Note 250 — Chapter VIII

Both the chronicles cite for their authorities the Archbishop Rodrigo of Toledo, and the Bishop Lucas of Tuy, in Galicia, (Cid, Cap. 293; General, 1604, f. 313. b, and elsewhere,) and represent them as dead. Now the first died in 1247, and the last in 1250; and as the General Chronicle of Alfonso X. was necessarily written between 1252 and 1282, and probably written soon after 1252, it is not to be supposed, either that the Chronicle of the Cid, or any other chronicle in the Spanish language which the General Chronicle could use, was already compiled. But there are passages in the Chronicle of the Cid which prove it to be later than the General Chronicle. For instance, in Chapters 294, 295, and 296 of the Chronicle of the Cid, there is a correction of an error of two years in the General Chronicle’s chronology. And again, in the General Chronicle, (ed. 1604, f. 313. b,) after relating the burial of the Cid, by the bishops, in a vault, and dressed in his clothes, (“vestido con sus paños,”) it adds, “And thus he was laid where he still lies” (“E assi yaze ay do agora yaze”); but in the Chronicle of the Cid, the words in Italics are stricken out, and we have instead, “And there he remained a long time, till King Alfonso came to reign (“E hy estudo muy grand tiempo, fasta que vino el Rey Don Alfonso a reynar”); after which words we have an account of the translation of his body to another tomb, by Alfonso the Wise, the son of Ferdinand. But, besides that this is plainly an addition to the Chronicle of the Cid, made later than the account given in the General Chronicle, there is a little clumsiness about it that renders it quite curious; for, in speaking of St. Ferdinand with the usual formulary, as “he who conquered Andalusia, and the city of Jaen, and many other royal towns and castles,” it adds, “As the history will relate to you farther on (“Segun que adelante vos lo contará la historia”). Now the history of the Cid has nothing to do with the history of St. Ferdinand, who lived a hundred years after him, and is never again mentioned in this Chronicle; and therefore the little passage containing the account of the translation of the body of the Cid, in the thirteenth century, to its next resting-place was probably cut out from some other chronicle which contained the history of St. Ferdinand, as well as that of the Cid. My own conjecture is, that it was cut out from the abridgment of the General Chronicle of Alfonso the Wise made by his nephew Don John Manuel, who would be quite likely to insert an addition so honorable to his uncle, when he came to the point of the Cid’s interment; an interment of which the General Chronicle’s account had ceased to be the true one. Cap. 291.

It is a curious fact, though not one of consequence to this inquiry, that the remains of the Cid, besides their removal by Alfonso the Wise, in 1272, were successively transferred to different places, in 1447, in 1541, again in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and again, by the bad taste of the French General Thibaut, in 1809 or 1810, until, at last, in 1824, they were restored to their original sanctuary in San Pedro de Cardenas. Semanario Pintoresco, 1838, p. 648.