Gonzalo Ruiz - Relationship With The Troubadours

Relationship With The Troubadours

In the song Chantarai d'aquest trobadors, a famous satire by Peire d'Alvernhe of twelve contemporary troubadours, one "Guossalbo Roitz" is listed among them. This name is the Occitanised form of the Old Spanish name "Gonçalvo Roiz", which is modern Spanish "Gonzalo Ruiz". Ruiz is not a surname but a patronymic meaning "son of Rodrigo (i.e. Ruy)". If Peire's satire was performed at Puivert before an audience that included the satirised troubadours and the entourage of Eleanor of England, who was passing through Gascony on her way to marry Alfonso VIII of Castile, then the identification of Guossalbo Roitz with Gonzalo Ruiz of Bureba becomes probable. Peire has this to say about his eleventh "victim" in lines 67 to 72:

Peire is making fun of Gonzalo's well-known military career. In fact, Peire may have learned about Gonzalo on a trip he made to Castile in the spring of 1158. If he did not meet Gonzalo at the Castilian court, where Gonzalo undoubtedly was between January and February, then he may have met him at the meeting of Sancho III of Castile, Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona, and Sancho VI of Navarre in the summer of that year.

Gonzalo Ruiz is also the name of a dedicatee of Quan vei pels vergiers desplegar, a sirventes of Bertran de Born, usually dated to the spring of 1184. This may be the same Gonzalo referred to in Peire d'Alvernhe's song, but Martí de Riquer i Morera suggests instead Gonzalo Ruiz de Azagra. This identity is strengthened by a reference in the poem to Pere Rois, probably Pedro Ruiz de Azagra, lord of Albarracín and the brother of Gonzalo de Azagra. Bertran's tornada goes like this:

This poem is the second of two violent outbursts by Bertran against Alfonso II of Aragon in 1184. At that time Alfonso had allied with Richard the Lion-hearted and was at the side of the latter during the suppression of a rebellion in the Limousin—where Bertran was Richard's vassal—and Périgord. Fraga, which had been conquered by Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona in 1149 (after two failed attempts by Alfonso the Battler) and divided between the Montcadas and a Templar barony, lay on the border of Catalonia and Aragon. Evidence from line 18 and from the song's razo suggests that perhaps the Quan vei was intended to be brought by Guillem de Berguedà, a Catalan troubadour and friend of Bertran and mutual enemy of Alfonso II, to Fraga and there transferred to Gonzalo.

Both Bertran's poem and Peire's attest the influence of the troubadours and their poetry on Navarre by the 1170s. If Gonzalo Ruiz is de Azagra, it should be noted that his brother's daughter, Tota Pérez, was married to Diego López de Haro—with whom the lord of La Bureba had a connexion—who was a great patron of troubadours. Rigaut de Barbezill, Peire Vidal, and Aimeric de Pegulhan all spent time at his court, as did Rodrigo Díaz de los Cameros, his son-in-law, one of the earliest Galician-Portuguese troubadours. Riquer attaches the Castilian embassy in France circa 1170 with Gonzalo Ruiz de Azagra.

Taken together these references to Gonzalo in two Occitan songs of the late twelfth century suggest that Gonzalo was a troubadour or at least a ioculator who could sing Occitan songs. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, in his Poesía juglaresca (1957), argued that "Gonzalvo Ruiz y Pedro de Monzón poetizaban en castellano, o acaso el de Monzón en aragonés" ("Gonzalo Ruis and Pere de Montsó wrote poetry in Castilian, or in the case of Montsó Aragonese").