University of Virginia Library

IV. Encina's Later Poems

When Encina was finally ordained at Rome in spring, 1519, he resolved on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with the intention of celebrating his first mass there. He has left an account of this journey in his Trivagia o viage a Jerusalem, published after his return in 1521. The poem is composed in two hundred and thirteen coplas de arte mayor and evidently conceived as a major undertaking inviting comparison with the Trescientas of Encina's poetic idol, Juan de Mena. The devout travelogue was a great success and reprinted many times (1521, 1580, 1606, 1608, 1733, 1786). Encina's ambitious poem has, however, received scant attention from critics and the zealously Catholic Menéndez y Pelayo has doubtless done much to deter a proper reading by his scathing remarks about the poem's lack of true religious inspiration. This is a pity, because set beside Cotarelo's picture of Encina, the autor malogrado, Plácida and the Trivagia seem to hang in space like mere appendages, not as parts of a continuously evolving artistic consciousness. Moreover, the poem tells us the following news of yet another edition of the Cancionero, which unfortunately never left the presses:

It would appear, then, that by 1521 Encina had already begun a new compilation of his works in the region of Rome ("en Lacio nacida") and planned to bring them out shortly ("ya están á raya"). No such Cancionero has survived but we can only surmise that any unpublished works of Encina written in Rome since 1509 were destined to be included. It is certainly regrettable that this final testimony to Encina's later activity, edited with his customary care and thoroughness, is consequently unavailable for scrutiny.

The late R. O. Jones has drawn attention to a MS in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid (no. 17510 of the Gayangos collection), in which we find the Trivagia and a summary in romance of the whole voyage. These were published along with a prose narrative account of the voyage by Enríquez de Rivera, Marquess of Tarifa, in whose company Encina had traveled. In the MS version, there are also a number of villancicos connected with the trip to Jerusalem and a long poem in twenty-eight stanzas of décimas (rhymed ABAAB:CDDCC): Coplas sobre el año de quinientos y veynte y uno de Juan del Encina. The latter describes the droughts, famines, and popular disorders that plagued Seville from 1520 and reached their height in 1521. Some historical corroboration of these events survives in Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga's Annales eclesiásticos y seculares de la muy noble, y muy leal Ciudad de Seville . . . (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1677). He writes: "Pero no permitiò establecerse bien la tranquilidad de la Ciudad, la terrible carestia, que en ella, y su comarca se padecía, y falta de pan, valiendo una fanega de trigo setecientos marauedis, gran suma para aquel tiempo, con que hambrienta, y necessitada la plebe, por auer tardado granos que se esperavan de fuera del Reyno, a ocho del mes de Mayo, segun algunas memorias, que otras lo refieren mas adelante, se amotinò. . . ." (p. 477; my emphasis). Since Encina's account has an eye-witness quality to it, we must assume that he was present in Spain by the summer of 1521. He had been appointed by Pope Leo X to the priorship of the Cathedral of León as early as 1519. One Antonio de Obregón, acting as attorney, took possession of the prior's post in Encina's name on March 14, 1519. The earliest extant evidence of Encina's presence in León are certain capitular acts that he witnessed on November 20, 1523.