the Cid

CID, THE (sid, Spanish theth), Diaz de Bivar (d. 1099), the favourite hero of Spain, and the most prominent figure in her lit erature. The name, however, is so obscured by fable as scarcely to belong to history. The Jesuit Masdeu denies that he existed, and this heresy has not wanted followers even in Spain. The truth of the matter has been expressed by Cervantes, through the mouth of the Canon in Don Quixote : "There is no doubt there was such a man as the Cid but much doubt whether he achieved what is attributed to him." The Cid of history is still the foremost man of the heroical period of Spain—the greatest warrior of the long struggle between Christian and Muslim, and the perfect type of the Castilian of the 12th century. Rodrigo Diaz, called de Bivar, from the place of his birth, better known by the title given him by the Arabs as the Cid (El Seid, the lord) and El Campeador, the champion, was born of a noble family about 1040, being first mentioned (as Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar) in a charter of Ferdinand I. of 1064. He rose to great distinction in the war between Sancho of Castile and Sancho of Navarre, in which he won his name of Campeador by slaying the enemy's champion in single combat. In the quarrel between Sancho and his brother Alphonso, he espoused the cause of the former, and suggested the perfidious stratagem by which Sancho eventually obtained possession of Leon. Sancho having been slain in 1072, while engaged in the siege of Zamora, the exiled Alphonso returned and occupied the vacant throne. The Cid accepted the new monarch, was entrusted with high commissions of State, and in 1074 married Ximena, daughter of the count of Oviedo, and granddaughter of Alphonso V. Some time afterwards he was sent to collect tribute from Motamid, the king of Seville, who was at war with Abdullah, the king of Granada. During the battle which ensued under the walls of Seville, Abdullah and his auxiliaries were routed, the Cid returning to Burgos with many prisoners and a rich booty. Garcia Ordonez then accused him to Alphonso of keeping part of the tribute, and the king took ad vantage of the Cid's absence on a raid against the Moors to banish him from Castile in 1081.

Henceforth Rodrigo Diaz lived that life of a soldier of fortune which has made him famous, sometimes fighting with the Christians, sometimes with the Moors, but always for his own hand. At the head of 30o free lances he offered his services to the count of Barcelona ; then, failing him, to Moktadir, the Arab king of Saragossa, under whose successors he fought for nearly eight years, against Mohammedan and Christian, being admitted almost to a share of their royal authority. His overtures towards Alphonso being rejected, he extended the Arab dominions at the expense of the Christian States of Aragon and Barcelona, and harried even the borders of Castile. Among the enterprises of the Cid the most famous was that against Valencia, where he appeared at the head of 7,000 men, chiefly Mohammedans. In defiance of a relief army, under Yusuf the Almoravide, the Cid took Valencia after a siege of nine months, on June 15, 1094—the richest prize which had been recovered from the Moors. The conditions of the surrender were all violated—the cadi Ibn Djahhaff burnt alive, many citizens slaughtered, and the possessions divided among the Cid's corn panions. The Cid ruled his kingdom, which now embraced nearly the whole of Valencia and Murcia, for four years, with vigour and justice. At length the Almoravides defeated him at Cuenca, and the blow led to his death in July, 1099. His widow maintained Valencia against the Moors till I102, when she evacuated the city, taking with her the body of the Cid to be buried in the monastery of San Pedro at Cardena, near Burgos. The bones have since been removed to the town hall of Burgos.

The Cid of romance is not the historical rebel, the con sorter with infidels and the enemies of Spain. He is the type of knightly virtue, the mirror of patriotic duty, the flower of all Christian grace, the Roland, the King Arthur, and Bayard in one. In a barbarous Latin poem, written in celebration of the conquest of Almeria by Alphonso VII. in i147, the bard sings of the super eminence of the Cid among his country's heroes : Ipse Rodericus Mio Cid semper vocatus, De quo cantatur quod ab hostibus haud superatus, Qui domuit Mauros, comites domuit quoque nostros.

The

Poerna del Cid, of the latter half of the 12th century, the oldest extant Spanish epic, written in a barbarous style, in rugged assonant rhymes, and a rude Alexandrine measure, full of a noble simplicity and a true epic grandeur, is invaluable as a living picture of the age, though it is silent about the Cid's cruelties. The ballads relating to him number nearly 200, most of which date from the 16th century and are of inferior merit. They all take very great liberties with history. Such of the ballads as are not genuine relics of the 12th century are either poetical ver sions of episodes in the hero's life as contained in the Chronicle, which itself was composed out of still earlier legends, or later in ventions inspired by the romance of chivalry. In these last the ballad-mongers, not to let their hero be outdone by Amadis of Gaul and the other heroes of romance, engage him in the most extravagant adventures—making war upon the king of France and upon the emperor, receiving embassies from the soldan of Persia, or bearding the pope. The last and the worst of the Cid ballads are those which betray by their frigid conceits and feeble mimicry of the antique the false taste and unheroic spirit of the age of Philip II. The influence of the Spanish Cid cycle in France first appeared in Du Perier's novel: La Hayne et l'Amour d'Arnoul et de Clairemonde (1600), and more notably in Corneille's Cid (1636), which was greatly indebted to the drama by Guillen de Castro, Las Mocedades del Cid (1614?).

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The

chief sources for the story of the Cid are Bibliography.--The chief sources for the story of the Cid are the Latin chronicle discovered by Risco in the convent of San Isidro at Leon, which appears, from internal evidence, to date from before 1258; the Cronica General, composed by Alphonso X. (d. 1284), partly (so far as relates to the Cid) from the above, partly from contemporary Arab histories, partly from tradition ; the Crdnica par ticular del Cid (first pub. 1512 by Juan de Velorado), a compila tion from the last, interlarded with pious fictions ; lastly, various early Arabic manuscripts, discussed in Dozy's Recherches sur l'histoire politique et litteraire de l'Espagne pendant le moyen age, vol. ii. (Leyden, 1849). The Chronicle was translated into Eng. by R. Markham (1883) , and with elaborations by Robt. Southey (1883) . The last edition and translation of the Poem of the Cid is by A. M. Huntington (The Hispanic Socy. of America, 1921) . The largest collection of the Cid ballads is that of Duran in the Romancero general, vol. x., xvi. of Rivadeneyra's Biblioteca de autores espanoles (1849-51) . Huber, Muller, and F. Wolf are among the authorities for the history and literature of the Cid. See also J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, History of Spanish Literature (1926) ; H. Butler Clarke, The Cid Campeador (1897) ; Hamel, Der Cid im Spanischen Drama (191o).