ALFONSO d'ARAGONA – Naples, entrance arch to Castel Nuovo.
F. Laurana and collaborators (1455–66).
He vainly attempted to placate him with broad concessions; he aspired unsuccessfully to carry the forces of the reconquista as far as Africa; he was embittered by the rebellion of his second son Sancho, who obtained the succession by trampling upon the rights of the infante de la Cerda (heir of the firstborn Ferdinand, who died prematurely in 1275 and was supported by the king of France). Finally deposed by the «cortes» of Valladolid, he ended by invoking the aid of the sultan of Morocco.
A master of law and doctrine, but uncertain and inept in practice, with his unstable and doubtful policy, he succeeded in realizing none of his dearest aspirations during his long reign, whose significance, nevertheless, is very high in the sphere of culture. A man of broad learning and great tolerance, he made use, without distinction of race, nationality, or religion, of the work of learned collaborators whom he summoned to his court in order to carry out a vast enterprise of organizing culture on the basis of translations, compilations, and commentaries on numerous legal, historical, and scientific works.
His action aimed at unifying the manifold and incongruous legislation of the municipal fueros, as Ferdinand III had already envisaged it, and was indeed fortunate and fruitful; it resulted in that formidable legal corpus, the book of the Siete Partidas, which for centuries remained the sole source of law, and in which Roman and canon law, the Digest and the Decretals, the Justinian Code and the Fuero Juogo are harmonized and interpenetrate. The Espéculo, the Fuero real, and other minor collections are inspired by the same spirit of unification.
The same breadth of purpose inspired, in the field of historiography, the composition of the General Historia, which remained unfinished at the account of the ancestry of the Virgin Mary. In it, in logical adherence to the universalist principles of the Wise King, use is made of the Bible and the classics, Arab historians alongside s. Augustine, and the major medieval writers and works, from Orosius to Giovanni di Garlandia and Luca Tudense, from the Roman de Troie to the Libro de Alexandre.
An equal attempt at unified organization underlies the Crónica general, in which the history of Castile is framed within that of the entire peninsula.
Among the scientific works, alongside the Libros del saber de astronomía, to which belong those Tablas alfonsinas that were famous throughout Europe until the 16th century, the Lapidario should not be forgotten; while the group of various and entertaining works includes, among others, the translation of Calita e Dimna, the work entitled Poridad de los Poridades, the Libros de ajedrez, dados e tablas, the Bonium o Bocados de oro, and the Libro de la Montería.
A patron of musicians and poets, and himself a poet, he gathered Spanish and foreign poets around him; he welcomed G. Riquier as well as B. Calvo, competing with them in delicate and conventional love poems or in impertinent and «screening» obscene satires. This poetry, however, he cultivated—contrary to his attempt at linguistic unification, by which he had imposed Castilian as the official language—in that Galician-Portuguese language which was by then generally adopted in lyric poetry throughout all the regions of the peninsula. Far richer is his sacred songbook (more than 400 compositions), composed in praise of the Virgin, from whom he drew themes and motifs from Latin collections, Spanish traditions, and vernacular poetry, which unfold there in a rich variety of metrical forms, and whose precise and picturesque realistic touches do not clash with the atmosphere of naïve devotion, which seems to soften and veil them. In it he reveals himself as one of the most sincere and fervent singers of the Virgin, whom he exalted with accents and
motifs that would later be taken up and elaborated many times in poetry.
A. García Solalinde also edited an anthology of the works of the Wise King (A. X. Antología de sus obras, 2 vols., Madrid 1922).
Literature: A. F. G. Bell, The 'Cantigas de S. María' of A. X, in Mod. Lang. Rev., 10 (1915), pp. 338–48; A. G. Solalinde, Intervención de A. X en la redacción de sus obras, in Rev. de fil. esp., 2 (1915), pp. 283–88; J. Ribera, La música de las Cantigas, Madrid 1922; J. M. Dihigo, Las Siete Partidas. Estudio linguístico, in Rev. de la fac. de filos. y cisne., Havana 1923; E. F. Dexter, Sources of the Cantigas of Alfonso of Sabio, Wisconsin 1926; R. Rübecamp, Die Sprache der altgalizischen Cantigas de S. María von A. X el Sabio, Hamburg 1933; J. A. Sánchez Pérez, A. X. el Sabio, Madrid 1935 (including a study, an anthology, and a bibliography); H. Arखंड, La música de las Cantigas de S. María del rey A. el Sabio, Barcelona 1943; S. Pellegrini, A. X re di Castiglia, in Glanco, 1 (1945).
Jole Scudieri Ruggieri