Building Christian Narrative

While the story of King Apollonius seems always to have been the tale of a learned pious king, critics note that the anonymous, thirteenth-century Castilian verse romance Libro de Apolonio contains more references to God and, specifically, that the ending of the work would appear to be the Spanish poet’s attempt to cast the work in a more religious vein than his precursors had done. ¹ Nevertheless, they argue, for a work they believe to be a Christianization of an earlier secular work, Apolonio does not appear to be particularly Christian, and many of the references seem to be imposed on the text rather than to be an integral part of it. ²