The Death of the Duke of Gandía: Historical Memory and Invention in a Judeo-Spanish Ballad

Abstract

La muerte del duque de Gandía is a late romance noticiero , which recounts events surrounding the assassination of Juan Borja (Giovanni Borgia) in Rome in 1497. During the sixteenth century, this romance appeared in printed ballad collections and circulated in chapbooks. Eventually, it became part of the Judeo-Spanish oral tradition, in which it is called El pexkador . Between 1890 and 1973, numerous versions were collected in Sephardic communities around the Mediterranean and in the United States. This article poses two questions: 1) When a historical narrative underlies the story being told by a ballad, how faithful does the oral tradition remain in its memory of those events? 2) As the historical events become increasingly distant in space and time, how do the forces of invention operate on these texts? The sixteenth-century text is anti-Borgia in sentiment; it suggests the involvement of other family members in the murder. In the modern oral texts, the political message disappears. Some elements of the well-documented historical event are conserved while others are transformed so that the story recounted continues to be meaningful to the communities that sing/recite the ballad.