Order and Chivalry. Jesus D. Rodriguez-Velasco

      There is no other monarch in Castile and León who has more faith than Alfonso XI in the possibility of reordering his relationship with the nobility through chivalry. Don Juan Manuel radically differed from this position and is one of the nobles who disquieted the king (and the cities, as we will see later). Paradoxically enough, the knighting ceremony of Alfonso XI, perhaps the most well known of all Castile’s investiture ceremonies, does not aim to knight the king himself.²⁷ It should be read as the acquisition of a right and a state through which he may legally order the nobility by way of an investiture legally issued by his own hand. Not having been previously knighted himself, however, Alfonso would not have been able to knight the long list of nobles, among them powerful and ricos hombres, who are mentioned in the Crónica de Alfonso XI (Chronicle of Alfonso XI).²⁸

      Knightly investiture imposes a dialectic between dependence and independence in the discourse on chivalry. It is a dialectic of domination that fractures the fixed hierarchy that the chivalric structure and its artifacts may impose on the double plane of knowledge (studium) and power (imperium).

      It is exceedingly interesting that this dialectic of domination appears much more explicitly in a poetic work composed around 1370 and known as the Cantar de Rodrigo (Song of Rodrigo), or Las mocedades de Rodrigo. Through the use of poetic language and its capacity to be disseminated and to influence society, the depiction of Alfonso XI’s chivalric investiture is set forth in literary form, with the corresponding allegorical values, as was designed and narrated in the chronicles of the period. The Song of Rodrigo is a central text of the medieval Castilian canon that revolves around the character of the Cid and the assertion of his role as an independent vassal—although not a rebel vassal, as some scholars have claimed (Funes and Tenenbaum, Mocedades).²⁹ Modern scholars have paid insufficient attention to the role of this work in the formation of the legend of the Cid, perhaps because the poem has been consistently isolated from the codicological and textual context in which it was transmitted, a longer historical piece known as Crónica de Castilla o del Campeador (Chronicle of Castile or of the Cid).³⁰ To understand the poem’s place in fourteenth-century Castile, it would be necessary to ascertain the significance of a work that subsumes notions of political and feudal independence with a Castilian chronicle on the subject of the Cid. Considering the manuscript itself and its time and place of production, such an inquiry would shed light on the broader jurisdictional matters that concern the present chapter.

      The Song of Rodrigo highlights a scene in which the Cid convinces King Fernando I (ca. 1010–1065) that he should emulate the former’s own independence. The text underscores here the issue of independence, immediately followed by instructions for the performance of coronation and chivalric investiture ceremonies:

      Et quando lo sopo Rodrigo,

      caualgo muy priuado.

      Entre dia & noche a Çamora es llegado

      al rrey se omillo. & nol beso la mano

      Dixo “Rey mucho me plaze

      por que non so tu uassallo

      Rey fasta que no te armasses

      non deujas tener Reynado

      Ca non esperas palmada de moro

      njn de christiano.

      Mas ve velar al padron de Santiago

      quando oyeres la missa

      Armate con tu mano

      et tu te ciñe la espada

      con tu mano & tu desciñe como de cabo

      [fol 196rb] e tu te sey el padrino

      et tu te sey el afijado

      Et llamate cauallero del padron de santiago

      E seryas tu mj señor

      Et mandarias el tu Reynado.

      [And when Rodrigo heard this,

      He rode off as fast as he could.

      In one single night he arrived at Zamora;

      He knelt down, but he did not kiss the king’s hand.

      He said, “My king, this greatly pleases me,

      Because I am not your vassal.

      My king, until you are knighted,

      You shall not have a kingdom.

      Do not receive a hand from Muslim

      Or Christian,

      But go observe the vigil of arms in honor of Saint James.

      When you have heard mass,

      Knight yourself with your own hand,

      And gird on your sword

      In the same manner, and then

      Ungird it afterward.

      You will be your own godfather,

      And you will be your own godchild;

      Call yourself a knight of Saint James,

      And you will be my lord,

      And you will rule your kingdom.]³¹

      The enormous littera notabilior (in red, with a height of four lines, in the Paris ms) punctuates a verbal formula that is simultaneously imperative and reflexive. The ármate [“knight yourself”] formula is the maximum expression of independence and at the core of King Ferdinand I’s dual acquisition. On one hand, by knighting himself following the ritual described in this text, Ferdinand acquires all the legitimacy of monarchic sovereignty, given that the ritual does not require him to form any bonds with an investor or patron who would ungird his sword. The second acquisition, the vassalage of the Cid, functions as a mythological reinforcement. In this act, the Cid, supreme figure of nobiliary independence from the monarchy, also becomes a vassal of a monarch who recognizes his version of power. By securing the vassalage of the Cid, who has previously refused to kiss the royal hand, he in turn secures that of all the high nobility and adds it to the increasing sphere of monarchic jurisdictional power.³²

      The ceremony that the Cid describes has its foundation in the political issue raised in the corresponding section of Partidas 2.21. As declared by the Cid, chivalric investiture cannot be avoided; it is compulsory. This notion echoes the institutional rigor of the Partidas, which stipulates that the king’s coronation should follow his investiture. The compulsory nature of the ritual allows the monarch to construct the ordo, since he is the source and origin of this social class. The ordo descends from the king; it is an extension of his own body.

      In Fernando’s case, however, it is necessary to modify the ritual to prevent the king from demanding fealty in ways that limit his independence. As the passage demonstrates, the ceremonial process of debt acquisition (in summary, girding on the sword, receiving a symbolic blow on the neck, and ungirding the sword) is decisive for the Cid. He wants to accept the good ritual, the legal ritual. Contrary to Don Juan Manuel, he is not interested in eliminating or deconstructing the ritual; he accepts its order and its political and juridical consequences. All he proposes is a substitution of subjects, or better yet a multiplication of the subject: it is the king who must adopt all the political personae who participate in the ceremonial process of investiture and accept as primary his natural bond with the apostle Saint James, patron of Spain.

      Although Leonardo Funes and Felipe Tenenbaum have attempted to date the composition of the Song of Rodrigo to a period prior to 1300, it is difficult to disengage it from the chivalric project of Alfonso XI, at least on this aspect.³³ On the other hand, the determined influence of the Partidas could even lead us to date this part of the work (if not the primitive poem in its entirety) to around 1340 or later. Even the date of initial redaction proposed by Alan Deyermond—around 1360—seems perfectly plausible (Epic Poetry and the Clergy).³⁴

      The specific date of the poem’s