A history of Spanish literature - Cristo Raul

THE FRENCH INFLUENCE 35
his History in French. The substitution of the Gallic
for the Gothic character in the eleventh century advanced
one stage further a process begun by the French
adventurers who shared in the reconquest.
With these last came the French jongleurs to teach
the Spaniards the gentle art of making the chanson de
geste. The very phrase, cantar de gesta, bespeaks its
French source. As the root of the Cid epic lies in
Roland, so the Mystery of the Magian Kings
offshoot of the Cluny Liturgy. The earliest mention of
the Cid, in the Latin Chronicle of Almerta, joins the
national hero, significantly enough, with those two
is but an
unexampled paragons of France, Oliver and Roland.
Another French touch appears in the Poem of Ferndn
Gonzalez, where the writer speaks of Charlemagne's
defeat at Roncesvalles, and laments that the battle was
not an encounter with the Moors, in which Bernaldo
del Carpio might have scattered them. But we are not
the presence of French
left to conjecture and inference ;
jongleurs is attested by irrefragable evidence. 1 Sancho I.
of Portugal had at court a French jongleur who in name,
if in nothing else, somewhat resembled Guy de Maupassant's
creation, " Bon Amis." It is not proved that
Sordello ever reached Spain ; but, in the true manner
he denounces St. Ferdinand
of your bullying parasite,
as one who " should eat for two, since he rules two
kingdoms, and is unfit to govern one " :
" E lo Rets castelds tank qden manje per dos,
Quar dos regismes ten, niper Pun non es pros"
1 See Mila y Fontanals, Los Trovadores en Espafta (Barcelona, 1889), and th*
same writer's Resenya hist6rica y crilica dels antichs poetas Catalans in the
third volume of his Obras completes (Barcelona, 1890).