“Berend tells this grotesque story well, with a lightness of touch not too often found in an academic. Her sentences are clear. Subtle arguments can be followed. And occasional, humorous remarks show her keen intelligence.”

– Catalonia Today

"Ms. Berend, a professor of history at Cambridge, sets out to trace how an eleventh-century mercenary became a world-famous star."

– The Wall Street Journal 

“An enthralling study. Berend aims to dismantle various ahistorical distortions and idealizations. Rodrigo, as she calls him throughout, was an easily customizable hero. For the most part, the real Cid was nothing like the saintly crusader and loyal vassal played by Charlton Heston in the 1961 film El Cid. Exceptionally fascinating. Being a careful, evidence-based work of scholarship, El Cid demonstrates again and again how insidiously political and religious institutions distort history for their own ends.”

– Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“El Cid has been remade time and again to match the cultural and political priorities of different ages. Nora Berend shows in her lively, original and fascinating book that El Cid’s reputation was largely constructed out of imaginative inventions. Her concern is much less with the historical El Cid than with what she calls his afterlife.”

– Literary Review

 

“A fascinating study of historical mythmaking. Nora Berend shows what can be pieced together about the eleventh-century mercenary known as El Cid, as well as the complicated legendary ‘afterlife’ built on his career. How did this opportunistic knight, who served Christian kings, Arab rulers and most of all his own interests, became a symbol of Spanish unity and Castilian-dominated national identity? Concisely and absorbingly, Berend supplies the answers.”

– Paul Freedman, author of Out of the East

“An enthralling study. Berend aims to dismantle various ahistorical distortions and idealizations. Rodrigo, as she calls him throughout, was an easily customizable hero. For the most part, the real Cid was nothing like the saintly crusader and loyal vassal played by Charlton Heston in the 1961 film El Cid. Exceptionally fascinating. Being a careful, evidence-based work of scholarship, El Cid demonstrates again and again how insidiously political and religious institutions distort history for their own ends.”

– The Washington Post

“El Cid has been remade time and again to match the cultural and political priorities of different ages. Nora Berend shows in her lively, original and fascinating book that El Cid’s reputation was largely constructed out of imaginative inventions. Her concern is much less with the historical El Cid than with what she calls his afterlife.”

– Literary Review

 

“A fascinating study of historical mythmaking. Nora Berend shows what can be pieced together about the eleventh-century mercenary known as El Cid, as well as the complicated legendary ‘afterlife’ built on his career. How did this opportunistic knight, who served Christian kings, Arab rulers and most of all his own interests, became a symbol of Spanish unity and Castilian-dominated national identity? Concisely and absorbingly, Berend supplies the answers.”

– Paul Freedman, author of Out of the East