WITH the production of the Salve Regina, and with the origination of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Galicia may be said to have entered triumphantly upon her second golden age, an age which extended from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, and in which is comprised the period which witnessed the most glorious triumphs of lyric poetry in Spain.

It must be remembered that for a hundred and seventy years previous to the year 585, when the Visigoths became the sole masters of Spain, the present province of Galicia, united to what is now the northern half of Portugal, had formed one united kingdom—that of the Sueves. As an independent nation, this portion of Spain, with a language of its own, and kings of its own, had more pronounced characteristics and traditions than any other part of Spain. Its language, originally Latin, had become, under the Sueves, a distinct Romance language, just as the Latin of central Spain became by degrees a Romance tongue, and finally developed into the Spanish language, as it is spoken in Madrid to-day. The language of Galicia during its second age of gold, the language of its lyric poetry was, like the Spanish language, a child of the Latin tongue; they were, we may say, twin branches from the same stem. But while the one became the universal language of Spain, the other split into two smaller branches, of which one became the national language of Portugal,[72] and the other—while it remained the purest of all the Latin dialects except the Italian—eventually sank to the level of a provincial dialect—that spoken by the peasants of Galicia to-day, a dialect which not even the historians of Spain and Portugal professed to understand till the close of the nineteenth century.

It was as recently as the last decade of the nineteenth century that students of Spanish history became conscious of the fact that a true knowledge of the history of Spanish civilisation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries could only be attained by careful study of the literature produced in the Galician tongue during Galicia’s second age of gold. An American writer, George Ticknor, whose work is still considered an authority on Spanish literature, erroneously attributed to flattery the words of the marquis of Santillana in his famous letter to the Constable of Portugal, “non ha mucho tiempo, cualesquier deÇidores e trovadores destas partes, agora fuesen castellanos anduluces o de la Estremadura, todas sus obras componian en lengua Gallega o portuguesca”[73]; but we know now that it was the simple truth, the language universally chosen by the famous trovadores of Spain, no matter which might be their native province, and by all Spain’s greatest poets of the Middle Ages was that of Galicia. “Ticknor thought it an insoluble mystery,” says Valmar, “why King Alfonso el Sabio should have left in his will a command that the poetry of Galicia should be sung over his tomb, seeing that he was buried in Murcia, where that tongue was not spoken; but if he had studied the Spanish poetry of that time, if he had read the beautiful Cantigas written by Alfonso himself, he would not have called the idiom spoken in Galicia in the thirteenth century a dialect, nor would he have been surprised that Alfonso should wish Gallegan poetry to be sung over his tomb.”

As we have seen, northern Portugal was once part of Galicia. When Portugal became a separate kingdom, she retained her original (the Gallegan) language. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, FeijoÓ pointed out that it was an error to suppose that there only existed three dialects derived from the Latin language, namely, Spanish, Italian, and French: there was a fourth—the Lusitanian language, that is, the language of Galicia, which was once identical with that of Portugal. The chief difference between the two is the pronunciation, and this is not sufficient to prevent individuals of the two countries respectively from understanding one another. FeijoÓ went on to insist that the Gallegan idiom was not, as generally supposed, a sub-dialect of Latin nor a corruption of the Spanish tongue, but an independent branch from the Latin tree, a branch more closely connected with the parent stem than even the language of Castille. “No one denies,” he says, “that Latin words have degenerated less in the Portuguese and Gallegan idioms than they have in Spanish: this could not be the case if they were sub-dialects of the Spanish language—the nearer the fountain the purer the stream. Italian is the purest of the Latin dialects; Portuguese comes next.”

The Gallegans have been a poetic people from the very earliest times, and this fact tallies with the traditions of their Celtic origin. Like the Irish, they have preserved even to our own day the Celtic predilection for spontaneous wit. The poetical contests indulged in by the trovadores of the Middle Ages were only an elaboration of the Celtic contests of wit so popular among the ancient Irish, and which are still part of the programme connected with a Gallegan peasant’s wedding. On the eve of her wedding-day the peasant girl in Galicia hears before her window the witty and often sarcastic couplet flung by the friends of a disappointed rival at the successful suitor and his friends who have come to serenade her, and then, as quickly as an echo, it is answered by the triumphant couplet of the happy bridegroom. Verse comes as readily as prose to the lips of these people, and the peasant bride may listen half through the night to their poetic banter.[74] Where the disappointment of the rival is very great, not only is the sentiment confessed in his spontaneous couplets very bitter, it is sometimes even cruel. French critics in FeijoÓ’s day complained that Italian and Spanish poets put too much enthusiasm (poetic frenzy) into their poetry, and to this charge FeijoÓ replied that he who wishes to turn the poets into prudent, discreet, and sensible beings, wishes to do away with them altogether, for enthusiasm is the soul of poetry, the ecstasy of the mind is the wing of the pen. In Galicia it is the wing of the tongue. “Impetus ille sacer, qui vatum pectora nutrit.”

The fact that Portugal and Galicia had for several centuries one common language accounts for the other fact that both have more than once laid claim to the honour of having produced the same great poet or literary man. Hence it comes that the trovador MacÍas el Enamorado appears as a Portuguese poet in the works of Portuguese writers, and as a Gallegan poet in the works of Spanish writers. The same apparent contradiction occurs with regard to the Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio.[75] Great was the importance of Galicia in the Middle Ages. Constantly was she visited by royalty, by princes, and by the flower of chivalry, attracted to the sepulchre of St. James. The greatest and noblest families of Spain had their senorial estates in Galicia. It was there that they founded the “Order of the Knights of Spain,” and later the Hermandad de Cambiadores, institutions which lent their powerful protection to the pilgrims who passed to and from Santiago on the French road (Camino francÉs).

Not only did the nobles speak the language of Galicia, that tongue was also the language of the court. It was in those days that a taste for la poesia provenzal penetrated into Galicia from France (brought by French pilgrims of aristocratic birth), and was imitated by the nobles of Galicia. “This persistence of the sentiment of love,” says the marquis of Fegueroa, “the chief argument of provenÇal lyric poetry, necessarily influenced our Knights of the Order of Spain, as it did the knights of northern France, Theobald IV, Count Champagne, and Charles of Orleans.” King Alfonso deliberately chose the language of Galicia in which to compose his hymns to the Virgin (Cantigas de Santa Maria); he chose it because it was so much more poetical than the language of Castille, so much more expressive, so much more tender; and for the same reason it became the favourite medium of all the poets of Spain. The native poets of Galicia were among the most famous of their age. It is now known that the curious book of poetry so long preserved in the Vatican library under the title of Cancionero de la Vaticana, was composed almost entirely by Gallegan poets, and not by Portuguese—as was believed until about twenty years ago.[76]

The trovadores of Galicia were great travellers, as well as musicians and poets. Not only did they visit and sing before the most powerful courts of Europe, but they studied at the schola mimorum of the countries they visited, and brought back with them to Santiago the most famous musical compositions of France and Italy. The music of Santiago Cathedral was for several centuries unsurpassed in Europe.

The Marquis de Valmar, in his fascinating work on the Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio, describes their language as spirited, flexible, impressive, and of rich variety. It was a language found ready for his use by the royal trovador; he did not improvise his happy expressions, they were already current among his people. The old idea that the modern languages of Europe were a result of the amalgamation of Latin with the barbaric idiom of the invaders of the Roman Empire is now completely abandoned. The philologists of to-day do not believe that the substantial changes introduced by the neo-Latin languages into the Latin tongue came from the Northern invaders except in very extreme cases. The transcendental transformations were a natural and inevitable result of the presence of Roman social life in Western countries.

The separation between the official and aristocratic language and that of the lower classes in such distinct regions, became the more palpable and determined, as the traditional glory of Imperial Rome waned. One Imperial Latin was spoken in the laws, tribunals, and schools, in the forum, the temple, and the palace; a common idiom bound together the educated classes of the vast Roman Empire; but in the business houses and the workshops, among the slaves and the lower classes, there was no common tongue; each country had its local expressions and its dialects, of which—though Latin was the foundation—a great part consisted of Latinised forms, and words of diverse origin—sometimes native, sometimes exotic—here Celtic, there Iberic, yonder Breton or Arabic, as the case might be. Later, when Roman fame and influence had declined still further, when the old Roman families had sunk to a plebeian level, and their place had been taken by a new, locally produced aristocracy, then it was that, along with the toga and the sword, the grand old Latin language disappeared for ever, leaving in its place a mixed dialect, which we call “Romance.”[77] The various provinces of the Roman Empire during its last period were, without doubt, bi-lingual. The conquerors adopted, as is invariably the case, the language and customs of the conquered, and forgot their own.

Valmar remarks that Amador de los Rios was right in saying that the common idiom of the peninsula was already completely formed at the beginning of the twelfth century. There are popular couplets written in the language of Galicia which can be traced back to the year 1110, namely the couplets that were sung on the occasion of the enthusiastic welcome given by the townspeople of Santiago to Bishop Gelmirez, who in 1105 had founded there a school for the cultivation of oratory, letters, and the Latin tongue. It is true, as Valmar points out, that the formation of the languages of Castille and Galicia must have required centuries, but that formation reached its completion towards the middle of the twelfth century. When new dialects came into existence, the synthetic beauty so remarkable in the Latin language was lost, but in its place animation and ease of expression were gained. “Marriages,” says Valmar, “also helped on the triumph of the Romance languages; but perhaps the most powerful influence was Christ’s religion of charity and love.”

Even in Italy Latin gradually became an unknown tongue to the lower classes. Pope Boniface VIII. translated the Stabat Mater into the young Italian language that the people might be able to appreciate it.

Alfonso x. indicates in Cantiga viii. that in his day a young man needed the help of the Holy Spirit before he could learn to speak Latin. To help on the propagation of the Christian religion, even Arabic was sometimes resorted to. Juan, Bishop of Seville, wrote sermons in Arabic at the beginning of the tenth century,[78] “a proof,” says Valmar, “that Latin was little known, as also the Romance language which was not yet risen.”

French, owing to the influence of the parish schools, took the precedence of all the neo-Latin languages, and had a powerful influence over other nations. There was a sudden flowering of Romance poetry in England just after the Norman conquest in 1066, and this spread to all the neo-Latin peoples—the story of Tristam and Iseult, the Arthurian legends, penetrated more deeply than the provenÇal lyrics. St. Francis of Assisi went about reciting French songs. Sir John Mandeville was the precursor of the famous Portuguese FerÑao Mendes Pinto, wrote in French the story of his travels in Asia (published by Lynn just after the invention of printing in 1480). Marco Polo also wrote, or rather dictated, his book of travel in French.

Alfonso el Sabio did not write in a vulgar dialect, but in the cultivated and polished language used by the aristocracy of Galicia. “The popular Gallegan dialect remained in the land of its birth, and kept the characteristic of a euphonic dialect,” says Valmar; but the language of learning ‘el Gallego erudito,’ so skilfully used by Alfonso and those innumerable Portuguese Spanish poets whose work is preserved in the Cancionero of the Vatican, acquired (without losing the essence of the primitive dialect) the character of a refined literary language. This language it was which became the mother of Portuguese.

The trouvadores of Aquitaine came in such numbers to Santiago, that it is no wonder they founded a centre of poetical unification, as Theophile Braga has called it. It was a school of national lyric poetry in the language which has been called Galaico-Portuguese. French influence was strongly reflected in it. It reached its highest point of resplendence in the reign of Alfonso X., and at that time even the lower classes understood and appreciated its poetry; so historians need be surprised no longer that the poet king chose to write in the language of Galicia.

Valmar has made a critical study of the versification of the Cantigas.[79] “In vain,” he says, “philologists have sought a connecting link between Latin prosody and the prosody of the Romance languages.” To write Hexameters in the language of Galicia would be impossible. The origin of the Cantigas is undoubtedly the popular and religious poetry of Latin decadence, at the moment when there was added to it a rhythmic element. There were, in Roman days, two Latin versifications, rhythmic and metric, corresponding to the two idioms sermo plebius and sermo patricius. The rhythmic versification used in popular poetry existed from the earliest days of Rome. It is mentioned by Livy, Cicero, Horace, and many other literary Romans. In the primitive hymns used by the Christian Church, the metric and rhythmic principles were curiously mixed. The earliest of these were composed by St. Ambrose and sung in Milan in 386. LÉon Gautier has remarked that the poetry of France originated with the verses sung in the churches.

The fact that Alfonso X. wrote many hymns of devotion to the Virgin does not prevent his morals from having been very shady. Dante went so far as to class him among princes unfit to reign,[80] and Valmar, unable to truthfully contradict the Italian poet, devotes pages to proving that Dante himself was not a better man. It is clear, however, that morals were everywhere very lax in those days, and one need not be surprised that the trovadores of Galicia were infected by the “audacias de la musa provenzal.” The poets of those days often seem to forget the moral dignity of humanity; they would attack the honour even of princes in their bold and bitter satyrs. “Alfonso,” says Valmar, “ever expressed real tenderness in his love songs.” But one or two of them have shocked even Valmar by their naked naturalism. “All this,” he says, “shows the relaxation of morals in his day, and the evil influences that came from Provence.”

One of the most singular legends contained in the Cantigas is that in which a rich and gallant gentleman, who has fallen blindly and immorally in love with a lady, prays with obstinate fervour two hundred Ave Marias to the Virgin every day for a whole year, entreating her that she would touch the lady’s heart. At length the Virgin appears to him in the church, and says, “Look at me well, and then choose between me and that other woman, the one who pleases you best (a que te mais praz).” The gallant gentleman instantly consecrated himself wholly to the adoration of the Virgin, and a year later she took him up with her to heaven.

In another Cantiga, the nun who acts as sacristan of the convent of Fontebras is in love with a knight, and is on the point of fleeing with him. She goes and prostrates herself before the Crucifix to take leave of Christ. Suddenly the holy effigy gives her such a blow in the face that it leaves a mark for ever on her cheek.

In yet another Cantiga (xciv.) a nun who acts as treasurer of a convent escapes from the cloisters with a lover, after having left the keys of the treasury before the altar of the Virgin with a prayer. The Virgin, in pity, takes her place,

and when the repentant nun returns after many years to the convent, she finds the keys where she had left them, and learned with astonishment and gratitude that no one had noticed her absence.

There are three hundred and fifty-nine Cantigas in Alfonso’s collection.

MacÍas (“O Namorado,” the infatuated lover) flourished in the last half of the fourteenth century, in the reign of Peter the Cruel (1350-69). Of all the trovadores of Galicia, MacÍas is the most popular. His fame is due to his tragic end, rather than to his merits as a poet. Professor Rennert,[81] who has recently published a monograph of MacÍas, does not find enough merit in his poems to account for his extraordinary fame. MacÍas has been extravagantly glorified alike by all the Portuguese and Spanish poets as a perfect model of true love, of love faithful even unto death. “Love alone was the cause of his death,” says Gregorio Silvestre.[82]

MacÍas is one of the most romantic figures in Spanish literature. Rennert has spared no pains in hunting for every scrap of information obtainable with regard to this pattern lover. He has perused the Satira de Felice e’ Infelice Vida, by Pedro, Constable of Portugal, written between 1453 and 1455; also the writings of Fernan NuÑez of Toledo, which appeared in 1499, and he assures his readers that all later writers who have made MacÍas their subject have drawn their inspiration from these two authorities.

From the pen of MacÍas himself, “the martyr to Cupid,” we have only four poems that can be authenticated. Rennert has examined these with extreme care, and says that the dialect (or language) in which they are written differs in no particular from the language of the early Portuguese poets.

As we have seen, the language of Galicia separated itself gradually from that of Portugal, as a result of the union of Galicia with the rest of Spain. Each of the four poems of MacÍas contains a sprinkling of Castillian words.

“His story fired the popular imagination,” says Fitzmaurice Kelly, “and enters into literature in Lope de Vega’s ‘Porfiar hasta morir,’ and in Larra’s ‘El Doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente.’”

There are two versions of the poet’s life story. The one taken up by Argote de Molina, and, in the words of Rennert, embellished with additional touches of romance,[83] is the most popular: “MacÍas was born in Galicia, and was a great and virtuous martyr to love, who, being enamoured of a gentle and beautiful lady, it happened that, riding one day over a bridge together, fortune so willed it that the mule upon which the lady was riding, becoming restive, threw her into the deep water. And as that constant lover, no less determined than fired by love, and fearless of death, saw what had happened, he quickly leapt into the deep waters: and he, whose infinite longing the great height of the bridge in nowise checked, nor whom the black and angry waters made forgetful of her in whose thrall he lived, seized her, already half dead, and bore her to the white sands safe and sound, and afterwards despairing of the reward that is not denied in the end to all true and faithful lovers, she was married to another. But that constant and gentle soul, that knew no change, loved her being married as he had loved her a maid, and as the faithful lover was journeying along one day, he met the cause of his undoing, for there came towards him his lady, and in requital of his great services to her he asked her to descend from her palfry. Thereupon MacÍas thanked her for her bounty, and bade her remount and ride on, so that her husband might not find her there, and she having departed, her husband arrived, and seeing him whom he did not much love standing in the middle of the road, he asked him what he was doing there, and MacÍas replied, ‘Here did my lady set her feet, and in these footprints I intend to remain, and end my sad life.’ And her husband, wanting in every feeling of courtesy or nobility, more actuated by jealousy than by mercy, dealt him a mortal blow with his lance. There, stretched upon the ground, his eyes turned in the direction in which his lady had departed, he uttered the following words: ‘O my only lady and for ever! Wherever thou mayest be, I entreat thee to remember me, thy unworthy servant’; and, having uttered these words with a deep sigh, his blissful soul passed away.”

MacÍas wrote a poem in which he upbraided Love. Here is the first verse of it—

And here is the fifth and last verse—

No doubt if he could but have foreseen his own tragic end, he would have reproached Cupid with even greater bitterness.