A true mirror of princes: defining the good governor in Miguel de Luna's Verdadera historia del rey don Rodrigo.

DURING the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a small yet politically influential group of Morisco writers sought to challenge Old Christian Spain's perception of their culture as something inferior and alien to the Peninsula. (1) In many of their works, these authors attempted to reclaim a sense of cultural pride, and to emphasize the positive roles played by the Peninsula's Arabic-speaking peoples throughout Spain's history. Miguel de Luna (c. 1545-1615), an official court translator of Arabic to Phillip II and III, was one of these writers. In his Verdadera historia del rey don Rodrigo, Luna rewrites the history of the Islamic conquest of the Peninsula, and recontextualizes common stories, myths, legends, histories, literary figures and commonly held prejudices concerning Spain's Islamic period so as to vindicate the Muslim presence in the Peninsula. But the legend that stands out most in Luna's text is that of Rodrigo, the last Visigothic king. Whereas in Spain's romance tradition, Rodrigo is often represented as a passionate although misguided man whose desire oversteps the boundaries of his good judgment, Luna's Visigothic monarch is portrayed as a cowardly rapist and tyrant who corrupts the faith of his subjects. Luna criticizes Rodrigo's reign, and by extension all of Visigothic Spain, by rewriting and recontextualizing the legendary king in such a way as to reshape Spain's Islamic legacy.

In order to understand how Luna refashions Spain's Islamic past, it is important to grasp, inasmuch as is possible, the implications of context, both literary and social. Context has, over the years, become an important element in the fields of pragmatics and in ethnographically oriented studies of language use, as well as recently, in the study of literature. From approximately the 1970s on, increasingly more interactive and dialogically based interpretations of context, situated talk and writing have come into acceptance (Duranti and Goodwin 1), and as the twenty-first century unfolds, this trend continues. Rather than presume a high degree of semantic transparency in a given encoded message, as was common to Saussurian and Chomskyan approaches to context and linguistic forms (Hanks 141), scholars in the field of anthropological linguistics have begun to focus more on the uses of, and the roles played by, language as utilized by the speaking subject (Duranti and Goodwin 1). Basing themselves on studies done on the ethnography of communication in 1972 and 1974 by Dell Hymes, and in 1982 by John J. Gumperz, in 1990 folklorist Richard Bauman and anthropologist Charles L. Briggs argued for a shift "[...] from the study of texts to the analysis of the emergence of texts in contexts" (59). This call for an understanding of utterance and context as socially embedded and constructed activities requires the analyst to consider how verbal and non-verbal communication mediates discursive interaction, and how the human being, in his or her role as an agent of communicative activities, makes and uses texts and other forms of discourse to construct his or her social world. To a large extent, these theories have been greatly influenced by the work of the Bakhtin Circle and its reevaluation of the idea of context and the role context plays in the social construction of reality, and of the social forces and heteroglossia that inescapably influence human communication, whether in the written or spoken form.

Typically, the idea of context has been somewhat slippery to define, and as Duranti and Goodwin assert, at the present time we may have to be content with our inability to produce a single, technical definition of the term (2). We cannot simply state that context consists of the external events that give shape to talk or written discourse for example, because talk and writing themselves can function as a context for other types of communication: verse can be contextualized within a prose narration within a story, and that same narration as a whole can be contextualized within talk between teller and recipient; letters and legal documents may be contextualized within a historical work or within a comedic play, or speech can be interpreted within the framework of varying social situations (Bauman). Scholars in the late 1970s developed two principal methodologies to better study context as part of oral communication: one that was informed by the cognitive sciences, and another that had been influences by the social sciences. The latter examined the ways in which the human mind processed information necessary for understanding talk, while the former centered on the aspects of interpersonal speech events that influence the production of talk (Lindstrom 103). Later, in the 1990s, scholars including philosopher Michel Foucault, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and linguist P. Linell further refined the idea of context to account for relationships between power and resistance that affect the discourse of the human, speaking subject; human speech, they theorized, as well as any other form of discourse, takes place within a realm of subjective and objective conditions that govern its production, and the talk of speaking subjects is therefore audible or authorized to greater or lesser degrees. (2) This emphasis not only on the utterance, but also on the multi-layered social circumstances and conditions surrounding the production and reception of a message is supported by numerous theorists.

In one study of how understanding and misunderstanding can occur between a native and a non-native (yet fluent) English speaker, Gumperz defines contextualization as "[...] speakers' and listeners' use of verbal and nonverbal signs to relate what is said at any one time and in any one place to knowledge acquired through past experience, in order to retrieve the presuppositions they must rely on to maintain conversational involvement and assess what is intended [...]" (230). This participant-centered approach to understanding context is also evident in Bauman's examination of context as a discursive meeting ground wherein "[...] talk is oriented to other talk [...]" and is socially imbued with meaning (138). Emanuel A. Schegloff develops a recipient-centered theory of context in which the parties involved in a communicative act do not interpret "[...] a strip of talk as an isolated object but instead interpret whatever is being said by tying it to the context in which it occurs" (191). William F. Hanks opts for a broad, less talk-oriented definition of context. In his work Language and Communicative Practices, he defines context as

   [e]verything and nothing. Like a shadow, it flees from those who
   pursue it, evading the levels and categories of theory, and pursues
   those who try to flee from it, insinuating itself as the unnoticed
   ground upon which even the most explicit statements depend [...].
   Ultimately, context is nothing less than the human world in which
   language use takes place and in relation to which language
   structure is organized [...]. How we describe it [...] depend[s]
   upon what we focus on. (140)

Context, then, in the broadest sense of the term, can be defined as the inescapable layers of socially-constructed meaning that saturate human lives, communication and experience.

Bearing in mind that every human action, situation, and utterance is permeated, evoked, and understood according to how it is contextualized, we can begin to examine the ways in which Miguel de Luna rewrites the legend of Spain's last Visigothic king, don Rodrigo--a figure of great iconic importance to the construction of national identity in the Iberian Peninsula--in such a way as to question the hegemony of Old Christian Spain. In order to understand Luna's commentary on Rodrigo's place in Spain's political and literary con sciousness, his history must be situated within the larger social and literary framework of Spain's pre-expulsion years. (3) The early sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a period of conflict and animosity between Spain's Habsburg monarchy and its various Morisco populations. Shortly following the fall of Granada to Fernando and Isabel in 1492, the Spanish monarchy attempted repeatedly to stamp out any vestiges of Islam in the Peninsula; edicts regulating dress, food, baths, hygiene, customs, celebrations and language were aimed at annihilating any external appearance of cultural difference in the Morisco populations, and the possession of texts written in Arabic was made punishable under the law. In Spain's romance tradition, whose subject matter often deals with battles, events, and personages that were important in the Reconquest, Christian primacy is also privileged. It is interesting to note that in Spanish ballads, tensions between Muslim and Christian factions are evident both overtly and at more subtle levels, as in the Rodrigo cycle of romances. The most widely circulated variants of the Rodrigo ballads owe much to legends that were common during the eighth century in the popular, Rodriguista sectors of Iberian society, while less popular versions of the legend circulated among pro-Vitiza sectors that were sympathetic to the Muslim government, and which were closely associated with the reigning Muslims. (4) As in Luna's history, these versions of the Rodrigo legend that circulated in relatively Islam-friendly spheres question Rodrigo's, and by extension all of Visigothic Spain's, sense of morality, as well as the Christian king's place as legitimate ruler of the Peninsula. The fact that Luna utilized Islamic accounts of the conquest instead of those favored by the Rodriguistas indicates his desire to privilege pro-Andalusi Muslim narratives in the face of the increasingly hostile official discourses directed towards Spain's Moriscos (and their history as Spanish citizens), which emanated from the Crown.

In addition to the social tensions that Luna evidences by choosing certain variants of the Rodrigo legend over others, Luna wrote (or "translated" by his own admission, although present scholarship agrees that Luna was indeed the author of the Verdadera historia) what he maintained throughout his life was a true history of the conquest of the Peninsula (Gayangos viii). In this true account of the conquest, Luna corrects errors of past historians, and offers the reader a trustworthy, eye-witness narrator, as well as examples of proper moral conduct, as was common to other historical discourses of his time (Cabrera de Cordoba; Herrera y Tordesillas). Thus contextualized as true, Luna's history compels the reader to consider some telling assumptions. Since Miguel de Luna was an official translator of Arabic to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Castilian monarchy, as a delegated agent of the state his discourse is "audible" (Bourdieu 239), and therefore authorized to gain recognition for the point of view he seeks to impose. Also, given that some of the principal characters in Luna's history serve as models of desirable conduct, and that it was supposedly written in close proximity to the Islamic conquest of the Peninsula by a simple foot soldier who took part in the battles narrated, the information he presents is seen as trustworthy and of historical importance. Therefore, if the reader agrees that Luna is acting within his capacity as royal translator and that his voice is indeed authorized and should be heard, and if the message he imparts is of moral value and if the source of Luna's history is indeed trustworthy, then s/he must consider that the information contained within the text, including Luna's negative image of Spain's last Visigothic monarch and the whole of Christian Spain under Rodrigo's rule, must be true as well. This contextualization of his history as true allows Miguel de Luna to dismantle the image of Rodrigo as Spain's last, great Christian monarch, to contest the official and popular anti-Morisco narratives that circulated during this period, and to comment on the sociopolitical environment in which he himself lived by veiling his observations in the historical past he represents.

The Rodrigo cycle of romances was compiled from a series of separate ballads most likely composed between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, which owe much to, and reflect the characteristics of, the Chronicle tradition that preceded them (Diaz-Mas 12-13; Menendez Pidal, Flor nueva 43-55). Although there are several variants of each individual ballad, certain characteristics of the Rodrigo cycle as a whole occur with enough frequency that they have become common to the tradition. First, Rodrigo is shown as a monarch whose will cannot be denied, and who feels a genuine love/desire for his vassal's daughter, referred to in the romances only as "La Caba" (Diaz-Mas 134; "La Caba"; Luna 54v; Sieber 4-7; Garces 86; Murillo 238; Gerli 53-58). Rodrigo confesses his love directly to the young woman, at which point she discretely downplays the amorous advances of her king, either taking his words as evidence of a test of her loyalty to her queen, or as a joke. Rodrigo then finds a way to corner Julian's daughter alone, and forces himself upon her. The dishonored girl's beauty wastes away, and she decides to inform her father of the incident in a letter. Julian is dishonored, and plots his treasonous revenge, making a pact with the Muslims of North Africa against his own sovereign. Rodrigo is later defeated in battle and flees, visibly wounded, on horseback. After a time spent wandering in the mountains, the king comes upon a hermit's cave, where he receives instruction as to how he may attain God's forgiveness for his sins. Rodrigo does penance, and dies after suffering and repenting of his wrongdoing (Menendez Pidal, Flor nueva 43-55; Diaz-Mas 133-142). It is interesting that, in the romance tradition, Rodrigo is not represented as a cruel rapist, but as a man whose judgment has become clouded by his passion. In some variations, he feels a sincere longing for Julian's daughter, and even declares his emotions at several points in the story, promising her his heart and kingdom if she will grant him his desire. Rodrigo fights heroically in battle, and to retreats only when the situation is hopeless. Most importantly, after realizing that he has lost his land to the invaders, king Rodrigo is given the chance to repent of his sins and to do penance, thus gaining God's forgiveness and entrance into paradise after death.

In the Verdadera historia, Miguel de Luna takes this representation of Rodrigo as a passionate, misguided yet ultimately forgiven man, and effectively rewrites it, recontextualizing the last Visigothic king and symbol of Spanish Christendom in a negative light. While negatively recontextualizing Rodrigo as an icon of Christian Spain, Luna negates the privileged position of what Francisco Marquez Villanueva has called neo-Gothicism as a great conservative myth (51). Responding to assertions like those set forth in Ambrosio de Morales' Coronica general de Espana, published in 1587, just a few years before Luna's first volume was to be printed, Luna describes Spain's Visigothic past as a nightmare to which the Muslim invasion puts an end (Marquez Villanueva 51). Whereas Morales tells of the many centuries of continuous Visigothic military victories, their heroic feats, generosity and bravery, Luna narrates the fall of an unorganized and ineffective Christian government (Morales 3: 293r). Additionally, as a symbol of Visigothic Spain, Luna's Rodrigo is a morally inferior ruler who corrupts his entire kingdom with his sins, abuses the confidence of one of his loyal vassals (count Julian), and forces himself sexually upon the young Florinda who has been left under his protection at court (Menendez Pidal, Floresta 2: xliv-xlv). Luna portrays him as a tyrant who corrupts the faith of his subjects, who illegitimately assumes the throne and seeks to assassinate the country's true and legitimate ruler (the soon-to-be monarch don Sancho), and who shows the depth of his moral depravity in the moment when he forces a poor shepherd to exchange clothes with him to hide his identity and avoid death by the encroaching enemy forces. But Rodrigo's sins are not his alone; his moral laxness permeates the Visigothic kingdom (Marquez Villanueva 48).

As previously stated, in the Verdadera historia, Rodrigo cannot control his vices. His first and primary flaw is that of jealously and lust for power, as evidenced in the account of his usurpation of Sancho's throne. According to Luna, Rodrigo was the brother of king Acosta, who had governed the city of Toledo, and who left behind after his death a legitimate heir to the throne, don Sancho. (5) Since Sancho was a child at the time of his father's death, Rodrigo, as the boy's uncle and the king's brother, was entrusted with a proxy rule. Miguel de Luna informs his reader that even though Sancho was still a child, the young sovereign showed great promise as a leader from his earliest days: "[e]l nino don Sancho mostraua grande esfuerco y valor en el animo, en tal grado que todos los de su Corte le tenian mucha aficion y voluntad" (14v). The yet-to-be-king is seen as legitimate heir to the Spanish throne not only by his lineage, but also by the goodwill he inspires in his subjects.

Rodrigo, conversely, is described as scheming, insincere and jealous of Sancho's legitimate rule. Luna informs his reader that the acting king "[n]o dexaua de recebir mucha pena y cuydado, aunque exteriormente mostraua lo contrario" every time he thought of submitting his will to that of Sancho and becoming the young monarch's vassal and inferior one day (14v). Out of fear and pride, and at the suggestion of his royal advisor, Ataulpho, Rodrigo unsuccessfully attempts to poison Sancho during a celebration at court (14). Rodrigo makes a second attempt upon Sancho's life when he endeavors to imprison the prince on false charges of conspiracy. Sancho is captured, and while he, in the custody of Rodrigo's soldiers, is en route to Toledo, his mother, Anagilda, recruits a small army, goes in search of her son, and kills every one of Rodrigo's men, except one: Ataulpho. Instead of putting the king's advisor to death as she had the rest of Rodrigo's company that had come in search of her son, Anagilda orders his ears and nose cut off for acts of treachery against his natural sovereign, and sends him back to Rodrigo as a threatening example (1516). Although mother and son escape and seek refuge among the Muslim population in Tangiers, within a short time they both die of the grief that escaping Rodrigo's grasp has caused them (18v). In this section of text, Miguel de Luna rewrites the history of Rodrigo's rise to power, refocusing Sancho's death as a direct result of his uncle's arrogance and pride, and implicating the king in the moral downfall of his subjects; because of Rodrigo's lust for power, Anagilda is forced into committing acts of war and revenge that define her as bloodthirsty and barbaric in the extreme (Marquez Villanueva 49). Thus, we see that Rodrigo's sins sully not only his own image, but also the moral behavior of his subjects.

Miguel de Luna also recontextualizes the historical and ethical climate surrounding Rodrigo's reign via the Visigothic king's moral laxness. In his dealings with Count Julian and Julian's daughter Florinda, Rodrigo's corruption is obvious. (6) First, the king abuses the trust of his once loyal vassal, which causes Julian to betray the Crown. Contrary to Julian's image in popular legend, in the Verdadera historia, Florinda's father does not plot treason against Rodrigo (Luna 22r, 54r; Menendez Pidal, Romancero 4; Floresta xvi-xxiv). In fact, Julian consistently acts on the king's behalf, traveling to Africa to discern the possible alliance between Anagilda and Muza, ruler of Islamic Africa (17r). But Julian's obedience does not sway Rodrigo. Taking advantage of his vassal's absence, the married king acts upon the "[...] vicios que solia vsar siendo soltero [...]" (20v) and sexually forces himself upon the young maid, Florinda. Thus forced to retaliate, Julian forms an alliance with Muca and uses his knowledge of Spain's geography to offer the Muslim forces safe passage into the Peninsula. Like her father, Florinda is also forced into a last, desperate expression of the anguish she bears because of the abuse she has suffered at the hands of her sovereign. Having been dishonored by the one to whom her honor and education had been entrusted, and feeling responsible for the death of many noble soldiers, Florinda throws herself from the highest tower of her father's castle (53v). The depth of her emotional turmoil reveals a woman who is conscious of right and wrong, not a liberal, winsome whore as implied by her alternate name ("la Caba") which is most commonly seen in Spain's romance tradition. Father and daughter are therefore exonerated in Luna's history, given that their acts against God (Florinda's suicide) and sovereign (Julian's treason) resulted from Rodrigo's uncontrolled vices.

In addition to his lust for power and lascivious tendencies, Rodrigo's religious conviction is also questionable. In opposition to the opinions upheld by the Rodriguista segment of Mozarabic society during Spain's Islamic period, Luna follows the legend's Muslim variant, portraying Rodrigo, not Vitiza, as given to carnal vices. The legendary Christian king not only commits adultery himself, but also invites the assumedly celibate Catholic clergy to take multiple lovers, a contradiction that defiles his community in the eyes of God. Luna describes in his second volume Rodrigo's corruption of the Church's custom of celibacy among its clergy: "No pueden ser casados, aunque el Rey don Rodrigo les dio licencia para tener mugeres vna, dos y tres, y las demas mancebas que quisiessen contra su misma ley [...] que [h]ay de presente en este Reyno mas hijos aspurios y de malos ayuntamientos, que ligitimos" (162). Here, Rodrigo is seen as a profaning, rather than religiously edifying force in his community. His carnal vices are not merely his own, but extend, rather, to corrupt the Catholic clergy as well as the population as a whole. By contextualizing Rodrigo as a negative example, Miguel de Luna criticizes pre-Islamic society in Spain by questioning the legitimacy of the land's heirs, and their dedication to the precepts of their faith.

Rodrigo's morality and position as monarch are further questioned by his treatment of the simple shepherd he encounters while fleeing the Muslim army. During a particularly bloody battle the king retreats on horseback, leaving his forces to struggle as best they can. Miguel de Luna emphasizes the cowardliness of Rodrigo's actions, and states that the king "[...] salio de su campo huyendo, sin consentir que ninguno de los suyos le siguiesse" (34v). Later, the Muslim captain Tarif Abenziet offers a handsome reward for Rodrigo's capture, dead or alive. Muslims, Christians and renegades all join in the search, each group having its particular motive for wanting to capture and punish Rodrigo. These mercenary troops find a man in the mountains, dressed as the Visigothic king, capture him, and bring him before Abenziet and his assistant, count Julian. Florinda's father informs the court that this man is not Rodrigo, but a rustic shepherd whom the king had duped. Upon questioning the shepherd, he explains to the group that he had merely been grazing his livestock in the mountains when a horseman (who was in reality the king) approached him, then ordered him to undress and exchange his clothes with him (34r). Far from representing the model behavior expected of a monarch, Rodrigo is seen as self-centered and uninterested in service to his subjects, God, or country.

This episode also represents an inversion of Rodrigo's penance and redemption as told in the romance tradition. In the Rodrigo cycle of romances, the Visigothic king comes upon a shepherd who introduces him to a hermit living in the mountains. This hermit guides the ex-ruler through acts of contrition and penance aimed at redeeming his soul in the eyes of the Christian God. But in Luna's history, the only person whom Rodrigo meets during his flight is the solitary shepherd whose clothing and identity the ex-monarch forcibly appropriates; nowhere does there appear a pious hermit to help Rodrigo confess and repent. Herein lies one of Luna's most bitter criticisms. Unable to cleanse his soul by performing acts of penance, Rodrigo--Spain's last Christian monarch and enduring symbol of the Peninsula as a Christian nation--is effectively denied God's forgiveness and is condemned to eternal punishment, just as his kingdom is doomed to fall to enemy hands.

Luna's negative recontexualization of the Rodrigo legend as seen in Spain's romance tradition is certainly compelling in its own right, but it becomes even more so when contrasted with the positive model of princely conduct of the magnanimous and righteous Arabic ruler, king Auilgualit Miramamolin Iacob Almancor (westernized as Almanzor). (7) First, the position the king's biography occupies within the Verdadera historia is an important reminder of how we are to view Almanzor's life, and second, the moral failings of Rodrigo are countered one by one by Almanzor's strengths; Almanzor's generosity, compassion, trustworthiness, wisdom, religious conviction and political effectiveness all call attention to the lack of these qualities in Spain's last Visigothic king.

The contextual position that a specific verbal or written discourse occupies in relation to others is significant in guiding the reader's comprehension of the message, and can alter the reader's perception of the information presented. As Bauman and Briggs indicate: "[t]he illocutionary force of an utterance often emerges not simply from its placement within a particular genre and social setting but also from the [...] relations between [its] performance and other speech events that precede and succeed it" (64). Bearing this statement in mind, we see that Almanzor's life is worthy of our attention in part because of the space it occupies in its textual setting. According to Luna's fictitious narrator, Abulcacim Tarif Abentarique, the story of the monarch's life is centered in the most important, respected place of the Verdadera historia, between the first and second parts of the history--a place reserved for the "[...] huesped honrado, noble y sabio, [a quien] se le deue dar el mejor lugar y assiento que huuiere en la casa y con buena voluntad apossentarle en lo interior del coracon [...]" (131v).

Abentarique relates to his reader that he has decided to incorporate the full version of Ali Abencufian's biography of Almanzor's life, word for word, within his own history, for two reasons (130r-131v). First, Abentarique mentions Abencufian's expertise as a writer, and the fact that, if he (Abentarique) were to write his own account of the life of king Almanzor, it would never equal what had gone before:

   [...] escriuio la vida del Rey Abilgualit Iacob Almancor, con
   grande rectitud, putualidad y verdad, por lo qual se le deue mucho
   loor y agradecimiento, y [...] me parecio que era gastar el tiempo
   en balde, tratar yo della en mi historia; porque [...] no podria yo
   escriuir mas de lo que el escriue, ni con mejor estilo [...].
   (131v)

Second, Luna's fictitious author underscores the value and importance of properly imitating and acknowledging the works of those wiser than oneself, in this case, Abencufian's words concerning Almanzor. Abentarique explains:

   [...] es grande osadia [...] o mejor decir, falta de razon y buen
   entendimiento [...] que vsan algunos ignorantes disfracados, en
   abitos de hombres sabios, en querer alcarse con los bienes agenos,
   y venderlos por proprios suyos [...] vsurpando el nombre de los
   tales autores [...]. [Y] aunque yo no sea sabio que merezca nombre
   entre los que lo son, alomenos pareciome de ser discipulo y
   verdadero siervo suyo; porque comiendo las migajas de sus dichos y
   sentencias, me siruieron de sustento contra la pestifera hambre de
   la monstruosa ignorancia [...]. (130r)

In these two sections of text, the exemplary nature of Almanzor's biography is made evident as Miguel de Luna fabricates a literary context for legitimizing the story of the king's life, which is to follow. On one hand, an intelligent man quotes those wiser than himself, and acknowledges them for their words and lessons. Bearing this in mind, Abencufian's biography necessarily represents the work of a wise man since it is included verbatim in the Verdadera historia, just as Luna's author, Abentarique, must be an intelligent and trustworthy man for having availed himself of the work of Abencufian. On the other hand, Almanzor's biography is said to show great artistic merit, being better than anything that Abentarique could have produced himself, and is therefore worthy of inclusion without revision. Thus, we understand that Luna's narrator considers Almanzor's life exemplary and worthy of incorporation into his account of the conquest because of the wisdom contained therein as well as its artistic merit.

Given that the words and lessons of a wise man are worthy of imitation, so should the positive model of princely conduct embodied by king Almanzor be considered exemplary. Rather than abusing the trust of his loyal vassals and raping their daughters or willfully endangering them, as did Rodrigo, the Muslim king builds his vassals' confidence in him by giving alms to the poor, ordering schools and hospitals built, and by creating a safe environment through which even women may travel alone without fear. Luna's Almanzor shows extraordinary compassion for the poor of his lands and an unmatched love for the truth. He routinely calls those in need to his court, and presents each one with a handful of gold coins (135v). On Fridays after worship, the king orders three tables set for the midday meal: one for the governors of his territories, one for his vassals of modest means, and one for the servants and poor in his community; all, regardless of rank or wealth, are fed abundantly (136r). So great is Almanzor's compassion for those in need, that he gives equally to each of them, whether they are Christian, Jew or Muslim (143r). He admonishes his sons that "[...] quien no tuuiere misericordia con sus proximos, no la hallara en Dios el dia del juyzio final" (153r), and on one occasion when a truly poor servant finds himself held prisoner because of a debt, the king himself pays the man's creditors out of the royal treasury (138r). Even in his last hours of his life, the king bears the welfare of his subjects foremost in his mind. In his final, dying breath, Almanzor orders that all his belongings and funds be dispersed among the poor, that all his slaves be freed, and that a substantial dowry be awarded to each of one thousand orphan girls whose marriages he also arranges (154r). Although Almanzor is exceedingly generous with the people of his land (unlike the greedy, power-hungry Rodrigo), he holds honesty above all else. Instead of duping those around him with false pretexts aimed at assassinating his own kin and the rightful sovereign of the kingdom, Almanzor champions truth. In his kingdom, crimes of dishonesty against other citizens, primarily against those individuals in more subordinate social positions, are punished quickly and harshly. Robbery and lying (or giving false testimony) are considered infractions of the highest rank, and are punished so severely that no one dare commit either (137r-139v). Miguel de Luna's Almanzor is thus characterized in contraposition to the image he presents of Rodrigo. He is a protector of the poor and weak, a godly man who holds truth in high regard, and is a man civilized enough to foster an atmosphere of safety throughout his community, no matter the cost.

Miguel de Luna's king Almanzor shows a genuine interest in, and concern for, the individuals of his lands, and unlike Rodrigo, he strives to protect those weaker than himself, especially women. Whereas Luna's Visigothic king rapes Florinda, and thereby indirectly causes her suicide and sin against God, Almanzor strives to foster a safe haven for the women under his protection. One particular instance in the Verdadera historia characterizes the rigor and desire for public safety that are typical of Almanzor's reign. After returning to Arabia from a mission to the newly acquired Spanish territories, one of the king's favorite governors, Abrahem Maauya, relates to his sovereign an incident of special interest. The governor informs the king that, while walking through the flat grasslands of the area, he came upon an attractive woman walking alone, unaccompanied by a male escort. The governor, concerned for her safety, reprimanded her for her behavior, but she answered:

   [...] mientras viuiere nuestro Rey y senor Auilgualit Iacob
   Almancor (al qual el soverano Dios de largos dias de vida, y haga
   victorioso contra sus enemigos) nosotros podemos andar con
   seguridad por sus Reynos en el yermo, y poblado. (139v)

The governor tells the woman that she is being naive in imagining such security, and that if a person of poor character should want to do her harm, there would be nothing Almanzor, who was in Arabia, could do to protect her (139v). Upon hearing this story, Almanzor becomes very displeased. The governor's act of placing the woman's honor in jeopardy by speaking with her as she walked alone in an unpopulated place, and the untruth he told by inferring that the king could do nothing to protect her, since he was so far away, is severely punished (139v).

Finally, the loyalty Almanzor's behavior instills in his vassals significantly highlights the lack of the same seen in Luna's description of Rodrigo. Whereas Rodrigo is shown to have betrayed, and been a cause of embarrassment to the people of his kingdom (22r), Almanzor represents a source of pride for his subjects and is a man worthy of imitation (132v, 135r, 148r, 149r, 151r-152v). Contrary to the acts of treason Rodrigo is shown to have incited in his vassals as exemplified in his dealings with count Julian (54r), Almanzor always repays devoted service generously, thereby contributing to a sense of loyalty among his troops (139-140). Even dead soldiers' families receive part of the war booty (148r), and instead of fleeing and leaving his troops in need, as did Rodrigo (34v), Almanzor goes into battle himself, alongside his soldiers (147). Finally, whereas Rodrigo is jealous of his political position to the extent that he attempts to, and eventually indirectly kills the rightful heir to the throne, don Sancho, Almanzor is humble when he speaks of the king's role in society and reminds his son how little any monarch's kingdom means in the scope of all eternity (149-151). Almanzor is described as a father figure and protector to everyone in his kingdom, instead of taking advantage of those who trusted him, as did Rodrigo (155v). Via the contrast Miguel de Luna establishes between the negative image of Rodrigo, and the positive model of Muslim conduct that follows, Luna frames Almanzor's life in such a way as to be understood as a lesson for all men, especially those who would reign.

In this study I have examined Miguel de Luna's recontextualization of don Rodrigo, a figure of great iconic importance in Spain's history and development as a country. In opposition to the traditional, positive portrayals of the last Visigothic king in the Rodrigo cycle of romances, Luna emphasizes the king's greed, lust, pride, and prevarication, as well as the political infractions he commits against his own natural sovereign, his cowardliness in battle, and his failure to bear his subjects' best interests in mind. Thus, Luna removes Rodrigo from his privileged position in popular ideology. But in addition to subverting the Rodrigo described in Spain's romances, Miguel de Luna also contrasts him with a positive Muslim model of behavior--king Almanzor. In this way Miguel de Luna is able to criticize not only one of Christian Spain's unifying legends, but all of Old Christian Spain as well, while simultaneously emphasizing the historical, social and moral contributions made by Spain's Muslim populations.

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by Gioia Marie Kerlin

Assistant Professor of Spanish

The University of Tulsa

NOTES

(1) The term "Morisco" as used in reference to Spain's arguably Christianized Mudejar populations and their descendents has, in the last few years, come under scrutiny. I am aware of the polemic surrounding the term's use, and agree with much of what has been argued by those who favor other ways of categorizing Spain's converted Mudejars and their progeny. That said, I also believe "Morisco" can be a functional term as long as its use is defined, and its limitations recognized. See Harvey (16); Barletta (163); Marquez Villanueva (117-166); and Cardaillac (33).

(2) Both Foucault and Bourdieu often allude to the relationship between the speaking subject and the discourses of power and resistance that can affect and govern his or her speech. Some examples include Foucault, "The Order of Discourse" in Untying the Text: A Post Structuralist Reader, and Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. In Approaching dialogue: Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives, Linell also suggests that cultural tools, of which language is an important example, are often unevenly distributed within a society.

(3) In his El concepto de Espana en la Edad Media, Jose Antonio Maravall addresses the unifying narrative of Spain as a Visigothic nation. In Maravall's opinion, the legendary Visigothic heritage of Spain has been conceptualized as an uninterrupted thread of continuity in spite of divergent, real geographic and political frontiers (299300). Of course, over time the story of Rodrigo as the last and greatest of the Visigothic rulers has suffered embellishments and editing to such a degree that the events and environment bear little resemblance to the "[...] problema de la real y efectiva presencia del factor visigodo en nuestra Reconquista" (300). Even so, the significance of Rodrigo and his legend as an enduring national myth cannot be underestimated.

(4) Menendez Pidal and O'Callaghan propose that there existed three basic political factions in Spain within which certain variations of the Rodrigo myth thrived and were popularized. These factions include the Mozarabic Rodriguistas--Christians of popular, not noble class, who found themselves obliged to live under Arabic rule after the conquest, and who harbored pro-Rodrigo sentiments; the Vitizan party which was comprised of Muslims and upper-class Christians who, given their friendliness towards and affiliation with the Muslim conquerors, enjoyed a variety of privileges under Islamic rule; and finally, the Christians who took refuge in the northern mountain regions of the Peninsula. Within the anti-Rodrigo, pro-Vitiza group the legend of Rodrigo's rape of Count Julian's daughter grew as a response to the anti-Vitizan sentiments of the lower classes. This particular variant of the legend of Spain's fall was also the one most commonly encountered among the learned class and most often reiterated in Islamic accounts of the conquest. See introductory materials to Menendez Pidal's Romancero tradicional, El Rey Rodrigo, Flor nueva, Floresta, and O'Callaghan, part I.

(5) Luna's history differs from what research has indicated on this particular topic. There was never a direct attempt made on the infant Sancho's life by his uncle Rodrigo. Rodrigo sent his grown nephew to fight in a Basque uprising in Pamplona, a battle in which Sancho was to lose his life (Menendez Pidal, Floresta xix).

(6) It is worthy of mention that Luna names Florinda for the first time in Spanish letters, refusing to call her by the pejorative title, "la Caba" (54v). In this way, Luna lends her more depth of character and evokes the reader's sympathy to a greater degree.

(7) The historical Iacob Almanzor lived approximately four hundred to four hundred and fifty years after the Verdadera historia was purportedly written. Therefore, the Almanzor referred to in the Verdadera historia seems to be another. During the tenth century in al-Andalus there lived one of the most influential rulers in the history of Spain's Islamic period, Muhammad Ibn Abi Amir al-Ma'afari, later to be known as al-Mansur (translated as "the Victorious" and usually westernized as Almanzor). See Luna (133r-158Lv) for this ruler's fictitious biography. It is interesting to note that, in addition to re-emplotting Almanzor within an earlier historical context, Luna also embellishes the ruler's life, emphasizing his positive cultural and political contributions while omitting the negative aspects of his rise to power (Fletcher, Moorish Spain; Espinosa Duran, Almanzor: Al-Mansur. El Vitorioso por Allah; O'Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain).