jensen 1992, 8.3, ll. 48–52)
Bibliography
Burns, Robert I., ed. Emperor of Culture: Alfonso X
the Learned of Castile and his Thirteenth-Century
Renaissance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
Jensen, Frede, ed. and trans. Medieval Galician-Portuguese Poetry: An Anthology. Garland Library of
Medieval Literature 87. New York and London:
Garland, 1992.
Keller, John Esten. Alfonso X: El Sabio. New York:
Twayne, 1967.
———, trans. “Cantigas VII.” In An Anthology of Medieval Lyrics, edited by Angel Flores, 303–305.
New York: Modern Library, 1962.