Iberia and the Myth and Meeting of Three Worlds

Nahir I. Otaño Gracia; Averie Basch

15 Iberia and the Myth and Meeting of Three Worlds

Nahir I. Otaño Gracia and Averie Basch

Iberia, and the Tricultural Myth³¹⁶¹¹

Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, and more

8^th—14^th Centuries

There are two common names for the period of eight hundred years during which Islamic peoples controlled some portion of the Iberian Peninsula: the Convivencia, or coexistence, and the Reconquista, or reconquest. Although academics no longer use these terms, their very difference suggests that medieval Spain can be seen as an extraordinary confluence of the three dominant cultures of the modern West (Islamic, Christian and Jewish), or as an embattled cohabitation. In either case, there is no denying the unique and multifaceted art and literature that emerged from it. Southern Spain was the portal through which the rich and ancient erudition of North Africa, the Middle East, and Greece made its way back into Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Muslim armies first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 711, sweeping northward into France, where they were eventually turned back by Charles Martel at Poitiers. The first dynasty of emirs in al-Andalus (Arabic for “the land of the Vandals,” earlier rulers of the region “Andalucía” in Spanish) was the Umayyads, who controlled the entire peninsula outside of the northern quarter—the Christian kingdoms of Asturias, León, Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia. Most of the cities of al-Andalus remained relatively independent. The great political and cultural centers were Córdoba, Granada, and, later, Seville; here were built the magnificent mosques and palaces still visible today, and here poets were drawn from all over the eastern empire. The long-established and highly regular forms of classical, courtly Arabic poetry were renewed through contact with the forms of Spain and vice versa.

Poetry was the most prestigious literary mode and the chief cultural institution of the Arabic-speaking world, practiced by rulers, courtiers, philosophers, and religious leaders as well as professional poets. The incorporation of Greek philosophy from the tenth century on provided a common language and set of problems to Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. The so-called “courtier rabbis” were especially important to this cultural mélange, benefiting from the Arab principle of toleration for those they called the dhimmi, or “people of the book.” Wealthy and powerful, fluent in Arabic, pious and learned in Jewish tradition, the community of the Sephardim (as the Jews of Iberia called themselves) saw to the everyday workings of the kingdoms of al-Andalus. They also created an unprecedented corpus of secular Hebrew poetry out of Arabic forms, as if the poetic clash of sensuality, nature, and physical love with divinity were a way of mitigating the contradiction between their public and private lives.

Celebrations of wine, love, and song went hand in hand with an underlying conviction of the transience of physical experience. Even under the fairly stable government of the tenth and eleventh centuries, warfare was constant. But Medieval Iberia was a society both enraptured and disturbed by anything hybrid. Jews and Christians held high posts in al-Andalus; their poets and philosophers later found refuge and patronage in the courts of northern Spain, collaborating, for example, in the creation by Alfonso X of the thirteenth-century cantigas de Santa Maria, a huge collection of over 400 songs celebrating the Virgin Mary. Miniatures in the opulent manuscript depict Arab, Jewish, and Christian performers side by side, singing, dancing, and playing a wide variety of musical instruments. A Castilian general such as Rodrigo Diaz battled other Christians as well as Muslims, and, although a loyal vassal to King Alfonso VI, maintained close friendships and ties of allegiance to Muslim rulers. Poetry and philosophy reflected the same paradoxes. Two hybrid courtly Arabic themes in the syllabic meter of indigenous Iberian dance refrains, attaching the original Mozarabic refrain as the final stanza (the “kharja” or “exit”); and the zajal, an entirely colloquial form based on the strophic structure of the muwashshah. Philosophers too combined d confronted religious worldviews, as can be seen in the selections below from Ramon Llull and Yehuda ha-Levi.

War, too, provided a central metaphor for the mixture of cultures. A traditional Castilian ballad such as “Three Moorish Girls” subtly evokes the simultaneously beautiful and hostile nature of a landscape in which an enemy was never far distant. The bittersweet suggestion of e loss of innocence gains added pathos from its setting in the border city of Jaén, site of an Arab defeat in 1246. The female speakers of the Galician-Portuguese cantigas de amigo are haunted by the long absence of a lover, whether crusading in the distant East or the nearby South. As in The Poem of the Cid, slogans of religious fervor often go hand in hand with episodes of intimate cooperation. But when Ferdinand and Isabella married to unite conclusively the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, a sea change was imminent. The last Arab stronghold, Granada, surrendered in 1492, the same year in which the Jews were expelled from Spain, and in which Columbus reached the Americas. The “people of the book” would come together again in other countries under conditions of war, but never again would that hostile proximity also result in a cultural flowering of such local beauty and far-reaching in fluence.

Castilian Ballads and Traditional Songs

c. 11th-14th centuries

During the late fifteenth century, as the final battles of the Iberian Crusades were being decided, Ferdinand and Isabella began forging a national identity for Spain exclusive of Jews and Muslims. One aspect of this process was to collect the oral tradition of Castilian song into written form, a process initiated by Dom Dinis in the late thirteenth century. The result was a series of Cancioneros, or songbooks and Romanceros or books of ballads, including the Cancionero de Palacio (1438), Cancionero de la Colombina (1493) the Cancionero musical del palacio (1500), Cancionero general (1511) the Cancionero de romances (1550), and the Romancero general (l600) The songs dated from the previous several centuries; many are probably of far earlier origin. In addition to universal motifs of love and celebration, these collections document the complex relationship of Castile over the past centuries with its southern neighbors in al-Andalus.

Ballad of Juliana^[1]

“Get on, you hounds, get on,

And may the furies take you.

Thursday you kill the boar

And eat the meat on Friday.^[2]

“Today makes seven years

I’ve wandered in these hills.

Now both my feet are bare,

Blood spurts from my toenails.

“Now I drink fresh gore,

The meat I eat is raw,

And sadly seek Juliana,

Who was the emperor’s daughter.

“Early St. John’s morning,^[3]

While she gathered flowers,

The Moors took her away

From her father’s bowers.”

Juliana hears this said

Wrapt in the Moor’s embrace;

Twin tears her two eyes shed

Fall on that Moor’s face.

Abenámar^[4]

“Abenámar, Abenámar

Moor of Moor’s delight

The hour of your birth

Comets filled the night.^[5]

The sea was calm as glass

The moon was waxing full

A Moor with stars like yours

Must never break the spell.”

“I tell the truth, my lord,

Though it be death to tell.”

“I thank you, Abenámar,

Your birth bespeaks you well.

What castles are those shining

High on yonder hill?”

“The Alhambra there, my lord,

The mosque tower further still,

And there, the Alixares,

Built so wondrous well.^[6]

A Moor was paid to build them

A hundred crowns a day

And lost, for each day idle,

As much as he was paid.

When all was built and ready

The architect was slain

So he could build no others

For Andalusia’s reign.

There lies Crimson Towers

A castle of renown

And there, the Generalife,

Of matchless garden fame,”^[7]

Then spoke King don Juan,

Mark what he will say:

“With your consent, Granada,

I’d marry you today;

With Cordoba for dowry,

Sevilla for display.”^[8]

“I am a wife, King John,

No widow, but a wife,

The Moor who is m y husband

Loves me more than life.”

I will not pick verbena^[9]

I will not pick verbena

on the morrow of St. John,^[10]

for my lover has gone.

I will not pick sunflowers,

honeysuckle or carnations.

Only sorrows will I pluck

and cruel frustrations,

for my lover has gone.

Three Moorish Girls^[11]

I am in love with three Moorish lasses in Jaén,^[12]

Axa, Fatima and Marién.

Three pretty Moorish lasses

went to pick olives,

and they found them already picked in Jaén.^[13]

Axa, Fatima and Marién.

And they found them picked,

and they came back dismayed,

and their colour was gone in Jaén.

Axa, Fatima and Marién.

Three such lively Moorish lasses

went to pick apples

and they found them already picked in Jaén.

Axa, Fatima and Marién.

Mozarabic Kharjas

10th-early 11th centuries

The kharja epitomizes the melting pot that was medieval Iberia. Written in Mozarabic, a Romance vernacular that was the common spoken language of al-Andalus, these brief verses originated in the refrains of popular dance. Hispano-Arabic (and, later, Hebrew) poets adapted these refrains as the final stanza (kharja means “exit”) of a poetic form they invented in the tenth century, called the muwashshah. The body of the poem is a courtly love song with traditional Arabic images but a syllabic meter based on the melody of the concluding vernacular stanza. The kharja responds to the refined and idealized male voice of the poem’s body with the frank, colloquial voice of a flesh-and-blood woman. Sixty-one kharjas survive, representing the earliest known body of Romance lyric.

As if you were a stranger^[14]

Como si filyol’ alyenu, As if you were a stranger,

non mas adormis a meu senu. you no longer fall asleep on my breast.

Ah tell me, little sisters^[15]

Garid vos, ay yermanellas, Ah tell me, little sisters,

com contenir a meu male! how to hold my pain!

Sin al-habib non vivireyy—I’ll not live without my beloved—

advolarey demandare.I shall fly to seek him again.

My lord Ibrahim^[16]

Meu sidi Ibrahim, My lord Ibrahim,

ya tu omne dolge, oh my sweet love,

vent’ a mib come to me

de nohte!at night!

In non, si non queris,If not, if you don’t want to,

Yireym’ a tib. I shall come to you.

Gar me a ob Tell me where

legarte!to see you!

I’ll give you such love!^[17]

Tan t’amaray, illa con al-sarti I’ll give you such love!—but only if

You’ll bend

an tagma’ halhali ma’ qurti! my anklets right over to my earrings!

Take me out of this plight^[18]

Alsa-me de min hali— Take me out of this plight—

Mon hali qad bare! my state is desperate!

Que faray, ya ‘ummi?— Mother, what shall I do?—

Faneq bad lebare! The falcon is about to snatch!^[19]

Mother, I shall not sleep^[20]

Non dormireyo, mamma,Mother, I shall not sleep

a rayo de manyana: When morning rises

í Bon Abu-1-Qasim, But dream of Abu-1-Qasim,

la fage de matrama! His features dawning.

Ibn Hazm

c.994-1063

Born into a rich and influential family in Córdoba, Ibn Hazm published his masterpiece—and 400 other works in a wide range of fields—amid a life deeply embroiled in the intrigues of the disintegrating caliphate. In The Dove’s Neckring (Tawq al-hamama c. 1024), a treatise on love combining verse and prose, Ibn Hazm took the nature imagery of the Islamic love poem—the dove, the garden—and used it to explore the mystical extremes of Greek philosophy. Much of this material was also personal in origin, containing memories of the estate of Ibn Hazm’s childhood that had been destroyed in 1013. Exiled from Córdoba, he served as vizier to several short-lived caliphs and was several times imprisoned, then chose to withdraw from public life in 1024 or 1027 and write without any patron or court. Controversial to the last, he attached himself to several different schools of theology and law, and ended his life a recluse, prohibited from teaching.

from The Dove’s Neckring^[21]

A

I love you with a love that knows no waning, whereas some of men’s loves are midday

mirages.^[22]

I bear for you a pure, sincere love, and in [my] heart there is a clear picture and an inscription

[declaring] my love for you.

Moreover, if my soul were filled by anything but you, I would pluck it out, while any membrane

[covering it] would be torn away from it by [my] hands.

I desire from you nothing but love, and that is all I request from you.

If I should come to possess it, then all the earth will [seem like] a senile camel and mankind like

motes^[23] of dust, while the land’s inhabitants will [seem like] insects.

B

My love for you, which is eternal by reason of its very nature, has reached its maximum

proportions, hence it can neither decrease at all, nor increase.

Its only cause is the will, and no one knows any cause other than that!

When we discover that a thing is its own cause, then it is an existence that is unperishing.

But when we find that [its cause] is in something other than itself, its destruction will come about

when we lack that which gave it existence.

C

Are you from the world of the angels, or are you a mortal? Explain this to me, for inability [to

reach the truth] has made a mockery of my understanding.

I see a human shape, yet if I use my mind, then the body is [in reality] a celestial one.^[24]

Blessed be He who arranged the manner of being of His creation in such a way that you should

be the [only] beautiful, natural light [in it].

I have no doubt but that you are that spirit which a resemblance joining one soul to another in

close relationship has directed toward us.

We lacked any proof that would bear witness to your creation, which we could use in

comparison, save only that you are visible.

Were it not that our eye contemplates [your] essence we could only declare that you are the Sublime, True Reason.

D

I enjoy con versation when, in it, he is mentioned to me and exhales a [scent] of sweet

ambergris^[25] for me.

If he should speak, among those who sit in my company, I listen only to the words of that

marvelous charmer.

Even if the Prince of the Faithful^[26] should be with me, I would not tum aside from [my love] for

the former.

If I am compelled to leave him, I look back [at him] constantly and walk like [an animal] wounded in the hoof.

My eyes remain fixed firmly upon him though my body has departed, as the drowning man looks

at the shore from the fathomless sea.

If I recall my distance from him, I choke as though with water, like the man who yawns in the

midst of a dust storm and the sun’s noonday heat.

And if you say: “It is possible to reach the sky,” I reply: “Yes, and I know where the stairs may be found.”

E

He who claims to love two lyingly commits perjury, just as Mani is belied by his principles.^[27]

In the heart there is no room for two beloveds, nor is the most recent of things always the second.

Just as reason is one, not recognizing any creator other than the One, the Clement,^[28]

Likewise the heart is one and loves only one, though he should put you off or draw you to him.

[He who claims to love two] is a suspect in the law of love; [he is] far from the true faith.

Likewise, religion is one and straight, while he who has two religions is a profound disbeliever.

F

Men have observed that I am a youth driven desperate by love; that I am brokenhearted,

profoundly disturbed, And yet, by whom?

When they look at my condition they become certain [of it], yet if they inquire into the matter

they are left in doubt.

[I am] like a handwriting whose trace is clear, but which, if they seek to interpret it, cannot be

explained;

[I am] like the sound of a dove over a woody copse, cooing with its voice in every way,

Our ears delight in its melody, while its meaning remains obscure and unexplained.

They say: “By God, name the one whose love has driven sweet sleep from you!”

Yet I will never [name him]! Before they obtain what they seek, I will lose all my wits and face

all misfortunes.

Thus will they ever remain prey to doubts, entertaining suspicion like certitude and certitude like

suspicion.

G

Having seen the hoariness (graying) on my temples and sideburns, someone asked me how old I

was.

I answered him: “I consider all my life to have been but a short moment and nothing else, when I

think reasonably and exactly.”

He replied to me: “How was that? Explain it to me, for you have given me the most grievous

news and information.”

So I said: “To the [girl] possessed of my heart I once gave one single kiss by surprise.

Hence, no matter how many years I live, I will not really consider any but that brief moment to have been my life.”

H

They said: “He is far away.” I replied: “It is enough for me that he is with me in the same age

without being able to escape.

The sun passes over me just as it does over him every day that shines anew.

Furthermore, is one between whom and me there lies only the distance of a day’s journey really

far away,

When the wisdom of the God of creation joined us together? This mutual proximity is enough

[for me]; I want nothing further.”

Ibn Arabi

1165-1240

Raised in Seville, the capital of the Almohad state, lbn al-‘Arabi converted to Sufism while still

a teenager, following a warning vision. He traveled across Iberia seeking wisdom and guidance,

including several meetings with the philosopher Ibn Rushd, then journeyed to North Africa and eastward on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He spent the last years of his life in Damascus. He produced numerous, often controversial esoteric works throughout his life; his poetry transposes those concerns through the lyric themes of nature, nostalgia, and love. Steeped in esoteric lore, a poem such as “Gentle now, doves” strives to render that lore immediately present through the experience of verse.

Gentle now, doves^[29]

Gentle now, doves of the thornberry

and moringa thicket,^[30]

don’t add to my heartache

your sighs.

Gentle now,

or your sad cooing

will reveal the love I hide,

the sorrow I hide away.

I echo back, in the evening,

in the morning, echo,

the longing of a love-sick lover,

the moaning of the lost.

In a grove of Gháda^[31]

spirits wrestled,

bending the limbs down over me,

passing me away.

They brought yearning,

breaking of the heart,

and other new twists of pain,

putting me through it.

Who is there for me in Jám’,

and the Stoning-Ground at Mína,^[32]

who for me at Tamarisk Grove,

or at the way-station of Na’mán?

Hour by hour

they circle my heart

in rapture, in love-ache,

and touch my pillars with a kiss.

As the best of creation

circled the Ká’ba,^[33]

which reason with its proofs

called unworthy,

He kissed the stones there—

and he was entrusted with the word!

And what is the house of stone

compared to a man or a woman?

They swore, and how often!

They’d never change-piling up vows.

She who dyes herself red with henna

is faithless.

A white-blazed gazelle^[34]

is an amazing sight,

red-dye signaling,

eyelids hinting,

Pasture between breastbones

and innards.

Marvel,

a garden among the flames!

My heart can take on

any form:

a meadow for gazelles,

a cloister for monks,

For the idols, sacred ground,

Ká’ba for the circling pilgrim,

the tables of the Torah,

the scrolls of the Qur’an.

I profess the religion of love;

whenever its caravan turns along the way,

that is the belief,

the faith I keep.

Like Bishr,

Hind and her sister,

love-mad Qays and his lost Láyla,

Máyya and her lover Ghaylán.^[35]

Solomon lbn Gabirol

C. 1021-c. 1057

Born in Malaga in southern Spain, Ibn Gabirol was orphaned at an early age. Physically weak, temperamental and ill-at-ease with the courtier life he spent his formative years in Saragossa,

an important center of Jewish culture, where he immersed himself in a career of letters. He wrote some twenty volumes on philosophy and religion, most of which haven’t survived. His influential secular treatise, The Source of Life, was translated from the Arabic into Latin

in the twelve century: Only during the nineteenth century was it discovered that its author Avicebron, was identical with the Andalusian Jew celebrated for his hymns and for his lyric poetry. Poems such as “She looked at me and her eyelids burned” demonstrate Ibn Gabirol’s skill in forging philosophical and religious preoccupations into powerfully unified visual images.

She looked at me and her eyelids burned^[36]

She looked at me and her eyelids burned,

While her goblet brimmed with tears;

The words overflowed her mouth, like strings of pearls,

And the smile on her lips defied compare with gold.

But the rebuke she sent my soul

Wounded me like the words of the creditor to the poor debtor.

Meanwhile, the cup passed from hand to hand like the sun amid the heavens,

And day receded, fleeting, like waves along the shore,

But my blood, receding at unison of day,

Tinged my cheeks bright red: she will not return.

Behold the sun at evening^[37]

Behold the sun at evening, red

As if she wore vermillion robes.

Slipping the wraps from north and south

She covers in purple the western side.

The earth-she leaves it cold and bare

To huddle in shadows all night long.

At once the sky is dark; you’d think

Sackcloth it wore for Yequtiel.^[38]

The mind is flawed, the way to wisdom blocked^[39]

The mind is flawed, the way to wisdom blocked;

The body alone is seen, the soul is hid,

And those who seek the world find only ill;

A man can get no pleasure here on earth.^[40]

The servant rises up and kills his lord,

And serving girls attack their mistresses.

Sons are raising hands against their parents,

Daughters too oppose their parents’ will.

My friend, from what I’ve seen of life I’d say

The best that one can hope is to go mad.

However long you live you suffer toil,

And in the end you suffer rot and worms.

Then finally the clay goes back to clay;

At last the soul ascends to join the Soul.^[41]

Winter wrote with the ink of its rains and showers^[42]

Winter wrote with the ink of its rains and showers,

The pen of its flashing lightning, and the hand of its clouds

A letter upon the garden in blue and purple,

Of which no craftsman with all his skill could make the like,

Therefore, when the earth longed to see the sky,

She embroidered on the twigs of her flowerbeds something like the stars.

Yehuda ha-Levi

before 1075-1141

Yehuda (or Judah) ha-Levi is the legendary figurehead of Sephardic Jewry, his life an emblem of the height and decline of its “Golden Age” in al-Andalus. A successful court physician, ha-Levi traveled throughout al-Andalus, frequently crossing into the Christian north, on whose border he had been born. Revered for his poetic gifts during his lifetime (over 800 of his poems survive), he became disenchanted with his success and the gilded life he led. In 1140 he left his home, setting sail for Jerusalem by way of Egypt, where he was seduced by the good life once again, tarrying as a court poet in Cairo and Alexandria for almost a year. He appears never to have reached the Promised Land, but in popular legend his pilgrimage led directly from Spain to the Western Wall of Jerusalem, where he died a violent death just before arriving. Only a few years after Yehuda ha-Levi’s departure, Jewish power was fully dispersed by the Almohad dynasty; for the courtier rabbis, the Golden Age was over. Yehuda ha-Levi’s composed in a wide variety of forms from panegyric to religious meditations to poems of love and wine. But he was equally celebrated for The Book of the Khazars (Kitab al-khazari), a prose meditation on Jewish history in the context of Greek philosophy, Islam, and Christianity.

Cups without wine are lowly^[43]

Cups without wine are lowly

As a pot thrown on the ground

But, full of juice, they shine

Like the body with a soul.

Ofra does her laundry with my tears^[44]

Ofra does her laundry with my tears

And spreads it out before her beauty’s rays.

With my two eyes she needs no flowing well;

Nor sun needs she: Her face provides the blaze.

Once when I fondled him upon my thighs^[45]

Once when I fondled him upon my thighs

He caught his own reflection in my eyes

And kissed my eyes, deceitful imp; I knew

It was his image he kissed, and not my eyes!

From time’s beginning, You were love’s abode^[46]

From time’s beginning, You were love’s abode:

My love encamped wherever it was You tented.

The taunts of foes for Your name’s sake are sweet,

So let them torture one whom You tormented.

I love my foes; for they learned wrath from You,

For they pursue a body You have slain.

The day You hated me I loathed myself,

For I will honor none whom You disdain.

Until Your anger pass, and You restore

This people whom You rescued once before.

Ramón Llull

1232-1315

A prolific polymath mystic, Ramon Llull wrote over 250 works, in Catalan and in Arabic, on nearly revery subject there was. Born on the island of Majorca, during his youth he was a courtier and seneschal, or steward, before a mystical vision led him to retreat for nine years of hermitlike study in order to persuade the Jews and Muslims of the error of their faiths. Immersed in all three cultures of Iberia, his esoteric Christianity is well evident in 366 allusive and lyrical aphorisms that make up the Book of the Lover and the Beloved (Llibre d’amic et amat), which forms chapter 99 of Blanquerna (1283), the first prose novel written in a romance language.

from Blanquerna: The Book of the Lover and the Beloved^[47]

14. The Lover sought for one who should tell his Beloved how great trials he was enduring for love of Him, and how he was like to die. And he found his Beloved, who was reading in a book wherein were written all the griefs which love made him to suffer for his Beloved, and the joy which he had of his love.

16. “Say, thou bird that singest! Hast thou placed thyself in the care of my Beloved, that He may guard thee from indifference,^[48] and increase in thee my love?” The bird replies: “And who makes me to sing but the Lord of love, Who holds indifference to be sin?”

18. There was a contention between the eyes and the memory of the Lover, for the eyes said that it was better to behold the Beloved than to remember Him. But Memory said that remembrance brings tears to the eyes, and makes the heart to burn with love.

54. As one that was a fool went the Lover through a city, singing of his Beloved; and men asked him if he had lost his wits. “My Beloved,” he answered, “has taken my will, and I myself have yielded up to Him my understanding; so that there is left in me naught but memory, wherewith I remember my Beloved.”

69. The Lover extended and prolonged his thoughts of the greatness and everlastingness of his Beloved, and he found in Him neither beginning, nor mean,^[49] nor end. And the Beloved said: “What measurest thou, O Fool?” The Lover answered: “I measure the lesser with the greater, defect with fulness, and beginning with infinity and eternity, to the end that humility, patience, charity and hope may be planted the more firmly in my remembrance.”

70. The paths of love are both long and short. For love is clear, bright and pure, subtle yet simple, strong, diligent, brilliant, and abounding both in fresh thoughts and in old memories.

89. Love went apart with the Lover, and they had great joy of the Beloved; and the Beloved revealed himself to them. The Lover wept, and afterwards was in rapture, and Love swooned thereat.^[50] But the Beloved brought life to His Lover by bringing to his memory His virtues.

98. The Beloved left the Lover, and the Lover sought Him in his thoughts, and enquired for Him of men in the language of love.

118. The Lover and the Beloved strove, and their love made peace between them. Which of them, think you, bore the stronger love toward the other?

130. With the pen of love, with the water of his tears, and on a paper of suffering, the Lover wrote letters to his Beloved. And in these he told how devotion tarried, how love was dying, and how sin and error were increasing the number of His enemies.

131. The Lover and the Beloved were bound in love with the bonds of memory, understanding, and will, that they might never be parted; and the cord wherewith these two loves were bound was woven of thoughts and griefs, sighs and tears.

132. The Lover lay in the bed of love: his sheets were of joys, his coverlet was of griefs, his pillow of tears. And none knew if the fabric of the pillow was that of the sheets or of the coverlet.

133. The Beloved clothed His Lover in vest, coat and mantle,^[51] and gave him a

helmet of love. His body He clothed with thoughts, his feet with tribulations, and his

head with a garland of tears.

182. The Lover made complaint of his Beloved, because He caused Love so

grievously to torment him. And the Beloved made reply by increasing his trials and

perils, thoughts and tears.

194. One day the Lover ceased to remember his Beloved, and on the next day he

remembered that he had forgotten Him. On the day when it came to the Lover that he

had forgotten his Beloved, he was in sorrow and pain, and yet in glory and bliss—the

one for his forgetfulness, and the other for his remembrance.

217. The Beloved chastened the heart of His Lover with rods of love, to make him love the tree whence He plucks the rods wherewith He chastens His lovers. And this is that tree whereon He suffered grief and dishonor and death, that He might bring back to love of Him those lovers whom He had lost.^[52]

Dom Dinis, King of Portugal

1261-1325

An accomplished poet and patron of the arts, Dom Dinis opened his court to displaced poets from abroad: Provençal troubadours fleeing the Albigensian crusade in southwest France, Jews and Muslims fleeing the unrest in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. The coastal town of Santiago de Compostela was an important destination for medieval pilgrims and the performers who accompanied them. The Portuguese court was nourished by these influences, and Dom Dinis put this rich blend of talent to work copying and compiling luxurious illuminated manuscripts of songs.

Over a hundred texts of Dom Dinis’s own songs have come down to us, along with the musical notation of seven compositions-all that we have, with seven of Martin Codax’s, to indicate how the songs of the Galician-Portuguese tradition were actually performed. Most Occitanian and Northern French songs, with their more elusive melodies and extended, highly expressive lyrics, were rendered by voice alone, or with the spare accompaniment of the medieval fiddle. The Galician-Portuguese songs, although influenced by the French lyrics, also derived from a strong local tradition of refrain-based folk song. With catchier melodies and highly repetitive lyrics, these songs lent themselves to the greater instrumentation and dance beat of a small orchestra, which included the harp and the pandeiro, a square framed drum, as well as the symphonie, a stringed instrument resembling a hurdy-gurdy.

Dom Dinis’s version of the canso or love song is generally short with a refrain; he composed seventy-three of them He also excelled in the cantiga de amigo, brief lyrics of love and longing written in the voice of a woman usually waiting for or going to meet her lover. Nowhere else in medieval Europe were women’s songs composed, often superior in quality to the otherwise more common cantiga de amor written in the voice of the male lover.

Provernçals right well may versify^[53]

Provençals right well may versify

And say they do with love

But those with verse in flowertime

And never else, I’d vow,

Their heart is not in torment

As mine is for my lady.

Although they’re bound to versify

And praise as best they can,

Nonetheless, I’d vow

That those with verse in spring

And never else, will bring

No grief as deep as mine.

For those who versify with joy

About the verdant (greening) time,

The flowers do their bidding,

In spring, but soon decline,

Nor is their life perdition

Nor death in life, like mine.