The Cid is the only knight-errant that has survived the polished satire of Cervantes. For his fame was neither literary nor aristocratic; but like the early Spanish proverbs, in which it is said he took so great a delight, it was embedded deep in the hearts of the people. And although the memory of his religious indifference may not have added to his popularity in the sixteenth century in Spain, it is a part of his character which must be taken into account in gauging the public opinion of earlier days. From the close of the eighth century to the close of the fifteenth, the Spanish people, Castilians and Aragonese, were if anything less bigoted than the rest of Europe. The influence of their neighbours the Moors, and of their Arab toleration could not be without its effect upon a people naturally free, independent, and self-reliant; and the Cid, who was certainly troubled with no religious scruples in the course of his varied career, and who, according to a popular legend affronted and threatened the pope on his throne in St. Peter’s, on account of some fancied slight, could never have been the hero of a nation of bigots. To judge the Cid, even as we now know him, according to any code of modern ethics, is supremely unreasonable. To be sure that, even now, we know him as he was is supremely presumptuous. But that Ruy Diaz was a great man, and a great leader of men, a knight who would have shocked modern poets, and a free lance who would have laughed at modern heroes, we can have no manner of doubt. That he satisfied his contemporaries and himself; that he slew Moors and Christians as occasion required, with equal vigour and absolute impartiality; that he bearded the king of Leon in his Christian council, and that he cozened the king of Saragossa at the head of his Moslem army; that he rode the best horse and brandished the best blade in Spain; that his armies never wanted for valiant soldiers, nor his coffers for goldpieces; that he lived “my lord the challenger,” the terror of every foe, and that he died rich and respected in the noble city that had fallen to his knightly spear--of all this at least we are certain; and, if the tale is displeasing to our nineteenth century refinement, we must be content to believe that it satisfied the aspirations of mediæval Spain.[g] THE HISTORICAL CID [Sidenote: [_ca._ 1050-1065 A.D.]] The real existence of the Cid and the most important events in his life have been proved by a sufficient, although not by a large number of documents, which, being amplified by Middle Age chroniclers, have formed the basis of later tradition. It is more or less in this traditionary form that the Cid appears, in Spanish history.