Gender in the Early Spanish Chronicles: from John of Biclar to Pelayo of Oviedo

GENDER IN THE EARLY SPANISH CHRONICLES: FROMJOHN OF BICLAR TO PELAYO OF OVIEDO Lucy K. Pick The University of Chicago The early chronicles and histories of medieval Spain may seem like an unpromising place to look for information about gender. After all, E.A. Thompson's acerbic comment about Isidore of Seville's Histoiy ofthe Goths, that, "He could have hardly told us less except by not writing at all" (E.A. Thompson 7), could be extended without exaggeration to the other works I will consider in diis study — John of Biclar's Chronicle, the Chronicle of 754, the two versions of the Chronicle ofAlfonso III, the Chronicle ofAlbelda, Sampiro's Chronicle, the Historia Silense, and Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo's Chronicon. Details about even the male rulers at the heart of these studies are scanty, laconic, and incomplete; information about women is scarcer still. But if scholars of early medieval Spain complain diat they cannot find the facts diey want from the sources at dieir disposal, they can be joined in their distress by anyone who looks to die historical writing of die medieval period for information about die past. These works are episodic by nature, seemingly lacking any kind of structuring order. The stories diey tell seem almost random; important events are passed over entirely or given a brief reference while insignificant tales are told in great detail (Peter Merritt Bassett 278). And groups of people, like women, whom we know to have been important historical actors, are left out of the narrative almost entirely (Karl Morrison xiv). Morrison helps us escape our frustrations widi these texts by showing us that the coherence we moderns seek within the text itself was located rather in the twinned process of esdieticjudgement by which the text was composed, and in the imaginative responses of the intended audience, the reader (xv). The writer, through deliberate U CORoNICA 32.3 (Summer, 2004): 227-48 228Lucy K. PickLa coránica 32.3, 2004 decisions ofinclusion and exclusion constructed a series ofsegmented episodes, of individual narrative images provoking affective responses of fear, pity, and love in the reader. The reader performed an esdietic and visual recreation of both the events described and die affective responses provoked by die events (102). The fascicular nature of the histories invited die reader to play widiin the gaps in die narrative and read widiin die silences of die text in order to complete die images found diere (28). By means of this play of mind, historical texts could be instruments ofcognition about God, odierwise inexpressible in words (49, 51). Texts were not merely constructed of segments or fascicles; diey could likewise be depicted diemselves as being fascicles of larger works (128). This is certainly true for the early Spanish chronicles, which explicidy or implicitly situate diemselves as continuations and additions to the ever expanding tale of universal history, widi its beginning located in Creation and its end in die coming Apocalypse , whedier viewed as imminent or distant. This view ofdie intention and relationship of these chronicles was perpetuated by the scribes who copied them sequentially widiin manuscript codices, and in the readers who read diem this way. The different historical works I will consider, which modern conventions isolate as discrete audiorial products , were frequently copied together in a single codex, available to readers as an ensemble, a collection of connected fascicles. Morrison's observations on historical writing and reading help us to consider the early Spanish chronicles, to read dieir silences and gaps as well as their vignettes. Despite their failure to be what we might want diem to be, diey are artful. Their principles of selection and omission are deliberate and thoughtiiilly conceived. Two particular considerations of his will guide us furdier as we consider die role and meaning of gender differences in die chronicles. The first are a set of observations on the limited areas where women, usually excluded , might be included within a historical narrative. Tales about women are not chosen at random but reflect strategic patterns of inclusion . Morrison cites diree major ones: women as victims of atrocities , in die entourages ofgreat men, and as participants in acts, such as marriage and procreation, possible because...