For
a scholar of England or northern Europe, a review of the translation
of a medieval chronicle normally focuses on how the translator’s work
differs from that of the long line of academic interlocutors who have
dealt with the
selfsame work over the years. This is seldom the case with Spanish
chronicles of the medieval centuries which are infrequently translated
into English. It
is with great pleasure, then, that I note the publication of
the first such translation of the extremely important, fourteenth-century
work, the Chronicle
of Alfonso X. Though the reign of the great polymath/sovereign of Castile-León,
Alfonso X “el Sabio” (1252-1282)has been extremely well explored
during the last three decades in the works of John Keller [Alfonso X, el
Sabio. New York, 1967], Robert I. Burns, S.J., [Emperor of Culture:
Alfonso X the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance.
Philadelphia, 1990], and Joseph O’Callaghan [The Learned King: The Reign
of Alfonso X. Philadelphia, 1993], the Chronicle of Alfonso X has
been largely ignored except from a literary point-of-view.
Professors
Thacker and Escobar are to be commended for transforming the nascent Castilian
of the fourteenth-century into a readable English version which follows
faithfully the meaning and arrangement of the original text. To firmly place
the Chronicle in its proper historical context, this edition relies
on Joseph O’Callaghan’s well-documented and organized discussion of Alfonso
X’s life and the mechanisms of the Chronicle’s formation. Almost
all the text notes are beholden to Dr. O’Callaghan’s encyclopedic
knowledge of the era. Despite these efforts to round out the
background of the Chronicle, the translators have failed to provide an adequate index for
either the historical or literary investigator.
In
some ways, Professors Thacker and Escobar have unnecessarily
narrowed their presentation of the Castilian monarch by not including
a contemporary
assessment of him by the great, eastern Spanish king, Jaume I
(1213-1276). As his father-in-law, rival, and fellow warrior against
the Peninsula’s Muslim
principalities, Jaume, in his great chronicle/autobiography, the “Book of
Deeds” (Liber dels Feyts) often remembers the history he shares with
his son-in-law very differently than Alfonso did. For example, while Alfonso,
in Chapter 10 of the Chronicle, describes his campaigns in Murcia of
1265-1266 as a strictly Castilian operation, Jaume, in Chapters 382-454 of the
Liber dels Feyts, describes in great detail how he put family honor
above that of his own lands to aid his daughter and son-in-law in successfully
completing the Murcian war and turning all the territories it gained to
Alfonso. Additionally, in Chapter
18 of the Chroncle, Alfonso talks of the 1269 marriage of his son
Fernando to the French princess, Blanche, and includes the entire eminent
wedding-list except for his father-in-law. For his part, Jaume, in Chapters
495-499 of the Liber dels Feyts, gives a very full account of the
lavish wedding and even recalls some of the Polonius-like advice he gave to
his son-in-law in the midst of the ceremonies.
Despite
the above reservations, de rigueur for the scholar of the Crown of
Aragon, I hail this new translation as a vehicle for opening up to
English-speaking audiences many of the forgotten or misunderstood political and
military aspects of Alfonso X’s tumultuous reign.
Donald Kagay
Albany
State University