In Spanish poetry, as in Spanish literature generally, in science, in legislation, and in history, the first name is that of Alfonso the Tenth.

The Cantigas or Hymns of the Virgin are not only true poetry, but they are undoubtedly the work of the King of Castile. Nor are there many of the ballads whose antiquity can certainly be traced to an earlier date than the thirteenth century, that are superior to King Alfonso's verses, although from their essentially national character they may be more interesting to modern readers. Yet the Cantigas may hardly be reckoned among the early masterpieces of Castilian literature; and they contributed in no way to fix or to develop the Castilian language. For they are written, strange to say, not in Castilian, nor in Latin, but in Gallician, an idiom or dialect which bears more resemblance to the modern Portuguese than to the noble language of Spain 1

But the greatest literary triumphs of the learned king were not in verse but in prose. No reader of Don Quixote in the original Spanish can fail to have been struck by the great number of quotations from the Bible that are put by Cervantes into the mouth of Sancho as well as of the Knight of La Mancha. Many of them had apparently become so common in men's speech in their native Castilian, that they are actually classed as refranes, or proverbs; and it is obvious that translations of the Bible into the vernacular must have been widely spread in Christian Spain, until on the arrival of Ferdinand of Aragon and the Inquisition,2 se hizo necesaria la prohibicion. The earliest translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue of Castile of which we have any note or record, is one that was made under the superintendence of Alfonso X.,. although the work itself has apparently perished.3

In addition to this uncertain translation of the Bible

1 They were composed between 1263 and 1284 under the title of Cantigas de Santa Maria: or, Loores y milagos de Nuestra Señora; and consist of a collection of four hundred and one poems, in the Gallician dialect, in various metres, upon miracles, sanctuaries, images, and other subjects connected with the life of the Blessed Virgin.

This interesting work has lately been published, in a deservedly magnificent edition, at the instance of the Royal Academy of Madrid, by the Marquis de Valmar. For further particulars see post., chap. xli.

The king is said to have founded and endowed a military and religious order in honour of Our Lady, and to have further provided that these Cantigas should be sung in perpetuam over his tomb in the Church of Santa Maria de Murcia. Mondejar, Memorias Historicas, 438; Ticknor, i., 40; and Dozy, Recherches, ii., 34. 2 Menendez y Pelayo, Heterodoxos españoles, vol. ii., p. 700.

3 This translation of the Bible is so casually referred to by the authorities that I had-after much search-well-nigh abandoned all hope of knowing anything more about it, than the somewhat doubtful fact that it had been made, when I became possessed of a copy of Muñoz, Diccionario-historico de los antiguos Reinos Provincias de España (Madrid, 1858), and at p. 27 of part ii. of that admirable work, I found a reference to an MS. existing in the monastery of the Escurial, of

into the vulgar tongue, the History of the Great Conquests beyond the Sea was compiled rather under his direction than by his own royal hand; and the work has been preserved to the present day. The Gran Conquista de Ultramar can never, like the Bible in the vulgar tongue, have excited the persecuting and destroying zeal of the Holy Office. It is an historical, geographical, and romantic history of the wars of the Crusaders in Palestine, beginning with the life and death of Mohammed, and continued down to the year 1270, and the great and special interest that attaches to the work at the present day, is that it is the first work of any importance composed in the language of Castile. For the language of the grants and charters, technical as a rule, or legal in form, beginning, if it may be, with the doubtful grant to Aviles in 1155, is rather deformed Latin or unformed Spanish, and may in no wise be compared with the finished Castilian of Alfonso X.1

The General Chronicle of Spain, a work which, if perhaps less ambitious, is scarcely less interesting than the Siete Partidas, occupied the attention of Alfonso X. during the greater part of his reign. It is divided into four books, the first extending from the creation of the world to the death of Alaric, the second comprising the Visigothic occupation, the third bringing down the history to the reign of Ferdinand the Great, and the fourth closes in 1252 with the accession of Alfonso himself. The first and second books are merely compilations from the ecclesiastical writers, and are dull and uninteresting. But the third book is founded, to a very large extent, on the ancient national ballads; and the

"the Castilian Translation [of the Bible] made by order of Alfonso the Learned, following the Hebrew text," with a quotation from the First Psalm.

There is no hint as to whether the New Testament as well as the Old is included; probably not, as the translation is expressly said to be hecha siguiendo el texto hebreo. I give the first two verses of the quotation as a specimen of the style:

"Bien auenturado es el uaron que non andudo enel conseio delos malos syn ley nin estudo enla carrera de los pecadores nin enla sylla de nuzimiento se assento, mas fue la voluntad del enla ley del sennor et enla ley del mesura dia et noche.'

I can find no further reference to this early and most interesting translation even in Muñoz. But he says (p. 5), that translations of the Holy Scriptures into Castilian were multiplied in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, and habiendo ocasionado graves inconvenientes el abuso que ya se hacia de los traducciones de la Biblia al lenguage vulgar se hizo necesaria la prohibicion.

These early translations were apparently taken not from the Vulgate but from the version of St. Jerome.

1 Alfonso X.

As to translations of the Bible into the Catalan or Limousin language of Aragon, see Menendez Pelayo, Heterodoxos Españoles, tom. i., p. 435. a créé la prose Castillane; non pas cette pale prose d'aujourdhui mais la vrai prose castillane, celle du bon vieux temps, cette prose qui exprime si fidèlement le caractère Espagnol, cette prose vigoureuse, large, riche, grave, noble, et naive tout à la fois; et cela dans ce temps ou tous les autres peuples de l'Europe, sans en excepter les Italiens, étaient bien loin encore d'avoir produit un ouvrage en prose qui se recommendât par le style. Dozy, Recherches, ii., 34. See also Ticknor, op. cit., i., 40-43.

stories are told with great vigour and spirit, of Bernardo del Carpio, of Pelayo, of Fernan Gonzalez and the seven children. of Lara, of Santiago fighting at Clavijo, and of Charlemagne flying from Roncesvalles. The fourth book is largely taken up with the legendary Chronicle of the Cid, after which, in soberer and more serious style, the annals of Spain are brought down to the days of authentic history.

The independent Chronicle of the Cid is in itself one of the most remarkable and interesting records of the ancient literature of Castile. It differs but slightly in style and general treatment from that contained in the fourth book of Alfonso's History; and it is probable that it is taken direct from the king's General Chronicle of Spain.1

V.-The Siete Partidas.

But it was not as a chronicler, nor yet as a linguist, not as a poet, nor even as an astronomer, that Alfonso is best remembered in nineteenth-century Spain. It is as a lawgiver that he takes rank with the Emperor on the Bosphorus • and the Emperor on the Seine; and his great Code still finds a place in the library of every Spanish lawyer, from Barcelona to Valparaiso,

The first translation of the Fuero Juzgo, or Visigothic Code, from the Latin into Castilian, was planned, if not actually undertaken, in the reign of St. Ferdinand. But whether as prince or as king, it was his more studious son who took the principal share in the execution of the work. Not content, however, with translating old laws into a new language, Alfonso aspired to be a legislator as well as a linguist, and his Espejo, or Mirror of Rights, comprising five books of laws written by him some time before 1255-was followed in that year by his Fuero Real, a shorter Code, divided into four books; and at length, after ten years of unremitting labour, his greatest work was given to Spain, in 1265. ·

Las Siete Partidas (the Seven Sets, or Divisions) is the modest title of a comprehensive Digest of the Code of Justinian and of that of the Visigoths, of the national and local fueros, of the Canon law, and of the decrees of the great Councils of Spain. The Code of Alfonso would at any time

1 Ticknor, vol. i., chap. viii.

2 Alfonso not only made good laws; he endeavoured to improve the administration of justice. He named twenty-four Alcaldes-nine for Castile, eight for Leon, and seven for Estremadura. From the decisions of the judges an appeal lay to the Royal Alcaldes at the capital; and from them to the king himself, who sat three days a week for this purpose. He also appointed corregidores, not correctors, but co-rulers, who superintended, and in some cases super

have been a noble monument of wisdom and prudence, of patient study, of intelligent research, and of an enlightened understanding. At the time of its compilation it was not only superior to anything of the kind that had ever been attempted since the times of Justinian; it stood alone and unrivalled in the medieval world; and for over six hundred years it remained not only the great text-book of Spanish Jurisprudence, but the greatest exclusively National Code of Laws in Europe.1

Yet the Siete Partidas did not at once become the law of the land; and it was not until 1348, the year of the abrogation of the Privilege of Union in Aragon, that it was promulgated, in a somewhat uncertain manner, as a text-book of the great Common Law of Castile.2

The first book or partida of the Code treats of natural law, the law of nations, and law ecclesiastical, mainly taken from the Roman Codes and Decretals. The second lays down the power and duties of the king. The third prescribes judicial procedure. The fourth treats of personal and social rights. The fifth is the Law of Contract; the sixth of wills, inheritance, and succession. The seventh contains the Penal Code, and the Code of Criminal Procedure. The modern reader who would intelligently and fruitfully study this celebrated Code, whether as an historian or as a jurist, will not fail to take advantage of the well-known historical and critical commentary, modestly styled an Ensayo, or Essay, of Don Francisco Martinez Marina, which was first published at Madrid3 at the beginning of the present century, and which is itself a work of great value and interest to the student of comparative legislation.

seded, the provincial judges, as will more fully be shewn in a subsequent chapter on the constitutional and judicial development of Castile.

1 The Code Napoléon, which is nearly six hundred and fifty years later, is necessarily somewhat more modern and more complete, and is itself the parent of most of the later Codes of the nations of Europe and America. Justinian's great work was not national; it was Imperial, and will ever be a text-book for the world. In England we have not yet attained to any Code whatever.

As to the adoption, to some extent, of the Code of the Siete Partidas in the United States of America, see Ticknor, i., 46.

"If all other Codes were banished," says Mr. Dunham, "Spain would still have a respectable body of jurisprudence in the Siete Partidas"; and an eminent Spanish advocate is said to have told the historian in 1832 that during an extensive practice of twenty-nine years scarcely a case occurred which could not be virtually or expressly decided by the Code of Alfonso X.-Dunham, iv., 121.

2 This was accomplished by the ever-celebrated Ordenamiento de Alcala, promulgated by Alfonso XI., in which it was provided that all cases that could not be decided by the application of the local Fueros, should be decided according to the laws of the Partidas. The spirit of the Fueros was, no doubt, more liberal than that of the Partidas; and it might have been unjust to impose the new Code upon Castile immediately, or without some preliminary mitigation. It was thus gradually introduced.

8 I have used the second edition (2 vols., Madrid, 1834); as well as Don Marcelo Martinez Alcabilla, Códigos de España (2 vols., Madrid, 1886).

THE first college that was established in the Peninsula, was, no doubt, that of Sertorius at Huesca.1 But the institution was in advance of the times. It perished on the death of its noble founder and patron; and for half-a-dozen centuries nothing like Public Instruction was found or imagined in Spain.

2

With the development of Christianity the clergy arrogated to themselves the exclusive power of teaching. Clerical seminaries were established at least as early as 527 by the Visigothic Bishops in the second Council of Toledo;3 and Isidore is said, on somewhat doubtful authority, to have founded a school at Seville. But after the coming of the Arabs, and more especially in the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, schools and colleges were established in most of the Spanish cities; and at Cordova especially an admirable system of public instruction anticipated much that was excellent in the Christian Universities of modern Europe; for in these early establishments general culture and special knowledge were alike aimed at, while liberality dominated the whole.1

1 The materials for a sketch, however brief, of the Universities of Spain, can hardly be found outside the Peninsula.

Don Vicente de la Fuente's Historia de las Universidades is the best general authority; and a good deal of miscellaneous information is to be found in the España Sagrada and the Documentos ineditos.

With regard to special Institutions, Maestro Pedro Chacon's Historia de la Universidad de Salamanca (Salmantica. 13 Januar. Ann. Salut, 1709), is undoubtedly the most interesting. The copy which I consulted in the National Library at Madrid, where this chapter was actually written, was in MS., and it was not until I returned to Bloomsbury that I learned that Chacon's work was printed in the Semanario Erudito, tom. xviii., Madrid, 1788, with a continuation of the original work in 1726 by D. Antonio Valladares, The Boletin de la Real Acad. de Hist., tom. xv. pp. 179 et. seq., contains some interesting information.

But the Spanish Universities do not seem, as a rule, to have engaged the attention of English writers. Of Ticknor's carelessness I have spoken in the text. In Laurie's Early Rise and Constitution of Universities, A.D. 200-1350, there is not a word about Spain! But see P. H. Denifle, Die Entstehung der Universitäten bis 1400. (1886), especially pp. 470-515.

2 One of the most offensive heresies of the Priscillianists was the claim to call themselves doctors. V. de la Fuente, i. 22.

3 Conc. Caes. Aug. (380), 7.

4 See Littré, Etudes sur les Barbares, pp. 440-3.