Alexander's book

Incipit of Book of Alexandre, more. O. The second verse of this work has been made by the declaration of principles of the mester of clergy.

The Book of Alexandre is a work in verse from the first third of the 13th century, written in romance, which narrates, with abundant fabulous elements, the life of Alexander great. It is written using the frame via or Alexandrian monorhyme tetrastrophe and is included in the poetic school called mester de clerecía. It consists of 2,675 stanzas and 10,700 verses.

Deals with one of the great issues of Western European literature. The length of the text, which exceeds ten thousand verses, the relevance of the sources and the issues covered, the enormous erudition shown and the internationality of the subject make this book perhaps the most interesting of its time.

The original, handed down in two copies, is attributed to Juan Lorenzo de Astorga, from the late XIII century or older probably from the XIV, which introduces abundant lionisms in the original that it transcribes, called manuscript O; another, discovered at the end of the XIX century in Paris, adopts features of the La Rioja dialect, designated as manuscript P, in whose text it appears The work is attributed to Gonzalo de Berceo.

Currently, critics consider that neither Juan Lorenzo nor the author of Miracles of Our Lady were the authors of Alexandre, so the work is considered anonymous. However, the geographical environment of the author is located in the current provinces of Logroño or Soria. And because of his extensive preparation, he had to study at some university (General Study), which could have been the one in Palencia, although no other is ruled out, for example Paris.

Regarding the dating, currently the date with the greatest consensus would be around 1230, although there is no conclusive proof and there are theories based on the calculation from stanza 1799 that place the work in the early years from the 13th century. Sicart estimates that it is between the years 1208 and 1216 and Serverat proposes a slightly closer period, between the years 1202 and 1205.

The use of sources is much more elaborate than in other clerical poems, such as those by Berceo. He basically uses Gautier de Châtillon's Alexandreis (a Latin poem also of a clerical nature composed around 1180), but he alters it to suit him and incorporates passages from other sources, such as the Historia de preliis —a medieval adaptation of Alexander's Romance (18th century). III), a set of biographical information attributed without basis to Callisthenes, a general of the Macedonian emperor, commonly known as Pseudo-Callisthenes—or the Li Romans d'Alixandre, a French epic poem from the XII. For a lengthy digression on the Trojan War he uses the Latin Ilias (1st century), a summary in Latin hexameters of the Iliad .

Second verse Book of Alexandre, first third of the thirteenth century, held by the declaration of principles of the mester of clergy, proudly distinguishing it from the trade of the mester of playlaría:

Mester brings fermoso, non is of hog
mester is sinless, ca is clergy
fablar curso rimado por la cuaderna vía
a syllables, ca is grant mastery.

Book of Alexandre, vv. 5-8.

I bring a beautiful trade, it's not a gambler.
trade is without fault, for it is of clergy,
speak [I bring] in rhymed verse, through the notebook,
with syllables, because it is a great mastery.

Preserved testimonies

Together with two extensive versions (the manuscript of the National Library of Madrid (ms. V-5-n.º 10) or manuscript O (for having been preserved in the library of the Duke of Osuna), from the 14th century or very late in the XIII century, copied in León by Juan Lorenzo de Astorga, which contains numerous leonesisms; and that of the Bibliothèque Nationale de París (Manuscript Espagnol 488), from the 15th century, with numerous Aragoneseisms, manuscript P, whose copyist attributes it to Gonzalo de Berceo, published by the Hispanist Alfred Morel Fatio in his Dresden edition, 1906), have also been preserved several minor fragments, bearing very little to do with the long manuscripts, none of which, in turn, are complete:

1. The fragment of the Ducal Archive of Medinaceli is of the centuryXIV and contains the first twenty-seven verses, that is, it reaches to verse c of verse 7.
2. Three fragments, published in a posthumous work by Francisco de Bivar, are preserved from the lost manuscript in Bugedo parchment (m. 1635): Marci Maximi Caesaraugustani, viri doctissimi continuatio Chronici omnimodae Historiae ab Anno Christi 430 (ubi Flav. L. Dexter desiit) usque ad 612 quo maximus pervenit... Madriti. Ex typ. Didaci Diaz de la Carrera. Anno M.D.C.LI, in fol..
3. The Victorial or Chronicle of Don But Child, written in the s. XV by Gutierre Díez de Games, we also have some verses, in two versions, one in the edition of Eugenio de Llaguno and Amírola, Madrid, 1762, pp. 221 - 222, and the other in the manuscript of the chronicle, of the centuryXV which is preserved in the Royal Academy of History, with the particularity that in the latter are copied as prose. Both contain the verses 51-55, 57-58, 61, 66 and 67, 73, 75-76, 80-82 and 84; the manuscript fragment also contains 77, which is missing in the form.

Linguistic characterization and authorship

Book of Alexandre. Manuscript O, folio 45v, depicting Alexander the Great armed sanding his troops.

Supporters of an original from Leon and authorship of Fray Juan Lorenzo have been Tomás Antonio Sánchez (1782), Emil Gessner (1867) and Ramón Menéndez Pidal.

Joan Corominas and Yákov Malkiel lean towards a western peninsular language. Alfred Morel-Fatio (1875) seems to be the first to point out that a copyist from Leon would have added these dialectal features to a Castilian original. The Castilian character would be predominant, according to Julius Cornu (1880), while Gottfried Baist, in that same year, speaks of a basic Castilianism, which must be qualified, since he defends the authorship of Gonzalo de Berceo. These claims come before P's discovery and purchase by the Bibliothèque Nationale, in 1887.

W. H. Chenery (1905), Emil Müller (1910) and Ruth I. Moll (1938) fit into the Castilian theory, with points that range from the denial of Leonism by the latter, inclined to the thesis of a youthful Berceo as author of the work, to the note of oriental features of the third, who does not accept this attribution. Emilio Alarcos (1948), after summarizing and discussing these opinions, also leans towards a Spanish original.

Although we do not know the name of the author, we can know details of his personality: he is a clergyman ("we are the simple erroneous and vicious clergymen", he says in 1824a) a highly cultured man (he had read a lot in Latin and French and his work has multiple sources and readings) and, although he appreciated the minstrel art, he felt far superior to it. His continuous intrusions and interventions in the work show to what extent he felt like the author-protagonist. He was a man of his century and, therefore, he exalted the most characteristic and admired values of the time (the courage of warriors, fidelity to the natural lord, belief in God, religious piety) and rejected everything that meant the transgression of the moral code (cowardice, disloyalty, mortal sins).

Date of composition

There is no precise agreement on this either, outside the very general limits of the first half of the XIII century: it has to be after 1182, the date of Gautier de Châtillon's Latin poem, Alexandreis, which he largely translates, and before 1250, the approximate date of the Poema de Fernán González, on which he influences. However, Francisco Marcos Marín, based on the text itself (stanza 1799) concludes that the date of composition must have been between 1202 and 1207, which excludes the authorship of Gonzalo de Berceo, since at that time he must not have been more than nine years old.. This same author, in his chapter on the Alexandre's Book of the Philological Dictionary of Spanish Medieval Literature (2002), points out that there are data from the poem that reflect events after 1207 (although they could be due to later interpolations) and it has been proposed to date the work around 1228, due to a possible allusion to the king of Sicily and the crusade of that year, so that currently the date of composition would be in any case in the first third of the 13th century.

The image of the king

Alexander fights against the Persian king Darius III in the battle of Issos. Details of the mosaic of the Casa del Fauno de Pompeya (National Archaeological Museum of Naples).

The poem was written to be read in court. Not surprisingly, in 1956 Raymond Willis launched the idea that the work could be a speculum principis or mirror of princes addressed to Ferdinand III the Saint or his son Alfonso X. For this reason, the image is fundamental. let it be given to the king.

How is Alexander the Great characterized? Right from the start, we are drawn to his double facet as a warrior (I want to read a book about a pagan king/who made a great effort of a wild heart/he conquered the whole world under his hand) and letrado (that he was frank and fardido and of great wisdom. This second characteristic will be developed in stanzas 14-19 and 38-45).

Another trait that stands out a lot is his liberality, because a great monarch must be very generous with good servants, even at the cost of his personal benefit.

Although the author of our poem is aware that he is a pagan king, he medievalizes him and does not hesitate to attribute anticipatory attitudes to Christianity, as can be seen in stanzas 120-123 (prays to a single God), 1161 (he affirms that he adores the Creator) or 2597 (I raise my eyes and outstretched hands to God).

In short, he is a perfect man because in him brain and clergy/effort and frankness and grant palacy are combined. (Verse 235)

Poem with overtones of an encyclopedia. The sources

Fifth Curt, History of Alexander the Great of Macedoniain an unqualified Florence of 1478.

The basic text that serves as a model for framing the successive incidents of the story is the poem in Latin hexameters Alexandreis de Gautier de Châtillon, which is from around 1180. This work follows in what constitutes the plot line of the poem, although —as its purpose is to delight and teach, as the poet states at the beginning of the book— he amplifies it with extracts taken from other works, such as a Greek adventure novel composed in the III by Pseudo-Callisthenes or as the Historia de preliis in Latin prose attributed to Archpriest Leo of Naples; above all, the Li Romans d'Alixandre by Alexandre de Bernay and Lambert li Tors, written in the Picardian dialect of the French lengua de oïl; the Latin Ilias of the Theban Pseudo-Pindar who inspired the famous digression on the Trojan War; the biography of Alejandro de Quinto Curcio, which is the origin of the legend; the Epítome of Julio Valerio; the Etymologies of San Isidoro of Seville; the Judaic Antiquities of Flavio Josefo; the Physiologus; the Disticha Catonis; Ovid's Metamorphoses and, of course, the Bible, especially "Genesis" and "Exodus". He also used oral tradition and oriental versions of the legend about Alexander the Great. We cannot know if he was influenced by another Spanish version of his story, the one contained in the lost clergy poem Los votos del pavón , although at least we know its source: the French poem Les voeux du paon.

As has already been said, the main plot line is the story of the life of Alexander the Great. However, it seems repeatedly enriched by the insertion of numerous digressions on very different topics. Among them, we will highlight Aristotle's speech to Alexander in stanzas 51-85, which is a true speculum principis; on the three parts of the world (c. 276-294); the summary that the Greek king wages the Trojan War in stanzas 335-772, to rejoice his ferles good-hearted people; the description of Babylon (stanzas 1460-1533), which includes a small lapidary (stanzas 1469-1462) or on the sins of man in general and of the different estates in particular (c. 1805-1830). Other times it is recreated in lengthy descriptions, such as that of the weapons of Darius (c. 989-1004) or the palace of the Hindu king Poro (c. 2119-2142).

Alexander descending into a submarine artifact. Miniature of the Li Romans d’Alixandre, Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms.264, foll. 50r. Illuminated by Jehan de Grise and his workshop, 1338-1344. Alexander the Great, in the Book of Alexandre and in several of its sources, in its desire for conquest goes beyond the natural world and explores the unknown, flying with the help of taps or descending to the marine depths, as in the image, through an artifact that prefigures the submarine. This unmeasured attempt to transpose the limits unexplored by man makes the author of the Alexandre is debated between the admiration he professes for the Macedonian hero, as an intellectual, and condemns him for his sin of pride, as a clergyman who is obliged to instruct in moral philosophy.

In summary, the main sources of the poem are these:

• The Alexandreis (c. 1180), a narrative poem in Latin hexameters by Gautier de Châtillon, inspired by the previous work and by the biography Historiae Alexandri Magni Macedonis (centuryIFifth Curt. The medieval Latin epic of the centuryXII is the main source of Book of Alexandre Spanish.
• The History of Preliis, medieval adaptation of Alexander's Romance attributed to the Pseudo Calístenes, a lot of legendary material around Alexander the Great in ten volumes that was the basis of all legends on his figure in the Middle Ages. The final form of this text belongs to the centuryIII, although the Latin translation, made by Julio Valerio Alejandro Polemio (principles of the centuryIV) is attributed to a certain Esopo.
• The Li Romans d’Alixandre started by Lambert le Tort and finished by Alexandre de Bernay, a French epic poem in the vernacular language of the centuryXII.

The poem

The problem of the structural unity of the work has been raised, since the plot is interrupted by numerous, diverse and varied episodes, some as extensive as the Trojan War, which could be considered as autonomous poems in themselves themselves and that in fact they have even been edited separately as such. But now today it is interpreted as a structural subtlety that does not disturb the thematic and structural cohesion of the text or its ultimate moral intention, and also serves to place it above the rest of medieval works on the subject; its unity is given precisely by the way in which the themes and episodes are interwoven, a procedure as common at the time as linear narration. What appear to be digressions serve in reality to highlight fundamental themes such as the downfall of human greatness, the dissolution of the protagonist's character, and the machinations of treason. In the Middle Ages, knowledge is understood by accumulation and the return to the past implies stopping the process of ambition, which is human degeneration. The anachronisms are conscious because the author does not look for a reflection of historical reality, but rather observes the classical world with medieval eyes: the Middle Ages have a cutting-edge vision of the classical world, as a quarry of materials to reinforce the undisputed authority of the Christian moral world; in that it is similar to the use that Saint Thomas made of Aristotle.

The work is divided into three parts:

1. Presentation of hero and learning. Discover the character of the hero and present the world in which his formation is carried out, which will allow him to understand his behavior throughout his life. He narrates the great wonders that take place when he is born, his education by Aristotle, his great intelligence, the wrath that corrodes him when he warns that the kings of Greece are tributaries of the Persian king Darius III, his ambition to shake that yoke and how he is armed knight and refuses to pay the tribute to Darius.
2. Ascense. The work that will suffer will be revealed until its hegemony in the world. First battles; dead Philip II, he accedes to the throne and unifies Greece conquering Athens, Thebes and Corinth. Go to Persia and get several victories before facing directly with Darius.
3. Maximum power and fall. Relation of his conquest of maximum power on earth: fight against Darius, conquest of Babylon, Susa, Usion, Persepolis. Death of Darius at the hands of the traitors Narbazanes and Bessus; Funeral honors that dispenses Alexander and execution of his murderers; conquest of India: overcomes Porus and proclaims himself the master and master of most of the known world; but it is not satisfied with that, it wants to dominate not only the earth, but the air and the sea; its fulminating later work, poisoned by the betrayals;

The poet condemns his hero. Alejandro fails because he is not capable of morally defeating himself. Far from having an epic motive, Alejandro is moved by a search for knowledge, a desire for wisdom and not possession or power; in his cleric/knight combo, Alejandro makes the mistake of directing his awareness outward rather than toward himself, which is certainly not religious or moral thinking; in his renouncing the search for self-knowledge, Alexander, the personification of the pagan world, lacks the moral element: the world has the shape of a man and man is a small world; the normal result would be to see his place in himself, to find himself in him, and to see his relationship to his creator. The pagans were incapable of knowing themselves, as did the king of the other world, Jesus Christ. Alexander serves, then, as an example of the vanity of the things of this world:

Francesco Fontebasso (1709-69), Alejandro Magno accepts Poro surrender.

Alexandre, who was rëy of grant power,

that in the seas shall not be able to fit,

in a hovo foya out to fall

that could not have term doze piedes have.

Jesús Cañas Murillo points out betrayal, arrogance and contempt for the world as dominant themes; all of them converge on the protagonist, who dies betrayed, sins of pride and renounces worldly glories in his agony; these three themes are also projected onto the other characters in the play. The poet especially insists on the absolute power of God and on the inscrutable traits of Providence, which governs the destiny of any man, no matter how powerful; Darius was already an Alexander and perished like him. On the other hand, the excellence of the poem comes from the perfect union of its parts in a solid whole that combines in just proportions the epic song, the book of chivalry and the didactic poem; skillful narrative passages, numerous and masterful descriptions, delightful legends, epistles and harangues, the exquisite interweaving of erudition and lyricism alternate... In short, it is one of the first masterpieces of Castilian literature.

Style

The cult poet masters rhetorical devices and makes good use of all of them. Similes and metaphors abound, especially those referring to animals; he also uses minstrel epic resources: epithets and formulaic style: "King Alexandre de la barva honrada...", "everyone said he was born in good time", "crying with her eyes, she began to mourn...". Along with the cult, popular language also appears: "Christianity has Europe as its flagship / Moors have the others for our toothless grant", "...of a dog that barks a lot, you never give';he feared you". However, the general tone is far from the spontaneity and immediacy of Gonzalo de Berceo.

Editions

The first printed edition was that of Tomás Antonio Sánchez in VV. AA., Collection of Castilian poetry prior to the fifteenth century, Madrid: Sancha, 1779-1790, 4 vols., of which corresponds to the third; includes readings from the O manuscript, newly discovered at the time. Florencio Janer reproduced this edition in Poets prior to the XV century, BAE, LVII, Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1864, pp. 147-224. The French Hispanist Alfred Morel-Fatio later edited the manuscript P, found in the Bibliotèque Nationale de Paris, with an extensive preliminary study (Dresden: Geseschaft für romanische Literatur, band 10, 1906). Raymond S. Willis made the first paleographic edition of all extant manuscripts and fragments (The Book of Alexandre. Texts of the Paris and the Madrid manuscripts prepared by... Princeton University Press, 1935). It was later reprinted (New York: Klaus reprint corporation, 1965). A critical and widely reprinted edition was that of Jesús Cañas Murillo (Madrid: National Editor, 1978). The following year, the Hispanist Dana Arthur Nelson made a critical reconstruction of the text (Madrid: Gredos, 1979) preceded by an exclusively linguistic study. Madelaine Aerni Ryland critically edited her unpublished doctoral thesis (1977). Among the most accessible modern editions we can mention the modernized one by Elena Catena (Madrid: Castalia, Odres nuevos collection, 1985) and the following:

• Francisco Marcos Marín (ed. lit.), Book of Alexandre, Madrid, Alianza, 1987. Digitalized in Alicante, Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library, 2000.
• Jesus Cañas Murillo (ed. lit.), Book of Alexandre. Madrid: Chair, 1988.

Fonts

• Cacho Blecua, Juan Manuel and María Jesús Lacarra Ducay, History of Spanish Literature, I. Between Orality and Writing: the Middle Ages, José Carlos Mainer (dir.), [s. l.], Critics, 2012, pp. 350-357. ISBN 978-84-9892-367-4
• Marcos Marín, Francisco, "Book of Alexandre", in Carlos Alvar and José Manuel Lucía Megías (eds.), Philological Dictionary of Spanish Medieval Literature, Madrid, Castalia (New Library of Scholarship and Critics, 21), 2002, chap. 93, pp. 754-762. ISBN 978-84-9740-018-3
• Pacual-Argent, Clara, Memory, Media, and Empire in the Castilian Romances of Antiquity: Alexander’s Heirs, Leiden, Brill (The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 83), 2022. ISBN 978-90-04-51226-9