[Here, Walker theorizes that the Razón de amor may have been parodied by Alfonso X in his poem about the famous courtesan Maria Peres.]

The Razón de amor, dating from the early thirteenth century, is the earliest surviving Castilian poem to show considerable influence of the poetry of the Provençal troubadours. The locus amoenus setting, the beautiful girl and her cultured amigo, the exchange of elegant gifts, the courtly behaviour of the lovers, their longstanding amor de lonh, and many other features all suggest a solid familiarity with the ideals and conventions of the poets of Southern France as well as with those of the derivative Galician-Portuguese school. The poet introduces his work by telling his audience that he has studied cortesìa over a long period in a number of countries where courtliness flourished:

5 Un escolar la rrimó
   que siempre dueñas amó;
   mas siempre ovo cryança
   en Alemania y en Francia,
   moró mucho en Lombardìa
10 pora aprender cortesìa.

It is well known that the Provençal poets and their minstrels travelled widely outside Southern France during the hey-day of their civilization; and after the Albigensian Crusade had brutally shattered this civilization in the early years of the thirteenth century, many of them were forced to take permanent refuge in foreign courts. Both in travel, and in exile they took with them into Northern France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and places even farther afield, their concept of love and their poetic ideals. One of the courts which extended a warm welcome to the refuge poets was that of Alfonso X, el Sabio, king of Castile and León, himself an accomplished poet and the author of the poem I wish to consider in relation to the Razón de amor.

The poem in question is one of Alfonso's cantigas de maldizer, which concerns Maria Peres, known as a Balteyra, the most notorious soldadera of the royal court. This woman's scandalous behaviour is the subject of a considerable number of ribald verses in Galician-Portuguese. In the king's poem the joke centres on Joham Rodriguiz's madeyra, the yard-stick of which Maria is told she will have to take full measure. The last stanza reads:

16 E [J. R.] disse: esta he a midida d'Espanha,
   ca nom de Lombardia, nem d'Alamanha,
   e porque he grossa non vos seja mal,
   ca delgada, pera gata, rren non val,
20 e d'esto muy mais sey eu c'abondanha.

How significant is it that the poet, in extolling Rodriguiz's madeyra, should contrast its size with that of the apparently less well-endowed inhabitants of Lombardy and Germany, two of the three centres of courtliness specifically singled out by the poet of the Razón de amor? Alamanha, of course, provides an easy rhyme with Espanha; but this does not explain either why Rodriguiz should wish to make his sexual organ a matter of national pride, or why the masculinity of the Italians should also be gratuitously impugned. If, however, we interpret these final lines as a satirical attack on the conventions of courtly love as exemplified by the Razón de amor, this scurrilous poem takes on a further humorous dimension. Alfonso would then seem to be implying, through Joham Rodriguiz, that the famous service of love, with its concomitant pleading, moaning and extravagant fidelity, is not the Spanish way of wooing; he might well be saying that the men of the peninsula prefer coito to coita. At the same time he appears to be suggesting that the elaborate ritual of courtly love is merely a cover for timidity and lack of sexual potency.

Unfortunately we have no knowledge of the popularity and diffusion of the Razón de amor during the later thirteenth century. We do know, however, that Alfonso was passionately interested in the development of Castilian as a literary instrument, that he was very well-versed in its heroic poetry, drawing extensively on epics for his Estoria de España, and that he himself composed one of the tiny number of lyric poems in Castilian that exist from before the fourteenth century. In view of this, it is reasonably probable that Alfonso knew the Razón de amor. Moreover, we have enough evidence concerning the high cultural level of the learned king's court to justify the assumption that if the king knew the Razón at least some of his courtiers would too, and so would be able to appreciate the satirical implications of his references to Germany and Lombardy in this cantiga de maldizer.

For all his breadth of learning and his international contacts, Alfonso remained a fervent nationalist and advocate of Castilian supremacy. Is it not possible that in this poem he is not only making an obscene joke at the expense of the luckless Maria Peres, but also indirectly extolling the notorious Spanish hombría at the expense of the dubious masculinity of the trans-Pyrenean fin amors?