Book of Alexandre Go to navigation Go to search Book of Alexandre F 45v of the Book of Alexandre (ms O).

jpg
Original title Book of Alexandre View and edit data on Wikidata Date of publication 13th century Julian View and
edit data on Wikidata [edit data on Wikidata]
Incipit from the Book of Alexandre, ms. EITHER. The second stanza of this work has been considered the
declaration of principles of the mester de clerecía.

The Book of Alexander is a work in verse from the first third of the 13th century,1 written in Lyonese, which
narrates, with abundant fabulous elements, the life of Alexander the Great. It is written using the quatrain via or
alexandrine monorhyme tetrastrophe and is included in the poetic school known as mester de clerecía. It is
composed of 2,675 stanzas and 10,700 verses.

It deals with one of the great themes of Western European literature. The length of the text, which exceeds ten
thousand verses, the relevance of the sources and the issues discussed, the enormous erudition displayed and
the international nature of the subject make this book, perhaps, the most interesting of its time.

The original, transmitted in two copies, is attributed to Juan Lorenzo de Astorga, from the end of the 13th century
or more probably the 14th century, who introduced abundant Leonese words in the original that he transcribed,
called manuscript O; another, discovered at the end of the 19th century in Paris, adopts features of the Riojan
dialect, designated as manuscript P, in whose text the work is attributed to Gonzalo de Berceo.

Currently, critics consider that neither Juan Lorenzo nor the author of Miracles of Our Lady were the authors of
Alexandre, so the work is considered anonymous. However, the author's geographical environment is located in
the current provinces of Logroño or Soria. And due to his extensive training, he must have studied at some
university (Estudio General), which could have been the one in Palencia, although any other university is not
ruled out, for example Paris.

As for the dating, the most widely agreed date is currently around 1230, although there is no conclusive proof
and there are theories based on calculations from stanza 1799 that place the work in the early years of the 13th
century. Sicart estimates that it is between the years 1208 and 1216 and Serverat proposes a slightly closer
period, between the years 1202 and 1205.

The use of sources is much more elaborate than in other clerical poems, such as those of Berceo. He mainly
uses Gautier de Châtillon's Alexandreis (a Latin poem also of a clerical nature composed around 1180), but
alters it to suit himself and incorporates passages from other sources, such as the Historia de preliis —a
medieval adaptation of the Romance of Alexander (3rd century), a set of biographical information attributed
without basis to Callisthenes, a general of the Macedonian emperor, commonly known as Pseudo-Callisthenes—
or the Li Romans d'Alixandre, a French epic poem from the 12th century. For an extensive digression on the
Trojan War he uses the Latin Ilias (1st century), a summary in Latin hexameters of the Iliad.2
Second stanza of the Book of Alexandre, first third of the 13th century, considered to be the declaration of
principles of the mester de clerecía, proudly distinguishing it from the profession of mester de juglaría:

Master I bring beautiful, it is not a joke

mester is without sin, it is of clergy to speak a rhymed course through the frame via counted syllables, it is
great mastery.

Book of Alexander, vv. 5-8.

I have a beautiful craft, it is not that of minstrelsy, it is a craft without faults, because it is that of the clergy,
speaking [I bring] in rhymed verse, through the cuaderna via, with counted syllables, because it is great
mastery.

Index

1 Preserved testimonies
2 Linguistic characterization and authorship
3 Date of composition
4 The image of the king
5 Poem with the appearance of an encyclopedia. The sources
 6 The poem
7 Style
8 Editions
9 References
10 Sources
11 External links

Preserved testimonies

Together with two extensive versions (the manuscript of the National Library of Madrid (ms. V-5-n.º 10) or
manuscript O (because it was kept in the library of the Duke of Osuna), from the 14th century or very late 13th
century, copied in León by Juan Lorenzo de Astorga, which contains numerous Leonese words; and that of the
Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris (Spanish manuscript 488), from the 15th century, with numerous Aragonese
words, manuscript P, whose copyist attributes it to Gonzalo de Berceo, published by the Hispanist Alfred Morel
Fatio in his Dresden edition, 1906), several minor fragments have also been preserved, which have very little to
do with the long manuscripts, none of which, for their part, are complete:

The fragment from the Ducal Archive of Medinaceli is from the 14th century and contains the first twenty-
seven verses, that is, it goes up to verse c of stanza 7.
Three fragments of the lost parchment manuscript from Bugedo are preserved, published in a posthumous
work by Francisco de Bivar (d. 1635): Marci Maximi Caesaraugustani, viri doctissimi continuatio Chronici
omnimodae Historiae ab Anno Christi 430 (ubi Flav. L. Dexter desiit) usque ad 612 quo maximus pervenit...
Madrid. Ex typ. Didacii Diaz de la Carrera. Anno MDCLI, in fol..
The Victorial or Chronicle of Don Pero Niño, written in the 15th century by Gutierre Díez de Games, also
preserves some stanzas, in two versions, one in the edition by Eugenio de Llaguno and Amírola, Madrid, 1762,
pp. 221 - 222, and the other in the manuscript of the chronicle, from the 15th century, which is preserved in the
Royal Academy of History, with the peculiarity that in the latter they are copied as prose. Both contain stanzas
51-55, 57-58, 61, 66 and 67, 73, 75-76, 80-82 and 84; the handwritten fragment also contains stanza 77, which is
missing in the printed version.

Linguistic characterization and authorship

Alexandre's book. Manuscript O, folio 45v, depicting armed Alexander the Great haranguing his troops.3

Supporters of a Leonese original by Friar Juan Lorenzo have been Tomás Antonio Sánchez (1782), Emil
Gessner (1867) and Ramón Menéndez Pidal.

Joan Corominas and Yákov Malkiel lean towards a western peninsular language. Alfred Morel-Fatio (1875)
seems to be the first to point out that a Leonese copyist would have added these dialectal features to a Castilian
original. The Castilian character would be predominant, according to Julius Cornu (1880), while Gottfried Baist, in
that same year, speaks of a basic Castilianism, which must be qualified, since he defends the authorship of
Gonzalo de Berceo. These statements were made before the discovery of P and its purchase by the Bibliothèque
Nationale in 1887.

W. H. Chenery (1905), Emil Müller (1910) and Ruth I. Moll (1938) is part of the Castilian theory, with clarifications
ranging from the denial of Leonese identity by the second, leaning towards the thesis of a young Berceo as the
author of the work, to the note of oriental features by the third, who does not accept this attribution. Emilio
Alarcos (1948), after summarizing and discussing these opinions, also leans towards a Castilian original.

Although we do not know the name of the author, we do know details of his personality: he was a cleric ("we are
simply misguided and vicious clerics," he said in 1824a), a very cultured man (he had read a lot in Latin and
French and his work has multiple sources and readings) and, although he appreciated the art of minstrelsy, he
felt very superior to it. His constant intrusions and interventions in the work demonstrate the extent to which he
felt himself to be the author-protagonist. He was a man of his century and, therefore, he exalts the most
characteristic and admired values of the time (the courage of warriors, loyalty to the natural lord, belief in God,
religious piety) and rejects everything that meant the transgression of the moral code (cowardice, disloyalty,
mortal sins). Date of composition

There is no precise agreement on this either, outside the very general limits of the first half of the 13th century: it
must be after 1182, the date of Gautier de Châtillon's Latin poem, Alexandreis, which it largely translates, and
before 1250, the approximate date of Fernán González's Poem, which it influences. However, Francisco Marcos
Marín, based on the text itself (stanza 1799), concludes that the date of composition must have been between
1202 and 1207, which excludes the authorship of Gonzalo de Berceo, since at that time he could not have been
more than nine years old. This same author, in his chapter on the Book of Alexandre in the Philological Dictionary
of Medieval Spanish Literature (2002), points out that there are details of the poem that reflect events after 1207
(although they could be due to later interpolations) and has proposed dating the work to around 1228, due to a
possible allusion to the king of Sicily and the crusade of that year, so that currently the date of composition would
in any case be placed in the first third of the 13th century.1 The image of the king
Alexander fights the Persian king Darius III at the Battle of Issus. Detail of the mosaic from the House of the Faun
in Pompeii (National Archaeological Museum of Naples).

The poem was written to be read at court. Not in vain, Raymond Willis already launched in 1956 the idea that the
work could be a speculum principis or mirror of princes addressed to Fernando III the Saint or his son Alfonso X.
That is why the image given of the king is essential.

How is Alexander the Great characterized? From the very beginning, we are shown his double role as a warrior (I
want to read a book about a pagan king/who was of great courage and a fresh heart/conquered the whole world
with his own hands) and a scholar (who was frank and courageous and of great wisdom). This second feature
will be developed in stanzas 14-19 and 38-45).

Another trait that stands out a lot is his liberality, because a great monarch must be very generous with good
servants, even at the cost of his personal benefit.

Although the author of our poem is aware that it is about a pagan king, he medievalizes him and does not
hesitate to attribute to him attitudes anticipating Christianity, as can be seen in stanzas 120-123 (he prays to one
God), 1161 (he affirms that he worships the Creator) or 2597 (he raises his eyes to God and his outstretched
hands).

In short, he is a perfect man because he combines sense and clergy/effort and frankness and great palatability.
(Stanza 235) Poem with the appearance of an encyclopedia. The sources
Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, in a Florentine incunabulum of 1478.

The basic text that serves as a model for weaving together the successive events of the story is the poem in
Latin hexameters Alexandreis by Gautier de Châtillon, which dates from around 1180. This work follows the line
of argument of the poem, although - as its purpose is to delight and teach, as the poet states at the beginning of
the book - he amplifies it with extracts taken from other works, such as a Greek adventure novel composed in the
third century by Pseudo-Callisthenes or the Historia de preliis in Latin prose attributed to the archpriest Leo of
Naples; above all, the Li Romans d'Alixandre by Alexandre de Bernay and Lambert li Tors, written in the Picard
dialect of the French langue d'oïl; the Latin Ilias of the Pseudo-Pindar of Thebes which inspired the famous
digression on the Trojan War; the biography of Alexander by Quintus Curtius, which is the origin of the legend;
the Epitome of Julius Valerius; the Etymologies of Saint Isidore of Seville; the Jewish Antiquities of Flavius
Josephus; the Physiologus; the Disticha Catonis; Ovid's Metamorphoses and, of course, the Bible, especially
Genesis and Exodus. He also made use of oral tradition and Eastern versions of the legend of Alexander the
Great. We cannot know whether he was influenced by another Spanish version of his story, the one contained in
the lost clerical poem Los voto del pavón, although we at least know its source: the French poem Les voeux du
paon.

As already mentioned, the main plot line is the story of the life of Alexander the Great. However, it seems
repeatedly enriched by the insertion of numerous digressions on very different topics. Among them, we will
highlight Aristotle's speech to Alexander in stanzas 51-85, which is a true speculum principis; on the three parts
of the world (c. 276-294); the summary that the Greek king makes of the Trojan War in stanzas 335-772, to cheer
his fertile people with good hearts; the description of Babylon (stanzas 1460-1533), which includes a small
lapidary (stanzas 1469-1462) or on the sins of man in general and of the different estates in particular (c. 1805-
1830). Other times he indulges in lengthy descriptions, such as that of the weapons of Darius (c. 989-1004) or
the palace of the Hindu king Poro (c. 2119-2142) Alexander descending in an underwater device. Miniature from
the Li Romans d'Alixandre, Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms.264, fol. 50r. Illuminated by Jehan de Grise and his
workshop, 1338-1344. Alexander the Great, in the Book of Alexander and in several of his sources, in his desire
for conquest goes beyond the natural world and explores the unknown, flying with the help of griffins or
descending to the depths of the sea, as in the image, using a device that prefigures the submarine. This
excessive desire to transcend the limits unexplored by man makes the author of Alexandre debate between the
admiration he professes for the Macedonian hero, as an intellectual, and the condemnation for his sin of pride, as
a cleric who is obliged to instruct in moral philosophy.

In short, the main sources of the poem are these:

The Alexandreis (c. 1180), narrative poem in Latin hexameters by Gautier de Châtillon, inspired by the
previous work and the biography Historiae Alexandri Magni Macedonis (1st century) by Quintus Curtius. The
medieval Latin epic of the 12th century is the main source of the Book of Alexandre Castilian.
The Historia de preliis, a medieval adaptation of the Romance of Alexander attributed to Pseudo
Callisthenes, a large amount of legendary material about Alexander the Great in ten volumes that was the basis
of all the legends about him in the

Middle Ages. The final form of this text belongs to the 3rd century, although the translation into Latin, made by
Julius Valerius Alexander Polemius (early 4th century) is attributed to a certain Aesop.
The Li Romans d'Alixandre begun by Lambert le Tort and finished by Alexandre de Bernay, a French epic
poem in the vernacular of the 12th century.

The poem

The problem of the structural unity of the work has been raised, since the plot is interrupted by numerous, diverse
and varied episodes, some as long as the Trojan War, which could be considered as autonomous poems in
themselves and which have in fact even been published separately as such. But today it is interpreted as a
structural subtlety that does not disturb the thematic and structural cohesion of the text or its ultimate moral
intention, and also serves to place it above the rest of medieval works on the subject; its unity is given precisely
by the way in which the themes and episodes are interwoven, a procedure as common at the time as linear
narration. What appear to be digressions actually serve to highlight fundamental themes such as the downfall of
human greatness, the dissolution of the protagonist's character, and machinations of betrayal. In the Middle
Ages, knowledge is understood as accumulation and returning to the past implies stopping the process of
ambition, which is human degeneration. The anachronisms are conscious because the author does not seek to
reflect historical reality, but rather observes the classical world with medieval eyes: the Middle Ages have a
dissecting vision of the classical world, as a quarry of materials to reinforce the undisputed authority of the
Christian moral world; in this it is similar to the use that Saint Thomas made of Aristotle.

The work is divided into three parts:

Hero presentation and learning. It reveals the character of the hero and presents the world in which he is
trained, which will allow us to understand his behavior throughout his life. It narrates the great wonders that take
place when he is born, his education by Aristotle, his great intelligence, the anger that consumes him when he
realizes that the kings of Greece are tributaries of the Persian king Darius III, his ambition to shake off that yoke
and how he is knighted and refuses to pay tribute to Darius.
Ascent. The hardships that the country will have to endure to achieve world hegemony are revealed. First
battles; after the death of Philip II, he accedes to the throne and unifies Greece by conquering Athens, Thebes
and Corinth. He marches to Persia and wins several victories before directly confronting Darius.
Maximum power and fall. Account of his conquest of maximum power on earth: fight against Darius,
conquest of Babylon, Susa, Usion, Persepolis. Death of Darius at the hands of the traitors Narbazanes and
Bessus; funeral honours given to him by Alexander and execution of his assassins; conquest of India: he defeats
Porus and proclaims himself master and lord of most of the known world; but he is not content with that, he wants
to dominate not only the land, but also the air and the sea; his subsequent sudden fall, poisoned by the traitor
Jobas; this gives rise to a series of final moralisations on the vanity of worldly honours that connect with the
problem of the vision of the world and the final meaning of the work.

The poet condemns his hero. Alejandro fails because he is unable to overcome himself morally. Far from having
an epic motive, Alexander is driven by a quest for knowledge, a desire for wisdom rather than possession or
power; in his combination of cleric/knight, Alexander makes the mistake of directing his knowledge outwards
rather than inwards, which is certainly neither religious nor moral thought; in his renunciation of the search for
self-knowledge, Alexander, the personification of the pagan world, lacks the moral element: the world is shaped
like a man and man is a small world; the normal result would be to see his place in it, to find himself in it and to
see his relationship with his creator.
The pagans were unable to know themselves, as did the king of the other world, Jesus Christ. Alexander thus
serves as an example of the vanity of the things of this world:
Francesco Fontebasso (1709-69), Alexander the Great accepts the surrender of Porus.

Alexander, who was a king of great power, which could not fit on seas or land, fell into a hole that could not
hold a limit of twelve.

Jesús Cañas Murillo identifies betrayal, pride and contempt for the world as dominant themes; all of these
converge on the protagonist, who dies betrayed, sins of pride and renounces worldly glories in his agony; these
three themes are also projected onto the other characters in the work. The poet insists especially on the absolute
power of God and the inscrutable features of Providence, which governs the destiny of any man, however
powerful he may be; Darius was already an Alexander and perished like him. On the other hand, the excellence
of the poem comes from the perfect union of its parts in a solid whole that combines in just the right proportions
the epic poem, the book of chivalry and the didactic poem; the skilful narrative passages, the numerous and
masterful descriptions, the very entertaining legends, the epistles and harangues, the exquisite interweaving of
erudition and lyricism alternate... In short, it is one of the first masterpieces of Castilian literature.
Style

The cultured poet masters rhetorical devices and makes good use of them all. Similes and metaphors abound,
especially those referring to animals; he also uses resources from epic minstrelsy: epithets and formulaic style:
"King Alexandre of the honourable beard...", "everyone said that he was born in good time", "crying from his
eyes, he began to wail...". Along with worship, popular language also appears: "Christianity holds Europe as its
leader / the others are Moors for our big teeth", "...of a dog that barks a lot, you should never be afraid of it."
However, the general tone is far from the spontaneity and immediacy of Gonzalo de Berceo.
Editions

The first printed edition was by Tomás Antonio Sánchez in VV. AA., Collection of Castilian poems prior to the
15th century, Madrid: Sancha, 1779-1790, 4 vols., of which this corresponds to the third; includes readings from
manuscript O, recently discovered at the time. Florencio Janer reproduced this edition in Poets before the 15th
Century, BAE, LVII, Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1864, pp. 147-224. The French Hispanist Alfred Morel-Fatio later
edited manuscript P, found in the Bibliotèque Nationale de Paris, with an extensive preliminary study (Dresden:
Geseschaft für romanische Literatur, band 10, 1906). Raymond S. Willis made the first palaeographic edition of
all the surviving manuscripts and fragments (The Book of Alexandre. Texts of the Paris and the Madrid
manuscripts prepared by... Princeton University Press, 1935). It was later reprinted (New York: Klaus reprint
corporation, 1965). A critical and widely reprinted edition was that of Jesús Cañas Murillo (Madrid: Editora
Nacional, 1978). The following year, the Hispanist Dana Arthur Nelson made a critical reconstruction of the text
(Madrid: Gredos, 1979) preceded by an exclusively linguistic study. Madelaine Aerni Ryland made a critical
edition in her unpublished doctoral thesis (1977). Among the most accessible modern editions are the
modernized one by Elena Catena (Madrid: Castalia, Odres nuevos collection, 1985) and the following:4

Francisco Marcos Marin (ed. lit.), Book of Alexandre, Madrid, Alianza, 1987. Digitized in Alicante, Miguel de
Cervantes Virtual Library, 2000.
Jesus Canas Murillo (ed. lit.), Book of Alexandre. Madrid: Chair, 1988.

References

Francisco Marcos Marín, «Book of Alexandre», in Carlos Alvar and José Manuel Lucía Megías (eds.),
Philological Dictionary of Medieval Spanish Literature, Madrid, Castalia (New Library of Scholarship and
Criticism, 21), 2002, chap. 93, pp. 754762; see page 754. ISBN 978-84-9740-018-3
Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua and Maria Jesus Lacarra Ducay, History of Spanish Literature, I. Between orality and
writing: the Middle Ages, José Carlos Mainer (dir.), [s. l.], Crítica, 2012, pp. 350-352. ISBN 978-84-9892-367-4
Marcos Marin, art. cit., 2002, p. 756.

Cf. Jesús Cañas, "Editions", in his introductory study of Aleixandre's Book, Madrid: Cátedra, 1988, p. 99 et
seq.

Sources

Cacho Blecua, Juan Manuel and Maria Jesus Lacarra Ducay, History of Spanish Literature, I. Between
orality and writing: the Middle Ages, José Carlos Mainer (dir.), [s. l.], Crítica, 2012, pp. 350-357. ISBN 978-84-
9892-367-4
Marcos Marín, Francisco, «Book of Alexandre», in Carlos Alvar and José Manuel Lucía Megías (eds.),
Philological Dictionary of Medieval Spanish Literature, Madrid, Castalia (New Library of Scholarship and
Criticism, 21), 2002, chap. 93, pp. 754-762. ISBN 978-84-9740-018-3

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Book of Alexandre. Edition by Francisco Marcos Marín of the
Book of Alexandre
By Alexandro Portal dedicated to critical works on the Book of Alexandre in the Gonzalo de Berceo Library
Emilio Alarcos Llorach, Berceo, author of «Alexandre»?
Amaia Arizaleta, Towards a bibliography of the Book of Alexandre
Elisa Benvavent Payá, The Book of Alexandre and the conversational narrative: two forms of orality to "say"
direct speech
Emiliano Jerónimo Buis, A Christian Troy...
Enrique Celis Real, Comparative analysis of the Book of Alexandre (stanzas 322762) and Homer's Iliad.
Francisco Marcos Marín, Genesis 11 and the Book of Alexandre 1505-1517»
Marisa Martínez Pérsico, Borders of the world, borders of knowledge and borders of the story in The Book
of Alexandre
Maria Dolores Solis Perales, The figure of Paris in the Book of Alexandre

Comparison between the work History of the destruction of Troy (De escidio troiae historia), by Dares
Phrygio, and the Book of Alexander. Complutense University of Madrid.

Control of authorities

Wikimedia Projects Wd Data: Q607973 Commonscat Multimedia: Category:Alexandre's book

GEA Dictionaries and Encyclopedias: 7969

Categories:

Books of the 13th centuryBooks of SpainMester de clerecíaMedieval literature of the Trojan WarLiterature
of Spain of the 13th century

Navigation menu

You have not logged in

Discussion
Contributions
Create an account
Login

Article
Discussion

Read
Edit
View history

Look for

Front page
Community Portal
Present
Recent changes
New Pages
Random page
 Aid
Donations
Report a bug

Tools

What links here

Changes in linked
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Cite this page
Wikidata item

Print/Export

Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version

In other projects

Wikimedia Commons

In other languages

English
Basque
Polish

Edit links

This page was last edited on 28 Jun 2021, at 22:38.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License; additional terms may
apply. By using this site, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.

Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.