This book surprised me in several, ultimately positive ways. I have long been familiar with Nora Berend through her pathbreaking scholarship on medieval Hungary and extremely useful broader theoretical articles on Christendom’s high-medieval expansionism. Over the years, I have profited greatly from reading (and rereading) and pondering her works. Thus, it was to my considerable surprise to stumble upon an announcement last year that Berend would be speaking at Saint Louis University’s Madrid campus, in a lecture entitled “Writing El Cid” sponsored by its Center for Iberian Historical Studies, relating to her forthcoming book on the subject. How and why, I asked myself, had this eminent scholar of Christendom’s Hungarian frontier come to write a book about the opposite side of Latin Christendom? Another source of surprise was the book’s topic. Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, generally known as El Cid (likely derived from the Arabic as-Sayyid, “the Lord”) or El Campeador (“the Champion”), is perhaps the only figure from medieval Spanish history that needs no introduction. So much has already been written about the Cid, including, most notably, Richard Fletcher’s now classic The Quest for El Cid, which made a huge splash in the late 1980s when it received both the Wolfson Literary Award for History and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. Was there more to say about the subject, I asked myself? And, at the risk of sounding territorial, wouldn’t Berend’s efforts, and the limited trade-book resources, have been better spent telling a lesser-known tale from the historical world she knows best?
While my initial surprise and curiosity lingered, I decided to withhold judgment until I could get my hands on the book and see for myself what Berend had set out to do—and what she had accomplished. The invitation to write this review provided that opportunity, and once I dove in, it quickly became clear that this was an altogether different kind of book than what Fletcher had produced in the 1980s—not to mention the many other popular accounts of this colorful and enigmatic figure over the years. Berend herself draws attention to one significant difference—namely, that she is a female historian interested in the history of women—in her introductory remarks:
The story of El Cid is worthy of the pen of Tolkien, the stuff of
legend and of men larger than life. There is thus a quiet irony
in the fact that it is a woman who writes this account of the
medieval superman; a successful military adventurer in life, and
a paragon of supposedly manly virtues in death. Women were
largely written out of the Cid’s life; present only as marginal
characters, important only insofar as they were connected to
him. Men composed his panegyric, men embraced his legend,
and marched in his name. Time, then, to redress the balance. (5)
At first, I was concerned that this call to bring gender analysis into the story might be merely superficial. But as I read further, I was delighted to find that Berend never loses sight of this theme. On the contrary, she consistently and thoughtfully develops it throughout. Again and again, across the chapters, she raises compelling questions about the roles women played in the life of the historical Cid, in the various iterations of the legendary Cid, and in the deliberate or inadvertent crafting of those legends over time. Whenever the sources allow, Berend seizes the opportunity not only to explore what little we know about his wife, Doña Jimena, and his daughters, but also to step back and reflect on how their presence illuminates the broader roles women played in medieval society—particularly in preserving family memory.
She skillfully identifies a central tension in the storytelling surrounding agentic women. On the one hand, “the women in Rodrigo’s family are obscured in the medieval narrative sources, and appear as generic stereotypes rather than individuals with agency” (93). In literary representations, their roles are constructed primarily to “enhance the hero’s reputation,” presenting them as passive, obedient, loyal, and patient—the ideal noble wives and daughters—set in stark contrast to the Cid’s assuredly active role as warrior, lord, husband, and father: fighting, plundering, governing, guiding, and providing. In reality, however, as Berend compellingly demonstrates—drawing on a wide range of inventive interpretive techniques, including a striking comparative case study of Queen Urraca of León-Castile—elite women like Jimena found ways to push against their expected passivity and assert agency. Among other things, Jimena played a pivotal role in establishing the Cid’s posthumous cult, allegedly taking his body with her as she abandoned the burning city of Valencia to the Almoravids. As Berend concludes, “The world of Jimena was therefore in a sense closer to our own than to the subsequent literary representations, a world where aristocratic women were not toys for men to honour or push around, but one where women made decisions and acted on their own volition” (108).
It is not only Berend’s engagement with deeply personal themes that makes her book a significant and highly original addition to the corpus on the Cid. After laying the groundwork by surveying the complex historical context and medieval literary traditions that gave rise to the Cid legend—and which were subsequently reshaped in divergent ways across the early modern and modern periods—Berend ventures into largely uncharted territory. In the second half of the book, she turns her attention to the uses and abuses of the Cid’s story over time and across media: in history writing, fictionalized accounts, and film. It is in these later chapters that Berend fully capitalizes on the historical foundation she has carefully established earlier, and where her breathtaking breadth and interpretive versatility truly shine. What struck me most—particularly from Chapter 7 onward—was her ability to interweave the myth-making efforts of various political and cultural actors into a vivid and remarkably accessible account of modern Spanish history. She traces the Cid’s evolving image as both protagonist and antagonist, showing how he has been mobilized by competing forces—including the far-right Spanish political party Vox, which has sought to reframe him as a national unifier through “Reconquest” in service of its nativist agenda. Chapter 9 stands out in particular, offering perhaps the most engaging and succinct account of Franco and Francoism I have encountered. These are the chapters that make El Cid a genuinely eye-opening and valuable read—not only for those interested in medievalism, but for anyone concerned with Spain, Spanish culture, or the reception and reinterpretation of Spanish history beyond its borders. Questions of gender continue to resurface in these later chapters, picking up threads from earlier discussions and adding new layers of complexity. We are introduced, for instance, to lesser-known female authors such as María Teresa León Goyri, who wrote two books about Rodrigo and Jimena in 1954 and 1960. These works were later celebrated in the post-Franco era for reimagining the Cid as a multicultural figure, thereby reclaiming his story for a broader, more inclusive vision of the Spanish people (206).
Berend’s major takeaway following this lively and deeply satisfying romp through centuries of history, myth-making, and popular media is sufficiently thought-provoking and instructive to be worth quoting in full here:
Does this mean that the Cid must be abandoned to the political
right? It is his heroization that must be abandoned. He did not
stand for the control of tyrannical monarchical power; rather,
he wanted power. He was not a victim of irrational vengeful ire,
nor of a tragic accident that kept his beloved from him for a
long period. Instead of turning him into a sympathetic figure fit
for a democratic or multicultural age, we need to see him as a
man who killed and plundered for a living. Of course, he was
conditioned by his times, as we are by ours. That does not
make him a model, or even someone with whom we should
sympathize. (212)
Berend’s interpretation thus offers insights not only into this particular myth but also into the broader processes of hero and anti-hero making, as political factions and interest groups continually appropriate—and often distort—figures and ideas from the past. El Cid is therefore a book with wide-ranging relevance, particularly for understanding how the medieval past is misused in contemporary contexts, including by the American alt-right and MAGA movements. Medievalists, history enthusiasts, and concerned citizens who have appreciated op-eds and other public-facing scholarship on the manipulation of medieval history—such as the work of Matthew Gabriele—will find much to engage with here.
By the time I finished El Cid, my initial skepticism had been fully dispelled. I am left with just one lingering question: when will Berend treat us to a similarly riveting, accessible book on medieval Hungary—the subfield for which she is best known? The audience she will undoubtedly gain from El Cid, myself included, would certainly welcome a repeat performance focused on that less familiar, opposite periphery of the medieval Latin Christian world.