Fernandez de Santiago, Roi

(Roi Fernandez clérigo)

(13th century)

   There is some question as to whether Roi Fernandez de Santiago is the same person as the poet who signs himself Roi Fernandez clérigo, but most scholars believe this to be the case. Assuming they are correct, 25 extant poems are attributed to this Galician poet, 18 of which are cantigas de amor, or love poems, while seven are CANTIGAS DE AMIGO, songs with female speakers. He was likely a priest (hence the title clérigo), and he is sometimes associated with the court of Alfonso X (known as “the Wise”), the Spanish king of Castile from 1221 until 1284.

   Roi Fernandez’s best-known lyric is a marinha or “sea poem” beginning Quand’ eu vejo las ondas (When I see the waves). Here the pounding of the waves is answered by the pounding of the speaker’s heart as he thinks of his beloved, with the implication that it is the sea that separates them:

   When I see the waves

   and the very steep cliffs,

   then suddenly waves begin pounding

   in my heart for the pretty lady:

   cursed by the sea,

   which does me such great harm!

   (Jensen 1992, 52.2, ll. 1–6)

   In the original, scholars have seen a correspondence between the rhythm of the poem and cadence of the waves themselves. The last two lines of the stanza curiously recall the refrain of an Italian song quoted in BOCCACCIO’s DECAMERON (ca. 1350): “the wave does me great harm.” Fernandez’s love lyrics tend to include fairly traditional COURTLY LOVE motifs, particularly the idea of the speaker’s suffering for love of his lady. In one fairly unusual poem, though, beginning Ora começa o meu mal (Now my grief begins), Fernandez reverses expectations; he replaces the convention of the “god of love”with a devil, and describes the speaker’s suffering after finding a new love to supplant the old:

   For the demon of love

   Made me choose another lady!

   (Jensen 1992, 52.1, ll. 5–6)

   Similar occasional innovative touches appear in some of Fernandez’s cantigas de amigo. Some of these lyrics are in the form of dialogues between a girl and her mother,with the mother generally taking the role of spokesperson for conventional societal restraints on the girl’s love for her amigo. In the lyric Madre, quer’ oj eu ir veer (Mother, today I wish to go see), though, the girl’s mother supports her daughter’s determination to follow her amigo to Sevilla:

   —My daughter, go, and I will come with you.

   —This will give me great pleasure,

   for I do not know when I shall see him.

   (Jensen 1992, 52.3, ll. 5–7)

   These original touches to his lyrics make Roi Fernandez de Santiago one of the more enjoyable lyric poets of the rich 13th-century Galician-Portuguese tradition.

   Bibliography

   ■ Flores, Angel, ed. An Anthology of Medieval Lyrics. New York:Modern Library, 1962.

   ■ Jensen, Frede, ed. and trans. Medieval Galician-Portuguese Poetry: An Anthology. Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 87.New York: Garland, 1992.