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Florence Curtis
This article examines a crucial but neglected scene of musical performance in the Castilian vernacular version of the story of Apollonius of Tyre, 'Libro de Apolonio' (c.1250). The scene, in which the protagonist plays the fiddle and sings at the court of his future wife and father-in-law, contains musicological detail unique in European literary history. The event of Apolonio's performance is also highly significant for the narrative and broader significance of the poem.
When Apolonio takes up the fiddle he demonstrates that he is of superior rational capacity and can moderate his desire, in consonance, as I argue, with Aristotelian natural philosophy and ethics. Analysing the scene in close textual detail and with reference to other major thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iberian texts, including the 'Libro de buen amor' (1330/43), 'Libro del Caballero Zifar' (c.1300) and Lucas de Tuy's 'De altera vita fideique controversiis' (c. 1236), I consider the evidence for an Aristotelian context for the 'Libro de Apolonio'. I assert that the poem is an attempt to assimilate Aristotelian thought into a Christian worldview at a very early stage for the European vernacular tradition. The 'Libro de Apolonio' is a pious response to strands of radical Aristotelianism prevalent from the early thirteenth century in Iberia. Such Aristotelianism was most likely disseminated in unofficial schools, via the vernacular, and closely associated with the Jewish intellectual community. The 'Libro de Apolonio' is an important witness of thirteenth-century Iberian Aristotelianism.
