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  • El monasterio de Cardeña y el inicio de la épica cidiana by Irene Zaderenko
  • Roger Wright
Zaderenko, Irene. El monasterio de Cardeña y el inicio de la épica cidiana. UAH Monografías Humanidades 45. Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2013. 200 pp. ISBN: 978-84-15834-09-0[mostrar notas y marcas de edición]

In this valuable study, Irene Zaderenko considers the evidence which links the Poema De Mio Cid with the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, concluding that the surviving manuscript was copied there and the original text might well have been both composed and written there. This distinction between the composition and the physical writing of the text is kept in mind, but the focus of the analysis is resolutely on the composition, and the role probably played in that by monks in, or at least from, San Pedro de Cardeña.

The real Rodrigo Díaz may well have had little to do with the monastery, despite its being not far from Vivar and even less from Burgos. No genuine document links him with the monastery at all. And although his tomb is and was at Cardeña from 1102, he was originally buried in Valencia, and we can assume that that is what he wanted himself. Even so, there must have been some reason for Urraca to go to Cardeña on her departure from Valencia with his body, and maybe she went there simply because it was the closest monastery to the family lands. And perhaps the name “El Cid” came to Cardeña with the body. But even if there was no connection between them in the lifetime of Rodrigo Díaz himself, there seems to be no doubt that the twelfth-century elaboration of the story has much to do with Cardeña. And since it seems clear that the surviving copy, still taken here to be of the fourteenth century, was made at Cardeña, then the argument for the 1207 version being written at Cardeña is a strong starter. The hypothesis that the stories concerning the Cid, and the ones being simultaneously developed concerning the foundation of the monastery, were being produced in the same intellectual atmosphere is well made here; the monastery was feeling a need to compete with other monasteries in Old Castile in many respects, including developing or inventing a postulated connection with epic heroes, their tombs and their stories. Irene Zaderenko’s account of the twelfth-century history of the monastery thus supports the hypothesis, which in itself is not new, that the monastery was instrumental in the elaboration of the Poema as we know it now. It is satisfying to realize that historical investigation can illuminate more aspects than can literary theories developed in modern contexts and anachronistically [End Page 191] applied to the twelfth century.

Chapters II to IV of the book relate specifically to Cardeña. Some of the connections are already well-known, such as Colin Smith’s suggestion that the Infantes de Carrión were chosen to be the villains of the poem because their descendants were in direct violent contact with the monks of Cardeña in the mid-twelfth century. In contrast, the correlation which Irene Zaderenko highlights between various sections of the Benedictine Rule and the ways in which the monks of Cardeña are shown to operate in the Poema is new to me, and in the event forms the most intriguing part of the book (76-81). Cardeña was Benedictine, and thus not part of the newer intellectual atmosphere which accompanied the arrival of newer brands of monk ultimately from France; these latter were the ones who specially favoured writing in Romance, as Francisco Hernández has been showing, providing a complication for the Cardeña hypothesis which will need clarification later. But the fact that the reception given to the Cid and his family in the early part of the Poema follows the requirements laid down in the Benedictine rule for the reception of needy travellers is an excellent argument for a specifically Benedictine inspiration, rather than simply a monastic one, underlying the elaboration of the...

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