joined the Moroccans in a new siege of Tarifa in 1294.
Nevertheless, Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, known there-
after as “el bueno,” successfully defended Tarifa until
a Castilian and Catalan fl eet compelled the enemy to
withdraw. The capture and subsequent defense of Tarifa
was the fi rst stage in closing the gates of the peninsula
to future Moroccan invasions.
Not long after Sancho IV died on 25 April 1295,
his wife María de Molina, whom he married at Toledo
in July 1282, became regent for their son, Fernando
IV. Sancho wrote a book of counsel titled Castigos e
documentos for Fernando.
See also Alfonso X, El Sabio, King of Castile and
León; Molina, María de; Philip IV the Fair
Further Reading
Gaibrois de Ballesteros, M. Historia del reinado de Sancho IV.
3 vols. Madrid, 1922.
Joseph F. O’Callaghan
SAXO GRAMMATICUS (13th century)
Toward the end of the 12th century, the Danish historian
Sven Aggesen wrote that his old associate Saxo was
composing a full-length history of the Danish kings of
the previous century. Four MS fragments of this work
(one, from Angers, probably autograph), a compendium
of around 1345, and an edition printed at Paris in 1514
from a lost MS provide the surviving evidence for
Saxo’s achievement. It was printed under the title of
Danorum Regum Heroumque Historiæ (“The History
of the Kings and Heroes of the Danes”), but is usually
known by the earlier description Gesta Danorum (alias
De Gestis Danorum).
Saksi was not an uncommon name in medieval
Denmark, and the historian cannot be identifi ed for
sure with any who bore it. Grammaticus “the learned”
and Longus “the tall” are posthumous by-names. From
his own words, we learn that he came from a warrior
family, and that he joined the household of King Valde-
mar I’s foremost adviser, Absalon, bishop of Roskilde
(1158–1192) and archbishop of Lund (1178–1201),
who encouraged him to write history. His partiality for
Zealand suggests that he came from that island. He may
have been educated abroad, and his familiarity with
church business argues that he became a clerk of some
sort, but probably not a monk. He was also familiar
with war and seamanship. In Absalon’s will, “my cleric
Saxo” was forgiven a small debt, and required to send
two borrowed books to the Cistercians of Sorø. Saxo
completed his work under the patronage of Archbishop
Anders (1201–1223), probably after 1216, and dedicated
it to Anders and King Valdemar II.
During Saxo’s lifetime, Denmark achieved domi-
nance over the Baltic lands; Danes also came into closer
contact with the intellectual life of the southern countries
their ancestors had raided. Saxo aimed to provide them
with a national history in Latin comparable to those of
other European peoples. The only foreign historians he
mentions are Bede, Dudo of St.-Quentin, and Paulus
Diaconus; he was less infl uenced by them in his con-
cept of the nation than by Vergil’s Aeneid, and by the
historical abridgments of the Roman authors Valerius
Maximus and Justin. His view of morals and mythology
owed much to Horace, Ovid, and Cicero; and the tone
of his work coincides with the humanistic scholarship
of the 12th century as expounded in the schools of
northern France (e.g., by William of Conches and John
of Salisbury), as well as with the contemporary epics
of Galterus de Castellione (Alexandreis) and Geoffrey
of Monmouth (Historia regum Britanniae).
Other Danish authors (e.g., the Roskilde Chronicler,
the Lejre Chronicler, Sven Aggesen) had made pioneer
attempts to record the Danish past in Latin, but Saxo
found them inadequate. He had no use for the annal-
ists of Lund, nor for conventional chronology, and the
northern genealogists failed to provide him with enough
kings. He claimed to be restoring lost native traditions
and interpreting runic memorials, but these claims seem
unfounded. He took most of his legendary and heroic
material from wandering Icelanders and their MSS, re-
locating stories from their international repertoire within
Denmark. He claimed that Archbishop Absalon’s own
words were his main source for modern history, but he
must have used other written sources now lost. His debt
to biblical ideas and language was small.
The work published in 1514 begins with a preface
including a geographical description of the northern
world, and is divided into sixteen books of unequal
length. Books 1–4 deal with the Danes before the birth
of Christ, 5–8 with the period down to the establishment
of the Church in Denmark. Books 9–12 cover events
from the Conversion to the promotion of Lund as a
metropolitan see, and 13–16 run from 1104 to 1187.
The fi rst eight books differ from the rest in the greater
fl uency of the prose and the inclusion of verse in a
variety of meters. The basic subdivisions are the reigns
of over seventy kings. Saxo begins with the election of
the eponymous Dan as the fi rst ruler, and the dethrone-
ment of the fi rst two kings, Humblus and Lotherus, by
unjust and justifi ed violence. Then Skioldus and Had-
ingus appear as types of the heroism, luck, and virtue
essential for effective kingship even in a pagan world.
These kings, and Frotho I in Book 2, are names derived
from Old Norse poetry and invested with attributes and
episodes. With Kings Ro (Book 2) and Høtherus (Book
3), he made versions of the legends now found in theSAXO GRAMMATICUS