Poetry of Álvaro of Córdoba

Álvaro of Córdoba was a Christian lay writer who lived in Muslim-ruled Córdoba during the ninth century CE. He is thus conventionally called one of the ‘Mozarabic’ writers, though the evidence shows that his knowledge of Arabic was very superficial at best, and in fact he was opposed to adoption of Arabic culture and language, particularly if that came at the expense of Latin identity and culture: in other words, the very opposite of being a ‘Mozarab’, which has connotations of becoming Arabised.

Along with his friend Eulogius, he was a leading advocate for the phenomenon of martyrs who were executed for offences of apostasy and/or blasphemy against Islam. Álvaro’s best known work was the Indiculus Luminosus, which made the case for Islam and its prophet Muhammad as being a manifestation of the Antichrist, and famously concludes with a lament about how so many Christians in his day had taken up the Arabic language and proved to be able composers of literature in Arabic, while neglecting the Latin language. He also engaged in a notable polemic dispute in the form of letters exchanged with Bodo/Eleazar, a Christian cleric who converted to Judaism.

The following post contains translations of some of Álvaro’s surviving poems. We know from his biography of his friend Eulogius that the two men were fond of poetry and verse composition. The topics of poetry primarily concern religion and nature, with some of the poems highlighting that Álvaro suffered from a serious illness that nearly killed him. The edition of the poems used is that contained in Gil’s Corpus Scriptorum Muzarabicorum (Madrid, 1973).

Here begin the verses.

1. Poem of the nightingale

Your voice, oh nightingale, surpasses the metrical poems
And surpasses the great breezes in wondrous ways.
Your sweet voice, oh nightingale, outdoes the instruments,
For it sings great songs sweetly and beautifully.
Your voice, oh nightingale, so surpasses the Muses in sound
That it in whistling it is three or four times better than their citharas.
And as you soothe and cherish the hearts of men, thus do you surpass
The sweet stringed lyres that are plucked with the thumb.
May every sort of voice yield, and may the chattering voice also yield to you.
With me as judge, may all your song shine brightly.
Certainly no bird can equal you in songs,
And as conqueror of men, you certainly should surpass the beasts in voice.
So sing various lyrics with a pleasant melody
And frequently pour out songs from your throat in your usual way.
Bring forth sweet-sounding lyric-song with your joyful heart
And sweetly strike the chords and make them resound with your throat.
Utmost glory, I say, be forever to Christ our God
Who has given such great joys to us servants.