By means of references of himself in his works, it is known that the first poet of the Castilian language was called Gonzalo, and was born (around1195) in the village Berceo - a few kilometres from the monastery - and he was educated at the monastery of San Millán de La Cogolla. The previous critic the Hipsanist Englishman Dutton conceived him as a simple and primitive cleric induced in poetry exclusively for a profound disinterested piety, but it is obvious that many of his works reflect the worries for the economic well being of the monastery and they were motives for the party politics in the monastery of his century (although Berceo was not a benedictine monk he was a cleric). |
Berceo, together with the monastery of San Millán is the birth place of the poet Gonzalo de Berceo. |
The work of Gonzalo de Berceo is the first in Castilian of a known author. |
He himself, colaborated in the falsification of some ecclesiastic documents, called "votes of San Millán" with the aim of increasing the rents of the monastery and to stimulate pilgrimages to the sanctuaries (both of which had decayed during the 13th century). These type of "tricks" were common practice in the Middle Ages. It was justified in the name of piety and so, there is no reason to judge Berceo as a delinquent, but there is reason to appreciate the extraordinary complexity of our poet and his world. More than being a simple and picturesque cleric that passed his days in his cell writing poetic personalities of all medieval Spanish literature. Far from being a simple author, moved by raptures of simple piety, Berceo was a master of the techniques and structure of didactic literature. A propaganda expert that felt profoundly loyal to the monastery and all that was linked to it.
Despite the protest that he himself made of his own ignorance, the intellectual formation of Berceo must be much greater than first thought. It is probable that he had notable legal and administrative knowledge, he was the lawyer of the Abbot Juan Sánchez. And so, Berceo was an educated man and it is thought that the title "master" was given in reference to the University range, possibly won for the General Studies of Palencia, around the year 1223 - 1236. Well now, apart from titles, his work clearly freed what was a man of vast culture, the possessor of a solid clerical education. |
