El Cid

gigatos | March 12, 2022

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Summary

Rodrigo Díaz (Vivar del Cid, Burgos?-Valencia, 1099), also known as the Cid Campeador, was a Castilian military leader who came to dominate at the head of his own army the Levant of the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 11th century as a lordship autonomous from the authority of any king. He managed to conquer Valencia and established in this city an independent lordship from June 17, 1094 until his death; his wife, Jimena Díaz, inherited and maintained it until 1102, when it passed back to Muslim rule.

His family origin is discussed in several theories. He was the grandfather of King García Ramírez of Pamplona, first-born son of his daughter Cristina.

Despite his later legend as a hero of Castile or crusader in favor of the Reconquest, throughout his life he placed himself at the orders of different warlords, both Christian and Muslim, really fighting as his own master and for his own benefit, so the portrait that some authors make of him is similar to that of a mercenary, a professional soldier, who provides his services in exchange for pay.

He is a historical and legendary figure of the Reconquest, whose life inspired the most important canto de gesta of Spanish literature, the Cantar de mio Cid. He has passed to posterity as “el Campeador” (”expert in pitched battles”) or “el Cid” (from the dialectal Arabic سيد sīdi, ”lord”).

By the cognomento of “Campeador” he was known during his lifetime, as attested in 1098, in a document signed by Rodrigo Diaz himself, by the Latinized expression “ego Rudericus Campidoctor”. For their part, the Arabic sources of the eleventh and early twelfth century call him الكنبيطور “alkanbīṭūr” or القنبيطور “alqanbīṭūr”, or perhaps (taking into account the Romance form) Rudriq or Ludriq al-Kanbiyatur or al-Qanbiyatur (”Rodrigo el Campeador”).

The nickname “Cid” (which was also applied to other Christian warlords), although it is conjectured that his contemporaries from Zaragoza (for his victories in the service of the king of the taifa of Zaragoza between 1081 and 1086) or -more probably- from Valencia, after the conquest of this capital in 1094, may have already used it as an honorific and respectful treatment, appears for the first time (as “Meo Çidi”) in the Poem of Almería, composed between 1147 and 1149.

As for the combination “Cid Campeador”, it is documented around 1200 in the Navarrese-Aragonese Linaje de Rodrigo Díaz, which is part of the Liber regum (under the formula “mio Cit el Campiador”), and in the Cantar de mio Cid (“mio Cid el Campeador”, among other variants).

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Birth

He was born in the middle of the 11th century. The different proposals worthy of study have ranged between 1041 (Menéndez Pidal) and 1057 (according to Martínez Díez he was most probably born in 1048.

His birthplace is firmly established by tradition in Vivar del Cid, 10 km from Burgos, although there is a lack of corroborating sources contemporary to Rodrigo, since the association of Vivar with the Cid is first documented c. 1200 in the Cantar de mio Cid and the first express mention that the Cid was born in Vivar dates from the 14th century and is found in the cantar de las Mocedades de Rodrigo.

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Genealogy

Menéndez Pidal, in his work La España del Cid (1929), in a neo-traditionalist line of thought, based on the intrinsic veracity of the folkloric literature of cantares de gesta and romances, looked for a Cid of Castilian and humble origins among the infanzones, which was in line with his thought that the Cantar de mio Cid contained an essential historicity. The poet of the Cantar designs his hero as a knight of low nobility who ascends the social ladder until he is related to monarchies, in constant opposition to the deep-rooted interests of the landed nobility of León. This traditionalist thesis was also followed by Gonzalo Martínez Diez, who sees in the father of El Cid a “frontier captain” of little importance when he points out “the total absence of Diego Laínez in all the documents granted by King Fernando I confirms that the infanzón de Vivar did not figure at any time among the first magnates of the kingdom”.

However, this view is poorly combined with the qualification of the Historia Roderici, which speaks of Rodrigo Díaz as “varón ilustrísimo”, that is, belonging to the aristocracy; in the same sense, the Carmen Campidoctoris pronounces him “nobiliori de genere ortus” (“descendant of the noblest lineage”). On the other hand, a study by Luis Martínez García (2000) revealed that the patrimony that Rodrigo inherited from his father was extensive, and included properties in numerous localities of the region of the valley of the Ubierna River, Burgos, which was only given to a magnate of the high aristocracy, for which it does not prevent having acquired these powers in his life as a warrior in the frontier, as was the case of the father of the Cid. It is conjectured that the father of Rodrigo Díaz did not belong to the royal court either because of the opposition of a brother (or half-brother) of his, Fernando Flaínez, to Fernando I, or because he was born of an illegitimate marriage, which seems more probable. Since Menéndez Pidal said that the father of the Cid was not a member of the “first nobility” the authors who followed him have generally considered him an infanzón, that is, a member of the small Castilian nobility; “frontier captain” in the fights between Navarrese and Castilians in the line of Ubierna (Atapuerca) according to Martínez Diez (1999).

Between 2000 and 2002 the genealogical works of Margarita Torres found that the Diego Flaínez (Didacum Flaynez, mere Leonese and older variant of Diego Laínez) that the Historia Roderici cites as progenitor, and in general, all the ancestors on the father”s side that the Latin biography collects, coincide exactly with the lineage of the illustrious Leonese family of the Flaínez, one of the four most powerful families in the kingdom of León since the beginning of the 10th century, counts related to the Banu Gómez family, coincide exactly with the lineage of the illustrious Leonese family of the Flaínez, one of the four most powerful families of the kingdom of León since the beginning of the 10th century, counts related to the Banu Gómez, Ramiro II of León and the kings of Asturias. This ancestry has also been defended by Montaner Frutos in various works of the 21st century. In his 2011 edition of the Cantar de mio Cid, he reaffirmed the veracity of the genealogy of Historia Roderici, elucidated in his historical correspondences by Margarita Torres. In this regard, the apparent discrepancy of the grandfather of the Campeador Flaín Muñoz with the variant “Flaynum Nunez” (Flaín Nuñez) recorded in Historia Roderici would not be an obstacle, since confusion between Munio and Nunio and their variants (Muñoz

His mother”s surname is known, Rodriguez (more uncertain is her name, which could be Maria, Sancha or Teresa), daughter of Rodrigo Alvarez, a member of one of the lineages of the high Castilian nobility. The maternal grandfather of the Campeador was part of the retinue of Fernando I of León from the latter”s royal anointing on June 21, 1038 until 1066. This family related Rodrigo Díaz to the lieutenant of Álava, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya Lope Íñiguez; to Gonzalo Salvadórez of Castile; to Gonzalo Núñez, lieutenant of the alfoz of Lara and genearca of the house of the same name or to Álvar Díaz, who was from Oca, and had married the sister of García Ordóñez, whom the epic and legendary sources considered to be an irreconcilable rival of the Cid.

In 1058, when he was very young, he entered the court service of King Ferdinand I, as a servant or page of Prince Sancho, forming part of his noble curia. This early entry into the retinue of the prince Sancho II is another clue that leads us to think that the boy Rodrigo Díaz was not a humble infanzón. In short, the myth of the Cid as belonging to the lowest nobility seems rather an attempt to accommodate the genealogy of the mythical Judges of Castile of the Linage of Rodric Díaz and his descendants, and of the legendary character of the Cantar de mio Cid, to the historical Rodrigo Díaz to highlight the heroism of the protagonist, characterizing him as an old Castilian but not of high nobility who rises thanks to the courage of his arm.

In summary, it is certain that Rodrigo Díaz descends through the maternal line of the nobility of the magnates and, if we accept the thesis of Margarita Torres, also through the paternal line, since he would be related to the Flaínez de León. In any case, both the scope of the properties with which he endowed his wife in the letter of arras of 1079, as well as his presence from a very young age in the royal entourage and the work he carried out at the court of Alfonso VI, are sufficient to conclude that the Cid was a member of the high aristocracy.

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Youth. In the service of Sancho II of Castile

Rodrigo Díaz, very young, served the infant Sancho, future Sancho II of Castile. In his entourage he was instructed both in the handling of weapons and in his first letters, since it is documented that he knew how to read and write. There is a diploma of endowment to the Cathedral of Valencia of 1098 that Rodrigo subscribes with the autograph formula “Ego Ruderico, simul cum coniuge mea, afirmo oc quod superius scriptum est” (“I Rodrigo, together with my wife, subscribe what is written above”). He also had knowledge of law, as he intervened on two occasions at royal request to settle legal disputes, although perhaps in the court environment a nobleman of Rodrigo Díaz”s position could be orally familiar enough with legal concepts to be summoned in this type of process.

Possibly Rodrigo Díaz accompanied the army of the still infant Sancho II when he went to the battle of Graus to help the king of the taifa of Zaragoza al-Muqtadir against Ramiro I of Aragon in 1063. From the accession to the throne of Castile of Sancho II in the last days of 1065 until the death of this king in 1072, the Cid enjoyed the royal favor as magnate of his entourage, and could have been engaged as armiger regis ”royal armiger”, whose function in the eleventh century would be similar to that of an esquire, since his attributions were not yet those of the royal ensign described in Las Partidas in the thirteenth century. The position of armigero would become that of ensign throughout the 12th century, as it would assume competencies such as carrying the royal ensign on horseback and occupying the leadership of the king”s army. During the reign of Sancho II of Castile the tasks of the armiger (guarding the arms of the lord, fundamentally in formal ceremonies) would be entrusted to young knights who were being initiated in the palatine functions. However, in the reign of Sancho II there is no documented record of any armiger regis, so this information could only be due to the fame that spread later that Rodrigo Díaz was the favorite knight of the king, and hence the sources of the end of the 12th century assign him the position of royal ensign.

He fought with Sancho in the war against his brother Alfonso VI, king of León, and with his brother García, king of Galicia. The three brothers disputed the primacy over the divided kingdom after the death of their father and fought to reunify it. Rodrigo”s warlike qualities began to stand out in the Castilian victories of Llantada (1068) and Golpejera (1072). After the latter, Alfonso VI was captured, so that Sancho took possession of León and Galicia, becoming Sancho II of León. Perhaps in these campaigns Rodrigo Díaz earned the nickname of “Campeador”, that is, warrior in open field battles.

After the accession of Sancho to the Leonese throne, part of the Leonese nobility revolted and became strong in Zamora under the protection of the Infanta Urraca, sister of the previous ones. With the help of Rodrigo Díaz, the king besieged the city, but was killed -according to a widespread tradition- by the Zamora nobleman Bellido Dolfos, although the Historia Roderici does not state that the death was due to treason. The episode of the siege of Zamora is one of those that has suffered the most recreations by cantares de gesta, chronicles and romances, so that the historical information about this episode is very difficult to separate from the legendary.

Trusted Knight of Alfonso VI

Alfonso VI recovered the throne of León and succeeded his brother in that of Castile, annexing it together with Galicia and re-uniting the Legionese kingdom that had been broken up by his father Ferdinand on his death. The well-known episode of the Jura de Santa Gadea is an invention, according to Martínez Diez “lacking any historical or documentary basis”. The first appearance of this literary passage dates from 1236.

Relations between Alfonso and Rodrigo Díaz were excellent at this time; although he did not hold important positions with the new king, such as that of Count of Nájera held by García Ordóñez, he appointed him judge or attorney in several lawsuits and gave him an honorable marriage with Jimena Díaz (between July 1074 and May 12, 1076), a noble great-granddaughter of Alfonso V of León, with whom he had three children: Diego, María (married to the Count of Barcelona Ramón Berenguer III) and Cristina (who married the infante Ramiro Sánchez of Pamplona). This link with the high nobility of Asturian origin confirms that Rodrigo and King Alfonso were on good terms during this period.

Proof of the confidence that Alfonso VI placed in Rodrigo is that in 1079 the Champion was commissioned by the monarch to collect the parias of Almutamid of Seville. But during the performance of this mission Abdalá ibn Buluggin of Granada launched an attack against the Sevillian king with the support of the messnad of the important Castilian nobleman García Ordóñez, who had also gone on behalf of the Castilian-Leonese king to collect the parias from the last Zirid leader. Both Taifa kingdoms enjoyed the protection of Alfonso VI precisely in exchange for the parias. The Campeador defended Almutamid with his contingent, who intercepted and defeated Abdalá in the battle of Cabra, in which García Ordóñez was taken prisoner. The literary recreation has wanted to see in this episode one of the causes of the enmity of Alfonso towards Rodrigo, instigated by the nobility related to García Ordóñez, although the protection that the Cid offered to the rich king of Seville, who enriched Alfonso VI with his taxes, benefited the interests of the Leonese monarch.

The disagreements with Alfonso were caused by an excess (although it was not rare at the time) of Rodrigo Diaz after repelling an incursion of Andalusian troops in Soria in 1080, which led him, in his pursuit, to enter the Taifa kingdom of Toledo and plunder its eastern area, which was under the protection of King Alfonso VI.

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First banishment: in the service of the taifa of Zaragoza

Without completely ruling out the possible influence of courtiers opposed to Rodrigo Díaz in the decision, the incursion of the Castilian against the territory of al-Qadir, the puppet regime of Toledo protected by Alfonso, caused his banishment and the rupture of the relationship of vassalage.

At the end of 1080 or beginning of 1081, the Campeador had to leave in search of a magnate to whom he could lend his military expertise. It is quite possible that he initially sought the protection of the brothers Ramón Berenguer II and Berenguer Ramón II, counts of Barcelona, but they refused his patronage. Rodrigo then offered his services to kings of taifas, which was not uncommon, since Alfonso VI himself had been taken in by al-Mamún of Toledo in 1072 during his ostracism.

Together with his vassals or “mesnada” he established himself from 1081 to 1086 as a warrior under the orders of the king of Zaragoza al-Muqtadir, who, seriously ill, was succeeded in 1081 by al-Mutaman. In 1082 he entrusted the Cid with a campaign against his brother, the governor of Lérida Mundir, who, allied with Count Berenguer Ramón II of Barcelona and the king of Aragon Sancho Ramírez, had not complied with the power of Zaragoza after the death of their father, unleashing a fratricidal war between the two Hudi kings of the Ebro Valley.

The Cid”s host reinforced the strongholds of Monzón and Tamarite and defeated the coalition, formed by Mundir and Berenguer Ramón II, already supported by the bulk of the Taifal army of Zaragoza, in the battle of Almenar, where Count Ramón Berenguer II was taken prisoner.

While al-Mutaman and the Champion were fighting in Almenar, in the impregnable fortress of Rueda de Jalon the former king of Lleida Yusuf al-Muzaffar, who was a prisoner in this castle, dethroned by his brother al-Muqtadir, planned a conspiracy with the governor of this place, a certain Albofalac according to the Romance sources (perhaps Abu-l-Jalaq). Taking advantage of the absence of al-Mutaman, the monarch of Saragossa, al-Muzaffar and Albofalac requested that Alfonso VI come with an army to revolt in exchange for ceding him the fortress. Alfonso VI also saw the opportunity to collect again the parias of the kingdom of Zaragoza and marched with his host, commanded by Ramiro of Pamplona (a son of García Sánchez III of Pamplona) and the Castilian nobleman Gonzalo Salvadórez, towards Rueda in September 1082. But al-Muzaffar died, and the governor Albofalac, lacking a pretender to the kingdom of Zaragoza, changed his strategy and thought to ingratiate himself with al-Mutaman by setting a trap for Alfonso VI. He promised the king of León and Castile to surrender the fortress, but when the commanders and the first troops of his army reached the first ramps of the castle after breaking through the gate of the wall, they began to throw stones from the top that decimated the army of Alfonso VI, who had remained, cautiously, waiting to enter at the end. Ramiro de Pamplona and Gonzalo Salvadórez died, among other important Christian magnates, although Alfonso VI dodged the trap. The episode became known in historiography as the “betrayal of Rueda”. Shortly afterwards, the Cid appeared on the scene after having been in Tudela, probably sent by al-Mutaman, foreseeing a large-scale Leonese and Castilian attack, and assured Alfonso VI that he had had no involvement in this betrayal, explanations that Alfonso accepted. There is speculation that after the interview there may have been a brief reconciliation, but there is only record that the Cid returned to Saragossa in the service of the Muslim king.

In 1084 the Cid was on a mission in the southeast of the Zaragozan taifa, attacking Morella, possibly with the intention that Zaragoza would obtain an outlet to the sea. Al-Mundir, lord of Lérida, Tortosa and Denia, saw his lands in danger and turned this time to Sancho Ramírez of Aragon, who fought against Rodrigo Díaz on August 14, 1084 in the battle of Morella, also called Olocau -although in 2005 Boix Jovaní postulated that it took place somewhat further north of Olocau del Rey, in Pobleta d”Alcolea-. Again the Castilian was victorious, capturing the main knights of the Aragonese army (among whom were the bishop of Roda Ramón Dalmacio or the lieutenant of the county of Navarre Sancho Sánchez) whom he would surely release after collecting their ransom. In one of these two apotheosic receptions in Zaragoza, the Cid could have been received with the cry of “sīdī” (“my lord” in Andalusi Arabic, in turn coming from the classical Arabic sayyid), the Romance appellative of “mio Çid”.

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Reconciliation with Alfonso VI

On May 25, 1085 Alfonso VI conquered the taifa of Toledo and in 1086 began the siege of Zaragoza, with al-Musta”in II on the throne of this taifa, who also had Rodrigo in his service. But at the beginning of August of that year an Almoravid army advanced towards the interior of the kingdom of León, where Alfonso was forced to intercept it, with the result of Christian defeat in the battle of Sagrajas on October 23. It is possible that during the siege of Saragossa Alfonso reconciled with the Cid, but in any case the Castilian magnate was not present at Sagrajas. The arrival of the Almoravids, who observed Islamic law more strictly, made it difficult for the Taifa king of Saragossa to maintain a Christian army chief and mesnada, which may have caused him to dispense with the services of the Campeador. On the other hand, Alfonso VI could have condoned Rodrigo”s sentence in view of the need he had for valuable warlords with whom to confront the new power of North African origin.

Rodrigo accompanied the court of King Alfonso in Castile in the first half of 1087, and in summer he headed towards Zaragoza, where he met again with al-Musta”in II and, together, they took the route to Valencia to help the puppet-king al-Qadir from the harassment of al-Mundir (king of Lérida between 1082 and 1090), who had allied again with Berenguer Ramón II of Barcelona to conquer the rich Valencian taifa, at this time a protectorate of Alfonso VI. El Cid managed to repel the incursion of al-Mundir of Lérida but soon after the king of the Lleida taifa took the important fortified town of Murviedro (now Sagunto), again dangerously harassing Valencia. Faced with this difficult situation, Rodrigo Díaz marched to Castile to meet his king to request reinforcements and plan the defensive strategy for the future. The result of these plans and actions would be the subsequent Cidian intervention in the Levant, which would bring as a result a chained succession of warlike actions that would lead him to end up surrendering the capital of the Turia. Reinforced, the Cid”s army headed for Murviedro in order to challenge the Hudi king of Lerida. While Alfonso VI left Toledo on a campaign to the south, Rodrigo Díaz left Burgos, camped in Fresno de Caracena and on June 4, 1088 celebrated the Easter of Pentecost in Calamocha and headed back to the lands of the Levant.

When he arrived, Valencia was under siege by Berenguer Ramón II, now allied with al-Musta”in II of Zaragoza, whom the Champion had refused to surrender the Levantine capital in the previous campaign. Rodrigo, faced with the strength of this alliance, sought an agreement with al-Mundir of Lérida and made a pact with the Count of Barcelona to lift the siege, which the latter made effective. Subsequently, El Cid began to collect for himself the parias that Valencia had previously paid to Barcelona or King Alfonso VI and thus established a protectorate over the entire area, including the taifa of Albarracín and Murviedro.

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Second banishment: his intervention in the Levant

However, before the end of 1088, there would be a new disagreement between the Castilian leader and his king. Alfonso VI had conquered Aledo (province of Murcia), from where he endangered the taifas of Murcia, Granada and Seville with continuous plundering raids. Then the Andalusian taifas again requested the intervention of the Almoravid emperor, Yusuf ibn Tashufin, who besieged Aledo in the summer of 1088. Alfonso came to the rescue of the fortress and ordered Rodrigo to march to meet him in Villena to join his forces, but the Campeador did not end up meeting with his king, without being able to discern whether the cause was a logistical problem or the Cid”s decision to avoid the meeting. Instead of waiting in Villena, he camped in Onteniente and placed advanced watchtowers in Villena and Chinchilla to warn of the arrival of the king”s army. Alfonso, in turn, instead of going to the agreed meeting place, takes a shorter route, through Hellín and through the Segura Valley to Molina. In any case, Alfonso VI punished the Cid again with a new banishment, applying a measure that was only executed in cases of treason, which involved the expropriation of his property; an extreme that he had not reached in the first banishment. It was from this moment on when the Cid began to act as an independent leader and he considered his intervention in Levante as a personal activity and not as a mission on behalf of the king.

At the beginning of 1089 he sacked the taifa of Denia and then approached Murviedro, which caused al-Qadir of Valencia to pay tribute to ensure his protection.

In the middle of that year he threatened the southern border of the king of Lérida al-Mundir and Berenguer Ramón II of Barcelona by establishing himself firmly in Burriana, a short distance from the lands of Tortosa, which belonged to al-Mundir of Lérida. The latter, who saw his dominions over Tortosa and Denia threatened, allied with Berenguer Ramón II, who attacked the Cid in the summer of 1090, but the Castilian defeated him in Tévar, possibly a pine forest located in the current port of Torre Miró, between Monroyo and Morella. He again captured the Count of Barcelona who, after this event, undertook to abandon his interests in the Levant.

As a result of these victories the Cid became the most powerful figure in the east of the Peninsula, establishing a protectorate over Levante that had as tributaries Valencia, Lérida, Tortosa, Denia, Albarracín, Alpuente, Sagunto, Jérica, Segorbe and Almenara.

In 1092 he rebuilt the fortress of Peña Cadiella (currently La Carbonera, Benicadell mountain range) as a base of operations, but Alfonso VI had lost his influence in Valencia, replaced by the protectorate of the Cid. To regain his dominion in that area, he allied with Sancho Ramírez of Aragon and Berenguer Ramón II, and obtained naval support from Pisa and Genoa. The King of Aragon, the Count of Barcelona and the Pisan and Genoese fleet attacked the Taifa of Tortosa, which had been subjected by the Cid to the payment of parias and in the summer of 1092 the coalition harassed Valencia. Alfonso VI, for his part, had previously gone by land to Valencia to lead the multiple alliance against the Cid, but the delay of the Pisan-Genoese armada that was to support him and the high cost of maintaining the siege, forced the king to abandon the Valencian lands.

Rodrigo, who was in Saragossa (the only taifa that did not pay him pariahs) seeking the support of al-Musta”in II, retaliated against the Castilian territory by means of an energetic campaign of plunder in La Rioja. After these events, no Christian force could oppose the Cid, and only the powerful Almoravid Empire, then at the height of its military power, could confront him.

The Almoravid threat was the cause that definitely led the Cid to take a step further in his ambitions in Levante and, overcoming the idea of creating a protectorate over the various fortresses of the region, sustained with the collection of the parias of the neighboring taifas (Tortosa, Alpuente, Albarracín, and other fortified cities of Levante) he decided to conquer the city of Valencia to establish a hereditary lordship, an extraordinary status for an independent warlord in that he was not subject to any Christian king.

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Conquest of Valencia

After the summer of 1092, with the Cid still in Zaragoza, Cadi Ibn Ŷaḥḥḥāf, called by the Christians Abeniaf, with the support of the Almoravid faction, promoted on October 28, 1092 the execution of al-Qadir, tributary and under the protection of Rodrigo, and took power in Valencia. Upon hearing the news, the Campeador became angry, returned to Valencia in early November and besieged the fortress of Cebolla, now in the municipality of El Puig, fourteen kilometers from the Levantine capital, surrendering it in the middle of the year 1093 with the firm intention that it would serve as a base of operations for a final assault on Valencia.

That summer he began to encircle the city. Valencia, in a situation of extreme danger, requested an Almoravid relief army, which was sent under the command of al-Latmuní and advanced from the south of the capital of the Turia to Almusafes, twenty-three kilometers from Valencia, and then retreated again. The Valencians would not receive any more help and the city began to suffer the consequences of the shortage of supplies. According to the anonymous Chronicle of the kings of Taifas:

He cut off the supplies, placed almajaneques and pierced its walls. The inhabitants, deprived of food, ate rats, dogs and carrion, to the point that the people ate people, because whoever among them died was eaten. The people, in short, came to such sufferings that they could not bear. Ibn ”Alqama has written a book concerning the situation of Valencia and its siege that makes the reader weep and frightens the reasonable man. As the ordeal dragged on for a long time and they lacked the stamina and as the Almoravids had left al-Andalus for Barbary and could not find a protector, they decided to hand over the city to the Champion; for which they asked him for the amman for their persons, their goods and their families. He imposed as a condition on ibn Ŷaḥḥāf that he should give him all the treasures of al-Quādir.

The tight siege had lasted for almost a whole year, after which Valencia capitulated on June 17, 1094. El Cid took possession of the city, calling himself “prince Rodrigo el Campeador” and perhaps from this period dates the treatment that would derive in “Cid”.

In any case, the Almoravid pressure did not let up and in mid-September of that same year an army under the command of Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Tāšufīn, nephew of Emperor Yusuf, reached Cuart de Poblet, five kilometers from the capital, and besieged it, but was defeated by El Cid in a pitched battle.

Ibn Ŷaḥḥḥāf was burned alive by the Cid, who thus took revenge for his murdering his protégé and tributary al-Qadir, but also apparently applying an Islamic custom. In order to secure the northern routes of the new lordship, Rodrigo managed to ally himself with the new king of Aragon Peter I, who had been enthroned shortly before the fall of Valencia during the siege of Huesca, and took the Castle of Serra and Olocau in 1095.

In 1097 a new Almoravid incursion under the command again of Muhammad ibn Tasufin tried to recover Valencia for Islam, but near Gandía was defeated again by the Champion with the collaboration of the army of Pedro I in the battle of Bairén.

That same year, Rodrigo sent his only son, Diego Rodríguez, to fight alongside Alfonso VI against the Almoravids; the troops of Alfonso VI were defeated and Diego lost his life in the Battle of Consuegra. At the end of 1097 he took Almenara, thus closing the routes north of Valencia and in 1098 he definitively conquered the imposing fortified city of Sagunto, consolidating his dominion over what had previously been the taifa of Balansiya.

Also in 1098 he consecrated the new Cathedral of Santa Maria, reforming what had been the aljama mosque. He had placed Jerónimo de Perigord at the head of the new episcopal see to the detriment of the old Mozarabic metropolitan or sayyid almaṭran, due to the disaffection that had occurred between the Campeador and the Mozarabic community during the siege of Valencia in September and October of 1094. In the diploma of endowment of the cathedral at the end of 1098 Rodrigo is presented as “princeps Rodericus Campidoctor”, considering himself an autonomous sovereign despite not having royal ascendancy, and the battle of Cuarte is alluded to as a triumph achieved quickly and without casualties over a huge number of Mohammedans.

… after the capture of Valencia, all of Rodrigo”s efforts were directed towards the consolidation of his seigniorial independence, towards the constitution of a sovereign principality detached from the secular tutelage of the king of Castile as well as from the ecclesiastical tutelage of the archbishop of Toledo.

Already established in Valencia, he also allied with Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, with the purpose of jointly stopping the Almoravid thrust. The military alliances were reinforced with marriages. The year of his death he had married his daughters with high dignitaries: Cristina with the infante Ramiro Sánchez de Pamplona. Such links confirmed the historical veracity of verses 3.724 and 3.725 of the Cantar de mio Cid “today the kings of Spain are his relatives,

Death

His death took place in Valencia between May and July of 1099, according to Martínez Diez, on July 10. Alberto Montaner Frutos is inclined to place it in May, due to the coincidence of two independent sources in dating his death in this month: the Linaje de Rodrigo Díaz on the one hand and on the other the Alphonsine chronicles that contain the Estoria del Cid (like the Sanchina Version of the Estoria de España), that gather data whose origin is in the oral or written history generated in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña. It is not an impediment that the monastery commemorated the anniversary of the Cid in June, since it is typical of these celebrations to choose the date of the moment of the burial of the corpse instead of that of his death and, in any case, the data is transmitted by a late source from the second half of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th century.

The Song, probably in the belief that the hero died in May, would specify the date at the Passover of Pentecost for literary and symbolic purposes.

His wife Jimena, who became mistress of Valencia, managed to defend the city with the help of her son-in-law Ramón Berenguer III for a time. But in May 1102, faced with the impossibility of defending the principality, the Cid”s family and people abandoned Valencia with the help of Alfonso VI, after plundering and burning the city. Thus, Valencia was conquered again the next day by the Almoravids and remained in Muslim hands until 1238, when it was definitively retaken by James I.

Rodrigo Díaz was buried in the cathedral of Valencia, so it was not the Campeador”s will to be buried in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, where his remains were taken after the Christian eviction and fire of the Levantine capital in 1102. In 1808, during the War of Independence, French soldiers desecrated his tomb, but the following year General Paul Thiébault ordered his remains to be placed in a mausoleum in the Paseo del Espolón, on the banks of the Arlanzón River; in 1826 they were moved again to Cardeña, but after the disentailment, in 1842, they were taken to the chapel of the Casa Consistorial of Burgos. Since 1921 they rest together with those of his wife Doña Jimena in the transept of the Cathedral of Burgos.

Literature

With the exception of the documentaries of the time, some signed by Rodrigo Díaz himself, the oldest sources about the Campeador come from the Andalusian literature of the 11th century. The earliest works we know of about him have not been preserved, although the essentials of them have been transmitted through indirect versions. In the Arabic sources the Cid is generally imprecated with the appellatives of tagiya (however, his warlike strength is admired, as in the 12th century testimony of the Andalusian Ibn Bassam, the only allusion in which the Arabic historiography refers to the Castilian warrior in positive terms; in any case Ibn Bassam usually refers to the Campeador with denigrations, execrating him throughout his Al-Djazira fi mahasin ahl al-Jazira…). (”Treasury of the beautiful qualities of the people of the Peninsula”) with the expressions “Galician dog” or “whom God curse”. Here is the well-known passage in which he recognizes his prodigious worth as a warrior.

…was this misfortune in his time, by the practice of his skill, by the sum of his resolution, and by the extremity of his fearlessness, one of God”s great prodigies.

It should also be noted that the Arabic sources never apply to him the nickname of sidi (lord) -which among the Mozarabs or his own messnad (which included Muslims) derived to “Cid”-, since it was a treatment restricted to Islamic leaders. In these sources he is called Rudriq or Ludriq al-Kanbiyatur or al-Qanbiyatur (”Rodrigo el Campeador”).

The Elegy of Valencia of the alfaquí Al-Waqasi was written during the siege of Valencia (early 1094). Between that year and 1107 Ibn Alqama or the vizier of al-Qádir Ibn al-Farach (according to the latest research) composed his Eloquent Manifesto on the Unfortunate Incident or History of Valencia (Al-bayan al-wadih fi-l-mulimm al-fadih), which narrates the moments prior to the conquest of Valencia by El Cid and the vicissitudes of the Christian lordship. Although the original is not preserved, its account has been reproduced in fragmentary form by several later Arab historians (Ibn Bassam, Ibn al-Kardabūs, Ibn al-Abbar, Ibn Idari, Ibn al-Khatib…) and was used in the Alphonsine chronicles, although the execution at the stake of Cadi Ibn Yahhaf ordered by Rodrigo Díaz was not translated in them.

Finally, and as mentioned above, in 1110 Ibn Bassam de Santarém dedicates the third part of his al-Jazira to expose his vision of the Campeador, of whom he shows the warlike and political capacities, but also his cruelty. It begins with the establishment of al-Qádir by Alfonso VI and Álvar Fáñez and culminates with the Almoravid reconquest. Unlike the eloquent Manifesto…, which shows an Andalusian, Taifal perspective, Bassam is a pro-Almoravid historian, who disdained the Taifa kinglets. According to Ibn Bassam”s perspective, Rodrigo”s achievements are largely due to the support given to him by the Andalusian Muslims, and to the inconstancy and dissensions of these leaders.

As for the Christian sources, from the first sure mention of the Cid (in the Poem of Almería, c. 1148) the references are tinged with a legendary aura, since in the poem on the capture of Almería by Alfonso VIII preserved with the Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris it is said of him that he was never defeated. For news more faithful to his real biography there is a chronicle in Latin, the Historia Roderici (c. 1190), concise and quite reliable, although with important gaps in several periods of the life of the Champion. Together with the testimonies of Arab historians, it is the main source on the historical Rodrigo Díaz. In addition, the Historia Roderici presents a Rodrigo Díaz not always praised by its author, which invites us to think that his account is reasonably objective. Thus, commenting on the Campeador”s raid through the lands of La Rioja, the author is very critical of the protagonist, as can be seen in the way he describes and evaluates his raid through La Rioja.

Rodrigo left Zaragoza with an innumerable and very powerful army, and penetrated into the regions of Nájera and Calahorra, which were domains of King Alfonso and were subject to his authority. Fighting with determination he took Alberite and Logroño. With brutality and without mercy he destroyed these regions, animated by a destructive and irreligious impulse. He seized a great booty, but it was deplorable. His cruel and ungodly devastation destroyed and devastated all the aforementioned lands.

Nevertheless, it is still a text intended to exalt the warrior qualities of the Champion, which is already reflected in its incipit, which reads hic incipit (or incipiunt according to another later manuscript) gesta Roderici Campidocti (”here begins” or ”the exploits of Rodrigo the Champion begin”).

The literature of creation soon invented what was unknown or completed the figure of the Cid, progressively contaminating the more historical sources with the oral legends that were emerging to extol him and strip his biography of the less acceptable elements for the Christian mentality and the heroic model that was to be configured, such as his service to the Muslim king of Saraqusta.

His exploits were even the subject of literary inspiration for cultured and erudite writers, as evidenced by the Carmen Campidoctoris, a Latin hymn written around 1190 in just over a hundred sapphic verses that sing of the Champion, extolling him as was done with classical Greco-Latin heroes and athletes.

In this panegyric, Rodrigo”s services to the king of the taifa of Zaragoza are no longer recorded; in addition, there are singular combats with other knights in his youth to highlight his heroism, and the motif of the murmurers appears, which provokes the enmity of King Alfonso, with which the king of Castile is exonerated in part of responsibility in the disagreement and banishment of the Cid.

In short, the Carmen is a select catalog of Rodrigo”s exploits, for which the field battles are preferred and the sources (Historia Roderici and perhaps the Chronicle of Najera) are discarded, as well as the punitive battles, ambushes or sieges, forms of combat that carried less prestige.

From this same period dates the first canticle of deeds about the character: the Cantar de mio Cid, written between 1195 and 1207 by an author with legal knowledge of the area of Burgos, Soria, the region of Calatayud, Teruel or Guadalajara. The epic poem is inspired by the events of the last part of his life (exile from Castile, battle with the Count of Barcelona, conquest of Valencia), conveniently recreated. The version of the Cid offered by the Cantar is a model of moderation and balance. Thus, when from a prototypical epic hero one would expect an immediate blood vengeance, in this work the hero takes his time to reflect upon receiving the bad news of the mistreatment of his daughters (“cuando ge lo dizen a mio Cid el Campeador,

The literaturization and development of anecdotal details unrelated to the historical facts also occurs in the chronicles from very early on. The Chronicle of Najeres, still in Latin and composed around 1190, already included, together with the materials from the Historia Roderici, other more fanciful ones related to the actions of Rodrigo chasing Bellido Dolfos in the legendary episode of the death of King Sancho by treachery in the Siege of Zamora, and which would give rise to the no less literary Jura de Santa Gadea. A few years later (around 1195) the Linage de Rodric Díaz appears in Aragonese, a genealogical and biographical text that also includes the persecution and lancing of the Cid by the regicide of the legend of Bellido Dolfos.

In the 13th century, the Latin chronicles of Lucas de Tuy (Chronicon mundi, 1236), and Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (Historia de rebus Hispanie, 1243), mention in passing the most relevant events of the Campeador, such as the conquest of Valencia. In the second half of that century, Juan Gil de Zamora, in Liber illustrium personarum and De Preconiis Hispanie, dedicates some chapters to the Castilian hero. At the beginning of the 14th century, Gonzalo de Hinojosa, bishop of Burgos, did the same in Chronice ab origine mundi.

The section corresponding to the Cid in the Estoria de España by Alfonso X of Castile has been lost, but we know it from its late versions. In addition to Arabic, Latin and Castilian sources, the wise king used the cantares de gesta as documentary sources that he prosified. The different re-elaborations of the Alphonsine chronicles were expanding the collection of information and stories of all origins on the biography of the hero. Thus, we have Cidian materials, each time more distant from the historical Rodrigo Díaz, in the Crónica de veinte reyes (1284), Crónica de Castilla (c. 1300), the Galician Translation (a few years later), the Chronicle of 1344 (written in Portuguese, translated into Castilian and later rewritten in Portuguese around 1400), the Chronicle of the Cid (first edition printed in Burgos, 1512) and the Ocampian Chronicle (1541), written by the chronicler of Charles I Florián de Ocampo. The existence of the cantares de gesta de la Muerte del rey Fernando, the Cantar de Sancho II and the primitive Gesta de las Mocedades de Rodrigo, has been conjectured from these prosifications of the Estoria de España, analogously to the prose version that appears there of the Cantar de mio Cid.

Until the fourteenth century his life was fabulized in the form of an epic, but with increasing attention to his youth, imagined with great creative freedom, as can be seen in the late Mocedades de Rodrigo, which recounts how in his youth he dares to invade France and to eclipse the exploits of the French chansons de geste. The last chanson de geste depicted a haughty character very much to the taste of the time, which contrasts with the measured and prudent character of the Cantar de mio Cid.

But the profile of the legendary Cid still lacked a pious character. The Estoria or Leyenda de Cardeña is in charge of giving it by compiling a set of news elaborated ad hoc by the monks of the homonymous monastery about the last days of the hero, the embalming of his corpse and the arrival of Jimena with him to the monastery of Burgos, where he was exposed seated for ten years until he was buried. This story, which includes hagiographic supernatural components and aims to turn the monastery into a place of worship to the memory of the already sacralized hero, was incorporated into the Castilian chronicles, beginning with the different versions of the Alphonsine Estoria de España. In the Legend of Cardeña appears for the first time the prophecy that God will grant the Cid victory in battle even after his death.

Among other legendary aspects that developed at the death of the Cid around the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, some of which are reflected in the epic epitaph that adorned his tomb, may have been the use of two swords with proper names: the so-called Colada and the Tizona, which according to legend belonged to a king of Morocco and was made in Cordoba. Since the Cantar de mio Cid (only one hundred years since his death) this tradition has spread the names of his swords, his horse Babieca and his birthplace, Vivar, if not its origin is the Cantar de mio Cid itself, since it is the first time that the swords, the horse and the birthplace appear.

From the 15th century onwards, the popular version of the hero was perpetuated, especially in the Cidian cycle of the romancero. His youth and his love affairs with Jimena were developed in numerous romances in order to introduce the sentimental theme in the complete story of his legend. In the same way, more episodes were added in them that portrayed him as a pious Christian knight, such as the trip to Santiago de Compostela or his charitable behavior with a leper, to whom, without knowing that it is a divine proof (since he is an angel transformed into a cripple), the Cid offers his food and comforts him. The character is thus configured as a perfect lover and example of Christian piety. All these passages will form the basis of the comedies of the Golden Age that took the Cid as the protagonist. In order to give biographical unity to these series of romances, compilations were made that organically reconstructed the life of the hero, among which stands out the one entitled Romancero e historia del Cid (Lisbon, 1605), compiled by Juan de Escobar and profusely reprinted.

In the 16th century, in addition to continuing the poetic tradition of elaborating artistic romances, several successful plays, generally inspired by the romancero itself, were dedicated to it. In 1579 Juan de la Cueva wrote the comedy La muerte del rey don Sancho, based on the heroic deed of the siege of Zamora. Lope de Vega also used this material to compose Las almenas de Toro. But the most important theatrical expression based on the Cid are the two plays by Guillén de Castro Las mocedades del Cid and Las hazañas del Cid, written between 1605 and 1615. Corneille based himself (at times verbatim) on the Spanish play to compose Le Cid (1636), a classic of French theater. We should also mention, although it has not been preserved, the comedy El conde de las manos blancas or Las hazañas del Cid y su muerte, with the capture of Valencia, also known as Comedia del Cid, doña Sol y doña Elvira, composed by the Caracas playwright Alfonso Hurtado de Velarde, who died in 1638 and specialized in the genre known as heroic comedy.

The 18th century was little given to recreating the Cidian figure, with the exception of Nicolás Fernández de Moratín”s extensive poem “Fiesta de toros en Madrid”, in which El Cid fights as a skilled rejoneador in an Andalusian bullfight. This passage has been considered the source of engraving no. 11 of the series La tauromaquia by Goya and his interpretation of the primitive history of bullfighting, which referred to the Carta histórica sobre el origen y progresos de las fiestas de toros en España (1777) by the same writer, which made El Cid, also, the first Spanish Christian bullfighter. El Cid also appears in a play of the Enlightenment, La afrenta del Cid vengada by Manuel Fermín de Laviano, a play written in 1779 but performed in 1784 and a significant work because it is the first to be inspired by the text of the Cantar de mio Cid published by Tomás Antonio Sánchez in 1779.

The Romantics enthusiastically picked up the figure of the Cid following the romancero and Baroque comedies: examples of nineteenth-century drama are La jura de Santa Gadea, by Hartzenbusch and La leyenda del Cid, by Zorrilla, a kind of extensive paraphrase of the whole romancero del Cid in approximately ten thousand verses. His adventures were also recreated in historical novels in the style of Walter Scott, as in La conquista de Valencia por el Cid (1831), by the Valencian Estanislao de Cosca Vayo. Late romanticism wrote profusely reworkings of the legendary biography of the Cid, such as the novel El Cid Campeador (1851), by Antonio de Trueba. In the second half of the 19th century the genre drifted to the novel of folletín, and Manuel Fernández y González wrote a narrative of this character called El Cid, as did Ramón Ortega y Frías.

In the theatrical field, Eduardo Marquina took this issue to modernism with the 1908 premiere of Las hijas del Cid.

One of the great works of the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro is La hazaña del Mío Cid (1929), which, as he himself points out, is a “novel written by a poet”.

In the mid-twentieth century the actor Luis Escobar made an adaptation of Las mocedades del Cid for the theater, entitled El amor es un potro desbocado; in the eighties José Luis Olaizola published the essay El Cid el último héroe, and in 2000 the professor of history and novelist José Luis Corral wrote a demystifying novel about the character entitled El Cid. In 2019 so did Arturo Perez Reverte in Sidi and historian David Porrinas, in the same year, updates his biography with El Cid. Historia y mito de un señor de la guerra. In 2007 Agustín Sánchez Aguilar published the legend of El Cid, adapting it to a more current language, but without forgetting the epic of the exploits of the Castilian knight.

In the 20th century, poetic modernizations of the Cantar de mio Cid were carried out, such as those by Pedro Salinas, Alfonso Reyes, Francisco López Estrada or Camilo José Cela.

The most recent critical editions of the Cantar have restored rigor to its literary edition; thus, the most authoritative at present is that of Alberto Montaner Frutos, published in 1993 for the “Biblioteca Clásica” collection of the publishing house Crítica, and revised in 2007 and 2011 in editions of Galaxia Gutenberg-Círculo de Lectores: the latter, moreover, has the endorsement of the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy).

Also read, battles – Battle of Navarino

Music

In 1979, Crack, a Spanish progressive rock band, released their album “Si Todo Hiciera Crack”, which included the song “Marchando una del Cid”, inspired by the legend of Rodrigo and more specifically by his exile and last days.

The album Legendario by the Spanish band Tierra Santa is based on the legend of El Cid as told in the cantar del mío Cid.

Opera

Sources