La temprana sombra de Caín

Much has been said and published about Spanish Cainism, but very little has been delved into the roots of such an evocation. This idea is, basically, the motor of this essay: to trace the shadow of the biblical fratricide, projected in our earliest history. With the start thus raised, I soon realized that the results of my research could also serve to address a little explored or non-existent space in the interpretive literature on the Bible. What was missing was a text, accessible to a very wide audience, that would highlight the literary and ideological value of the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible, whose weight, as supported by this book, has been so great in the Hispanic historical narrative. The essay is divided into two parts: the first deals with the different faces of the fratricide, as well as the literary trajectory of the figure of Cain within biblical, canonical and apocryphal literature. The memory of this character serves as an excuse and as a guide to appreciate the virtuosity of masterpieces of ancient literature such as Genesis or the Book of Samuel; In the following chapters, it also illuminates the kind of transformations that, in religious and literary terms, biblical literature experienced through the centuries. In the second part we address the oblique shadow of that personification of fratricide par excellence that is Cain; especially in the narratives of the history of Spain. From Isidoro de Sevilla (direct descendant of the adversus iudaeos tradition of Latin patristicism) to apologists such as Ximénez de Rada or López de Ayala, the Hispanic chronicle tradition took advantage of that early shadow of Cain to put together narratives with the ability to endorse contempt for others. religious communities or explain fratricides with the support of the Scriptures.