Did the Infantes de Carrión intend to kill the Cid's daughters?

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: POEMA DE MIO CID/CANTAR DE MIO CID Notes 1. ‘The Infantes de Carrión’, BHS, XXXIII (1956), 17–24, at p. 17. Although Hart recognizes the existence of two possible arguments, he does not commit himself over the question of whether or not the Infantes intended to murder their wives. 2. All quotations from the Poema de mio Cid are from the edition of Colin Smith (Oxford 1972). 3. On the implications and possible tradition underlying martires here, see John K. Walsh, ‘Religious motifs in the early Spanish epic’, RHM, XXXVI (1970–71), 165–72. The cry of the girls ‘jcortandos las cabeças!’ may have a more direct source in the French Panse la duchesse, in which Parise in similar circumstances cries ‘Quant serai relevée, si me copez le chié’ (628). For Per Abad's knowledge of this poem, see Colin Smith in La Corónica, VI, No. 1 (Fall 1977). 14–21. 4. It is pointed out to us that early mediaeval laws were mainly concerned with actions and their effects, and very little with intentions, good or bad. In the twelfth century, under the influence of'new’ Roman law at Bologna and of Christian thought with its insistence upon conscience and sinful intention, some concept of mens rea began to be mentioned, e.g. by the Decretam 3.22.2, in a passage which stemmed ultimately from a remark of St Augustine about perjury. The Spanish Partidas and earlier codes appear to have nothing to say of relevance to the present case. It is clear that nothing about mens rea or intention to murder figured in the laws of Castile at the time of the poet, about 1200 (still less in the Cid's day, if the poet were looking back to practices of that time) ; had there been such laws, the poet—in my view a man trained in the law, possibly a practising lawyer—would hardly have failed to make something of them in the charges and judgements of the court scene, which in other respects he handles so expertly. 5. See Hart, ‘The Infantes de Carrión’; Ulrich Leo, ‘La "afrenta de Corpes" ‘novela psicológica’, NRFH, XIII (1959), 291–304; and Roger M. Walker, ‘A possible source for the afrenta de Corpes episode in the Poema de mio Cid’, MLR, LXXII (1977), 335–47. 6. Quotations from the Chanson de Florence de Rome are from the edition of A. Wallensköld, SATF, 2 vols. (Paris 1907–09). 7. See Walker, ‘A possible source’. A further important parallel has recently come to our notice: in both poems the heroines’ marriages are unconsummated at the time of the assault. Florence tells her husband, Milon's brother, that she will not allow him to make love to her until he has avenged the death of her father on the Greeks (2420–22); Florence is on her way to meet him upon his return from the wars when she is abducted by Milon. Colin Smith argues elsewhere that the marriages of the Cid's daughters and the Infantes were also unconsummated before Corpes; see ‘On the distinctiveness of the Poema de mio Cid’, Mio Cid Studies, ed. A. D. Deyermond ¡London 1977), 161–94, n. 13 to p. 168, adapted and translated as Chapter 3 of his Estudios cidianos (Madrid 1977), p. 84, n. 24. 8. We should like to express our gratitude to Professor Derek Lomax for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. He is, of course, in no way responsible for any of the views put forward.