So much for verse. Castilian prose develops on parallel lines with it. A very early specimen is the didactic treatise called the _Diez Mandamientos_, written by a Navarrese monk, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, for the use of confessors. Somewhat later follow the _Anales Toledanos_, in two separate parts (the third is much more recent), composed between the years 1220 and 1250. Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo (1170-1247), wrote a Latin _Historia Gothica_, which begins with the Gothic invasion, and ends at the year 1243. Undertaken at the bidding of St. Ferdinand of Castile, this work was summarised, and done into Castilian, probably by Jiménez de Rada himself, under the title of the _Historia de los Godos_. Its date would be the fourth decade of the thirteenth century, and to this same time (1241) belongs the _Fuero Juzgo_ (_Forum Judicum_). This is a Castilian version of a code of so-called Gothic laws, substantially Roman in origin, given by St. Ferdinand (1200-1252) to the Spaniards settled in Córdoba and other southern cities after the reconquest; but though of extreme value to the philologer, its literary interest is too slight to detain us here. Two most brilliant specimens of early Spanish prose are the letters supposed to have been written by the dying Alexander to his mother; and the accident of their being found in the manuscript copied by Lorenzo Segura de Astorga has led to their being printed at the end of the _Libro de Alexandre_. There is good reason for thinking that they are not by the author of that poem; and, in truth, they are mere translations. Both letters are taken from _Hunain ibn Ishāk al-'Ibādī's_ Arabic collection of moral sentences; the first is found in the _Bonium_ (so called from its author, a mythical King of Persia), and the second on the Castilian version of the _Secretum Secretorum_, of which the very title is reproduced as _Poridat de las Poridades_. Further examples of progressive prose are found in the _Libro de los doce Sabios_, which deals with the political education of princes, and may have been drawn up by the direction of St. Ferdinand. But the authorship and date of these compilations are little better than conjectural.