Historia Roderici
The Historia Roderici ("History of Rodrigo"), originally Gesta Roderici Campi Docti ("Deeds of Rodrigo el Campeador") and sometimes in Spanish Crónica latina del Cid ("Latin Chronicle of the Cid"), is an anonymous Latin prose history of the Castilian warrior Rodrigo Díaz, better known as El Cid Campeador.
It is generally written in a simple, unadorned Latin by an author who reveals no knowledge of a wide reading; his only reference to other literature is a
Modern editors have divided the work into seventy-seven chapters (not in the original). The author apparently knew little of Rodrigo's life before his marriage to
The earliest preserved manuscript of the work dates to the first half of the thirteenth century. It was found in the late eighteenth century in
Notes
- ^ So unadorned—"bleak" in the words of Fletcher, 94—is the Historia that only one figure of speech (a simile, "still as a stone") is ever used, twice.
- ^ Fletcher, 94.
- ^ Fletcher, 95.
- ^ The text reads Ennecus Suggiz de Montecluso, a reference to Íñigo Sánchez de Monclús, whom the Cid captured at the Battle of Morella (1084). The spelling Suggiz is phonetic (with the exception of the u).
- ^ Fletcher, 95–96.
Bibliography
- Barton, Simon. 1997. The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century León and Castile. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ISBN 0-394-57447-8.
- Reilly, Bernard F. 1988. The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065–1109. Princeton: Princeton University Press.