PrintThe following post is to provide any corrections and addenda to my translation and study of Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada's Minor Histories, recently published by Manchester University Press:
(i) pp. 8-9: By the "immediate aftermath" of Las Navas de Tolosa, I am referring to events after the battle concluding with the death of Alfonso VIII in 1214 CE. Alfonso VIII is clearly a heroic figure for Rodrigo.
(ii) p. 13: "On the basis of inheritance law": Latin iure hereditario. What this means is that Ferdinand III bestowed the locality as something to be possessed in perpetuity by the church of Toledo. Rodrigo of course had no natural descendants, but with his death and those of his successors, Caseata would be passed down the generations as a possession of the church of Toledo. Also note that the original passage in the Historia Gothica also makes clear that Rodrigo was still holding Caseata and other neighbouring forts at the time he was writing.
(iii) p. 62: "This is because the Mozarabic Chronicle is in fact the only surviving contemporary source for the documentation of such events." By this mean I mean it is the only surviving contemporary source to provide a continual, detailed account of the conquest and al-Andalus' existence as a province of Umayyad caliphate with its various governors up to Yusuf al-Fihri. Some other eighth century sources do reference the conquest and the Muslim incursions into modern-day France but do not provide a continual account comparable to that of the Mozarabic Chronicle.
(iv) pp. 75-77: On the translation of al-ḥājib as supercilium (brow in the sense of 'eyebrow'). Strictly speaking, the eyebrow is indeed translated as al-ḥājib in Arabic. But Rodrigo's attempt to explain the eyebrow's function as the meaning behind the government position of al-ḥājib is not correct. He claims that just as the eyebrow protects the eyes, so this title was applied to the person who protects the nation. In fact, al-ḥājib as a term is used to describe the relation between the supreme ruler and the people. That is, he functions as a kind of veil or barrier between the ruler and his people.
(v) p. 120: "magnanimously pursued": Not in a conventional modern sense of "magnanimous," but rather a more archaic sense of magnanimity: that is, being bold and wiling to face danger.
(vi) p. 143: "out of magnanimity": as with the previous remark, the sense is that the barbarians who yielded to the Romans following the Goths' military campaign were unwilling to take the bold risk of migrating to other abodes, but rather stayed put out of cowardice and base motives.
(vii) p. 163: "magnanimous": Here, by contrast, I do mean "magnanimous" in the more modern conventional sense.
(viii) p. 214: "offered their soldiers": Comparing with Arabic source material, it is also possible to render "soldiers" (Latin: milites) here as "knights" or "horsemen." Indeed, elsewhere in Rodrigo's historical works, milites can have the sense of "knights."
(ix) p. 240: "whose brief tenure had scarcely begun": the original Latin reads brevi termino vix incepto. An alternative interpretation that can be admitted is to render the phrase (which literally means "with a brief period having scarcely begun") as simply meaning "very shortly afterwards."
(x) p. 202: "one person at Algeciras, another at Beia": the original Latin reads unus qui Girat Alhadra et alius qui Beie. The Old Spanish translation misinterprets these phrases as meaning the names of people rather than the locations they were based at.
(xi) p. 128: "In the depth of his heart, revived his desire to do harm to the Romans": alternatively, the meaning of the original Latin might be: "he nursed the harm done to him by the Romans in the depth of his heart." The ambiguity arises from the fact that iniuria with a genitive can entail a subjective genitive meaning (i.e. 'harm done by someone') or an objective genitive meaning (i.e. 'harm done to someone'/'doing harm to someone'). Elsewhere, in Historia Arabum c. 41, iniuria has a subjective sense: 'injustices' committed by Sulayman.
(xii) p. 144: 'presumed himself to be stronger than he actually was'- literally, 'presumed too much of himself'- which means making undue assumptions about one's strength and power.
(xiv) Sources of the Historia Romanorum: an important study that I missed in noting the sources of the Historia Romanorum is a 2019 article by Helena Carlos de Villamarín, entitled "Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada y la Compilación Historiográfica del Códice de Bamberg Hist. 3." The article argues that for parts of the Historia Romanorum detailing Aeneas' story, the Toledan archbishop is using a paraphrase of the Excidium Troie ('Destruction of Troy') that is extant in four manuscripts and appears to go back to 10th-century Italy. Specifically, the following parallels are of note and suggest his use of the paraphrase:
- Prior to landing in Africa, Aeneas' fleet is exposed to a storm that leads to the demise of Palinurus.
- Aeneas being informed in a dream that he will first be married to Dido and then head to Italy.
- Dido being amazed by the sight of Aeneas girded with his weapons.
- Aeneas being saddened by the depiction of Troy's demise in a temple.
- Aeneas being informed in a dream about finding a white pig with 30 offspring under an oak-tree.
- A remark about how, in ancient times, showing an olive branch was a mark of peace as Aeneas met Evander.
- The expedition of Nisus and Euryalus and how the two men met their demise, specifically because of the bright golden helmet called a cassis.
- Diomedes' rejection of Latinus' petition to help him fight Aeneas, informing Latinus that he knows who Aeneas was, and that if Troy had had a third person like Hector and Aeneas, it would not have fallen.
At the same time there is also innovation on Rodrigo's part. In particular, Rodrigo makes a narrative connection between Aeneas seeing the depiction of Troy's demise and his decision to leave Carthage.