Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/460

 4 io THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE Spain. In the western group of Galicia and Portugal, no Spain: literature of importance had yet appeared. In The Cid Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, and Valencia, as we have already seen, the troubadours from southern France held the field. But in Castile, whose tongue was to become the national speech of Spain, there had already been written, sometime between 1150 and 1250, the Poema del Cid, an epic with a Spanish hero. Alfonso the Wise of Castile (1 252-1 284), already mentioned as a patron of learning, also did much to encourage writing in Spanish and had learned Arabian works translated into Castilian rather than into Latin. The Bible was also translated into the vernacular in his reign, a great collection of laws was issued called Las Siete Partidas ("The Seven Parts"), and prose histories in the Castilian tongue began to appear. Alfonso was himself somewhat both of a poet and a mu- sician. In medieval Italy poetry first developed in the south in Sicily under Provencal inspiration. Frederick II was a Beginnings P atron of literature as well as of science, and of Italian was looked back upon by Dante as "the father of Italian poetry." In the course of the thirteenth century the Italians produced an important new verse- form, the sonnet. But it is with the great name of Dante, who lived from 1265 to 132 1, that we first become conscious of an Italian literature distinct from the Provencal and of the creation of a national literary language. Since he also was the greatest and the best-known of all medieval poets and since he wrote just as the French romances and lyrics and fabliaux were passing, we may close with him our account of the prime of medieval literature. Dante was born in Florence, fought for his city and wrote love-verses like many other young gentlemen of his day, Career of and in 1300 became one of the six priors or chief board of magistrates. The usual party strife and revolutions were in process, and besides there was trouble with the pope. By 1302 the opposite party came into power, Dante was accused of peculation during his recent term of