WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

This suggests that, in the portrait, Guzmán wishes to depict a “real” person and not just play on
readerly expectations of verisimilitude. If Pedro I and Enrique II esteemed the Chancellor
enough to love him, Ayala’s laudable characteristics, no matter how fantastical, should be worth
taking at face value.
Nevertheless, there persists a type of stylization evident in Guzmán’s dating of Ayala’s
portrait to the reign of two monarchs. First, the signifier “amado” ‘loved’ syntactically bridges
the time from one king to another (Pedro to Enrique) and from one point in time of Ayala’s life
to the next (from youth to adulthood). This means that Ayala served Pedro I “seyendo moço”
‘being a young man,’ and that he willingly counseled Enrique II as an “older” man. 274 The
Chancellor’s service to the kings, therefore, distinguishes the love which he received from
Enrique and Pedro implicilty. As a “moço” ‘youth,’ Ayala could not return love to Pedro with
the same intensity that, in his maturity, he could give to Enrique. 275
The use of “amado” ‘loved’ as a syntactic bridge between youth and maturity is not
inconsequential. In dividing Ayala’s age and his role in the court from friend to the king to that
of advisor, the signifier “amado” silences the real events of Ayala’s life that caused him to be
loved. Thus the portrait does not explicitly detail how Ayala deserved Enrique’s favor as an adult
man; it does not even say that the Chancellor went on to serve his heirs, Juan I and Enrique III, in
his old age as a counselor, knight, and fighter and by their help was ransomed from political
274 For medieval Castile, “moçedad” ‘youth’ lasted well into what we would consider adulthood. As Juan Garcia
Castrojeriz in his translation and commentary to Giles of Rome’s Regimine Principum notes: “los ommes vienen a
su edad complida, que es ser varón, que dura desde los veintiocho fasta los cincuenta annos” ‘men come to their full
age, which is to be a mature man, that lasts from twenty eight to fifty’ (See Juan Garcia Castrojeriz, Glosa
Castellana al Regimiento de Príncipes de Egidio Romano, 3 vols., ed. Juan Beneyto Perez (Madrid: Instituto de
Estudios Politicos, 1947) 2.199). Ayala would be only two years into his maturity when he switched sides to support
Enrique II in 1365.
275 As shown by Juan Manuel, the standard exemplum for this was Roboam 1 Kings 12:6-11: “falleredes en la Biblia
que, por razón que el rey Roboam, fijo del rey Salamón, non quiso crer los consejeros amigos de su padre et créo los
sus consejeros mancebos, perdió para siempre…el reino et el señorio del pueblo de Ysrael” ‘You will find in the
bible that, because King Roboam, son of Solomon, did not wish to believe the counselors friends of his father and
believed his own young counselors, he lost forever…the kingdom and the lordship over the people of Israel’ (Juan
Manuel, Libro Infinido, ed. Carlos Mota (Madrid: Cátedra, 2003) 155).
167