The seven infants of Lara

Portaleyo de Gonzalo de Berceo in the Monastery of San Millán de Suso, with which they become the sarcophages of the seven Lara infants of legend.

The seven infants of Lara (or de Salas) is a legend

from texts preserved in medieval chronicles, whose oldest testimony appears in the expanded version of the Estoria de España composed during the reign of Sancho IV of Castile, before 1289, which was edited by Ramón Menéndez Pidal under the name First General Chronicle. From the account of the chronicles (it also appears in the Chronicle of 1344 or Second General Chronicle and in an interpolation to the Tercera Crónica General whose copy dates from 1512) Ramón Menéndez Pidal found indications of the existence of an ancient song of deed that had disappeared, which he partially reconstructed and dated around the year 1000, and which would be, along with the Cantar de mio Cid and the Poema de Fernán González, one of the most important epic songs of Castilian literature and the most primitive example of Spanish epic. The tradition has elaborated the legend also in the ballads.

The infantes of Lara were the sons of Gonzalo Gustioz (or Gustios) and Sancha Velázquez, known as "Doña Sancha". The story revolves around a family dispute between Lara's family and Ruy Velázquez's family and his sister Doña Sancha. The most notable motive is that of revenge, the main motor of the action.

Description of the legend

According to the version handed down by the legend contained in the Sanchina version of the Estoria de España, which could include an ancient epic song composed around the year 990, during the wedding between Doña Lambra —a native of Bureba— and Rodrigo Velázquez de Lara, better known as Ruy Velázquez, and also called Roy Blásquez —brother of Doña Sancha, mother of the infants—, the relatives of the bride confront those of Lara. Álvar Sánchez, Doña Lambra's cousin, is killed in this confrontation at the hands of Gonzalo González, the youngest of Lara's seven infants.

Almanzor shows the heads of the seven infants to his father Gonzalo Gustioz. Recorded by Otto Venius, 17th century.

Later on, Gonzalo González is seen by Doña Lambra while he bathes in his underwear, an event that Doña Lambra, considering it as a sexual provocation on purpose, interprets as a serious offense. Doña Lambra, taking advantage of this incident to avenge the death of her cousin Álvar Sánchez, who has not yet been satisfied, responds with another affront by ordering her servant to throw and stain Gonzalo González with a cucumber filled with blood, before the mocking laughter of your brothers. Gonzalo reacts by killing Doña Lambra's servant, who had gone to take refuge under the protection of his mistress's cloak, which is also spattered with blood.

These events provoke Doña Lambra's thirst for revenge. For this reason, her husband Ruy Velázquez hatches a plan whereby Gonzalo Gustioz, lord of the enclave of Salas, is sent to Almanzor with a letter whose content indicates that the bearer of the letter be killed. The father of the infants does not know the content of the letter because it is written in Arabic. Almanzor takes pity on Gonzalo Gustioz and limits himself to holding him prisoner, since he considers the suffering of his captive excessive, which is relieved by a sister of Almanzor himself. A son named Mudarra is born to both of them, who will later be adopted by Sancha Velázquez, Gonzalo Gustioz's wife. Years later, this son, although a bastard, will avenge, by killing Ruy Velázquez, the crime committed against his half-brothers, since Lara's seven brothers had been led into an ambush by Muslim troops in which, despite their bravery, They are beheaded and their heads sent to Córdoba by order of their uncle Ruy Velázquez. There they will be painfully contemplated by their father Gonzalo Gustioz in one of the most emotional scenes of the entire Castilian epic.

Gonzalo Gustios's ring or Mudarra's ring

In the prosification of the song, Gonzalo Gustios is finally released. Just before leaving, Almanzor's sister, who had slept with Gonzalo Gustioz during captivity, tells him that she is pregnant by him (the child will be Mudarra). Gonzalo Gustioz sees here a possible way to take revenge on Ruy Velázquez, so he takes a ring and breaks it into two pieces, giving one part to her and keeping the other half. Mudarra receives this half ring as an inheritance from him, being later recognized by his father Gonzalo by putting the two parts together and seeing that they fit perfectly. In the prosification of the song from the Chronicle of 1344 or Segunda Crónica General, Gonzalo Gustioz becomes blind over the years, and when the ring is put together a miracle occurs: he regains his sight and the ring is permanently attached. In the opinion of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, the subplot of the ring and its use for the recognition of father and son, is one of the many proofs of the Germanic origin of the Spanish epic.

A probable lost epic song

The prosifications of the legend existing in the Alfonsian chronicles used a epic song as their source, a hypothesis that can be deduced from the abundance of assonant rhymes and other style traits typical of epic literature that remain in the prose of the chronicles. The existence of a lost Song of the seven infants of Lara arouses the consensus of philologists, since the verses of the epic were not excessively altered. Hence, quite reliable reconstructions of what could have been the original song have been written. Regarding this, Mercedes Vaquero has traced signs of orality in the prosified texts, which would indicate that at some point there was a song that was recited, intoned, or sung.

The Song of the Seven Infants of Lara or of Salas has as its time frame a historical situation that refers to Castile around 990, which has served to date the poem, although not all critics accept that the Cantar was composed around the year 1000, objecting that it preceded the great cycles of French epic, to which it could be indebted.

In this regard, Carlos and Manuel Alvar point out that many of the motifs of the primitive Cantar de los infantes de Lara are more closely related to those of the Scandinavian and Germanic epic (such as the Song of the Nibelungs) than with those of the Romanesque epic songs. Among them, the importance of blood ties, the cruelty of revenge as a way of imposing individual justice not supported by social institutions or a corpus of law, or the aggressiveness of passionate relationships, which carry a significant sexual charge, stand out. Erich von Richtofen, in his studies on this epic poem, has noticed numerous analogies with the epic of central and northern Europe, in particular he affirms that the epic of the infants of Lara, in addition to having a multitude of original Castilian elements and motifs, has many points in common with the Thidrek saga: «Odila's dishonor and her husband Sifica's revenge plan; his concert with his friend the governor; the journey of Fridrek and his six companions; the ambush set by the governor in which the seven knights of Wilzemburg find their deaths; in addition to details given to the episodes of the death of the Harlungos Edgardo and Aki with their master Fritila, the theme of the skulls sent to the father and that of the revenge of Hogni's son".

According to Ramón Menéndez Pidal, the poem had different versions, some much later than the original. The name of the song would be Los Siete Infantes de Salas, since the name of “Lara” is not mentioned. In it Doña Lambra is married to Ruy Velázquez. This scholar does not assert that all the characters are historical. As poetic elements it includes the Moorish infanta and the avenger Mudarra.

Alan Deyermond points out that the plot background reveals universal and habitual motifs from folklore, such as the letter that orders the death of the messenger (a commonplace coinciding with that of Hamlet), the love of a young woman for the prisoner taken captive by his brother or the mysterious ancestry of the protagonist.

The Anglo-Saxon critic appreciates that the Cantar de los siete infantes de Lara or Salas gathers great value due to its antiquity and priority in its genre and because it reflects that which It would be the heroic age of the birth and formation of Castile, a period that is in turn the moment of the gestation of the epic in the towns. In addition, he praises the energetic painting of some passages, such as the one in which Mudarra threatens Doña Lambra and she tries to seek protection:

Doña Lambra's bad girl for the count has delighted
in their garments great duels, the ralves of the bruised beasts;
He came to Burgos, entered the palace,
cast at the feet of the count and kiss the hands:
«Merced, count sir, set so of your cousin!
[of] what Rodrigo fizo yo culpa non habría,
e non me desamparedes, four few would be my days."
The count dixo: « Lies, doña alevosa sabida!
all these betrayals you have been swept;
you of my strengths erades ma'am and rein.
Non vos atreguo the body today in this day;
I'll send Don Mudarra to burn alive
and that you can spook those damn meats,
e, for what you have fed, the lost soul.

Influence on oral and written literature

Romance manuscript of the seven Lara infants. National Library of the Argentine Republic

The song of the Seven Infants of Lara, despite the fact that it could not be preserved in any manuscript (although Ramón Menéndez Pidal and, to a lesser extent, Erich von Richthofen reconstructed many of its verses), has had a great influence on the later literature. A non-exhaustive list is as follows:

• Prosification of singing in First General ChronicleIn the Chronicle of 1344 or Second General Chronicleand in the Chronicle of the Twenty Kings.
• Fragmentation of singing in romances. These epic romances are mostly the Old Roman. There are currently 6 epic romances on Lara infants.
• Several plays, including:
  • Seven Infants, written by Juan de la Cueva in 1579.
  • The Mudarra bastardwritten in 1612 by Lope de Vega.
  • The Great Tragedy of the Seven Infants of Lara, written by Alonso Hurtado Velarde between 1612 and 1624.
• The seven infants of Lara, novel by Manuel Fernández and González, published in 1853.
• The former moron (1834), poem in verse in decay of the Duke of Rivas.

Sarcophagi and tombs

The exhibition of the relics of the seven infants of the legends and literary works has been, since ancient times, the endeavor of several monasteries, since the link with prestigious heroes (whether real or fictional) provided these ecclesiastical establishments with an increase in the economic resources and the pilgrims attracted by them. Thus, the alleged sarcophagi of the seven infants of Lara are shown in the Monastery of San Millán de Suso, although the remains that claim to be those of the murdered brothers have been disputed by other monasteries, such as San Pedro de Arlanza; also the church of Santa María de Salas de los Infantes claims to keep their heads, and exhibited for a long time seven skulls that were held by those of the seven brothers; on the other hand, it is said that the tomb of Mudarra is found in the Cathedral of Burgos. The dispute for the possession of relics of famous heroes, known legendarily, has been common from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Outstanding Performances

• Teatro Español, Madrid. 1966.
• Decorated: Manuel Mampaso.
• Direction: Adolfo Marsillach.
• Performers: Nuria Torray, Gemma Cuervo, Charo Soriano, Luis Morris, Fernando Guillén, José María Rodero, Gabriel Llopart, Carlos Ballesteros.

Fonts

• ALVAR, Carlos and Manuel Alvar, Spanish medieval, Madrid, Chair, 1997. ISBN 978-84-376-0975-1. Cfr. especially the chapter “Seete Infantes de Lara”, p. 175-270.
• ANTELO IGLESIAS, Antonio: «Filology and historiography in the work of Ramón Menéndez Pidal». Thesaurus. Bulletin of the Instituto Caro y Cuervo. I take XIX. October-December 1964. No. 3. [2]
• DEYERMOND, Alan D., History of Spanish literature, vol. 1: The Middle Ages, Barcelona, Ariel, 2001 (1.a ed. 1973), pp. 78-81. ISBN 84-344-8305-X
• MENÉNDEZ PIDAL, Ramón (1896): The Legend of the Seven Infants of Lara. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1971. This research study by D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal has had three editions:
  • 1.a.- The Legend of the Seven Infants of Lara. Madrid: Print of the children of José M. Ducazcal, 1896.
  • 2a.- With numerous additions in: Works by R. Menéndez Pidal, Vol. 1. «The Legend of the Infants of Lara». Madrid: Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1934.
  • 3a.- In Complete Works by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Vol. I. «The Legend of the Seven Infants of Lara». Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1971, which reproduces the above and expands with dispersed works published after 1934.
• MENÉNDEZ PIDAL, Ramón; Possessed gallbladders; Espasa-Calpe Argentina; Buenos Aires - Mexico; 1948 (2nd edition); pp. 195-196.
• RICHTHOFEN, Erich von, "Epical-Medival Interdependence: Two Gothic Tangents", They say: Hispanic philology notebooks, n. 9, 1990, Madrid, Complutense University, pp. 171-186. ISSN 0212-2952.
• VAQUERO, Mercedes, «Orality Signs in Some Common Epic Reasons: Seven Infants of Lara, Romanz of the Infant García and Cantar of Sancho II», Aengus Ward (coord.), Acts of the XII Congress of the International Association of Hispanists, 21-26 August 1995, Birmingham, vol. 1, (Medieval and Linguistics), pp. 320-327, University of Birmingham: Department of Hispanic Studies, 1998. ISBN 0-7044-1899-1.