Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia 9789004250482, 9789004291003, 2015001423

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Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia

The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World formerly medieval iberian peninsula Editors Larry J. Simon (Western Michigan University) Gerard Wiegers (University of Amsterdam) Arie Schippers (University of Amsterdam) Isidro J. Rivera (University of Kansas) Mercedes García-Arenal (cchs/csis)

VOLUME 59

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/memi

Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia Edited by

Laura Delbrugge

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: MS Reg. 14425, fol. 35v. Ceremonial de con-sagración y coronación de los reyes de Aragón (appendix to the Ordinacions de Cort). Second half of the fourteenth century. With kind permission of the Biblioteca Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Self-fashioning and assumptions of identity in medieval and early modern Iberia / edited by Laura Delbrugge. pages cm. -- (The medieval and early modern Iberian world (formerly Medieval Iberian Peninsula), ISSN 1569-1934 ; volume 59) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-25048-2 (hardback : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-29100-3 (e-book) 1. Portugal--Social life and customs. 2. Aragon (Spain)--Social life and customs. 3. Castile (Spain)--Social life and customs. 4. Iberian Peninsula--Social life and customs. 5. Self--Social aspects--Portugal--History. 6. Self--Social aspects--Spain--Aragon--History. 7. Self--Social aspects--Spain--Castile--History. 8. Identity (Psychology)-Social aspects--Portugal--History. 9. Identity (Psychology)--Social aspects--Spain--Aragon--History. 10. Identity (Psychology)--Social aspects--Spain--Castile--History. I. Delbrugge, Laura, 1968DP532.5.S45 2015 946.0009’02--dc23

2015001423

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1569-1934 isbn 978-90-04-25048-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-29100-3 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents List of Figures vii List of Contributors viii Introduction Laura Delbrugge 1 1 Strategies of Royal Self-fashioning: Iberian Kings’ Self-coronations 18 Jaume Aurell 2 Lessons for My Daughter: Self-fashioning Stateswomanship in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon 46 Zita Rohr 3 Moor or Mallorquín? Anselm Turmeda’s Ambiguous Identity in the Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca 79 David Gugel 4 The Marques de Santillana’s Library and Literary Reputation 116 Daniel Hartnett 5 Ludology, Self-fashioning, and Entrepreneurial Masculinity in Iberian Novels of Chivalry 144 Michael Harney 6 In Search of the Author: Self-fashioning and the Gender Debate in Fifteenth-Century Castile 167 Wendell P. Smith 7 A Theology of Self-fashioning: Hernando de Talavera’s Letter of Advice to the Countess of Benavente 202 Mark D. Johnston 8 Inside Perspectives: Catalina and João III of Portugal and a Speculum for a Queen-to-be 226 Núria Silleras-Fernández 9 Forging Renaissance Authorship: Petrarch and Ausiàs March 253 Albert Lloret

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10 Conflict or Compromise? Identity and the Cathedral Chapter of Girona in the Fourteenth Century 277 Caroline Smith 11 Mary Magdalene and Martha: Sor Isabel de Villena’s Self-fashioning through Constructing Her Community 298 Lesley Twomey 12 Debunking the “Self” in Self-fashioning: Communal Fashioning in the Cartagena Clan 327 Montserrat Piera Index 367

List of Figures 1.1 MS Reg. 14425, fol. 19r. Ceremonial de con-sagración y coronación de los reyes de Aragón (appendix to the Ordinacions de Cort). Second half of the fourteenth century 36 1.2 MS Reg. 14425, fol. 35v. Ceremonial de con-sagración y coronación de los reyes de Aragón (appendix to the Ordinacions de Cort). Second half of the fourteenth century 37

List of Contributors Jaume Aurell Associate Professor at the Department of History in the University of Navarra (Spain). He is the author of Authoring the Past: History, Autobiography, and Politics in Medieval Catalonia (Chicago, 2012) and La scrittura della memoria (Roma, 2011). Laura Delbrugge Ph.D. (1996), Pennsylvania State University; currently Professor of Spanish at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has published three editions on works by Andrés de Li, including Reportorio de los tiempos (Tamesis, 1999) and Thesoro de la passion (Brill, 2011). David Gugel M.A. (Ph.D. forthcoming, 2015), is presently a Doctoral Candidate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. He has published and presented regularly on topics dealing with society and cultural exchange in the pre-modern Mediterranean. Michael Harney Ph.D. (1983), University of California, Berkeley; Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature Program, University of Texas-Austin. Author of Kinship & Marriage in Medieval Hispanic Chivalric Romance (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001). Daniel Hartnett Received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia (2009) and is currently Assistant Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College (Ohio, usa). His work on fifteenth-century Iberian poetry has appeared in journals such as Hispanic Review and postmedieval. Mark D. Johnston Ph.D. (1976), is Professor of Spanish at DePaul University. He has published numerous works on Ramon Llull and several recent studies on Hernando de Talavera, besides editing Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides (Toronto, 2009).

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Albert Lloret Ph.D. (2010), The Johns Hopkins University; Assistant Professor of Spanish and Catalan at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of Printing Ausiàs March: Material Culture and Renaissance Poetics (cece, 2013). He serves as managing editor of Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures. Montserrat Piera Ph.D. (1991), The Pennsylvania State University; currently an Associate Professor of Medieval Iberian literature at Temple University. Her publications include Curial e Güelfa y las novelas de caballerías españolas and Mens et mensa: Thinking of Food in Medieval Cultures. Zita Rohr Ph.D. (2009), University of Armidale, Australia is a Research Associate in the Department of History at the University of Sydney. She is preparing a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan, Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442). The Reverse of the Tapestry: A Case Study of Family and Power, due for publication in 2015. In 2004 she was admitted to the Ordre des Palmes Académiques (chevalier grade). Núria Silleras-Fernández Assistant Professor at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese of the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the author of Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship: Maria de Luna (Palgrave, 2008) and Chariots of Ladies: Francesc Eiximenis, the Feminine, and Court Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Cornell, 2015). Caroline Smith Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. She is currently writing a dissertation on the cathedral chapter of Girona in the first half of the fourteenth century. Wendell P. Smith Ph.D. (2000), Wilson College, Chambersburg, pa, wrote a dissertation at the University of Texas, Austin on Amadís de Gaula. His subsequent research has focused on libros de caballería and the Spanish empire, most recently concerning cosmology in Don Quijote. Lesley Twomey Reader at the University of Northumbria. She recently published The Serpent and the Rose: The Immaculate Conception in Hispanic Poetry in the Late Medieval Period and The Fabric of Marian Devotion in Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi.

Introduction Laura Delbrugge

Origins of the Volume and Theoretical Framework

This book was born, as many good things are, over a glass of reasonably ­adequate wine in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In May 2011, my erstwhile colleagues in the Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (imana) and the North American Catalan Society (nacs) were fully immersed in brainstorming sessions for the 2012 International Congress of Medieval Studies. Fueled by good food and better company, promising topics flew across the dinner tables, to be scribbled down on napkins or the backs of flyers for La corónica, everyone happy to be part of the palpable intellectual energy with long-time friends and colleagues. At some point during this delightful chaos of semi-formed ideas, I confessed to our long-time session organizer, John Bollweg, my fascination with authorial identity, in particular that of the Zaragozan writer, Andrés de Li, the author of three extensive works published between 1492 and 1494, whose texts have long formed part of my research agenda. A converso, Li was investigated by the Inquisition in 1490 and later used his business connections with the famed printer Pablo Hurus to self-fashion himself into a prolific author of Christian texts, a likely attempt to move past his converso heritage. Our discussion of Li soon became a session proposal, and in May 2012, “Drawing Lines: Identity and Self-fashioning in Medieval Iberia” was part of the 47th Annual International Congress of Medieval Studies, held at Western Michigan University. The session was a rousing success, with four speakers, all of whom have chapters in the present volume, and more than 40 attendees. That year, another brainstorming session, this time over better-than-average coffee and huevos rancheros with my long-time mentor, Dr Donna Rogers, quickly resolved itself into the idea for an edited volume exploring self-fashioning in medieval and early modern Iberia. Thus was born Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Judging by the overwhelmingly positive responses to this volume, evident in the quantity as well as quality of scholars who have chosen to participate, the exploration of medieval and early modern Iberian self-fashioning seems to promise tantalizing avenues for ­critical study. Using the term “self-fashioning” with regard to identity creation was most famously employed by Stephen Greenblatt in his groundbreaking 1980 volume, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Greenblatt’s work rests on his perception of a dramatic change in the process of identity formation in

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291003_002

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Renaissance England, noting that, “in the sixteenth century there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process.”1 Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning, with its theoretical foundations in the works of Foucault, Marx, and Raymond Williams, among others, became the basis for the critical movement of New Historicism. Renaissance Self-Fashioning is comprised of a series of essays that explores how six influential writers of Renaissance England—More, Tyndale, Wyatt, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare—chose to self-fashion their public identities, each one crafting “a distinctive personality, a characteristic address to the world, a consistent mode of receiving and behaving.”2 Greenblatt asserts that the formation of identity centers on one’s perception of the existence of an “authority,” a set of core beliefs that originate outside of the individual but that he or she accepts as essential and genuine; these core values form the basis of a person’s perception of relative social position. Anything outside these limits, and in contrast to the perception of one’s self, is seen as “alien, strange, or hostile.”3 Self-identity results from the tension that is created at the intersection of these two forces, as an individual struggles, consciously or unconsciously, to accept or reject all or part of their prescribed position within a social paradigm. Underlying this transformation in Renaissance identity formation was, according to Greenblatt, an anxiety-provoking sense of moving away from an obligatory Christian self-fashioning in the model of the suffering Christ.4 This angst resulted in the birth of a new model of identity creation. Given that Greenblatt’s 1980 Renaissance Self-Fashioning is still viewed as the seminal work on self-fashioning more than 30 years after its initial publication, there would appear to be room for further examination of the theme, including the investigation of its potential applicability to other cultural and historical milieu. To be sure, Greenblatt himself noted that while there seemed to be a greater receptivity toward self-fashioning during the Renaissance, humans have always had “a sense of personal order, a characteristic mode of address to the world, a structure of bounded desires—and always some elements of deliberate shaping in the formation and expression of identity.”5 Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia moves away from New Historicism’s insistence on the total absence of “subjectivity” in early 1 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 2. 2 Ibid., 2. 3 Ibid., 9. 4 Ibid., 3. 5 Ibid., 1.

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modern individuals that assumes an imperfection in preceding eras. This volume does not recognize the creation of a divide between medieval and early modern personages through the use of terms like “subjectivity” or “modernity” as exclusionary indications of a society’s “civilized” nature. Self-fashioning as described in Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity has relatively little to do with modernity and virtually everything to do with fundamental human nature, because, regardless of time or place, humans have always tried to influence how they are viewed by others, as described by the 20th-century sociologist Erving Goffman: Regardless of the particular objective which the individual has in mind and of his motive for having this objective, it will be in his interests to control the conduct of others, especially in their responsive treatment of him. This control is achieved largely by influencing the definition of the situation which the others come to formulate, and he can influence this definition by expressing himself in such a way as to give them the kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with his own plan. Thus, when an individual appears in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilize his activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his interest to convey.6 In other words, as Richard Trexler notes, self-fashioning is an essential part of the creation of individual human identity. No matter what one’s nation, class, status, sex, religion, or age, to have an identity is, among other things, to have done things in the presence of others. We presume that actions performed in social spaces partly create and change individual and collective identities. Social spaces are . . . central to the formation, expression, and modification of individual and group identities. Individuals take action in public to make a certain image of themselves recognizable to others, and in that process they come to recognize their own person in that image.7 Perhaps even more significant than our application of self-fashioning to contexts outside of Renaissance England is that many of the essays in SelfFashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia 6 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London: Penguin Books, 1959), 15–16. 7 Richard C. Trexler, ed., Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Binghamton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985), 4.

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have also moved away from Greenblatt’s initial conclusion that self-fashioning is exclusively determined by dominant social forces outside of the individual, rather than idiosyncratic manifestations of will: “Self-fashioning . . . involves submission to an absolute power or authority situated at least partially outside the self—God, a sacred book, an institution such as church, court, colonial or military administration.”8 Rather, the essays in this volume identify, in one way  or another, the existence of individual agency in the construction of identity, either conscious or unconscious, that is considered to be the core of self-fashioning. What is at stake here is a sense of how and under what conditions subject/individuals simultaneously exist within and make purposive intervention into social formations. Such intervention can and does take place, actively or passively, through single people or collectives, privately and publicly. It can take place in the form of a refusal as much as an intervention; it can be in the service of conservatism as much as of disruption. It may well call upon an experience of class; but more generally it calls upon the subject’s individual history: such a history is not exclusively determined by class or class membership, real, borrowed, or imagined.9 Self-fashioning is, in essence, an attempt to somehow subvert or reject existing social structures and therefore could sometimes be compared to committing a crime, in that acts of criminal behavior, as well as individual choices to selffashion, can and do lead to aggregate changes in overall societal structure, as category boundaries of both what is legal and what is socially acceptable can be influenced by the repeated rejection of social rules. The aggregate of individual acts can, over time, lead to the establishment of entirely new social boundaries. Many of the essays in Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia demonstrate that a core facet of successful self-fashioning seems to the bending, rather than the breaking, of existing social constructs, so that while the elasticity of boundaries may eventually be compromised, it is not immediately destroyed. Nevertheless, repeated disregard of social boundaries as seen in individual acts of self-fashioning can and do shift social boundaries, and these stretched limits eventually morph into new social parameters. In Discerning the Subject, Paul Smith details the evolution of an individual’s sense of self, especially how this self-awareness can shape the nature of the social experience. 8 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 9. 9 Paul Smith, Discerning the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 5.

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Resistance does take place, but it takes place only within a social construct which has already construed subject-positions for the human agent. The place of that resistance has, then, to be glimpsed somewhere in the interstices of the subject-positions which are offered in any social formation. More precisely, resistance must be regarded as the by-product of contradictions in and among subject-positions. The subject/individual can be discerned but not by the supposition of some quasi-mystical willto-resistance . . . resistance is best understood as a specific twist in the dialectic between individuation and ideological interpellation.10 Understanding the dynamic relationship between the individual and his or her surrounding societal boundaries is fundamental for understanding the possibility and potential effectiveness of self-fashioning. Of particular importance is an assessment of both the individual’s consciousness of his or her selffashioning efforts as well as his or her actual ability, or means, to carry them out; a peasant, for example, likely could not become a Castilian monarch, however much he or she wanted to do so, because of insurmountable social barriers. Operating on the premise that self-fashioning can be seen in multiple cultural and historical contexts, Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia demonstrates how medieval and early modern Iberian self-identity was intimately tied to, but not completely limited by, issues of class, gender, and religion and that purposeful self-fashioning of individual identities could eventually lead to changes in the acceptability of the proscribed social behaviors associated with overarching social categories. Essays in the collection explore varied manifestations of self-fashioning and how they contributed to identity formation in medieval and early modern Iberia, including absorbing accounts of the identity conflicts experienced by religious converts, self-fashioning maneuvers for political gain, self-promotion through authorship or the acquisition of impressive libraries, as well as the social ramifications of deliberate choices by monarchs of both genders to deviate from established rites of ritual and rule. To the surprise of no one, wealth was, and is, a universal lubricant for social mobility and successful self-fashioning. While Greenblatt had noted that the English Renaissance authors he discussed in Renaissance Self-Fashioning “all embody, in one form or another, a profound mobility . . . in most cases, this mobility is social and economic,”11 the relative ease that money and position bring to identity formation was not limited to Renaissance England, as 10 Smith, Discerning the Subject, 25. 11 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 7.

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citizens of our modern world know all too well. Essays in Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia also clearly reveal the relative frequency of self-fashioning within the upper ranks of medieval and early modern Portuguese, Catalan, and Castilian societies. Monarchs and nobles of both genders, as well as those belonging to positions of power within the Church, had the ability to push social boundaries much further than did the lower classes. Essays on the self-fashioning of the Iberian upper class include that by Jaume Aurell, in which he explores the origins of self-­ coronations in Castile and Aragon as deliberate acts of self-fashioning done to establish royal authority as independent from that of the Church. Daniel Hartnett’s essay examines the self-fashioning of the well-known Castilian nobleman, the Marques de Santillana, through his careful acquisition of Dante texts. Articles by Zita Rohr and Núria Silleras-Fernández discuss the self-fashioning efforts of Castilian and Aragonese monarchs as they shaped both their own understanding of power and identity as well as that of their royal offspring in foreign courts. This type of vicarious self-fashioning is echoed in the essay authored by Mark Johnston on Hernando de Talavera’s letter of advice to the Countess of Benavente. However, other essays in the volume demonstrate that medieval and early modern Iberian self-fashioning was not solely the domain of the nobility, undertaken in order to thrive at court through the acquisition of prestige and wealth. Other motivating factors for self-fashioning have included expressions of religious identity, in particular that of converts, as seen in the essay by David Gugel on Anselm de Turmeda, as well as the promotion of family and religious communities via identity creation, themes explored by Lesley Twomey, Montserrat Piera, and Caroline Smith. In addition, the establishment of authorial identity as manifested in literary productions was often a motivating factor behind self-fashioning efforts, topics explored in the essays by Wendell P. Smith, Michael Harney, Daniel Hartnett, and Albert Lloret. Finally, it should be understood that the contributors to this volume are engaged in essential foundational investigative work. Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia sheds new light on the nature of an individual’s relationship to society regardless of time or place. It is important, therefore, to note that, given the diversity of past approaches to the question of identity and identity fashioning, one finds a rich but perforce contradictory vocabulary to describe the concept itself in  the pages of our volume, including “self-fashioning,” “identity creation,” “self-identity,” “self-awareness,” “public personae,” and “public image,” among others. This volume seeks to be inclusive, and because it includes initial investigations of medieval and early modern self-fashioning in Iberia, it

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embraces diverse investigatory models of the subject, explicit and implicit, new and traditional, largely because there is no generally agreed-upon definition for the object of our study. Some of our volume authors have a highly developed or sophisticated notion of self-fashioning as a theoretical construct, while others are grounded in a particular dimension or aspect of the  process itself and, consequently, how they believe self-fashioning can be  identified in medieval and early modern individuals. In this way, our volume accounts for multiple definitions of self-fashioning and identity creation in that it embraces all possible models as we seek to provide a more robust and comprehensive vision of medieval and early modern Iberian identity creation.

The Individual Essays

Essays in Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia discover self-fashioning and identity creation throughout the Iberian Peninsula, including Castile, Aragon, and Portugal, from the 14th to the 16th centuries. As such, this volume offers essential cultural boundaries and contexts within which to most effectively explore the applicability of selffashioning to lands and times far removed from Greenblatt’s Renaissance England. The many and varied approaches to self-fashioning and identity formation in medieval and early modern Iberia can be seen throughout the volume. Also of note is the fact that, throughout the entire work, it is possible to see the connection between literature and self-fashioning, as Greenblatt initially described in Renaissance Self-Fashioning: Self-fashioning derives its interest precisely from the fact that it functions without regard for a sharp distinction between literature and social life. It invariably crosses the boundaries between the creation of literary characters, the shaping of one’s own identity, the experience of being molded by forces outside of one’s own control, the attempt to fashion other selves.12 All 12 essays in Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia have a literary or epistolary component to them, making one of Greenblatt’s parameters of self-fashioning, that it is seen “always, 12

Ibid., 3.

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though not exclusively, in language,”13 particularly applicable to the present volume. The first chapter in Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia is Jaume Aurell’s “Strategies of Royal Self-fashioning: Iberian Kings’ Self-Coronations.” Aurell explores the self-fashioning of these three medieval Castilian and Aragonese monarchs, in particular how they deliberately fashioned early notions of kingship by choosing to crown themselves in calculated deviance from the traditional coronation ritual in which kings were crowned by representatives of the Church. Aurell examines the historical accounts of these coronations, including autobiographical narratives by the kings themselves and manuscript illustrations, in order to contextualize these early monarchs’ self-fashioning choices. Zita Rohr’s essay, “Lessons for my Daughter: Self-fashioning Stateswomanship in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon,” examines the deliberate self-fashioning efforts of four Aragonese royal women in the 14th century: Elionor of Sicily, Violant of Bar, María de Luna, and Yolande of Aragon, as well as their innovative conceptualization of “stateswomanship.” Rohr’s extensively documented chapter describes how these four female members of the same royal dynasty seized control of their political and personal destinies as rulers and in the process redefined what it meant to exercise authority as a ruling female. Elionor, Violant, and María served as examples for the younger Yolande, in effect laying out her path toward the effective exercise of authority. Rohr also presents two counter-examples of highly ineffective self-fashioning tactics as practiced by two other royal women of the same era, Sibil.la de Fortià and Isabeau of Bavaria, whose failure to fashion themselves as strong, capable leaders led to their downfall. This essay is a commanding example of purposeful selffashioning in medieval Aragon and, as such, provides a brilliant counterpoint to traditional, stylized portrayals of female monarchs as mere fashionable figureheads. David Gugel continues the exploration of Iberian self-fashioning with his fascinating essay on religious identity, “Moor or Mallorquín? Anselm Turmeda’s Ambiguous Identity in the Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca.” Gugel offers a rarely seen glimpse into the world of a medieval convert from Christianity to Islam, Anselm Turmeda (aka Abdallah al-Tarjuman). Turmeda’s Catalan text, the Cobles de la Divisió del regne de Mallorca, written in 1398, is a highly autobiographical entreaty to the citizens of Mallorca to resolve the political differences destroying the island. Turmeda’s writings are from the relatively unique perspective of a new convert to Islam and 13

Ibid., 9.

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illuminate the often painful transition period following conversion. Turmeda’s words also clearly illustrate the inconvenient social nature of conversion, manifested in an inability to separate cleanly and quickly from old beliefs, and the consequent changes to both individual identities and social frameworks. The Cobles is Turmeda’s attempt to make sense of his conflicting loyalties, and the literary scaffold within which he conveys this struggle is an example of self-fashioning of religious and, consequently, social identity in medieval Aragon. The fourth chapter in the volume is Daniel Hartnett’s “The Marques de Santillana’s Library and Literary Reputation.” Hartnett explores individual self-fashioning through literature, but from a rather unique perspective. Hartnett’s essay relates how Íñigo López de Mendoza, the Marqués de Santillana (1398–1458), carefully crafted his public image as an intellectual through the deliberate acquisition of rare manuscripts, many of them works by Dante, and how this intentional self-fashioning as an learned individual led to his advancement in the court of Juan II. Santillana’s well-stocked library, one of the most extensive in 15th-century Castile, allowed him to control regional access to works of great historical and literary value, vicariously transferring to him the perception of worth that is so elusively and effectively tied to the idea of exclusivity. Hartnett describes how this self-fashioning contributed to the historical perception of Santillana’s reputation as an intellectual, in spite of the possibility that Santillana may not have been well versed in Latin. Hartnett also discusses the social leveraging that Santillana’s control of Dante’s popular yet relatively unavailable works offered to their owner. The essay provides a detailed catalogue of Santillana’s holdings of works by Dante and other authors as evidence of Santillana’s patterns of text acquisition and how these selections had benefits for him far beyond personal intellectual growth. Michael Harney’s “Ludology, Self-fashioning, and Entrepreneurial Mas­ culinity in Iberian Novels of Chivalry” mines the genre of Spanish chivalric romances for evidence of deliberate self-fashioning. Harney acknowledges the potential difficulty of applying Greenblatt’s authorial-biographical definition of self-fashioning to the anonymous romances and also cautions against the wholesale acceptance of these literary adventures as faithful representations of the reality of medieval men at arms. He does note, however, the shared goal of social prominence of both literary and de facto knights, an objective often affected by a knight’s marriage to a rich woman of a socially superior class. Harney compares fictional and chivalric self-fashioning to theatrical productions, concluding that both were rooted in the social world of false fronts and competitive gamesmanship; he also examines the role of female protagonists

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in chivalric romances, most notably the impact of female adherence to or, more often, subversion of defined patriarchal hierarchy. Harney’s exploration of the tension between the superior social status of the desired princess/ heiress and the lower status of the fortune-seeking knight-errant deftly encapsulates the nature of fictional self-fashioning in the romance and offers conclusions as to how this literary creation of identity illustrates the social tensions of the late medieval period in Iberia. Wendell P. Smith’s chapter, “In Search of the Author: Self-fashioning and the  Gender Debate in Fifteenth-Century Castile,” provides examples from ­cancionero poetry, historiography, and the treatises of the querelle des femmes in 15th-century Castile, including works by Álvaro de Luna, Juan de Mena, Diego de Valera, Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Diego de San Pedro, Juan de Flores, Fernando del Pulgar, and Fernando de Rojas. Smith examines these texts in order to frame the gender debate in 15th-century Castile as a cultural context for self-fashioning. Although gender-debate treatises were ostensibly about the nature of women, Smith argues that they also contributed to the creation of the identities of their male authors; while works of courtly love would seem to be in opposition to misogynistic texts such as the Corbacho, in fact both authorial strategies allowed for the creation of male identity as opposed, allied, or ambiguously related to that of Woman. It is within this context that Smith explores the applicability of Greenblatt’s Elizabethan-era theory for late 15th-century Castile, including an investigation of self-fashioning in the works of authors on both sides of the gender debate, and how techniques changed with ascension of Isabel I and the consequent reframing of gender and power. Smith also examines the self-fashioning of two converso authors, Diego de Valera and Fernando del Pulgar, who used their writings to manage the “doubling of consciousness” they felt as converso courtiers and whose works reveal intriguing choices of self-projection versus repression; Pulgar’s public works, for example, reveal a mindful “self-cancellation” that is absent in his private correspondence. Both authors demonstrate conscious awareness of the impact of authorial choices on identity, including the ability to distance oneself from political conundrums. Smith’s essay concludes with an exploration of Fernando de Rojas’s La Celestina (1499), in which issues of self and identity within the Castilian gender debate take on new meaning in the speech of the socially unrestricted title female character. Many of the essays in Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia explore the self-fashioning that occurs when an individual creates his or her own identity through the manipulation of the identities of others, be they individuals or groups. This vicarious selffashioning is seen in the attempts of monarchs to influence the behavior of

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their married royal children living in foreign courts, as in the essay by Núria Silleras-Fernández, and in letters and books written to influence the conduct of others, as in the chapters by Mark Johnston and Zita Rohr. This volume also examines identity fashioning of families, clans, or religious communities in their attempts to influence the sense of identity of its members, as in the essay by Montserrat Piera that explores the fashioning efforts of the powerful Cartagena family in the 14th and 15th centuries in Castile. This type of vicarious self-fashioning is a recurrent feature of identity creation, as was seen in Greenblatt’s characterization of literary self-fashioning in Renaissance England. The ability to influence others is a key component of self-fashioning and speaks to the relative strength of an individual’s concept of self. Mark Johnston explores self-fashioning by controlling the conduct of others in his chapter, “A Theology of Self-fashioning: Hernando de Talavera’s Letter of  Advice to the Countess of Benavente.” Johnston’s composition addresses a f­undamental aspect of self-fashioning in the medieval era: the abundant ­corpus of texts on conduct and behavior. According to Johnston, these works came from diverse genres, including wisdom literature, theological treatises, speculum texts (the so-called “mirrors for princes”), and chivalric manuals, as well as advice letters from parents to their children and many other specialized works on how to act. Johnston’s chapter contextualizes Talavera’s letter, written for María Pacheco, the Countess of Benavente, as a careful defense of the Countess’s right to craft for herself the daily regimen appropriate to her estado (status); it also demonstrates how Talavera applied basic principles of moral theology to theorizing commonplace advice on aristocratic conduct. In doing so, Johnston argues, Talavera created an exceptionally coherent model for the Countess’s ongoing self-fashioning of her role as a noblewoman as well as her self-realization of her individual agency in this role. Núria Silleras-Fernández’s essay, “Inside Perspectives: Catalina and João III of Portugal and a Speculum for a Queen-to-Be,” describes another example of vicarious self-fashioning, this time as practiced by two married Portuguese monarchs in the early 16th century, Catalina and João III. These efforts were directed at the couple’s only surviving daughter, María Manuela of Portugal (1527–45), immediately following her marriage to her double first cousin, Felipe, Prince of Asturias, who would eventually succeed his father, Carlos I, to the throne of Spain as Felipe II. Catalina and João wrote three personal letters to María, crafting a personal speculum for the princess to help her navigate the intricacies of her new married life in a foreign court. Silleras-Fernández contextualizes the couple’s fashioning efforts as a type of self-fashioning once removed, as their missives encouraged María to heed their sage parental advice as a conduit to the creation of her own self-identity.

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The chapter by Albert Lloret, “Forging Renaissance Authorship: Petrarch and Ausiàs March,” offers a tantalizing description of the process by which the poems of the famed Catalan writer Ausiàs March found renewed popularity a century after his death and describes how this resurgence was in part shaped by the structural and translation choices made during the production of the 1539 editio princeps of March’s poetry by Juan Navarro. Lloret contends that the creation of this edition actually entailed a recodification of March’s mid-15th-century poems in the style of Petrarch’s sonnets. This fashioning of March’s posthumous identity was intentional, extending to the substitution or suppression of some erotic language and specific religious content, in addition to reshaping the format of the poems to create a recognizable Petrarchan sequence, likely more to the taste of 16th-century book aficionados. March’s works were, in effect, refashioned for a different audience, thereby changing their original interpretation and altering March’s literary identity and legacy forever. Caroline Smith’s essay, “Conflict or Compromise? Identity and the Cathedral Chapter of Girona in the Fourteenth Century,” explores the idea that identity in medieval Iberia was multi-faceted, often depending on family status or profession. Her essay explores the identity of the cathedral canons of Girona, whose actions as described in archival documentation often expose a preoccupation for the promotion of family members, a secular predilection that by rights should not concern an ecclesiastic. Smith reveals how the canons’ mobility came less from economic stability than from a relative elasticity between secular and ecclesiastical social hierarchies. This flexibility meant that there was no clearly established “alien” or “authority,” to employ Greenblatt’s terms, to create boundaries for social behavior, which permitted the canons to have two loci of allegiance—family lineage and ecclesiastical hierarchy—by fashioning their identities through the creation of a composite compromise between the expectations of both groups. Lesley Twomey continues the exploration of life in a religious community with her essay, “Mary Magdalene and Martha: Sor Isabel de Villena’s Selffashioning through Constructing Her Community.” Twomey examines the Vita christi written by the Catalan nun, Isabel de Villena, in order to show how it demonstrates Villena’s self-fashioning as seen through her descriptions of two female followers of Christ, Mary Magdalene and Martha of Bethany. Although mindful that Villena’s example does not fit precisely into Greenblatt’s original theoretical framework, Twomey does see self-fashioning in the work of this late medieval nun, and she carefully details how Villena purposefully crafted her representations of Mary and Martha so that they would serve

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as models of hard work and patience for the nuns in Villena’s convent. She also portrays Mary Magdalene as a woman who would have been recognizable to the noble female patrons who supported Villena’s convent. To illustrate the impact of Villena’s depiction of Mary and Martha on Villena’s own authority and purpose as an author, Twomey presents the depictions of Mary and Martha by three male authors of Vita christi texts—John of Caulibus, Francesc Eiximenis, and Ludolphus of Saxony—as foils in order to illuminate the motives behind Villena’s portraits. Twomey ultimately demonstrates that Villena fashions her sex through her construction of female identity by using Mary and Martha as examples, thereby remaking the life of Christ to her own perception and providing a glimpse into Villena’s convent world. The final chapter in Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity is “Debunking the ‘Self’ in Self-fashioning: Communal Fashioning in the Cartagena Clan,” by Montserrat Piera. Piera moves beyond individual selffashioning to an examination of the communal self-fashioning of the famed Cartagena family, who dominated Castilian politics, letters, and society throughout much of the 14th and 15th centuries. Piera validates both the existence of self-fashioning in medieval Castile as well as the importance of individual agency in its manufacture. Her analysis focuses on the biographies and writings of the family patriarch Solomon HaLevi (c.1351–1435), a convert to Christianity who (re)fashioned himself into a Christian bishop, Pablo de Santa María, in 1390, as well as Pablo’s brother, the chronicler Alvar García de Santa María (c.1370–1460), and Alvar’s son, Alonso de Cartagena (1384– 1456), writer of the polemic pamphlet Altercatio praeminentia sedium. Piera’s final portrait is of Pablo’s granddaughter, Teresa de Cartagena, author of the first theological treatise that defended women’s authority to write. Piera asserts that each member of the Cartagena clan deliberately practiced selffashioning based in communitas, a “relatively structure-less society, based on relations of equality and solidarity and resistant to the normative social structure,” in order to protect themselves and their family members, all while promoting the fame and fortune of the entire clan. Their conscious and very successful efforts at crafting a strong and authoritative joint identity not only served to protect their family from religious and political persecution but also shaped overarching public and religious opinion among their contemporaries. Through her analysis of representative Cartagena-authored texts such  as Las siete edades del mundo, Crónica de Juan II, and Arboleda de los enfermos, Piera uncovers the creation of a powerful communal identity and its resultant ­societal influence on issues of religion, power, gender, and class in medieval Castile.

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Selected Bibliography on Self-Fashioning and Identity

Ashley, Kathleen, and Robert L.A. Clark, eds. Medieval Conduct. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Blackmore, Josiah, and Gregory S. Hutcheson, eds. Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Durham, n.c.: Duke University Press, 1999. Bleach, Lorna, Katariina Närä, Sian Prosser, and Paola Scarpini, eds. In Search of the Medieval Voice: Expressions of Identity in the Middle Ages. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. Bouza, Fernando. Imagen y propaganda: Capítulos de historia cultural del reinado de Felipe II. Madrid: Akal, 1998. ———. Palabra e imagen en la corte: Cultura oral y visual de la nobleza en el Siglo de Oro. Madrid: Abada, 2003. Bratsch-Prince, Dawn. “The Politics of Self-representation in the Letters of Violant de Bar (1365–1431).” Medieval Encounters 12, no. 1 (2006): 2–25. Brownlee, Kevin, and Walter Stephens, eds. Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Hanover, n.h.: University Press of New England, 1989. Brownlee, Marina S., and Han Ulrich Gumbrecht, eds. Cultural Authority in Golden Age Spain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860. Reprint by Renaissance Classics, 2012. Burke, Peter. “Representations of the Self from Petrarch to Descartes.” In Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Roy Porter, 17–28. London: Routledge, 1997. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Metamorphosis and Identity. New York: Zone Books, 2005. Callinicos, Alex. Making History: Agency, Structure, and Change in Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1978. Clavería, Carlos. “Notas sobre la caracterización de la personalidad en Generaciones y semblanzas.” Anales de la Universidad de Murcia 10 (1952): 481–526. Crawford, Michael J. The Fight for Status and Privilege in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile, 1465–1598. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014. Dalia Juárez, Raquel. Miguel Cervantes and Self-fashioning: The Invention of the Selves. Ann Arbor, mi: umi, 2003. Demoor, Marysa, ed. Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves, and Self-fashioning, 1880–1930. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Denery, Dallas G. Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology, and Religious Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

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Di Camillo, Ottavio. El humanismo castellano del siglo XV. Valencia: Fernando Torres, 1976. Duggan, John. Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-fashioning in the Rhetorical Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Earenfight, Theresa, ed. Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain. Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2005. ———. Medieval Queenship. New York: Palgrave, 2013. Eisenbichler, Konrad. “Charles V in Bologna: The Self-fashioning of a Man and a City.” Renaissance Studies 13, no. 4 (1999): 430–39. Farmer, Sharon. “Personal Perceptions, Collective Behavior: Twelfth Century Suffrages for the Dead.” In Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, edited by Richard Trexler, 231–39. Binghamton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985. Fenster, Thelma, and Daniel Lord Smail, eds. Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Floger, Robert. Writing as Poaching: Interpellation and Self-fashioning in Colonial relaciones de méritos y servicios. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books, 1970. ———. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. ———. “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 777–95. Gauvard, Claude. “La Fama, une parole fondatrice.” Médiévales 24 (1993): 5–13. Giddens, Anthony. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1959. de Grazia, Margareta. “The Modern Divide: From Either Side.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 3 (2007): 453–67. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. ———. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. ———. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Greene, Thomas. “The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature.” In The Disciplines of Criticism, edited by Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene, and Lowry Nelson, Jr., 242–64. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968. Hutcheson, Gregory S. “Cracks in the Labyrinth: Juan de Mena, Converso Experience, and the Rise of the Spanish Nation.” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 25, no. 1 (1996): 37–52. Johnson, Laurie. “Shakespeare’s Gifts: Self-fashioning, Authorising, Stephen Greenblatt.” In “Rapt in Secret Studies”: Emerging Shakespeare, edited by Darryl Chalk and Laurie Johnson, 329–46. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar, 2010.

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Johnston, Mark D., ed. Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides to Behaviour for Youths, with English Translations. Medieval Academy Books, 111. Toronto: University of Toronto Press and Medieval Academy of America, 2009. Lozano, Jorge Sebastián. “Choices and Consequences: The Construction of Isabel de Portugal’s Image.” In Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, edited by Theresa Earenfight, 145–62. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Luciani, Frederick. Literary Self-fashioning in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Lewisburg, me: Bucknell University Press, 2004. Marsh, Peter. “Identity: An Ethogenic Perspective.” In Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, edited by Richard Trexler, 17–30. Binghampton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985. Matarasso, Pauline. Queen’s Mate: Three Women of Power in France on the Eve of the Renaissance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. Melchior, Bonnie. “Gender and Self-fashioning.” Studies in the Humanities 27, no. 1 (2000): 35+. General OneFile. 15 June 2012. Mirabella, M. Bella. “Feminist Self-fashioning: Christine de Pizan and The Treasure of the City of Ladies.” The European Journal of Women’s Studies 6 (1999): 9–20. Patterson, Lee. “Introduction: Critical Historicism and Medieval Studies.” In Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1530, edited by Lee Patterson, 1–14. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990a. ———, ed. Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1530. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990b. ———. “On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies.” Speculum 65, no. 1 (1990c): 87–108. Pieters, Jürgen. Moments of Negotiation: The New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001. Porter, Roy, ed. Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present. London: Routledge, 1997. Seidenspinner-Núñez, Dayle. “Inflecting the Converso Voice: A Commentary on Recent Theories.” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 25, no. 1 (1996): 6–18. Shils, Edward. Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Smith, Paul. Discerning the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. Stanislawski, Michael. Autobiographical Jews. Essays in Jewish Self-fashioning. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. Strosetzki, Christoph. La literatura como profesión: en torno a la autoconcepción de la existencia erudita y literaria en el Siglo de Oro español. Kassel: Reichenberger, 1997.

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Trexler, Richard C., ed. Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Binghamton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985. Veenstra, Jan R. “The New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt: On Poetics of Culture and the Interpretation of Shakespeare.” History and Theory 34, no. 3 (1995): 174–98. Weissberger, Barbara. Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Weissman, Ronald F.E. “Reconstructing Renaissance Sociology: The ‘Chicago School’ and the Study of Renaissance Society.” In Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, edited by Richard C. Trexler, 39–45. Binghamton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985. Wilson, Scott. Cultural Materialism: Theory and Practice. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

chapter 1

Strategies of Royal Self-fashioning: Iberian Kings’ Self-coronations1 Jaume Aurell Medieval coronations served as opportunities to emphasize the king’s authority, the nature of his power, the use of political symbols, the relationship between the king and his people, and the sacred idea of the monarchy.2 The power of the symbolism naturally emerges in connection with the visual experience and political practice of the coronation ceremony—particularly visible at the precise moment of coronation.3 Thus coronation ceremonies have become one of the privileged fields for understanding the symbols and politics of the Middle Ages. As Percy Schramm states, “the consecration of the monarch is one 1 I appreciate Laura Delbrugge’s invitation to participate in this volume and her active task of co-ordination and editing. In particular, this essay owes a great deal to her careful and clever revision of the text. This article is part of the Religion and Civil Society Project sponsored by the Instituto de Cultura y Sociedad (ics) of the University of Navarra; the project is directed by Montserrat Herrero. 2 For a bibliographical introduction on medieval coronations, see János M. Bak’s “Introduction: Coronation Studies—Past, Present, and Future,” in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. János M. Bak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 1–15. For a general context of the symbols of kingship based on a study of coronations, see Percy E. Schramm’s A History of the English Coronation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1937); for its connection with political and legal theory, see Walter Ullmann’s The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship (London: Methuen, 1969); and for the political theology and the overall reception of the medieval state, consult Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). For examples of medieval English coronations, see Roy Strong’s Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (London: Harper, 2005); H.G. Richardson’s “The Coronation in Medieval England: The Evolution of the Office and the Oath,” Traditio 16 (1960): 111–202; Ernst H. Kantorowicz, “Inalienability: A Note on the Canonical Practice and the English Coronation Oath in the Thirteenth Century,” Speculum 29 (1954): 488–502; Paul L. Ward, “The Coronation Ceremony in Medieval England,” Speculum 24 (1939): 160–78; and for French coronations, see Richard A. Jackson, Vive le Roi! A History of the French Coronation from Charles V to Charles X (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984). For the analysis of the long-term continuity of the political symbols of coronations, see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, “Oriens Augusti—Lever du roi,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17 (1963): 117–77. 3 For the cultural and political power of rituals, see Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); as well as Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291003_003

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of the most magnificent and most genuine products of the medieval spirit, and for this reason it is worthwhile attempting to grasp its ­minute details.”4 In recent decades, historians and anthropologists have emphasized the art of interpreting the many meanings of a single rhetorical figure or symbolic event. This tendency has been closely associated with the concept of “thick description,” a term coined by Clifford Geertz and originating in symbolic anthropology but one that has also had adherents among historians.5 All events, but especially political gestures carrying a strong symbolic charge, are capable of generating multiple meanings, in some cases even contradictory ones. In medieval coronations, the language of words merges with the language of symbols. Contemporary with anthropological approaches to medieval symbolic practices, early modernist literary critics led by Stephen Greenblatt have created the concept of “self-fashioning,” trying to discern how individuals or groups define or express identity and authority through a variety of literary and performative practices.6 In the creation and expression of 4 Schramm, A History of the English, 10–11. See also Jacques Le Goff, “Is Politics Still the Backbone of History?” Daedalus 100 (1971): 1–19; Stefan Weinfurter, “Authority and Legitimation of Royal Policy and Action: The Case of Henry II,” in Medieval Concepts of the Past. Ritual, Memory, Historiography, eds. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick Geary (Washington: German Historical Institute, 2002), 19–38; John W. Bernhardt, “King Henry II of Germany: Royal Self-representation and Historical Memory,” in Althoff, Medieval Concepts, 39–70, and David Cannadine, “Introduction: The Divine Rite of Kings,” in Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, eds. David Cannadine and Simon Price (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1–19. This last work describes the connections between history and anthropology in relation to these ceremonies. A. van Gennep, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Edmund R. Leach, and Meyer Fortes have provided historians with rich epistemological data. The question of cultural authority has been explored for early modern literature, and some of these theories may be usefully applied to medieval issues. See, for instance, Cultural Authority in Golden Age Spain, eds. Marina S. Brownlee and Han Ulrich Gumbrecht (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Walter Stephens (Hanover, nh: University Press of New England, 1989); and Auctoritas: Authorship and Authority, eds. Catherine Emerson, Edward A. O’Brien, and Laurent Semichon (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 2001). 5 For the concept of “thick description,” see Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3–30. 6 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); and Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004). See also Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies, eds. Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1992); Jürgen Pieters, Moments of Negotiation: The New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt (Amsterdam: Amsterdam

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identity, authors and historical actors employ inherited attributes, acquired skills, and performed actions to persuade contemporaries in ways that exemplify the values and expectations prevalent in their historical context. In fact, Greenblatt used Geertz’s definition of culture to argue that self-fashioning is “the cultural system of meanings that creates specific individuals by governing the passage from abstract potential to concrete historical embodiment.”7 Greenblatt proposed thus a “new historicism,” in particular the notion that subjects and authors are connected by text and context and their resulting ability to highlight the authorial agency as well as their ability to self-create a new identity—a process which has been labeled as self-fashioning. Seen from this perspective, self-fashioning becomes an artfully manipulative process in which a new identity is purposefully created and then presented to the world. To be sure, this concept of self-fashioning has been applied extensively to literary and historical texts, creating the related concepts of self-textuality, rhetorical self-fashioning, literary self-fashioning, textual self-fashioning, and authorial self-fashioning, all trying to study “how authors construct their identities within literary texts.”8 Yet there are not as many examples of the application of this model to the interpretations of rituals, ceremonies, and performative  practices—what we could call gestural self-fashioning or

University Press, 2001). For the application of New Historicism to medieval studies, see Lee Patterson, “Introduction: Critical Historicism and Medieval Studies,” in Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1530, ed. Lee Patterson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 1–14. 7 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 4–5. 8 John Duggan, Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 16. On the literary concepts I mention in the text, see Peter Burke, “Representations of the Self from Petrarch to Descartes,” in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1997), 17–28; Robert Floger, Writing as Poaching: Interpellation and Self-fashioning in Colonial relaciones de méritos y servicios (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 118; and Michael Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews: Essays in Jewish Self-fashioning (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 12–14. This approach has been particularly fruitful in its encounter with gender studies: Frederick Luciani, Literary Self-fashioning in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Lewisburg, ME: Bucknell University Press, 2004); M. Bella Mirabella, “Feminist Self-fashioning. Christine de Pizan and The Treasure of the City of Ladies,” The European Journal of Women’s Studies 6 (1999): 9–20; Dawn Bratsch-Prince, “The Politics of Self-representation in the Letters of Violant de Bar (1365–1431),” Medieval Encounters 12, no. 1 (2006): 2–25; Raquel Dalia Juárez, Miguel Cervantes and Self-fashioning: The Invention of the Selves (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 2003). See also the collective volume Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, ed. Theresa Earenfight (Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2005), which complements my “Kingship” approach with the “Queenship” dimension in medieval Spain.

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performative self-fashioning. Taking into account the aforementioned methodologies of symbolic anthropology and new historicism, this article will explore the peculiar and transgressive gestures of self-coronation of Alfons IV of Aragon, Alfonso XI of Castile, and Pere IV of Aragon, performed in 1328, 1332, and 1336, respectively. Specifically, this essay will use as its theoretical frame the concepts of thick description provided by anthropologists as well as the concept of self-fashioning provided by literary critics.9 In doing so, it will show that these three 14th-century Iberian kings broke the established tradition of coronations by crowning themselves rather than being crowned by the bishop. Their ritual transgression makes us wonder to what extent their actions were deliberate expressions of reformulating and self-fashioning their political identity and personal authority. While the paths taken by the kings of Castile and Aragon initially were distinct, they ultimately converged on a uniform practice of self-coronation, as evidenced by the aforementioned selfcoronations performed between 1328 and 1336.

From Narrative to Performative Self-coronations in Castile: Sancho II to Alfonso XI

The first unorthodox ceremony of self-coronation appears in Castile at the beginning of the 12th century.10 Two chronicles, the Historia Silense, c. 1115, and 9

10

Alfons the Benign’s self-coronation is narrated in Ramon Muntaner’s Crònica, in Les Quatre Grans Cròniques, ed. Ferran Soldevila (Barcelona: Selecta, 1971), 939–49 (Chap. 297). The relationship among Alfonso XI’s ceremonies of knighting, anointing, and selfcrowning is narrated in Crónica del rey Don Alfonso el Onceno, in Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, ed. Diego Catalán (Madrid: Gredos, 1977), 506–10 (Chaps 120–21). Pere el Ceremoniós’s self-coronation is narrated in Pere el Ceremoniós, Crònica, in Les Quatre Grans Cròniques, 1025–26 (Chap. 2: 10–12). For the coronation of the kings of Castile, see Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, “Un ceremonial inédito de coronación de los reyes de Castilla,” in Estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españolas (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1965), 739–63; and Luis García de Valdeavellano, Curso de historia de las instituciones españolas (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1968), 430–32. For a general view of the ideological conception of the Iberian monarchy, see José Antonio Maravall, “Sobre el concepto de monarquía en la edad media española,” in Estudios dedicados a Menéndez Pidal (Madrid: csic, 1954), 401–17; Francisco Elías de Tejada, Historia del pensamiento político catalán. La Cataluña clásica (987–1479) (Seville: Montejurra 1963); and, more recently, José Manuel Nieto Soria, Ceremonias de la realeza: propaganda y legitimación en la Castilla Trastámara (Madrid: Nerea, 1993); José Manuel Nieto Soria, Fundamentos del poder real en Castilla (siglos XIII–XVI) (Madrid: Eudema, 1988); and Peter Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).

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Bishop Pelagius of Oviedo’s chronicle, c. 1118, introduced the narration of the self-coronation practiced by the violent King Sancho II, an enemy of his own brother, Alfonso VI, who eventually succeeded Sancho as king of Castile. Pelagius of Oviedo recounts that, in 1072, the usurper-king Sancho II, after having defeated his brother Alfonso VI, “et imposuit sibi in Legione coronam” (he placed the crown on his own head in Leon.)11 We cannot confirm the veracity of this story, but we can take for granted that the gesture existed at least in the chronicler’s imagination, and his explicit mention of it may suggest that it is a change from previous practice. Although Sancho II receives some praise in the chronicle, the gesture is unquestionably seen by the chronicler Pelagius as a sign of usurpation, as Paul, the duke of Narbonne, who fought Wamba four centuries before in the context of the Visigothic Spain, is described in the Historia Silense as a usurper for having been named king after placing the crown on his own head.12 It is certain that the compiler of the Historia Silense knew the account of Paul’s selfcoronation, fixed at the end of 7th century in Bishop Julián’s Historia Wamba, in which Paul is always defined as tyrannus and usurper, in contraposition to the religious and legitimate King Wamba.13 The same parallelism between the transgression of self-crowned Castilian kings and that of usurping Visigothic kings is expounded by the chronicler Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo, who stated in his history of Spain (c. 1245) that Sancho II crowned himself, and also in his history of the Arabs that kings had crowned themselves in the Visigothic period.14 Sancho’s transgressive self-coronation contrasts with 11

12

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14

Crónica del obispo Don Pelayo, ed. Benito Sánchez Alonso (Madrid: Sucesores de Hernando, 1924), 78. For Sancho II’s self-coronation, see Thomas Deswarte, De la destruction a la restauration. L’idéologie du royaume d’Oviedo-León (VIIIe–XIe siècles) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 206; Linehan, History, 398; Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065–1109 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 63. Historia Silense, ed. Francisco Santos Coco (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadenevra, 1921), 5–6; Historia Silense, ed. Justo Pérez de Urbel and Atilano González Ruiz-Zorrilla (Madrid: Escuela de Estudios Medievales, 1959), 117. Julián, Obispo de Toledo, Historia Wambae regis: Chaps. 3–4; ed. Wilhelm Levison, in Sancti Iuliani Toletanae Sedis Episcopi Opera, Pars I (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 240–41. On the Visigothic origins of coronations, see Thomas Deswarte, “Le Christ-roi: autel et couronne votive dans l’Espagne wisigothique,” in Églises et pouvoirs, eds. Bruno Béthouart and Jérome Grévy (Boulogne-sur-Mer: Maison de la Recherche en sciences humaines “Palais Impérial,” 2007), 71–83. Rodrigo de Toledo, Historia de Rebus Hispaniae, Chaps 7, 20: “sibi trium regnorum imposuit diadema,” ed. Juan Fernández Valverde (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987); Rodrigo de Toledo, Historia Arabum, Chap. 9: “more rerum Gothorum sibi imposuit diadema,” ed. José Lozano Sánchez (Seville: Publicaciones de la Universidad, 1974); Linehan, History, 392, 398.

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the practice of other Castilian kings who were almost contemporary to him. Fernando I of Castile (1037–65), for instance, appears as a legitimate king who respects the rules of ascension to power, accepting the crown conventionally and (supposedly) being crowned in 1038 and named king.15 Thus the gesture of self-coronation is seen in Castile, at least during the 12th century, as a transgression of a natural receipt of authority rather than a legitimate practice that served to increase kingly autonomy. It is noteworthy, then, that this once highly transgressional gesture would become a legitimate practice only two centuries later, when Alfonso XI (1312–50) also performed a self-coronation. Castile had experienced a shift at the beginning of the 14th century with regard to coronation ceremonies, with the appearance of a new ceremonial, complementary to the former “Ceremonial de Toledo”; this revised ceremonial was subsequently elaborated around the 1280s. This new ceremonial was probably commissioned by the same Alfonso XI who had relatives in Portugal and was elaborated by a Portuguese bishop of Coimbra (1319–33) called Ramon around the 1320s.16 Alfonso XI followed this ceremonial in his installation, which consisted of the three successive ceremonies of knighting, anointing, and coronation. This ceremonial confirms that the coronation was at the core of the ceremony, since—contrary to the habitual practice—the part of the text devoted specifically to the ceremony starts with the coronation, while the anointing is at the end.17 Alfonso’s self-coronation is narrated in the Crónica del rey Alfonso Onceno.18 The chronicler explains that the king wanted to be knighted and crowned because he was determined to make his kingdom great.19 This historical narration allows us to compare the ceremonial rubrics included in the El Escorial 15 16

17 18

19

Crónica del Obispo Don Pelayo, 71. This document is usually called “El ceremonial de El Escorial” because it is kept in the Monastery of Escorial. The transcription and some interesting comments on the ceremonial appear in Claudio Sánchez Albornoz’s “Un ceremonial inédito de coronación de los reyes de Castilla,” in Estudios sobre las instituciones medievales españolas (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1965), 739–63 (transcription of the ceremonial, 753–63; details on the Dayton, 741–42). See also Linehan, History, 584–92. Sánchez Albornoz, “Un ceremonial,” 756. On Alfonso XI’s self-coronation, see Peter Linehan, “The Mechanization of Ritual: Alfonso XI of Castile in 1332,” in Ritti e rituali nelle società medievali, eds. Jacques Chiffoleau, Lauro Martines, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’alto Medioevo, 1994), 309–27; Ramos Vicent María del Pilar, Reafirmación del poder monárquico en Castilla: la coronación de Alfonso XI (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1983); and Linehan, History, 584–601. Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, ed. Catalán, 507.

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Ordo that were supposed to be followed with Alfonso’s actual performance on the day of his coronation. In truth, Alfonso did not follow the ceremonial he himself had commissioned. Peter Linehan expresses well the contrast between the “theory,” as planned by the ceremonial, and the “practice,” as narrated by the chronicle: “Nowhere is the contrast between their two perceptions of the king’s place in society, the bishop’s and the chronicler’s, more startlingly apparent than in their accounts of what ought to have and what really did happen on the occasion of the knighting of Alfonso XI.”20 The Castilian Alfonso XI’s self-coronation in 1332 was the culmination of a complex ritual that began with his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela to be knighted by the mechanical arm of the sculpture of the Apostle and Patron of Spain on July 25, 1332.21 Alfonso was then anointed at the Monastery of Las Huelgas (Burgos) in August of that same year,22 in front of the same mechanical sculpture (moved from Santiago to Burgos for the occasion).23 Only then did the king sit on the throne, take the royal diadem, and place it on his own head.24 The automated Saint James had certainly enabled the king of Castile, both in Santiago and Burgos, to assert his independence of all earthly powers both spiritual and secular.25 Yet the discordance between the El Escorial Ceremonial and the ritual followed by Alfonso XI in his installation ceremony is particularly striking at the moment immediately following his anointing. The chronicler explains that, “el Rey subió al altar, e tomó su corona de oro con piedras preciosas e de muy gran presçio, e púsola en la cabeça: e tomó él la otra corona, e púsola a la Reyna, e tornó fincar los ynojos ante el altar” (the King 20 Linehan, History, 592. 21 Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, ed. Catalán, 507. 22 Ibid., 510. 23 Ibid., 507. 24 Teófilo Ruiz explores this story as the singular manifestation of the Castilian royauté sans sacre (royalty without consecration), which does not claim the healing character of both French and England kings nor the backing of the Church in the ceremony of the coronation (Teófilo F. Ruiz, “Une royauté sans sacré: la monarchie castillane du bas moyen age,” Annales Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 39 (1984): 429). See also Marc Bloch, Les rois thaumaturges. Étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué a la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (París: Colin, 1961). 25 For more about the automated Santiago and its function in Alfonso XI’s knighting and anointment, see Linehan, History, 592–93 and 598–99; and Linehan, “Alfonso XI of Castile and the Arm of Santiago (with a Note on the Pope’s Foot),” Miscellanea Domenico Maffei dicata, eds. Antonio García y García and Peter Weimar (Goldbach: Keip, 1995), 121–46. The sculpture-machine of Santiago is still visible today in the cloister of the church of the Monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos.

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ascended to the Altar, and took his crown, which was made of gold with stone of very great price, and placed it on his head; and he took the other crown, and placed it on the Queen, and knelt again in front of the altar).26 The ceremonial had planned the ceremony otherwise: the bishop who said the Mass should have put the miter on the king’s head, over the royal crown.27 Yet there is no mention of the miter in Alfonso XI’s chronicle. The miters belonged to a wider world than Castile had ever known, just as the entire ceremonial evoked scenes which had not been seen since the age of Alfonso VII. Alfonso XI (or, rather, the narration of Alfonso XI’s installation ceremonies) revived practices that the popes had been striving to remove during the previous two centuries.28

From Coronations to Self-coronations in the Crown of Aragon: Alfons the Benign and Pere the Ceremonious

Meanwhile, after having shown a strong reluctance to this gesture for many years, the neighboring Crown of Aragon introduced the ceremony of coronation in 1204, much later than in Castile.29 This disinclination on the part of the Aragonese kings to accept the ceremony of coronation indicates a royal reluctance to submit to ecclesiastical authority and will help to explain future Aragonese kings’ propensity for self-coronation. The first Aragonese king who participated in a coronation ceremony was Pere II, the Catholic (1196–1213). Pere went to Rome in 1204 to receive the diadem from Pope Innocent III, who also conferred upon him the scepter and received homage from the monarch. Pere’s son, Jaume the Conqueror (1213–76), in turn, steadfastly refused to be crowned by Pope Gregory X because he wanted to liberate the kingdom of Aragon from servitude to Rome. As he confesses in his autobiographical Llibre dels fets, Jaume preferred to return to his kingdom without the crown rather than have to pay homage to Rome.30 His successor, Pere III the Great (1276–85), was the first Aragonese king to be crowned in Zaragoza, the capital of the kingdom, in 1276. Although he was crowned by the bishop, he instituted the 26 Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, ed. Catalán, 510. 27 Sánchez Albornoz, “Un ceremonial,” 762–63. 28 Linehan, History, 601. 29 For an overview on Aragonese coronations, see Bonifacio Palacios Martín, La coronación de los reyes de Aragón. 1204–1410: Aportación al estudio de las estructuras políticas medievales (Valencia: Anubar, 1975). 30 James I of Aragon, Llibre dels fets, Chap. 538, in Soldevila, Les quatre grans cròniques, 183. English edition: The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon: A Translation of the Medieval Catalan Llibre dels Fets, trans. Damian Smith and Helena Buffery (Burlington: Ashgate, 2003).

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autonomy of the ceremony, liberating it from Rome.31 Pere III the Great’s successor, Alfons III the Liberal (1285–91), introduced the new oath into the coronation ceremony in Zaragoza in 1286, explicitly declaring that, though he received the crown from the bishop, this did not imply political subordination to Rome.32 Jaume II the Fair (1291–1327) was not crowned officially, perhaps because he considered that his previous coronation as king of Sicily made a new ceremony unnecessary.33 It was Alfons IV the Benign (1327–36) who not only restored the ceremony of the royal installation in the kingdom of Aragon in 1328 but also introduced the daring practice of crowning himself.34 His self-coronation in the Cathedral of Zaragoza in 1328 signaled an important change in the coronation and anointing of the kings of Aragon. The Aragonese kings hitherto had used the Huesca Pontifical ritual, simply adding new ceremonies to it in marginal notes as appropriate, such as the handing over of the pommel granted to Pere II the Catholic by Innocent III. Doctrinal modifications were also introduced, including the substitution of words alluding to the elective nature of monarchy with other later versions emphasizing its hereditary nature. Alfons IV, by contrast, found himself operating in a different context, one in which the European monarchies sought to emulate the pomp of Byzantine Empire in their ceremonies. His coronation was not based on the Huesca Pontifical, but rather on the more ostentatious imperial ceremony of Constantinople, evidenced in the fact that Alfons appeared in the vestments of a deacon.35 The Catalan chronicler Ramon Muntaner provides us with the narration of the auspicious event. He ends his chronicle with a meticulous account of 31

The ceremony is described by the Catalan chronicler Bernat Desclot in his chronicle. Soldevila, Les quatre grans cròniques, 460. 32 Bonifacio Palacios Martín, La coronación de los reyes de Aragón, 308. See also Francesc Carreras i Candi, “Itinerari del rey Anfós II (1285–1291) Lo Liberal,” Boletín de la Real Academia de las Buenas Letras de Barcelona 10 (1921–22): 61–83. 33 Palacios, La coronación de los reyes de Aragón, 190–91. 34 Ramon Muntaner in Crònica, Chap. 297, in Soldevila, Les Quatre Grans Cròniques, 939–49. On the political, religious, and cultural implications of Alfons IV’s coronation, see Jaume Aurell, Authoring the Past. History, Autobiography, and Politics in Medieval Catalonia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 210–12; Palacios, La coronación de los reyes de Aragón, 269–76. 35 Bonifacio Palacios Martin, “El Ceremonial,” in Ceremonial de consagración y coronación de los reyes de Aragón II: Transcripción y estudios (Zaragoza: Diputación General de Aragón, 1992), 104–33; Antonio Durán Gudiol, “El rito de la coronación del rey en Aragón,” in Argensola: Revista de Ciencias Sociales del Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses 103 (1989): 17–40; and Percy E. Schramm, Las Insignias de la realeza en la Edad Media Española (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1960), 93–94.

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Alfons’s coronation, which he likely witnessed personally in 1328. Before the start of the Mass, the king placed the crown and the sword on the high altar “de la sua man” (with his own hands).36 The king was anointed then with chrism on his right shoulder and arm by the archbishop of Zaragoza. At the end of the Mass, the king unstrapped his sword himself and placed it back on the altar, near the crown. Then they began a second Mass, and, after a long ceremony, at the moment of the coronation: Lo dit senyor rei, ell mateix, pres la corona de l’altar e la’s posà al cap; e con la s’hac posada al cap, lo senyor arquebisbe de Toledo, e el senyor infant en Pere e el senyor infant en Ramon Berenguer ­ adobaren-la-li.37 (The Lord King himself took the crown from the altar and placed it on his own head; and when he had done this, the lord Archbishop of Toledo [the king’s brother, who had celebrated the second mass] and the Lord Infante Pedro [also the king’s brother] adjusted it for him.) A murmur of astonishment must have rippled through the audience, since no Iberian or European Ordo of coronation had foreseen the possibility of the substitution of the officiating bishop by the monarch in the act of placing the crown. Yet all the attendants seemed to be in agreement with this unusual procedure, because when the king placed the crown on his head, all the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, princes, knights, and citizens sang the supreme thanksgiving prayer, the Te Deum Laudamus, in loud voices, as was customary. The king then took the gold scepter in his right hand, later transferring it to his left hand, and then took the orb in his right. The king’s deliberate gesture, which signaled his intention to separate the Church from his own secular power, was further manifested in his prayer to God:

36 Muntaner, Crònica, Chap. 297, in Soldevila, Les Quatre Grans Cròniques, 939. 37 Ibid., 940. Muntaner uses a peculiar and rather unusual Catalan verb, adobar, to emphasize that the gesture of putting the crown on his head was performed by the king himself, and that his brothers only “adjusted” it. This verb transmits the idea that the archbishop could barely fix the crown or would have little to do with it once the king had placed it on his own head. Notably, the archbishop of Zaragoza was not part of this ritual, even if he was one of the celebrants of the Mass. Very interestingly, Pere will use exactly the same verb in the narration of his own coronation (Pere el Ceremoniós, Crònica, Chaps 2, 10–12, in Soldevila, Les Quatre Grans Cròniques, 1025–1026), making it evident that he was familiar with Muntaner’s narration.

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E con tot açò fo feit e l’Evangeli fo cantada, lo senyor rei, altra vegada molt ab gran reverència, oferí si mateix e la sua beneita corona a Déu, e s’agenollà devant l’altar molt humilment.38 (And when all this was done and the Gospel had been sung, the Lord King again, with a great reverence, offered himself and his sacred crown to God, and knelt down very humbly before the altar.) Then he sat on the royal throne, placed the scepter and orb on the altar in front of him, and called for all the nobles in order to knight them. A second self-coronation ceremony was performed in the kingdom of Aragon in 1336, when Pere IV of Aragon observed similar rituals as those of his father, Alfons IV, during his own self-coronation, but in a context of considerably more tension.39 We have a very detailed narration of the event, written autobiographically by the king himself in his chronicle, the Llibre. Pere recounts that the solemn rite of anointing and crowning the king was set for April 14, 1336, in Zaragoza’s San Salvador Cathedral. After scrupulously observing the prescriptions for prayer, fasting, personal cleanliness, and wardrobe, the king set off for the cathedral vestry. There he met the celebrant, Pedro López de Luna, and a long list of concelebrants, among them the bishops of Lérida, Tarazona, and Santa Justa (Cerdeña), as well as many priors, canons, and various members of religious orders and also some knights, including the celebrated Ot de Montcada, one of the king’s advisors. The celebrant was the archbishop of Zaragoza, Pedro López de Luna y Ximénez de Urrea (1318–45), to whom the honor fell as Metropolitan of the kingdom’s capital. However, that spring morning there was a heated discussion in the vestry shortly before the start of proceedings. While the prelates were dressing in the sacristy, the archbishop asked Pere to let him place the crown on the king’s head. Pere refused, as he had planned to act in accordance with the custom initiated by his father, Alfons IV, who had crowned himself without the aid of the attendant bishops. The king and the archbishop argued vehemently. As a result, the liturgy was delayed, to the consternation of the assembled throng in the Zaragoza Cathedral. Ot de Montcada made the case to the archbishop that the coronation of the monarch “at the hands of a prelate” would be prejudicial to the Crown.40 However, none of the other courtiers present opposed the archbishop, leaving the king to defend himself practically 38 Muntaner, Crònica, Chap. 29, in Soldevila, Les Quatre Grans Cròniques, 940. 39 For a dramatic narration of Pere’s coronation, see Rafael Tasis, La vida del rei en Pere III (Barcelona: Teide, 1954), 49–52. 40 Pere IV of Aragon, Llibre del rei en Pere, in Soldevila, Les quatre grans cròniques, 1025.

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unaided. The king had no objection to letting the archbishop take the lead in administering the unction, considered a sacrament and proper to the spiritual and sacred sphere, but he demanded that the archbishop desist in his desire to be involved at the exact moment of coronation, which belonged to the temporal sphere. During this confrontation in the vestry, the king had to vigorously refuse the requests of the Metropolitan of Zaragoza, face down the suspicion of the other bishops and prelates, and overcome the apathy of his own advisors. Moreover, time was an issue: the people present in the nave of the cathedral began to grow impatient with the delay. All the same, the king was resolved to withstand the archbishop’s demands. Finally, in the face of the king’s categorical denial, the archbishop decided to change tactics and begged the monarch that he at least be allowed to adjust (adobar) or set straight the crown in full view of the people after the king had crowned himself. Pedro López de Luna had witnessed the same action eight years before, when Alfons IV had allowed the celebrant of that coronation, his brother Juan, archbishop of Toledo, and his other two brothers, the princes Pedro and Ramon Berenguer, to adjust the crown once it had been put on by the king himself. That action mitigated the visual impact of the selfcoronation. The king’s advisors again tried to persuade him to acquiesce. To make matters worse, the archbishop began to reproach the monarch for dishonoring the Church with his arrogant attitude, as well as the archbishopric of Zaragoza and the entire kingdom of Aragon. Concerned with the mounting delay, which could scandalize the people waiting in the nave, and in an effort to buy time, Pere told the archbishop that he would accept these requirements. Once all details had been seemingly settled, the Mass processional, which included the king, archbishop, bishops, abbots, prelates, knights, citizens, and others who had witnessed the discussion in the sacristy, began. But when the crucial moment of coronation arrived, the king approached the altar and informed the archbishop of his decision to crown himself, telling the archbishop not to touch the crown. The king solemnly placed the crown upon his own head, in full view of the archbishop and the entire congregation. The archbishop was disconcerted but went on with the Mass, feigning normality and solemnity, and completed the remainder of the formalities. After the ceremony, the king received applause from his vassals in the cathedral and then departed in splendor on horseback, adorned in silver chains, with the scepter in his right hand and the pommel in his left, both made of gold. The festivities that followed the coronation went on for three days, during which, according to the king’s calculations, around 10,000 people came up to the royal table. At 16 years of age, the king had faced his first real test of authority, a foretaste of how complex his reign would be.

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Such is the version of events that appears in the second chapter of King Pere’s autobiographical chronicle, known as the Llibre del rei en Pere (Book of King Peter).41 This is, in fact, the only account that we have of the ceremony, and while it carries a heavily dramatic, subjective, and emotional charge, none of the external facts available to us casts any doubt on its historicity. There is little chronological distance between this first historical representation and the event itself. The detailed nature of the account and, above all, the minute description of the king’s state of mind confirm the close relationship between the historical event and the written account. The evidence also shows that King Pere was already working on his autobiography in 1349, having commissioned his secretaries to begin writing this account only 13 years after his selfcoronation.42 In any case, we know for certain that the king had finished writing the first three chapters in 1375 from a letter sent to Bernat Descoll, one of his collaborators in writing the chronicle.43 Finally, the king’s meticulous working method, including his personal review of the manuscript drafts, suggests that the writing of the chronicle had begun many years before and was an integral part of the king’s creation of his own public personae and legacy.44

Strategies of Kings’ Self-fashioning: Representing Self-coronations

Alfons IV, Alfonso XI, and Pere IV were also very determined to highlight the moment of self-coronation in the chronicles of their respective reigns. They involved themselves in a ambitious strategy of self-fashioning, developing a particular historical-narrative program to establish a predetermined version of the facts, thereby establishing a specific liturgical and iconographic symbolism that ensured that the self-coronation of kings eventually would be accepted as the standard. The calculated strategy created by these three kings functioned as a means of endurance of continuity, identity self-creation, and consolidation of their legacies. The remaining pages of this essay will describe the forms in which this strategy was developed and practiced. 41

42 43 44

Pere IV of Aragon, Llibre del rei en Pere in Soldevila, Les quatre grans cròniques, 1025–1026. English edition: Chronicle. Pere III of Catalonia (Pedro IV of Aragon), trans. Mary Hillgarth (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980). On the dates of Pere’s Llibre composition, see Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, Chronicle. Pere III, “Introduction,” 1: 53–57. Antoni Rubió i Lluch, Documents per l’història de la cultura catalana mig-eval (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1908), 1:263 and ff. Antoni Rubió i Lluch, “Estudi sobre l’elaboració de la crònica de Pere el Cerimoniós,” Anuari de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans III (1909–10): 519–70.

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The chronicler Ramon Muntaner left a detailed account of Alfons IV’s self-­ coronation, finishing his chronicle around 1336, a mere eight years after the original event. Muntaner, who most probably had met the king, Alfons the Benign, intentionally and effectively established the king’s authority and sovereignty through a shrewd and calculated interpretation of the main symbols involved in the king’s coronation ceremony. Muntaner explains that Alfons’s rites of anointing and coronation took place in two different Masses, the first including the rite of unction and the second the coronation itself. The first Mass had been conducted by Pedro López de Luna, who anointed the king, while the second was conducted by the king’s brother Juan, archbishop of Toledo, who appears not to have had too many problems recognizing the king’s right to self-coronation, as he was content to merely adjust the crown on the king’s head after the king crowned himself. Pedro López de Luna would not have felt humiliated or disregarded in this case, because he did not officiate in that part of the ceremony. By contrast, eight years later, during the coronation of Pere the Ceremonious, the situation was very different. By merging unction and coronation into a single Mass, Archbishop Pedro would necessarily have had to conduct the coronation, and he did not want to play a supporting role. Perhaps he assumed that Pere would forget the small matter of selfcoronation, a practice initiated by Pere’s father, a previously unprecedented act in Aragon. Pere, however, considered it a matter of extreme importance, which explains the tension palpable in the vestry on his coronation day. Muntaner’s account of the event includes the meanings of the signs and symbols of the self-coronation. Using the chants sung by the troubadours during the celebration after the coronation, Muntaner elucidates the symbolism of the royal crown, which later will apply to Pere’s ceremonies as well. E la significança de la corona és aital: que la corona qui és tota redona, e en redonea no ha començament ne fin, així la corona significa nostre senyor ver Déus poderós, qui no hac començament ne haurà fin. Per ço con significa Déus poderós, la li ha hom posada al cap, e no en la mijania ne en los peus, mas al cap, on és l’enteniment; e per ço la memòria deu haver a Déu totpoderós, e que els vaja lo cor, ab aquesta corona, del regne celestial, lo qual regne és perdurable.45 (The meaning of the crown is this; that the crown is round and as in a round thing there is no beginning no end, it signifies Our Lord, the True, Almighty God, Who has no beginning, and will have no end; and because it signifies God Almighty it has been placed on the king’s head, and not in the middle of his body, nor at his feet, but on his head, where the 45 Muntaner, Crònica, in Soldevila, Les Quatre Grans Cròniques, 942.

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understanding is; and therefore he should remember God Almighty and be resolved to gain, with this crown he has taken, the crown of Heavenly glory, which is an everlasting kingdom.) This description differs only slightly from that given by modern scholars of medieval history. Ernst Kantorowicz posits that the crown symbolizes the entire realm. Obviously, the “crown” meant something more transcendent than the gold rim adorning the king’s head, different both from the rex and regnum, but the symbolism is unambiguous. Yet “crown” was not quite identical with “king” either, because of the distinction between “king’s physical head” and the “crown of the realm” adorning that head. Kantorowicz applies this entire symbolism to his theory of the two bodies. In the phrase “head and crown” the word crown served to add something to the purely physical body of the king and to emphasize that more than the king’s “body natural” was meant; and in the phrase “realm and crown,” the word crown served to eliminate the purely geographic-territorial aspect of regnum and to emphasize unambiguously the political character of regnum which included also the emotional value of patria.46 Self-coronation reinforced the king’s autonomy and privileged the role of the crown itself in the ceremony. The crown, being round, has no beginning or end, which implies that the king should wear it with the infinite intention of doing good works, and especially of reigning fairly and justly. Kings must wear it on their head, the locus of understanding, which leads to a good will. It is full of precious stones, symbol of the virtues that should adorn the life of a king.47 It is, literally, the key symbol among the various iconographic representations commissioned by the king in commemoration of his own self-coronation. If we turn to the other Aragonese king who performed a self-coronation, we can note that Pere the Ceremonious’s behavior, evident in his own autobiographical narration, is particularly revelatory of not only his desire to self-­ fashion himself through self-coronation but also his deliberate need to control the narrative representation of that event. King Pere wanted to be master of the primary historical account of what had happened on the morning of his

46 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 340–41; H.G. Richardson, “The English Coronation Oath,” Speculum 24 (1949): 50. 47 Ordinacions de la Casa i Cort de Pere el Ceremoniós, eds. Francisco M. Gimeno, Daniel Gonzalbo, and Josep Trenchs (València: Universitat de València, 2009), 233–44.

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consecration and royal coronation, and that is why he deliberately decided to include the story of his self-coronation in the autobiographical Chronicle. To begin with, Pere’s narration of his self-coronation tellingly centers on the argument in the vestry between the king and the bishop. The king intersperses the ordered account of events with descriptions of his own state of mind. First, he is saddened by the indolence of his advisers.48 Then, he is greatly dismayed at having to confront someone of the archbishop’s authority, who is also his priest, on the very day that he was to be honored and receive the veneration reserved only for royalty.49 Lastly, aware of his youth, Pere finds his emotional composure disturbed again when he has to make a final decision, feeling rushed by the impending start of the ceremony. It is then that the subtlety and astuteness that are so characteristic of his reign emerge: although he appears to give in as a way to resolve the situation and thereby allow the ceremony to commence, he decides that, at the moment of truth, he will take the crown himself and dispense with the role of the archbishop.50 These emotional notes increase the dramatic force of the account and help to get the reader on the king’s side and be convinced of his courage and loyalty as well as his statesmanlike sense of duty in the face of his new public responsibilities. Pere recounts these events in his Llibre in a simple, straightforward style that rings of truth, but his retelling also reveals the pride of one who believes his dignified performance was the key to overcoming the adversity of the day. The autonomy that emerges from Pere’s narrative self-representation runs parallel with the political self-sufficiency that emerges from his performative selfcoronation. The story demonstrates the strength of the power of ritualistic gestures and symbols, and the control King Pere exercised over them. The account reveals his calculated manipulation of the situation, even when under pressure from his adversaries. Interestingly, he agreed to take the oath—the sign of the consensual character of royal dignity—fully aware that the power of the gesture of self-coronation was much more effective than the perceived authority of the juridical contract. At a time when royal succession was dynastic rather than elective—independent both of approval or consecration by the Church and of election by the people—Pere the Ceremonious claimed for 48

“Fom fort torbats en nostre cor” (Our heart was shocked). Père, Llibre, in Soldevila, Les quatre grans cròniques, 1025–26. 49 Pere, Llibre, in Soldevila, Les quatre grans cròniques, 1026. For a description of the close relationship between King Pere and Archbishop Pedro López de Luna, see Josep Rius Serra, “L’arquebisbe de Saragossa, canceller de Pere III,” Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia 8 (1932): 1–62. 50 Pere, Llibre, in Soldevila, Les quatre grans cròniques, 1026.

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himself the power of symbols in order to increase authority and create his own self-fashioned personae. Because of this, he won for himself the nickname “Ceremonious,” an attribute that has surpassed even his reputation for cruelty.51 Thanks to his own autobiographical account, Pere’s self-coronation transcended mere symbolic meaning, allowing him to more firmly establish his monarchial authority among his people in a real and tangibly visible way. Pere also plays with the description of his own sentiments in order to increase the emotional strength of his narration. King Pere’s account seems authentic on account of its realism, but it is informed by the intensely emotional and subjective authorial presence natural to the autobiographical genre. Aware of the general hostility that his choice of self-coronation had caused, Pere admits that his heart was troubled and his mind hesitated— indeed, he was only 16 years old when he was crowned. Nevertheless, he writes of how he overcame his fears and reiterates his initial intention to crown himself. Pere continues his narration with a very long sentence that describes his contradictory feelings: on the one hand, the request that he not crown himself had come from the most honorable ecclesiastical authority in the kingdom, whom the king respected. Moreover, all his advisers and the citizens of Zaragoza were against his decision. The archbishop was disturbed (mogut in the original Catalan) but hid his discomfort and anxiety. Pere concludes his account by noting the archbishop’s nobility, as he, with deep piety and solemnity, continued celebrating the Mass, accomplishing his task elegantly.52 The dramatic import of Pere’s self-coronation leaves no doubt as to its importance as a symbolically charged political gesture. The king and the archbishop were fully aware of the scale, meaning, and impact of this variation to the coronation rite, which is why their argument in the vestry was so heated. Furthermore, the importance of King Pere’s gesture is determined not only by its exceptional nature but also by its normative capacity in establishing future practice. In 1353, 16 years after his coronation, King Pere and his collaborators finished working on a new ceremonial for the rite of coronation of kings.53 51

52 53

For Pere’s political thought and discourse, see Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, “La personalitat política i cultural de Pere III a través de la seva crònica,” Lengua i Literatura 5 (1993): 7–102; and Raquel Homet, “El discurso político de Pedro el Ceremonioso,” in El discurso político en la Edad Media, eds. Nilda Guigliemli and Adeline Rucquoi (Buenos Aires: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, 1995), 97–115. Pere the Ceremonious, Llibre, 2:10–12, in Soldevila, Les Quatre Grans Cròniques, 1025–26. Palacios argues that the ceremonial was elaborated between 1336 and 1338, or even before the ceremony (Palacios, La coronación de los reyes de Aragón, 238–40). This last assertion

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The new ceremonial took the form of an appendix to a very lengthy document entitled “Regulations Made by His Highness Pere the Third of Aragon on the Governance of all the Officials of his Court,” dated 1344. Written in Catalan, it constituted the first vernacular version of the texts regulating the running of the royal house of Aragon and the duties of all its advisers, scribes, and officials. This new Ordo appeared under the title Ordinació feta per lo molt alt e molt excel.lentpríncep e senior lo senyor en Pere Terç, rey d’Aragó, de la manera con los reys d’Aragó se faran consagrar e ells mateys se coronaran (Ordination made by the most high and excellent Prince and Lord, Pere the Third, King of Aragon, of the manner in which the kings of Aragon will be consecrated and crown themselves).54 Even the title itself emphasized the act of self-coronation. The ceremonial of the coronation of kings was complemented by another, shorter text, expounding how queens should be consecrated and how they should be crowned by their royal husbands.55 The king himself was directly involved in the writing of the new ceremonial, as shown by the signed revisions that appear throughout the original manuscript, correcting the successive drafts that his scribes would pass to him or adding some new idea.56 The new Ordo states that the king has to place the crown upon himself, “sine adiutorio alicuius persone” (without anyone’s help).57 This contrasts radically with other European ordines, which usually record that, at the moment of the coronation, “metropolitanus reverenter coronam capiti regis imponant” (the Metropolitan may reverently place the crown on the king’s head).58 King Pere’s self-coronation is the only such event to generate iconographic representations. The illustrations showing the king of Aragon’s self-coronation come from the miniatures that adorn two of the three versions of the ceremonial commissioned by Pere the Ceremonious. Elaborated during the second half of the 14th century (though certainly no later than 1380), they were meant



is difficult to sustain, however. If the ceremonial had been elaborated before the ceremony, the discussion in the vestry would make no sense, since the question of the autocoronation would have been discussed during the process of elaborating the ceremonial rather than at the ceremony itself. 54 Ordinacions de la Casa i Cort, 241–66. 55 Ibid., 266–74. 56 Ibid., 14–15. 57 Palacios, La coronación de los reyes de Aragón, 266. 58 This example is taken from the 12th-century Sicilian Ordo, ed. Reinhard Elze, “The Ordo for the Coronation of King Roger II of Sicily: An Example of Dating from Internal Evidence,” in Bak, Coronations, 175.

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for the royal palaces of Barcelona, Zaragoza, and Valencia.59 The first manuscript, dated between 1370 and 1380, comes in the final appendix to one of the codices of the sumptuous “Regulations” quoted in the last paragraph. The instant at which the sovereign places the crown on his own head appears in the codex’s first initial (Fig. 1.1). The king, standing before the altar in the presence of several people seated on wooden benches, holds aloft a great golden fleur-de-lis crown while facing the Metropolitan of Zaragoza, now restricted by the regulations to giving a simple blessing. Dressed in his dalmatic— beautifully and abundantly bordered with gold thread—and sporting loose,

Figure 1.1  MS Reg. 14425, fol. 19r. Ceremonial de consagración y coronación de los reyes de Aragón (appendix to the Ordinacions de Cort). Second half of the fourteenth century. With kind permission of the Biblioteca Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid

59

Facsimile, edition, and commentaries in El “Manuscrito de los Reyes” de las “Ordinacions” de Pedro IV (Valencia: Scriptorum, 1994), 14.

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Figure 1.2  MS Reg. 14425, fol. 35v. Ceremonial de consagración y coronación de los reyes de Aragón (appendix to the Ordinacions de Cort). Second half of the fourteenth century. With kind permission of the Biblioteca Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid

well-kempt locks, the sovereign lowers his head to place the crown on it with his own hands, the mark of royalty par excellence. The king also noted in his Ordo that the king himself should crown the queen with his own hands (Fig. 1.2). This ambitious program of historical, liturgical, and iconographical representations have led historians and literary critics to highlight King Pere’s ability to strengthen his authority and generate a self-fashioned identity by many different means, particularly the king’s moral strength as contrasted with his corporal weakness, as well as his particular and conscious use of his writing to

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increase the governmental efficiency of his extensive kingdom, among other things.60 These strategies were implemented to reinforce the king’s new political identity and to ensure that the gesture of self-coronation would not remain an idiosyncratic one among select Castilian and Aragonese kings but, instead, would become a standard component of coronation ritual in general.

Conclusions: Iberian Kingship Self-fashioning through Self-coronations

Although their original rituals were distinct, by the middle of the 14th-century, Castilian and Aragonese kings alike had learned the effectiveness of selfcoronation in the establishment of monarchical identity and its impact on the public perception of monarchs as central figures within their respective kingdoms. Menaced by internal insurrections and external resistance, monarchs emphasized historical language, liturgical gestures, and iconographical models of self-coronation to protect their revered status as kings. These practices were means of shaping the perception of interests, developing discursive royal ideology, highlighting ritual symbolical meanings, and appealing to the public desire for dramatic spectacle in order to generate a specific image of the king as lord. The political language of signs they created helped to shape the public perception of kingly interests and, consequently, the development of monarchial self-fashioning. Self-coronation functioned as an instrument of public persuasion, as a way of strengthening kings’ political identity, and as a method of shaping the social and political world in which kings had to rule.61 The Iberian kings’ recourse to self-coronation could be also explained by the fact that, in contrast with other European monarchies of the era, they were never authoritative or absolute rulers. In truth their jurisdiction was limited not only by the religious and moral norms imposed by ecclesiastical authority but also by the laws, customs, and traditions of their cities, which protected the 60

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Francisco Gimeno Blay, Escribir, Reinar: La experiencia gráfico-textual de Pedro IV el Ceremonioso (1336–1387) (Madrid: Abada, 2006); Ramon d’Abadal, Pere el Cerimoniós i els inicis de la decadència política de Catalunya (Barcelona: Destino, 1987). I borrow some of these concepts from Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 24; William H. Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); and John G.A. Pocock, “The Concept of a Language and the métier d’historien: Some Considerations on Practice,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 19–40.

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general interests of the kingdom and the juridical status of the different estaments.62 By the late Middle Ages, coronations had become rituals laden with symbols that emerged from visual, rhetorical, and ceremonial spectacle, able to attract not only ecclesiastical but also lay audiences.63 The ceremony might have lost part of its real “content”—the sacred nature of kingship—by that time, but the vigor of the symbolic and ritualistic “form” prevailed with no less genuine power. In conclusion, therefore, it can be argued that Iberian kings’ self-coronations were examples of deliberate self-fashioning rather than merely random political transgressions or breaks in tradition. These monarchs intentionally used the symbolic meaning and magnetic public attraction of these royal ceremonies as means of creating their own images in a predetermined way. With the language of the gestures they went beyond the textual culture, incorporating liturgical and performative practices, clearly demonstrating that these monarchs were aware of the privileged position of gestures, rituals, ceremonies, and liturgies as platforms of political power. In addition, these Iberian kings were also aware that any policy of consolidation required validation by the authority of the past; for this reason, they chose to strengthen the collective memory of their subjects by producing their own historical writings and images of self-coronations. Iberian kings’ practice of self-coronation supported their continuing efforts to justify their political agendas and their ability to create their own identities through purposeful selffashioning. All political authority requires what Clifford Geertz calls a “cultural frame” or “master fiction” within which to define itself and make its claims. The legitimacy of political authority depends on its cultural resonance, for political life is “enfolded” in general conceptions of how reality is configured.64 In addition, every cultural frame has a “center” with sacred status. The sacred center authorizes a kind of social and political mapping and gives the members of a society their sense of place. It is the heart of things, the place where culture,

62

63

64

For the concept of “pactism” of the Iberian monarchies, particularly of the CatalanAragonese kingdoms, see Jaume Vicens Vives, Notícia de Catalunya (Barcelona: Destino, 1960). For a panoramic discussion of evolution of this aspect of the European political thought, see David Starkey, “Representation Thought Intimacy: A Study of the Symbolism of Monarchy and Court Office in Early Modern England,” in Symbols and Sentiments: CrossCultural Studies and Court Office in Early Modern England, ed. Joan Lewis (London: Academic Press, 1977), 187–224. Clifford Geertz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in Culture and Its Creators: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils, eds. Joseph Ben-David and Terry Nichols Clark (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 150–71.

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society, and politics come together.65 It is in this cultural center that selfcoronations took on greater import in the world of Iberian monarchial self-fashioning. In conclusion, then, it can be surmised that the self-coronations of Alfonso XI of Castile, and both Alfons IV and Pere IV of Aragon, were neither uncalculated nor naïve dramatic gestures but were strategic, premeditated, and secularized rituals conducted in order to gain self-sufficiency in their sovereignty and to self-fashion their own royal identities. Within a period of eight years (1328–36), the Iberian Peninsula witnessed three highly magnificent and sumptuous self-coronations. In placing the crowns on their own heads, these three Iberian kings succeeded in making power virtually coterminous with the symbolic apparatus of monarchy and, in particular, with the person of the monarch. They turned self-coronation into a multifaceted gesture, evidence of the complexity of kings’ identity and their ability to create and re-create their own identities during troubled times. Bibliography

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Ullmann, Walter. The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship. London: Methuen, 1969. Vicens Vives, Jaume. Notícia de Catalunya. Barcelona: Destino, 1960. Ward, Paul L. “The Coronation Ceremony in Medieval England.” Speculum 24 (1939): 160–78. Weinfurter, Stefan. “Authority and Legitimation of Royal Policy and Action: The Case of Henry II.” In Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, edited by Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick Geary, 19–38. Washington: German Historical Institute, 2002.

chapter 2

Lessons for My Daughter: Self-fashioning Stateswomanship in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon Zita Rohr This essay is in part inspired by a 15th-century book of advice, admonitions, and warnings, Lessons for My Daughter, penned by Anne of France for her only surviving child, 12-year-old Suzanne of Bourbon.1 Anne descended from the house of Aragon via her maternal great-grandmother, Yolande of Aragon, daughter of Joan I and Violant of Bar. The purpose of this brief study is not to analyze the literary leavings of Anne of France; instead I will discuss the ways in which a particular dynasty of royal women consciously self-fashioned their identities to advance their projects as “representative” stateswomen.2 The “players” to be examined here are Elionor of Sicily, queen-consort of Pere IV of Aragon; Violant of Bar, queen-consort of Pere’s son, Joan I of Aragon; María de Luna, queen-consort of Joan’s brother and successor, Martí I of Aragon; and Yolande of Aragon, sole surviving child of the union of Violant of Bar and Joan I of Aragon. Sibil.la de Fortià, Elionor’s successor to the post of Pere’s IV’s 1 Anne de France, Enseignements à sa fille; suivis de l’Histoire du siege de Brest, eds. Tatiana Clavier and Eliane Viennot (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 2006); Anne of France, Anne of France: Lessons for my Daughter, ed. and trans. Sharon L. Jansen (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004). Anne’s father, king spider, Louis XI, commissioned a “Lessons for my Son,” The Rosebush of Wars, for Anne’s brother, Charles VIII. Louis XI, Le Rosier des guerres: enseignements de Louis XI, roy de France pour le Dauphin son fils, ed. André Gillois (Paris: F. Bernouard, 1925). Anne of France had another child, a son, when she was about 15 years of age. There is no record of his birth, death, baptism, or burial, “only the stained glass figure of a boy commemorated 25 years later in the window of Moulins cathedral known as the ‘vitrail des ducs’.” Pauline Matarasso, Queen’s Mate: Three Women of Power in France on the Eve of the Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 11. 2 See M. Bella Mirabella, “Feminist Self-Fashioning: Christine de Pizan and the Treasure of the City of Ladies,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 6, no. 9 (1999): 9–20. To explain Christine de Pizan’s intent, Mirabella discusses, analyzes, and deploys Stephen Greenblatt’s ideas regarding self-fashioning and his analysis of the act of self-creation to her (re)reading of Christine’s Treasure of the City of the Ladies (1405). Mirabella’s ideas coincide with the period under investigation here. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291003_004

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queen-consort, and Isabeau of Bavaria, queen-consort of Charles VI of France, will serve as counterpoints to the issues raised in this discussion. From the reign of Yolande of Aragon’s paternal grandfather, Pere IV the Ceremonious, the crown of Aragon was one of the most powerful in the western Mediterranean; extending from the principality of Catalonia, it encompassed the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca, Corsica, and Sardinia as well as the duchies of Athens and Neopatria. Yolande of Aragon’s paternal grandmother, Elionor of Sicily, was a woman of rare political sensibility. In 1364 she replaced Bernat II de Cabrera (whom she had ruthlessly opposed) as Pere’s chief advisor; Pere had been obliged to do him to death to appease his opponents in hostile crown territories.3 Prior to the downfall of Cabrera, during Pere’s absence on campaign in Castile, and while not explicitly nominated the king’s lieutenantgeneral, Elionor convened Pere’s cortes. Ten years later (in 1374) Pere accorded her the lieutenant-generalcy in recognition of her great value to his royal enterprise; she subsequently continued to act without further formal designation. In discussing Elionor’s informal forays into the political arena, Núria SillerasFernández observes that a lack of formal election as the king’s lieutenant “was no impediment to her aggressively independent political capacity, which was well-known to her contemporaries.”4 Elionor’s is an example of the way in which a queen-consort might successfully self-fashion her identity; stateswomen-queens enjoyed the political confidence and support of their husbands, and “in real terms, the queen’s facility to rule, or to exercise power, rested on her own political and administrative talents and on her capacity to support the dynasty and her individual agenda with clarity and sang-froid.”5 Elionor’s elder son’s first wife, Mata of Armagnac, was sent by her husband, the infant Joan, duke of Girona, to the kingdom of Valencia as royal representative in an attempt to quell the disputes of its constantly feuding nobility.6 Mata, however, seems to have had neither the stomach nor the heart for active stateswomanship, preferring instead to concentrate upon family and to lead a pious 3 T.N. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 114–16. 4 Núria Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship: Maria de Luna (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 6. She cites Ulla Diebel, “La Reyna Elionor de Sicilia,” Memorias rablb, 10 (1928): 351–454, 380–449. 5 Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 7. 6 Joan I had first been betrothed to Jeanne Blanche de Valois, posthumous daughter of Philippe VI of France and his second wife, Blanche of Navarre. Jeanne was half-sister to Jean II le Bon of France. She died in 1371, in Béziers, on route to her wedding. This betrothal had been negotiated in France by Joan’s advisers with the full assent of Pere IV. Aurea Javierre, Mata d’Armaynac, Duquesa de Girona (Barcelona: Dalmau, 1957), 20–22, cited by Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 6.

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and retiring life. Joan named his second wife, Violant of Bar (the mother of Yolande of Aragon), lieutenant-general for a finite period at a time when he contemplated a personal military intervention in Sardinia.7 Much in the way Elionor of Sicily had fashioned her identity as proactive and visible queen-­ consort, Violant of Bar built upon this brief interlude of sanctioned political authority, enhancing her potential to wield power as well as her personal and political prestige. Like Elionor, Violant was a woman known for her “aggressively independent political capacity”; once she had sensed the potential for power and influence inherent in her exalted position as consort to Joan I of Aragon, she determinedly self-fashioned, making the most of this undeniable advantage. Violant’s sister-in-law and next-in-line to the post of queen-consort of Aragon, María de Luna, was the dynasty’s first woman to serve formally as lieutenantgeneral with unlimited jurisdiction over the Crown of Aragon, and she held the position longer than any of the queens-consort who had proceeded her.8 A stateswoman queen-consort had to be highly intelligent and skilled in the chess game of politics. She required the support of a powerful husband with his “firm’s” best interests at the forefront of his thinking. Christine de Pizan observed that a wise king, with a capable and intelligent wife, should not hesitate to extend to her the authority to rule in his name.9 Christine’s ideas are borne out by history and personal experience, and not merely by recourse to political theory; she represents her own activity as a “complicated amalgam” of  “lived experience and an oral tradition of communal female speakers.”10 The three kinswomen listed above were object lessons in self-fashioned stateswomanship for the daughter who would follow them, Yolande of Aragon. Leaving to one side Elionor of Sicily (who passed away some six years before Yolande of Aragon was born), we turn to her “successor” Sibil.la de Fortià. Sibil.la failed to impress her contemporaries despite the best efforts of her husband, Pere IV, to refashion her from his acknowledged concubine into something rather more queenly. It is an irony indeed that Pere’s high nobility and his sons, Joan and Martí, welcomed Sibil.la while she was his mistress, but once Pere 7

Ibid. Cf. Francesco Casula, Profilo storico della Sardegna aragonese (Sassari: cnr, 1982) cited by Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 6. 8 Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 6. 9 Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of the Ladies (London: Penguin, 1999), 80; cited by Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 7. Cf. Juanita Feros Ruys, “Didactic ‘I’s and the Voice of Experience in Advice from Medieval and Early Modern Parents to their Children,” in What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in Medieval and Early Modern Periods, ed. Juanita Feros Ruys (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 129–162, 161. 10 Maureen Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s “Cité des Dames” (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 37.

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moved to fashion an “honest” royal woman of her, she was openly derided by her step-sons, their wives, and the kingdom’s high aristocracy. For Joan and Martí, to do homage to Sibil.la was a profound insult to the memory of their mother, Elionor of Sicily, and a palpable threat to their inheritance.11 From their point of view, the marriage was bad enough, but the prospect that the old king might sire additional legitimate heirs with his younger and captivating fourth wife was a danger too great to be ignored. Sibil.la de Fortià was not a woman of royal lineage, nor was she recruited from the ranks of the aristocracy. She was instead the beautiful but unlettered daughter of modest nobility, the openly acknowledged mistress of the king before her elevation to his queen-consort. The credendum held that queens were to be cultivated, sophisticated, and of virtuous repute, bringing to their king-husbands considerable dowries, and their unions were conceived to seal important political alliances.12 The 1377 marriage of Pere IV and Sibil.la de Fortià ticked none of these boxes; theirs was a match based upon mutual attraction, one that had much in common with the 1385 marriage of Charles VI of France to Isabeau of Bavaria. For very different reasons, both of these marriages would lead to a great deal of malice in their respective palaces, and much of it due to the inability of both women to fashion themselves as effective queens and stateswomen.13 While the established nobility made a great show of snubbing Sibil.la, those seeking her good favor as a route by which to obtain the king’s ear, including high officials, the aristocracy, and some members of royal family, showered her with gifts and money.14 Pere knew that Sibil.la’s elevation had dented her popularity and that she was ill-equipped to fashion herself into an acceptable queenconsort. To address Sibil.la’s shortcomings, he wrote to the distinguished prioress of Sixena, who assigned Sibil.la two “good, honest and well-educated” nuns of 11 Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 70. Pere and Sibil.la had a daughter, Isabella, prior to their marriage in 1377 (1376–1424), whom the king later legitimized. She married Jaume II el Dissortat (the Unfortunate), count of Urgell. As the most senior legitimate agnate, Jaume expected to be Martí I’s successor in the event he produced no surviving legitimate male heir. He was passed over during the succession crisis following Martí’s death in 1410. 12 Núria Silleras-Fernández, “Money Isn’t Everything: Concubinage, Class and the Rise and Fall of Sibil.la de Fortià, Queen of Aragon (1377–87),” in Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Theresa Earenfight (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 67. 13 See below. 14 aca (Archivo de la Corona de Aragon): rp, reg. 506, fol. 1v (2–28–1376); fol. 17r: Josep Maria Roca, “La Reyna empordanesa,” Memorias rablb 10 (1928): 9–211. Both cited by Silleras-Fernández, “Money Isn’t Everything,” 70.

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impeccable lineage to address her lack of literacy and sophistication.15 Then, in a highly unusual move for queens in the Crown of Aragon, Pere organized a glittering coronation for his new queen in 1381. Given Sibil.la’s fragile queenly fama, Pere was at pains to emphasize her legitimacy as his consort.16 A formal coronation was a proactive means by which to communicate Sibil.la’s title and her dignified position; to confirm to all present her legitimate authority as a queen of Aragon. Pere’s coronation initiative had a good deal in common with the coronation of the heavily pregnant Isabeau of Bavaria in 1389, held four years after her hasty marriage, without dowry or marriage contract, to Charles VI.17 Isabeau’s coronation coincided with the arrival of the Milanese princess, Valentine Visconti, the cultured and highly educated new wife of Charles’s younger brother, Louis of Orleans. In the absence of effective queenly self-fashioning by Sibil.la and Isabeau, Pere and Charles probably felt the need to buttress the authority and prestige of their respective queens: one in the face of familial and aristocratic resistance, and the other to militate against the eclipsing of the queen’s prestige by a new and glittering addition to the royal family, moreover a dynastic rival of the queen’s natal house. While Isabeau’s coronation was a triumph of pageantry and goodwill, many key players, including Pere’s sons Joan and Martí and his daughter, Joana d’Empúries, did not attend Sibil.la’s coronation, 15

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“[Sibil.la] did not know her letters and wanted to learn them, and [Pere writes to request well-qualified sisters] to teach her letters” (no sabe letras e querendo aprender and para amostrar a nos de letra); Cf. Roca, “La Reyna,” 13 and 159, for the documents concerning the matter. Constructed between c. 1183 and 1208, the royal monastery of Santa María de Sixena was founded by Queen Sancha of Castile, consort of Alfons II of Aragon, for highborn nuns from the wealthiest Aragonese families. Thanks to royal patronage, it flourished during the 14th and early 15th centuries, but its prominence and prestige declined after the merger of Castile and Aragon under the rule of the Catholic monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand. See R. Padre Fr. Marco Antonio Varon, Historia del Real Monasterio de Sixena (Pamplona: Pasqual Ibañez, 1773). For an analysis of fama (renown, good name, reputation), consult Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, eds. Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003); and Claude Gauvard, “La Fama, une parole fondatrice,” Médiévales 24 (Printemps 1993), 5–13. Tracy Adams, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 106–07. Adams cites Fanny Cosandey on the subject of a French queen’s coronation in a post-Salic reality: La reine de France. Symbole et pouvoir, XVe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Gallimard: 2000), 137–38. Michel Pintoin, Chronique de Religieux de SaintDenys (rsd), eds. M.L. Bellaguet and Bernard Guenée (Paris: Editions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1994), vol. 1, bk. 10, Chap. 7, 611–15. Cf. Jean Froissart, Chroniques livres III & IV, eds. Peter Ainsworth and Alberto Varvaro (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2004), 348–65.

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an event designed intentionally to celebrate her marriage and confirm the king’s authority.18 The one exception to the luminaries who boycotted Sibil.la’s big day was the powerful magnate María de Luna, wife of the king’s younger son, Martí. She participated as a matter of personal expediency rather than a desire to lend her personal support to Sibil.la’s sovereignty. Silleras-Fernández notes, “Maria attended for the simple reason that she desperately needed a favor from King Pere (. . .) Maria could not afford to offend her father-in-law.”19 Pere had taken his autumn bride in full knowledge that she did not meet the established gold standard for queens-consort, something made clear by his actions. He moved decisively to address her lack of literacy and refinement, extending to her the rare privilege of a queenly coronation to acknowledge his deep attachment to her and to buttress her authority. He draped her in jewels, sumptuous dress, and every luxury, seizing the initiative to fashion Sibil.la’s fama by ensuring she had a household befitting a queen of Aragon.20 Her “pre-queen” household consisted of people with status similar to her own; once queen, Sibil.la’s household demanded upgrading in keeping with her new status. In common with medieval monarchs of the time, the kings and queens of Aragon understood that in order to be treated as such they needed to fashion luxurious and refined personal courts. While undoubted showpieces, such courts were not merely for display; they were an essential part of the superstructure of the patronage networks crucial to the maintenance of a queen’s powerbase. These networks involved a carefully calibrated system of reward and assiduous attention to loyal protégés and servants, family members, and the Church.21 The most prominent member of Sibil.la’s household was her brother, Bernat de Fortià, and he received the lion’s share of her favor. In common with Isabeau of Bavaria’s strenuous efforts on behalf of her brother, Louis of Bavaria, Sibil.la’s brother Bernat was her pet project; he received properties and rents and entered into the confidence of the king, eventually named his chamberlain and governor-general for Catalonia. For his part, thanks to the ceaseless 18

It was held on January 31, 1381. Joana, in particular, believed that “it was unthinkable that one of her own vassals (Sibil.la) should be transformed into her stepmother” and sovereign queen. The prospect of paying homage to Sibil.la was a humiliating affront to the fama of the infanta Joana. Silleras-Fernández, “Money Isn’t Everything,” 73. 19 Ibid. 20 In yet another point of comparison with Isabeau of Bavaria, lacking intrinsic queenly fama and the face of fragile sovereignty, lavish attention was paid to outward appearances. Cf. Rachel C. Gibbons, “The Queen as ‛Social Mannequin’: Consumerism and Expenditure at the Court of Isabeau of Bavaria 1393–1422,” Journal of Medieval History 26, no. 4 (2000): 371–95. 21 Silleras-Fernández, “Money Isn’t Everything,” 76.

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activity of his adoring little sister, Queen Isabeau, Louis of Bavaria, heir to a minor Bavarian duchy, was enriched and promoted, receiving the title of Constable from his sister (blocked by the king’s brother, Louis of Orleans) and married off to successive bankable brides, Anne de Bourbon-La Marche and Catherine of Alençon. Despite Isabeau’s exertions on his behalf, Louis of Bavaria had little influence at the court of Charles VI, and he did not sit on the royal council as an adviser. The ever-opportunistic Louis did not, however, repay his sister’s generosity; Tracy Adams confirms that “after a lifetime of accepting gifts from his sister, he (Louis) was unable or unwilling to return the favor when she (Isabeau) requested help from him.”22 In the cases of both queens’ brothers, their elevation led to inevitable tensions with the established nobility and the great officers of the court; not only had both men “encroached on their turf” but they also had not hesitated to throw their newly acquired weight around.23 A queen’s household was held to be a mirror of her virtue, authority, and prestige, an important asset for a queen conscious of the need to fashion her fama.24 The noblewomen of a queen’s household benefited from her authority and splendor, and the queen by their presence and service at her court. In addition to underwriting the sumptuous surroundings with which to frame Sibil.la en tableau, Pere worked to boost her prestige by garnishing her household with ladies of impeccable lineage and connections. It was a great honor to be invited to serve the queen as a lady-in-waiting, yet this was not to prove the case with one particular lady of quality, issue of the noble Valencian lineage of Proixida, Constança de Perellós.25 The words chosen by Pere to formulate his “request” to Constança indicate that he rather anticipated her prompt refusal: We ask you and we command you that you come immediately in the company of mossen Anthoni de Vilaragut, your cousin, (. . .) because we think 22 Adams, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria, 241–45. Adams does not consider Isabeau’s favoritism towards her natal house of Bavaria to be anything but legitimate, citing Isabeau’s talent for diplomacy and mediation as the reason for her interest in FrancoGerman affairs. There is considerable disagreement on this score. 23 For details of Bernat’s activities and their consequences, see Silleras-Fernández, “Money Isn’t Everything,” 77. 24 See below for perceptions of Queen Isabeau’s disorderly household and how such perceptions created political problems for her queenship and chaos at court. 25 Constança de Pròixida i Carròs. Claire Ponsich, “Un témoignage de la Culture en Cerdagne, la correspondence de Violant de Bar (1380–1431),” Etudes Roussillonnaises Revue d’Histoire et d’Archéologie Méditerranéennes: Le Moyen Age dans les Pyrénées catalanes; Art, culture et société 21 (2005): 147–93, esp. 152.

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it well, (. . .). And for this reason, since there is no reason that any subject of ours, especially in the situation in which you find yourself (. . .) nor anything even similar can you say no. Fighting words rendered with the added precaution of writing to his Valencian lieutenant-governor stating that “mossen Antoni Vilaragut” would arrive directly to carry out his command, and “sots en corriment de nostra ira e indignació” (at the risk of our ire and indignation), he should ensure that madona Constança accept the offer being made to her; adding that, should she refuse, the governor was to execute Antoni’s charge “per grat o per força” (willingly or by force).26 The honor of Queen Sibil.la was at stake, and for Claude Gauvard, “porter honneur, c’est voir d’honneur” (to bear honor is to distinguish honor), and honor is in essence a dignity that “n’existe que par le regard des autres” (exists only in the eyes of others).27 Constança, a woman of energetic personality and powerful familial connections, refused to join her cousin, Antoni, dismissed the king’s “request,” replying crisply that “she had no intention of serving someone who was of lower status than her.”28 Constança was implicated in the shunning of Sibil.la by other members of the high nobility and royal family, which included the king’s largely estranged daughter-in-law, Violant of Bar. This was something for which both Constança and Violant would later pay dearly; Pere was thin-skinned when it came to his fama, and he had a long memory and an appetite for vengeance.29 While Sibil.la transformed her position from mistress to spouse and from lady to queen, she did not succeed in fashioning a queenly identity, notwithstanding “Pygmalion” Pere who strove mightily to protect her position and to fashion for himself a queen worthy of the crown. Sibil.la was aware of her shortcomings and fearful of the retribution that would be heaped upon her with Pere’s passing by Joan and Violant, who resented her rancor and interference in the wake of Constança’s refusal to serve her. When it became clear that 26

27 28 29

Dawn Bratsch-Prince, “The Royal Privada in Late Fourteenth Century Iberia: A Woman’s Path to Privilege, Power and Persecution,” Unpublished Conference Paper, cmrs Conference 2007: Power, Collingwood College, Durham University, July 13–16, 2007, 7. Claude Gauvard, “De Grace Especial”: Crime, Etat et Société en France à la fin du Moyen Age (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010), “L’honneur blessé,” 706. Silleras-Fernández, “Money Isn’t Everything,” 78. Eventually, Constança was removed from Violant’s household at the direct request of Pere and with the full assent of his cortes in 1383. Claire Ponsich, “L’honneur au XIVe siècle de la vicomtesse d’Illa I de Canet, et d’une noble dame valencienne, deux favorites de la duchesse de Gérone, puis de la reine d’Aragon,” Etudes Roussillonnaises 20 (2003): 80.

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Pere was not long for the world, two weeks before his death, Sibil.la packed up all her movables, gathered together her family and allies, and fled.30 Her stepsons, however, were hard on her heels, with the infant Martí laying siege to the castle where she had sought refuge. Sibil.la threw herself on his mercy, and she, her brother, and their supporters were arrested and stripped of their towns, castles, and properties; some servants were executed summarily. Joan passed the bulk of Sibil.la’s assets and property to Violant of Bar, the new queen of Aragon. The unhappy dowager was accused of lese-majesty, of abandoning the king at his hour of death, and of helping herself to his treasury. In a convenient act of refashioning, Sibil.la was cast into the role of sorceress: Why else had the king considered marrying her? And, had not King Joan I fallen ill shortly after Pere’s death? Both events were obvious consequences of Sibil.la’s black arts.31 Sibil.la’s meteoric rise and vertiginous fall demonstrate that, while she had the support of her husband the king, great wealth, personal charm, and beauty, she was unable to fashion a queenly identity sufficiently durable to protect her. Sibil.la’s networks were weak and unstrategic, and she did not possess the force of personality, intelligence, political skill, education, or knowledge required to self-fashion effectively.32 Violant of Bar, however, proved an assiduous and accomplished self-­ fashioner. Dawn Bratsch-Prince and Claire Ponsich have researched Violant of Bar’s extensive epistolary at great length and in minute detail.33 Violant’s 30 31

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Silleras-Fernández, “Money Isn’t Everything,” 79–80. Ibid., 81. “Queen Yolande (Violant of Bar) also shared many of her husband’s interests in less than orthodox practices.” Michael A. Ryan, A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011), 119–23. As mentioned above, Sibil.la had a lot in common with her near-contemporary Isabeau of Bavaria. Dawn Bratsch-Prince, Violante de Bar (1365–1431) (Madrid: Ediciones del Orto, 2002); Bratsch-Prince, “Pawn or Player? Violante of Bar and the Game of Matrimonial Politics in the Crown of Aragon (1380–1396),” in Love, Sex, and Marriage in Medieval Iberia, ed. María Eugenia Lancara (New York: Garland, 2002), 59–89; Bratsch-Prince, “The Politics of Selfrepresentation in the Letters of Violant of Bar (1365–1431),” in Medieval Encounters 12, no. 1 (2006): 2–25. See, by Claire Ponsich, “L’Intervention de la reine d’Aragon Violant de Bar dans les designations épiscopales: Etude de quelques-unes de ses letters envoyées entre 1387 et 1396,” in conference proceedings Devenir évêque au Moyen Age, Du choix de la personne à la prise de possession du bénéfice: Sources et vocabulaire (forthcoming); “Car amic dans les correspondance de Yolant de Bar. Un discours épistolaire convenu de l’amicitia ou celui d’une affectivité durable et d’un bénéfique?” Méridiennes, in Conference Proceedings “Amor, amicitia, esquisse d’un discours savant sur l’amour er l’amitié au Moyen-Age” (forthcoming); “Des lettres, le livre et les arts dans les relations de Violant de Bar et de

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epistolary practice, both private and public, constitutes one of the most extensive and diverse collected writings to have flowed from the pen and chancellery of a medieval queen. The correspondence of this high-born woman, little studied yet influential in her day, forms part of extraordinary chancellery registers preserved in the Aragon Crown Archives in Barcelona. These registers contain many thousands of pieces of diverse diplomatic royal correspondence, organized by category and systematically copied by secretaries into bound registers prior to dispatch. Violant’s correspondence is preserved in some 50 volumes of compiled letters, viz., regs. 1815–24; reg. 2027, and regs. 2029–62. For example, just one of these meticulously organized ­volumes holds some 140–200 folios; all the letters are followed by a statement regarding the recipient, and a separate notation to the right of the page identifies the writer as well as the name and signature of the copyist, with some letters preceded by a short description of their contents.34 In her analysis of Violant of Bar’s “politics of self-representation” or, for our purposes, self-­ fashioning, Bratsch-Prince observes that Violant created several discrete and mutable “self-representations,” laid bare in her extensive correspondence.35 Violant consciously manipulated perceptions and expectations by fashioning distinct identities informed by variable contexts and by her shifting roles of daughter, niece, wife, duchess, mother, queen, cultural enthusiast, patron, and royal widow. Histories fashion Violant as a virile and aberrant queen whose forceful personality and proactive political activity are juxtaposed against the received personality of her husband, the weak, sickly, and effeminate Joan I of Aragon, amador de la gentilesa. Much of this bad press is based upon court intrigue, gossip, and the politically motivated criticism of the cortes; specifically designed to shed a poor light on the couple by their opponents and critics.36 Violant of Bar did not fashion herself as virile or manly; her

Gaston Fébus vers 1388–1389,” in Froissart à la cour de Béarn: L’Ecrivain, les arts et le pouvoir, ed. V. Fasseur (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009); “La Correspondance de Yolande de Bar, reine veuve d’Aragon: une source sur Benoït XIII et le concile de 1408,” Etudes Roussillonnaises 24 (2009): 81–118; and “Un témoignage de la Culture en Cerdagne: la correspondance de Violant de Bar (1380–1431),” Etudes Roussillonnases 21 (2005): 147–93. 34 Bratsch-Prince, Violante de Bar, 15–17. 35 Bratsch-Prince, “The Politics of Self-representation,” 2. 36 See my “True Lies and Strange Mirrors: The Uses and Abuses of Rumor, Propaganda and Innuendo during the Closing Stages of the Hundred Years War,” in Queenship, Reputation and Gendered Power, ed. Rachel C. Gibbons (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). See Bratsch-Prince, “The Politics of Self-Representation,” 2–3, for a detailed discussion of and sources for the origins of Violant’s “black legend.”

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correspondence testifies to a queen very much in touch with her feminine side(s), fashioning several distinct women in her own voice and by her own authority. Violant will only be glimpsed through a glass darkly if we rely solely upon politico-cultural histories of 14th-century Catalonia; the “real” Violant of Bar—or at least the woman she fashioned—emerges from her letters.37 However much Violant of Bar effectively self-fashioned, she was not immune to political problems, first arising from the ire of her father-in-law, who opposed her marriage to Joan, and later from the cortes. Public opinion in the latter decades of the 14th century cast a jaundiced eye over the conduct of the Aragonese royal family, as it did in France during the first decades of the 15th century. The households of Joan and Violant were scrutinized and censured in the Montço cortes in 1382 and again in 1388. On the first occasion, they were duke and duchess of Girona, but by the cortes of 1388, Joan and Violant were king and queen. The 1382 cortes were convoked to examine serious political and financial issues arising from accusations directed at the households of King Pere and his heir, Joan. The 1382 cortes presented a complaint to Pere alleging high treason against the staff of the duke and duchess of Girona, demanding a purge of bad advisers, odious favorites, and corrupt officials; with a special emphasis on Violant’s household.38 They were accused of high treason, of selling justice, and were suspected of having vouchsafed state secrets to foreign parties such as the king of Castile, the barons of Sicily, Violant’s uncle, Louis I, duke of Anjou, and the Genoese. The cortes reminded King Pere that, in alluding to the tendency for royal court staff to mushroom, he himself had said that “counselors were like fungus for it did not take them long to grow.”39 37 38

39

Bratsch-Prince, “The Politics of Self-Representation,” 3. Salvador Sanpere i Miquel, Las Damas d’Aragó (Barcelona: Imp. De la Renaixensa, 1879), 180–81. See José Coroleu y Juglada and José Pella y Forgas, Las cortes Catalans: Estudio jurídico y comparativo de su organizacíon, 2nd ed. (Barcelona: Imprenta de la Revista Histórica Latina, 1876), 206, for the text of the petition from the cortes to Pere. Cited by Bratsch-Prince, “The Politics of Self-representation,” 4. “Joan sentit que ‘n lo fet se tirava de dret contra Violant” (Joan sensed that the ruling would be pressed into service against Violant). Arx. Municip. de Barcelona, Carta del 28 Juriol de 1383, Sanpere i Miquel, Las Damas, 184. “Sus consejeros eran como los hongos, que en poco tiempo hacien su crecimiento,” Bratsch-Prince, “The Royal Privada,” 6. Cf. Textos Jurídics Catalans Lleis i Costums 11/2: Cort General de Monts 1382–1384, ed. Josep Maria Sans i Travé (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya Departament de Justicia, 1992), 174–77, 184, esp. 188–89, 190–99; and Suzanne F. Cawsey, Kingship and Propaganda: Royal Eloquence in the Crown of Aragon c. 1200–1450 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), esp. “Pedro IV and his Sons,” 73–102, esp. 83.

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The main focus for complaint was directed or, rather, redirected, at Joan and Violant, satisfying Pere, who had been stung by the refusal of Constança de Perellós to serve Queen Sibil.la as her lady-in-waiting.40 Moreover, it was a timely distraction to steer the attention of the cortes away from the shortcomings of his own household and his record of crippling military expenditure. Under Pere’s ascendancy, the cortes demanded the dismissal of Constança.41 Joan tried to hold Violant’s position on the matter, and the situation between father and son, king and heir, deteriorated further.42 It is apparent from Violant’s 1383 correspondence with her husband that she was not prepared to give in to the king’s bullying without a fight. Instead, she threatened to leave Aragon rather than banish Constança: I consent to no order. Constança is a lady and exercises no office, and before I let them (the king, Sibili.la and the cortes) take her from my side, I’ll consent to leaving the realm. If you, my husband and lord, want to sacrifice your servants, do it, as it is a matter for your conscience, but as regards Constança, no one will touch her without my order.43 Manifestly, the 18-year old duchess of Girona did not flinch in the face of Pere’s authority and fought hard to retain Constança and to defend her favorite’s reputation. Ponsich observes that Violant’s spirited and unconditional defense of Constança de Perellós was by extension a defense of her own reputation and honor.44 I noted above the primordial role a royal woman’s household played in her self-fashioning. The most effective and risk-free strategy employed to attack an assertive and aspiring stateswoman was to target either her privada or the general condition of her household. This strategy required no real proof of misconduct, merely some well-designed innuendo, a sense of grievance, and the ability to make a charge stick sufficiently to undermine the fama of a  queen or princess. Violant’s letter to Joan reveals her self-sufficient spirit; 40 41 42 43

44

See above. Bratsch-Prince, “The Royal Privada,” 6. Textos Jurídics Catalans Lleis i Costums 11/2, 186–201. “Al fet de madona Constança, senyor, quant és de mi per res no consintrem que suspensió alguna ne se’s feta per manera del món. Del tresorer, vós, senyor, ne fets ço que vostra mercè sera.” aca reg. 1817, fol. 97r, transcribed by Bratsch-Prince, Violante de Bar, 67. English paraphrasing, Bratsch-Prince, “The Royal Privada,” 8. “Violant prend très vivement et inconditionnellement la défense de Constança de Perellós, defendant aussi, à travers sa dame, sa reputation” (Violant spiritedly and unconditionally leapt to Constança de Perellós’s defense, defending, through her favorite, her own reputation). C. Ponsich, “L’Honneur,” 80.

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she was no Sibil.la de Fortià. She was, instead, a self-assured consort of impeccable lineage and powerful connections, and she refused to capitulate to the king’s unreasonable will, irrespective of what her husband’s conscience might dictate. Despite Violant’s best efforts, Constança was eventually separated from her household. However, from the evidence of Pere’s renewed offensive against Constança in 1385, it is clear that she retained Violant’s confidence and friendship.45 In 1386 Pere again confronted his recalcitrant heir and his assertive duchess, demanding permanent satisfaction on the issue of Constança de Perellós. After the passage of almost a decade, the residue of Pere’s incensed reaction to Constança’s rebuff to Sibil.la’s prestige (and to his sovereign authority) leaps out unchecked in a letter dated February 20, 1386, wherein he refers to Constança as “that black and evil daughter of the devil.”46 This letter was written in response to yet another perceived attack upon his sovereignty posed by Constança’s third marriage in 1385 (facilitated by Joan and Violant) to the most powerful lord of Roussillon, Pere VIII de Fenollet i de Narbona.47 In this withering missive to the headstrong Violant, Pere salutes her coldly as the wife of Prince Joan rather than the customary “our beloved daughter, the duchess of Girona.”48 Pere slights not only Violant but also his heir by withholding the salutation lo primogenit (his first-born son). He condemns Violant’s malign influence over Joan, a product of the ascendancy of that “black and evil daughter of the devil.” He claims that Constança still holds Violant in her sway, and he criticizes his daughter-in-law for not fulfilling her obligation to guide and to influence Joan to respect the will of his father. He chastises Violant, his disobedient daughter, accusing her of placing contradictory ideas into Joan’s head based upon her uncritical acceptance of Constança’s “lies and falsehoods and similar things,” even though she is well aware of that lady’s infamia and behavior: “the condition of her person and her fame,” observing that Constança

45

46

47 48

In November 1386, Violant sent a missive addressed to her “noble e amada de casa nuestra” (gentle and beloved [friend of] our house), viscountess of Illa and of Canet. aca reg. 1818, fol. 94r. Cited by C. Ponsich, “L’Honneur,” 81, where she notes that the letter was dispatched under Violant’s secret (segell) seal, written by the hand of her personal secretary, Jacme de Besanta. “Aquella negra avol fembra filla de Diablo Na Constança,” Roca, “La Reyna,” 203–04, and as rendered by aca, reg. 1819, fol. 47v, “acquexa negua e avol fembra filla del diable na Costança.” Cited by C. Ponsich, “L’Honneur au XIVe siècle,” 81. Pierre Ponsich, “Aperçu historique sur la seigneurie et la vicomté de Canet,” Etudes Roussillonnaises, t. 11 (1992): 39–54, cited by C. Ponsich, “L’Honneur,” 80. Bratsch-Prince, “The Royal Privada,” 7.

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“tench aquexa manera ab vós” (has a way with you).49 A striking example of Pere’s effort to fashion and malign his daughter-in-law according to his reading of her: his son’s unworthy consort, his unwanted daughter and disobedient subject. In light of their continued insubordination to the rulings of his cortes, Pere accuses Violant and Constança of planning to destroy his lands and realms and observes that if Joan, their advisers, or she had any sense, they would understand that he was forced to act against Constança for the good of the Crown. Pere and the historical record, however, remain mute upon the detail of Constança’s alleged misdeeds.50 A royal woman’s household being a dynamic rather than a static organism, Violant soon allowed a new privada, the prominent Valencian noblewoman Carroça de Vilaragut, to enter her royal affections.51 Following Joan’s ascension on the death of his father in December 1387, the Montçó cortes were convoked in 1388 by the new king to assert his sovereignty and to raise funds for ongoing military operations. Joan had acted swiftly to establish his claim to throne; he pledged to defend Catalonian franchises and had received homages in Barcelona in 1387. However, the cortes determined to bring up the unaddressed need for fiscal restraint and reform of the royal households, much of it a remnant of Pere’s busy and authoritarian reign. They demanded that Joan make wide-ranging and sweeping reforms to the casa reial and that he dismiss the multitude of court officers who “exercised a charge and influence in the palace, causing unbearable expense for the Crown and innumerable prejudices for the common welfare of the kingdom.”52 Joan vented his irritation by threatening to dissolve the assembly; this merely unified the dissatisfied. In an act of nascent 49

50 51 52

Ibid. See Madeleine Doran, “Good Name in Othello,” Studies in English Literature (sel) 7 (Spring 1967), 197: “Othello’s final speech can be illuminated by concepts of Roman law. Existimatio or fama was a man’s good name, ‘a condition of uninjured dignity’, which he possessed by virtue of being a man.” There are two ways a man could lose his fama, either under law (infamia juris) or outside the law (infamia facti). Infamy of fact was most commonly the result of mala fama, “rumor or suspicion of criminal behavior whether or not that rumor was true.” Othello, in his final speech and in his suicide, acknowledges the infamia juris that he has incurred but seeks to clear his name of mala fama. See Fenster and Lord Smail, Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003). There was little sisterly solidarity between Violant’s privadas; Constança and her second husband, Pere VIII de Fenollet, stood out from the crowd as the most ferocious critics of Carroça during the Montsó cortes of 1388–89. C. Ponsich, “L’Honneur au XIVème siècle,” 87. Bratsch-Prince, “The Royal Privada,” 7–8. Carroça first appeared in Violant’s household around 1382. Bratsch-Prince, “The Royal Privada,” 7–8.

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stateswomanship, Violant stepped in to mediate between the king and his ­cortes, heading off political chaos by putting forward compromise proposals for judicial reform.53 She was sensible of the role proper to a queen—required to be by turn mediatrix, conciliatrix, and pacificator—and she was intelligently aware that success in her role would enhance her personal power and prestige. The cortes accepted Violant’s proposals, as did the king, who, despite his assent, believed them onerous.54 Queen Violant demonstrated her skills as mediatrixin-chief, showing her understanding of the nature of her new role as queen and consciously fashioning her new identity. The great cortes held in Monçó in November 1388 were the first and last of Joan’s personal rule, but by December 1389 all that he had proved was that he had not inherited his father’s parliamentary ability.55 Notwithstanding Violant’s victory or, perhaps, as a direct result of it, the cortes refocused its attention on her newest privada. Queen Violant’s household was a more prestigious and powerful space; its potential as a theatre for rumor and innuendo therefore increased, and the banishment of her new friend, Carroça de Vilagarut, was harsher than anything her predecessor, Constança, had experienced. Carroça had suffered the first slur upon her name at the court of Pere IV, and in 1385 she requested leave from Violant to defend her good name in person to confront the cowardice of her accusers. This coincided with Pere’s renewed offensive against Constança de Perellós (see above); it seems clear that Pere orchestrated a dual strategy to undermine and weaken the influence of Violant de Bar by attacking both her privadas. Carroça had no intention of allowing her enemies to fashion her image at the court of the king.56 By 1388 the accusations against Carroça, Violant’s friend and tutor to the royal children, worsened as their enemies called her integrity into question, blackening her name with dishonor and disrepute: she was accused of conducting sexual affairs with the king and Francesc de Pau, the queen’s mayordomo and adviser to the king.57 Carroça was criticized for being one of a number of “profane people of unwholesome lifestyle” harming the royal couple.58 While the charge was made against all those officials who sold access to the king and queen and 53 Bisson, The Medieval Crown, 123. 54 Bratsch-Prince, Violante de Bar, 30–31. 55 Dawn Bratsch-Prince, La vida y espistolario de Violant de Bar (1365–1431), unpublished translation notes, 9. Cf. Bratsch-Prince, Violante de Bar, 29–31. 56 aca reg. 1818 (1384–1389 Infantisae Yolantis Uxor, Inf. Johannis Loct. Petri III), fol. 66r–66v, cited by C. Ponsich, “L’Honneur,” 81. 57 Ibid. 58 Bratsch-Prince, “The Royal Privada,” 8–9.

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“by whose advice and favor diverse graces and mercies were delivered in a disorderly manner,” Carroça was singled out by the cortes for undermining the king and the queen’s authority to govern.59 Joan sensed the danger of an attack upon his new and fragile sovereignty by his hostile cortes and consented to the reading of the charges against Carroça. His nobles were in revolt, and the rumors circulating about Carroça’s morality were a reflection of the nobility’s opposition to his authority and to the power and influence of his queen. The defamation of the queen’s privada was irreversible; Joan was forced to prioritize civil harmony to the detriment of truth.60 Bratsch-Prince relates how Carroça fought the decision, declaring that, should the accusations against her be proved, he her king and lord should “immediately have her beheaded”; but if the accusations could not be proven, that Joan should determine to “exact appropriate justice against those good people who spread such lies.”61 On September 28, 1389, Joan proclaimed the expulsion of the queen’s privada.62 Carroça, the most loyal and most courageous partisan of the queen and of the king, was forced to abandon her position at the court and her post in the palace.63 Targeted by the public discredit directed towards her favorites, Constança and Carroça, Violant of Bar rose above these crises. Duchess or queen, Violant demonstrated great insight into what lay beneath the plots against her two privadas, injuring the reputations of the noble ladies who had come to her court to serve her and to conduce to her fama and prestige. Violant’s household having forged the fama of her favorites, enemies sought to neutralize their 59

Ibid. “Privación de la Carroza; es cosa notable. Finalement el rey, oídas las informaciones de entrambas las partes, a suplicación de la corte general dio una cédula que llamó edicto, por la cual privó a la Carroza de la habitación y familiaridad de su casa real y de la reina y del duque de Girona y de los infants y de cualquiere participación de oficio y beneficios y que no pudiese volver a ellos; y lo que fue no menos de maravillar como cosa que tocaba a todos en general—se declaró así por auto de corte” (The Deprivation of Carroza; this is remarkable. Finally the king, at the petition of the general cortes, having heard various testimonies, decreed an edict, which deprived Carroça of her post and her proximity to the queen and to the heir, the duke of Girona, for her part in the trading of benefits [and access], and for which she was forbidden to return to the royal household (which amazed) and touched everyone in general—and so proclaimed the cortes). Jeronimo Zurita, ed. Ángel Canellas López, Anales de la Corona de Aragón, t. 4 (Zaragoza: Institución “Fernando el Católico” (c.s.i.c.), 1978), 734. 60 C. Ponsich, “L’Honneur,” 83. 61 Bratsch-Prince, “The Royal Privada,” 9. 62 aca reg. 1817, fols 35r, 40r, 52v, 54v, 116r–116v; C. Ponsich, “L’Honneur,” 83. 63 Ibid.

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position by recourse to the cortes. Conscious of the need to self-fashion in keeping with her status and ambition, Violant understood that while her own prestige and honor had not been tarnished directly by the scandals implicating her privadas, the rules of the courtly game dictated vigilance in the face of internal and external forces that might one day irreparably damage her carefully fashioned identity, jeopardizing her privileged position atop the pyramid of power.64 Following the sudden death of Joan in 1396, the cortes singled out Joan and Violant’s officials and allies for a third time in 1397. They were accused of undue influence, of causing the death of the king by a lack of vigilance for his health and safety, and of separating the queen from the king so unscrupulous advisers could better influence her in political matters. The 1397 cortes were led by the new queen, María de Luna who, in the absence of King Martí delayed in Sicily, had her own political reasons for neutralizing the queen-dowager. The conflict between royal authority and the prestige and power of the cortes is clearly demonstrated by their machinations to put an end to Violant’s influence, attacking her favorites in an effort to suppress her autonomy. The change in Violant’s status did little, however, to silence her or render her invisible. As befitting a French princess and queen-widow of Aragon, she picked herself up and, with great clarity of purpose, recast herself as venerable stateswoman-at-large acting in the interests of her family and friends. Violant maintained scrupulously her status of queen-dowager up until her death: her extant correspondence with her wider family and her considerable networks of influence testify to her vigorous political personality.65 Violant died in Barcelona in the summer of 1431, aged 66, having witnessed the extinction of her marital house of Barcelona upon the death of her brother-inlaw, King Martí, in 1410. During Joan’s reign his younger brother Marti, along with his consort, María de Luna, enjoyed positions of privilege and prestige, much of it due to their massive territorial holdings, which formed “the greatest seigniorial power 64 65

Ibid., 85. Violant’s daughter Yolande was titular queen of Jerusalem and Sicily-Naples, her granddaughter Marie of Anjou married Charles VII and was queen of France, her grandsons Louis III and René of Anjou were successively titular kings of Jerusalem and Sicily-Naples, and her great-grandson Louis XI succeeded his father Charles VII as king of France in 1461. She aspired to have her grandson, Louis III of Anjou, succeed to the throne of Aragon in 1410. See Francesca Vendrell Gallostra, Violante de Bar y el Compromiso de Caspe (Barcelona: Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 1992); and Claire Ponsich, “Violant de Bar (1365–1431): Ses liens et réseaux de relations par le sang et l’alliance,” in Reines et princesses au Moyen Age, ed. Marcel Faure, 2 vols (Montpellier: Publications de l’Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, 2001), 1:233–76.

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block ever seen in the crown of Aragon.”66 For a number of reasons it was essential that Joan ensured the continued love and loyalty of his younger brother, and he did this by showering him with prestige, honor, titles, and positions, naming Martí his heir should he (Joan) die without surviving male issue.67 While María was not particularly fond of her French sister-in-law, Violant of Bar, prior to Joan’s death the two women managed a cordial, if not intimate, relationship mainly because the two brothers were very close and mutually supportive. Queen María made no secret of the fact that she did not care for Violant’s postures and French preferences, writing to Richard II of England to inform him that, with the death of Joan and the drop in status of his French widow, Violant of Bar, Aragon would resume the pro-English diplomacy and contacts that had been the norm during the reign of her father-in-law, Pere IV.68 María fashioned herself deliberately as a home-grown Aragonese queen, schooled from early childhood in the ways of the court, pious and circumspect, holding a mirror to the perceived excesses and frivolities of her predecessor, Queen Violant. SillerasFernández affirms that when María became queen, she “was already a mature woman, well-experienced in the administration of noble patrimony and the dynamics of life in the royal court.”69 María supported both her husband and her son, Martí the younger, with stable management and valuable economic resources to continue the fight for Aragon’s sovereignty over insular Sicily, an enterprise that emptied her treasury and almost rendered the royal couple destitute. It was for this reason that she was so tenacious in securing the crown for the absent Martí in the wake of the accidental death of Joan in 1396. Had María not succeeded in her efforts to hold the dowager Violant and her officials at bay, the couple would have been ruined financially. The massive financial burden occasioned by the campaign for insular Sicily mirrored precisely the subsequent situation of her niece, Yolande of Aragon, in her fight for Angevin sovereignty over peninsular Sicily-Naples. In her attentive conduct of their joint and crown affairs, María earned a reputation as a sound manager, and her diplomatic skills had earlier been revealed in her ongoing negotiations with her brother-in-law Joan while he was king. She was an intelligent ruler, highly skilled in the subtleties of governance; historians agree that María was both “steadfast and astute.”70 66 Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage, 25. 67 Ibid., 257. 68 Ibid., 44. 69 Silleras-Fernández, “Spirit and Force: Politics, Public and Private in the Reign of Maria de Luna (1396–1406),” in Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, ed. Theresa Earenfight (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 79. 70 Ibid., 81–82.

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María self-fashioned through her deeds, her successes, and her limitations; she was cut from the broadcloth of authentic Aragonese queenship practice and preferences. She might not have shined as brightly as her predecessor, the ­precocious, gifted, cultivated, and well-educated Violant of Bar, but she did not feel the need to work at fashioning multiple self-representations, and she ­stabilized the crown for her husband, Martí I. Like Violant’s court, María’s was the outward manifestation of her personal preferences, and she fashioned her household and palaces to reflect her profound piety, communicating her sovereign authority.71 Her religious and cultural patronage was founded upon strong political exigencies, anchored securely to the desire to perpetuate her own name and ensure its recognition. Such activity was essential to María’s desire to fashion herself as a model queen worthy of respect and emulation. Silleras-Fernández concludes that María’s deep commitment to spiritual Franciscans, to observancia franciscana, and her public devotions combined to “serve both her formal and personal political agendas, and she practiced them with energy.”72 In her spiritual preferences and practices, María had a great deal in common with her predecessor and especially with her niece, Yolande of Aragon, who was deeply influenced by the preferences of the courts of her parents, Joan and Violant, and those of her uncle and aunt, Martí and María, both profoundly religious by inclination and education.73 Unlike Sibil.la de Fortià, the triumvirate of Elionor of Sicily, Violant of Bar, and María de Luna consciously self-fashioned according to their respective idioms; all three seized control of their personal and political destinies, confronting obstacles and setbacks with clear heads and intelligent energy, and all three had lessons for their “daughter,” Yolande of Aragon. Violant of Bar’s conscious pragmatism, her intelligent approach to self-fashioning, and her skilful use of extended familial, spiritual, and cultural networks facilitated her involvement in politics and diplomacy, which beyond Iberia were activities generally reserved for men. Notwithstanding this, Violant’s excessive expenditure on cultural innovation irritated many key players, allowing them an easy platform from which to blacken her carefully fashioned identity. Her sister-inlaw and successor María de Luna’s more pious and measured approach to selffashioning deliberately held a mirror to Violant’s perceived excesses and shortcomings. This was an essential alternate model for the young Yolande of Aragon, one that probably informed her approach to Isabeau of Bavaria. It is 71 72 73

Ibid., 89. Ibid., 89–90. Ibid., 90.

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worthwhile, therefore, to make some observations regarding Yolande of Aragon’s export of self-fashioned Aragonese stateswomanship to serve her diverse projects in France, Provence-Forcalquier, and peninsula Sicily-Naples. The long-anticipated import of this Aragonese princess in December 1400 made quite an impact upon French royal circles. Michel Pintoin, the monk of Saint-Denys, perhaps describes it best: Cette princesse captivait tous les regards par sa rare beauté, par les charmes de son visage et par l’air de dignité répandu sur toute sa personne. C’était en un mot un veritable trésor des graces. Au dire les sages, la nature avait pris plaisir à la former et l’avait comblée de toutes les perfections; il ne lui manquait que d’être immortelle. Je n’essaierai point de décrire ici ses attraits; il me suffira de dire qu’aucune femme ne méritait de lui être comparée.74 (This princess captivated all those who looked upon her, by her rare beauty, her charm of countenance, and the air of dignity emanating from her entire being. She was, in a word, a treasure of graces. According to the wise, nature had taken pleasure in creating her, filling her with all perfection, save immortality. I will not attempt to detail her attractions here, suffice to say that no other woman is worthy of comparison with her.) Interestingly, the sole description Pintoin is willing to extend to us regarding the arrival of Isabeau of Bavaria in 1385 is that the king, having viewed several portraits of eligible princesses, “choisit madame Isabelle de Bavière, âgée de quatorze ans, la trouvant très supérieure aux autres en grace et beauté” (chose Madame Isabelle of Bavaria, aged 14 years, finding her superior in grace and beauty to the others).75 The alliance between the houses 74

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“Yolant, (. . .), forme venustate singulariter conspicuam, vultus elegancia et tocius corporis habitudine intuentibus favorabilem, (. . .). Hec erat vere verus pulcritudinis radius, quam circumspectorum judicio, natura studio multo depinxerat, et in qua nil erraverat, nisi quod mortalem cam statuerat. Cujus speciem particularibus expalnere sermonibus labor esset inutilis, cum ejus forma quasi omnium aliarum precelleret speciem mulierum.” rsd, vol. 1, bk. 21, Chap. 7, 772–74. Ibid., vol. 1, bk. 6, Chap. 5, 358–59. Some, such as Tracy Adams, have claimed that Pintoin’s lukewarm appreciation of Isabeau (and his criticism of her) stems from the fact that his pen belonged to the duke of Burgundy. For many others, including Bernard Guenée, Pintoin remains a diligent chronicler who, while making no claim to cold objectivity, had a close faithful relationship to facts and events and was keen to understand the “whys” of events and people: “his work is the beautiful fruit of a perfect symbiosis between a man and a place” (son oeuvre est le beau fruit d’une parfaite symbiose entre un homme et un lieu). Bernard Guenée, “Préface,” rsd, 1: lxix.

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of  Anjou and Aragon had been more than a decade in the planning and negotiation, and the bride and groom were in their early twenties. Without marriage contract or dowry, 14-year-old Isabeau of Bavaria married the teenaged Charles VI two days after her arrival in Amiens, while ostensibly on a pilgrimage. Yolande of Aragon had received meticulous education in literature, art, culture, spirituality, and the business of Aragonese stateswomanship, watching both her mother and aunt perform in this capacity from a very young age. The unfortunate Isabeau benefited from none of these advantages, and while she was more literate and cultured than the hapless Sibil.la de Fortià, she was just as ill-prepared for the turns of fortune’s wheel that lay ahead of her. There seems to be little or no evidence that Isabeau received any solid education in the responsibilities of the management of a princely household, let alone the government of an important duchy, much less a kingdom. Her mother, Taddea Visconti, died when she was 11, and there seems to be no word as to any exemplary factual foremother or actual kinswoman from whom the young Isabeau might have drawn example or ­comfort.76 It is known, however, that the young Isabeau was pious and goodnatured, preferring pilgrimages to the Abbey of Ramsdorf and pious religious spectacles.77 Sponsored by the king’s uncle, Philippe of Burgundy, and mentored by the very capable Jeanne, duchess of Brabant, the unformed 14-year old Isabeau was fashioned into a hatchling queen-consort. The only problem was that the fashioning was imposed upon Isabeau, as was the case for Sibil.la de Fortià. Like Pere’s fashioning of Sibil.la, Isabeau’s queenly fama was superficial and brief 76

Not much is known of the first 15 years of Isabeau’s life; had she not made such a spectacular match she might have remained a minor genealogical footnote in the annals of the Wittelsbach clan. It was not until her marriage to Charles VI that Bavarian chroniclers started to take an interest in her. The Benedictine monks of either St Ulrich and St Afra’s Abbey, Augsburg, or St Emmeran’s, the Imperial Abbey of Ratisbon (Regensburg), henceforth describe her as being endowed with “perfect virtue, remarkable beauty, graceful manners, and most elegant morals” without elaborating as to how she came to be so blessed. The abbots of Ratisbon held the rank of princes of the Empire. Johann Adlzreiter von Tettenweis, Annalium Boicæ gentis partes III (Francofurti as Moenum: J.F. Gleditsch, 1710), 2nd part, bk. 6, col. 114. Cited by Marcel Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, reine de France: La Jeunesse, 1370–1405 (Paris: Perrin, 1903), 22. Isabeau had enough Latin to read her Hours, the Lives of the Saints, and the chronicled deeds of her ancestors, but her favored reading was of epic poems written in Bavarian, strong on the honor of the ducal court and exalting the virtues of womanhood. Ibid., 24, and see Sigmund Reizler, Geschichte Baierns (Gotha: F.A. Perthes, 1899), 2:553. 77 Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, 24–25.

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rather than deep and enduring. With the recurrent madness of her husband, Charles VI, and the subsequent deaths of her mentors and protectors, Philippe in 1404 and Jeanne in 1406, Isabeau started to founder, entering a downward spiral with no coherent strategy for either the salvation of her kingdom or her own survival and posterity. To this was added the perception that she prioritized the house of Wittelsbach to the detriment of the kingdom of France. Isabeau’s failure to self-fashion into an authentic French queen made her an easy target for criticism and derision, and her resultant legend is very black indeed.78 Marcel Thibault makes the point that Isabeau never matured; she was stuck fast in an adolescent phase of avid selfishness underwritten by an astonishing aptitude for intrigue.79 At the age of 35, with the full encouragement of her brother-in-law, Louis of Orleans, Isabeau evinced an arrogant pleasure in presiding over the frivolities and parties of her court. With Burgundy gone, Isabeau turned away from her principal role as consort to Charles VI, uncoupling herself from him in all but name at some point in 1404. Things unraveled rapidly for her queenly fama, rumors circulated, and churchmen did not hold back from censuring her court and household. Isabeau trampled over the primary rules of successful political motherhood, viz., to keep herself above reproach and to work in the best interests of the dynasty. Isabeau’s reputation was for the besmirching and, by mid-1405, whisperings to the effect that she was neglecting her children had reached the king.80 Throughout 1405 the major topic of conversation was the queen, and by August 15, 1405, not only was Isabeau suspect but also many of the ladies of her court were accused of 78

See Rachel Gibbons, “Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (1385–1422): The Creation of an Historical Villainess: The Alexander Prize Essay,” in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, vol. 6 (1996): 51–73; and Rachel C. Gibbons, The Active Queenship of Isabeau of Bavaria, 1392–1417: Voluptuary, Virago, or Villainess, unpublished Ph.D. diss., Reading University, uk, 1997. 79 Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, 399. 80 Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, Œuvres completes de Pierre de Bourdeilles, seigneur de Brantôme, 13 vols, eds. Prosper Merimée and Louis Lacour de la Pijardière (Nendein: Klaus Reprint, 1977), 2: 357–58. Charity Willard Cannon, Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works (New York: Persea Books, 1984), 148–49. On May 5, 1405, the Augustinian monk Jacques Legrand gave a sermon in the presence of Isabeau and the king, urging that she reform the morals of her court (rsd, vol. 2, bk. 26, Chap. 7, 267–75), and a short while later, on November 7, 1405, Jean de Gerson, canon of Notre-Dame and chancellor of the University of Paris, delivered his sermon Vivat rex, which urged the queen, the princes, and the court to work towards restoring the health of the king and his kingdom (rsd, vol. 2, bk. 26, Chap. 21, 345–47. Ibid., Chap. 12, 294).

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misconduct.81 From about 1404–06, the lampoonist-author of political pamphlet Le Songe Véritable pungently castigated Isabeau on the themes of her greed and the unbridled luxury of her court.82 Once these attacks upon the queen and her household had come to light, it was an easy task for her detractors to ensure that they resurfaced in 1413 and 1417. Unlike Violant of Bar, Isabeau did not understand the political motivations informing these attacks, nor did she appear to have the intelligence or pragmatism to circumvent them. Had she been an accomplished self-fashioner, she would have ensured tighter control over the conduct of her household and taken steps to sideline those members who brazenly detracted from her queenly fama. It was against Isabeau’s tarnished fama, her infamia, and her perceived inability to govern intelligently in her “absent” husband’s name that Yolande of Aragon was able to fashion herself as the Bonne-mère (Good Mother) of her son-in-law, the dauphin Charles, later Charles VII. Her conscious self-fashioning mirrors María de Luna’s; both Isabeau and Yolande certainly dressed for success, but Yolande did so with a dignity and elegance informed by her Franciscan preferences. Like her aunt, Yolande managed to achieve equilibrium between extravagant choice of fabric and simplicity of garment, something Isabeau consistently failed to do, dressing in excess of her queenly dignity.83 An illustrative instance of Isabeau’s ostentation is to be found during the period 1401–03, when her power and dignity at court were practically unassailable. Rather than consolidating her authority and husbanding her new fiscal resources, she chose to deplete her significant treasury on frivolous whims, gifts of eye-watering largesse to benefit her natal house of Bavaria, and expensive jewelry. Rachel Gibbons concedes, “When given access to these large sums, it is clear that, during her time as queen of France, Isabeau had developed extremely expensive tastes.”84 81

“Toute cette année 1405, on ne cessa de ‘parler de la royne’.” Marie-Josèph Pinet, Christine de Pisan (1364–1430). Etude biographique et littéraire (Geneva: Slatkin Reprints, 2011; repr. of Paris: Honoré Champion, 1927 edition), 130. 82 Thibault, Isabeau de Bavière, 416. See Le Songe Véritable: Pamphlet Politique d’un Parisien du XVe siècle, ed. Henri Moranvillé (Paris: Société de l’histoire de Paris, 1891); and Thelma Fenster, “Ways of Knowing in the Songe Véritable and Christine de Pizan’s Livre de l’Avision Cristine,” in Poetry, Knowledge, and Community in Late Medieval France, eds. Rebecca Dixon, Finn E. Sinclair, et al. (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), 202–14. 83 “(. . .) le costume est aussi miroir de la sensibilité, dont il reflète la plupart des expressions” (dress is also a mirror of awareness, reflecting most of its manifestations). Michèle Beaulieu, “Le Costume, miroir des mentalités de la France médiévale (1350–1500),” in Mélanges offerts à Jean Dauvillier, ed. Centre d’histoire juridique méridional (Toulouse: Centre d’histoire juridique méridional, 1979), 83. 84 an KK 42, fols 61 and 73, cited by Gibbons, “The Queen as ‘Social Mannequin’,” 391.

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The Augustinian preacher Jacques Legrand called the king’s attention to fashion crimes and moral lapses in Isabeau’s household; Eustache Deschamps, Jean Juvénal des Ursins, Philippe de Mézières, and Christine de Pizan all picked up on this theme. Deschamps alludes to headdresses with “cornes comme font des limas” (horns such as those pushed out by slugs). Juvénal des Ursins does not check his disapproval: “The ladies and damsels lived in great and excessive states (with) marvelous horns, long and large (. . .) having on each side two great wings so huge that when they wished to pass through doorways they needed to turn sideways and crouch or they would be unable to pass through; very displeasing to ‛right-thinking’ people.” Philippe de Mézières (a close connection of Christine de Pizan)85 counsels the queen to sort out her life and live “without ostentation, without pride, without great expense and without flamboyant livery.” Christine de Pizan fashions a detailed “mirror” of Charles V’s consort, Jeanne de Bourbon, and her court: accompanied by “ladies and damsels in great quantity, from all neighborhoods, honest, honorable and well chastised (as required) otherwise they had no place (in the queen’s court), and all dressed appropriately, each according to their function, corresponding to the dignity of the occasion.”86 It seems that Christine strove to inspire greater responsibility in her queen, hinting perhaps that Isabeau, “vray miroir des

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See Lori J. Walters, “The Vieil Solitaire and the Seulette: Contemplative Solitude and Political Theology in Philippe de Mézières, Christine de Pizan and Jean Gerson,” in Philippe de Mézières and His Age: Piety and Politics in the Fourteenth Century, eds. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Kiril Petkov (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 119–44, esp. 122–31. rsd 2, bk. 26, Chap. vii, 266–69; Yann Grandeau, “De Quelques Dames qui ont servi la reine Isabeau de Bavière,” in Bulletin philologique et historique ( jusqu’à 1610) du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques 53 (1975), 160–61; Jean Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, ed. Denys Godefroy (Paris: 1653), 336; Mathilde Laigle, Livre de Trois Vertus de Christine de Pisan et son milieu historique et littéraire (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1912), 109–11; Dora M. Bell, Etude sur le Songe du Viel Pélerin de Philippe de Mézières (Geneva: E. Droz, 1955), 164; Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, ed. Suzanne Solente (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1938–40), 1, 56–57; Rosalind Brown-Grant, “Mirroring the Court: Clerkly Advice to Noble Men and Women in the Works of Philippe de Mézières and Christine de Pizan,” in Courtly Literature and Clerical Culture: Selected Papers from the Tenth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Universität Tübingen, Deutschland, 28. Juli–3. August 2001, ed. Christoph Huber and Henrike Lâhnemann (Tûbingen: Attempto Verlag, 2002), 39–53, esp. 50–53. Cf. Geoffroy de la Tour Landry, Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry pour l’enseignement de ses filles, ed. Anatole de Montaiglon (Paris: P. Jannet, 1854), 98–100; and Eustache Deschamps: Témoin et modèle. Littéraire et société politique (XIVe–XVIe siècles), ed. Thierry Lassabatère and Miren Lacassagne (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris Sorbonne, 2008).

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dames” (authentic mirror for ladies), had failed in her obligation to educate and, instead, had corrupted the young women of her household.87 Gibbons testifies that “Isabeau had the personality and the potential to record extremely large expenses on her personal pleasures and fancies, and in this area she certainly attracted criticism.”88 Isabeau’s flamboyance and party-girl reputation was the “known fact” upon which rumor was constructed, establishing the foundation for propaganda that weakened her influence.89 Yolande of Aragon took great care to fashion her identity. By the mid-15th century, multiple princely courts existed within France or at its borders: Orleans, Burgundy, Bourbon, Foix, and Savoy. And, leading the charge in the regality stakes was Yolande’s marital house of Anjou. Her husband, Louis II of Anjou, carried the prestigious titles of king of Jerusalem, duke of Anjou, and count of Maine, Provence, and Forcalquier. In terms of princely fama, Louis’s royal titles placed him on equal footing with the king of France; Yolande of Aragon was every inch Louis’s queen.90 Anjou evinced a unity of purpose with its Valois son-inlaw, Charles VII: they were obliged to fight for their respective kingdoms and sovereignty and to rely upon the support of one another. The third generation of Angevin kings of Jerusalem-Sicily and Charles VII were fashioned under the enlightened ferula of Yolande of Aragon. Yolande did not allow her attention to waver from her endgame: the recovery and pacification of France for the good of her House. Yolande self-fashioned accordingly. 87 88 89

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Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe du vieil pelerin, bnf MS Fr. 22542, fol. 300. Cf. G.W. Coopland’s edition (London: Cambridge University Press, 2009, repr. of the 1969 edition). Gibbons, “The Queen as ‘Social Mannequin’,” 391. See my chapter, “True Lies and Strange Mirrors: The Uses and Abuses of Rumor, Propaganda and Innuendo during the Closing Stages of the Hundred Years War,” in Queenship, Reputation, and Gendered Power, eds. Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz St John in ­preparation for Palgrave Macmillan. While the duke of Burgundy might have dazzled Europe with his wealth, the luxury of his court, and the sumptuousness of his diversions and parties, he lacked the luster that only a crown could impart. Françoise Pionnier, Costume et vie sociale la cour d’Anjou XIVe–XVe siècle (Paris-La Haye: Mouton and Co, 1970), 77–78. Jean-Paul Boyer, “Sacre et théocratie. Le cas des rois de Sicile Charles II (1289) et Robert (1309),” in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, vol. 89, no. 2 (1995): 195. Jean-Paul Boyer, “‛La ‘foi monarchique’: royaume de Sicile et Provence (mi-XIIIe–mi-XIVe siècles),” in Le formes della propaganda politica nel Due e nel Trecento: Relazioni tenute al convegno internazionale di Trieste (2–5 marzo 1993) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1994), 89. Cf. Zita Rohr, “Late Medieval Queenship and the Practice of Political Motherhood: Yolande of Aragon, Bonne-Mère of France,” in Image and Perception of Monarchy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Sean McGlynn (Newcastle-upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014).

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By the summer of 1418, the political situation in France had deteriorated dangerously, and the teetering government in Paris was sucked into a maelstrom of violence. Yolande of Aragon, queen of Jerusalem-Sicily, Aragon, Valencia, and Mallorca, refused to accede to Isabeau of Bavaria’s demands to return her son, the dauphin Charles, to his father’s court. A citation attributed to Jehan Bourdigné frames well how Yolande’s mind might have been working; in it she appears to fashion an Isabeau reflective of the gossip that had circulated about her since 1405: To a woman endowed with a lover, [who] has no need for a child. He [Charles] has not been nurtured in this place [the court of Anjou] to this point to allow him to pass away like his brothers [Louis and John, successive dauphins], or to be rendered mad like his father, or at the very least to be made English like you. I shall keep him mine, come and take him if you dare.91 That such a lettre de défi was dispatched by Yolande to Isabeau is moot; Yolande and Charles’s actions support the idea that there was a fashioning strategy in play at the time. Yolande’s queenly defiance was not fully repaid, however, until the serendipitous appearance of Joan of Arc more than a decade later, and in this development too there was a good deal of fashioning and self-fashioning.92 91

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“A femme pourvue d’amant, point n’est besoin d’enfant. N’ay point nourri et élévé iceluy jusques icy, pour que le laissiez trépasser comme ses frères, ou le rendiez fol comme son père, à moins que le faissiez Anglois comme vous. Le garde mien, venez le prendre si l’osez.” I have been unable to locate this citation in Bourdigné to date; it could be a pseudocitation or an apocryphal statement contained in an as-yet-undiscovered archive. Jehanne D’Orliac (Anne Marie Jeanne LaPorte) wrote Yolande’s biography in 1933, and there was considerable archival loss during World War II. Jehanne D’Orliac, Yolande d’Anjou: La Reine des quatre royaumes (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1933), 56. I hope to excavate D’Orliac’s personal archive of manuscripts, letters, unpublished writings, and documents to attempt to determine her sources and her thinking. She bequeathed them in 1975 to the Archives Départementales D’Indre-et-Loire, Sous-série 75J Fonds Jehanne D’Orliac. Isabeau’s “protector,” Jean of Burgundy, was a passive ally of/proactively neutral towards Henry V of England. The Maid of Orleans’s progress is as compelling as the many Joans fashioned from the time of her initial appearance at the garrison town of Vaucouleurs to the current day. In Henry VI Shakespeare refers to her as a pucelle (maiden) and a puzzle/pussel (slut); his portrayal of her remains a puzzle until the fifth act, when all is revealed. William Shakespeare, ed. Edward Burns, King Henry VI Part I (London: Arden, 2000), 25–27, 156, and 287–98.

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The raw material of the mystical teenaged Joan was molded and fashioned by her local Franciscan spiritual guardians and polished by Yolande of Aragon and her allies upon her arrival in Chinon; Joan’s spiritual preferences were a fortuitous match with the Franciscan observant spirituality of Yolande of Aragon, the pious queen of Jerusalem-Sicily.93 The ways in which Yolande of Aragon’s political rivalry with Isabeau of Bavaria played out is suggestive of the influence of earlier political rivalries between her mother, Violant of Bar, Sibil.la de Fortià, and María de Luna; clearly, their “daughter” Yolande had learned her lessons well. Effective selffashioned stateswomen-queens active in the crown of Aragon and, in the case of Yolande, beyond it shared some common characteristics. They evinced above-average intelligence, harnessed by an enlightened education. As children they enjoyed a rich and cultured formative environment with access to and an insistence upon learning. They were more likely than not to have been exposed to a rich “capital of experience” demonstrated by foremothers and kinswomen that included identifying and learning from their errors and miscalculations. They had the aptitude to exploit diverse networks to best advantage. They were keen collectors and consumers of literature and preserved knowledge, borrowing, lending, and commissioning vernacular translations. In many instances they participated in literary correspondence with bibliophile heads of state, peers, and relatives. They understood the structural opportunity afforded by the self-sufficient status of widowhood and intelligently exploited it, always attentive to the traps that awaited independent single women.94 Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, they possessed the singular 93

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Robert of Baudricourt dispatched Joan to the court of the dauphin Charles, and the colors he selected for her travelling kit reflected the Angevin (and Franciscan) preference for gray and black. “Black, grey, and russet” were the colors of the courts of Anjou prior to 1470. René of Anjou’s archers and household officers were likewise monochromatically liveried in shades of black, gray, and white. Françoise Pipponier describes the uniform of the Angevin house of Bar-Lorraine, one influenced apparently by Yolande’s spiritual and sumptuary preferences: “A tout un personnel qui remplit des fonctions fort varies à son service, le roi René fait livrer régulièrement le meme type de vêtements: des robes drap noir et surtout gris” (Rene regularly sent the same type of vestments, robes of black and, above all, gray, to those in his employ who fulfilled many and varied functions while in his service). Piponnier, Costume et vie sociale, 212. Ibid. Cf. Malcolm G.A. Vale, Charles VII (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), 94. Violant, María, and Yolande would have been very familiar with the work of Francesc Eiximenis. Francesc Eiximenis, Lo libre de les dones, eds. Frank Naccarato, Joan Colomines, and Curt Wittlin (Barcelona: Curial Edicions Catalans, 1981). Cf. David J. Viera, La Dona en Francesc Eiximenis (Barcelona: Curial, 1987); and Manuel J. Peláez, Jen Louis Hague, and

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personal characteristics, skills, and attributes that allowed them to self-fashion and to succeed in their respective enterprises. In her Lessons for My Daughter, Yolande of Aragon’s great-granddaughter, Anne of France, placed great emphasis upon the need for pragmatic self-­ fashioning and observed that at all times a wise princess must stay in control of her master narrative; she must eliminate any possibility for criticism: “And so my daughter, devote yourself completely to acquiring virtue. Behave so that your reputation may be worthy of perpetual memory: whatever you do, above all, be truly honest, humble courteous, and loyal. Believe firmly that if even a small fault or lie were to be found in you it would be a great reproach.”95 Wise words. Bibliography

Unpublished Archival Sources

Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó (aca) aca reg. 506 aca reg. 1818 (1384–1389 Infantisae Yolantis Uxor, Inf. Johannis Loct. Petri III) aca, reg. 1817 aca, reg. 1819 Arxiu Municipal de Barcelona amb carta del 28 Juriol de 1383 Archives Nationales de France an KK 42 an KK 243 an KK 244 Bibliothèque Nationale de France bnf MS Fr. 22542: Mézières, Philippe de, Le Songe du vieil pelerin

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Josep Maria Peral, “La Femme veuve dans l’œuvre de l’évêque d’Elne, Francesc Eiximenis, 1330–1409,” in La Femme dans l’histoire et la société méridionales (IXe–XIXe s.): 66e congrès de la Fédération historique du Languedoc-Roussillon, Narbonne 1994 (Montpellier: La Fédération, 1995), 117–28; Francesc Eiximenis, Francesc Eiximenis: An Anthology, eds. David Guixeras and Xavier Renedo, trans. Robert D. Hughes (Barcelona: Barcino; Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008). Anne of France, Lessons, 31. “Et pourtant ma fille, employez votre etendement du tout à acquérir vertus. Et faites tant que votre renommée soit digne de perpetuelle mémoire. Et quoi que vous fassiez, sur toutes riens, soyez véritable, franche, humble, courtoise et léale; et croyez fermement que si petite faute ni mensonge ne pourrait être trouvée en vous, que ce ne vous fût un grand reproche.” Anne de France, Enseignements, 42.

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Diebel, Ulla “La Reyna Elionor de Sicilia.” Memorias rablb 10 (1928): 351–454. Doran, Madeleine. “Good Name in Othello.” Studies in English Literature (sel) 7 (Spring 1967): 195–217. D’Orliac, Jehanne. Yolande d’Anjou: La Reine des quatre royaumes. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1933. Fenster, Thelma, and Daniel Lord Smail, eds. Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Fenster, Thelma. “Ways of Knowing in the Songe Véritable and Christine de Pizan Livre de l’Avision Cristine.” In Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France, edited by Rebecca Dixon, Finn E. Sinclair et al., 202–14. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008. Feros Ruys, Juanita. “Didactic ‘I’s and the Voice of Experience in Advice from Medieval and Early Modern Parents to their Children.” In What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in Medieval and Early Modern Periods, edited by Juanita Feros Ruys, 129–62. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. Gauvard, Claude. “La Fama, une parole fondatrice.” Médiévales 24 (Printemps 1993): 5–13. ———. “De Grace Especial”: Crime, Etat et Société en France à la fin du Moyen Age. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010. Gibbons, Rachel. “Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France (1385–1422): The Creation of an Historical Villainess: The Alexander Prize Essay.” In Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Sixth Series, vol. 6 (1996): 51–73. ———. The Active Queenship of Isabeau of Bavaria, 1392–1417: Voluptuary, Virago, or Villainess. Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Reading University, uk, 1997. ———. “The Queen as ‘Social Mannequin’: Consumerism and Expenditure at the Court of Isabeau of Bavaria, 1393–1422.” Journal of Medieval History 26, no. 4 (2000): 371–95. Grandeau, Yann. “De Quelques Dames qui ont servi la reine Isabeau de Bavière.” Bulletin philologique et historique ( jusqu’à 1610) du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques 53 (1975): 129–239. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Javierre, Aurea. Mata d’Armaynac, Duquesa de Girona. Barcelona: Dalmau, 1957. Laigle, Mathilde. Livre de Trois Vertus de Christine de Pisan et son milieu historique et littéraire. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1912. Matarasso, Pauline. Queen’s Mate: Three Women of Power in France on the Eve of the Renaissance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. Mirabella, M. Bella. “Feminist Self-fashioning: Christine de Pizan and the Treasure of the City of Ladies.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 6, no. 9 (1999): 9–20. Peláez, Manuel J., Jen Louis Hague, and Josep Maria Peral. “La Femme veuve dans l’œuvre de l’évêque d’Elne, Francesc Eiximenis, 1330–1409.” In La Femme dans

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l’histoire et la société méridionales (IXe–XIXe s.): 66e congrès de la Fédération historique du Languedoc-Roussillon, Narbonne 1994, 117–28. Montpellier: La Fédération, 1995. Pinet, Marie-Josèph. Christine de Pisan (1364–1430): Etude biographique et littéraire. Geneva: Slatkin Reprints, 2011; repr. of Paris: Honoré Champion, 1927 edition. Piponnier, Françoise. Costume et vie sociale la cour d’Anjou XIVe–XVe siècle. Paris and La Haye: Mouton, 1970. Ponsich, Claire. “Violant de Bar (1365–1431): Ses liens et réseaux de relations par le sang et l’alliance.” In Reines et princesses au Moyen Age, edited by Marcel Faure, 233–76. Montpellier: Publications de l’Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, 2001. ———. “L’honneur au XIVe siècle de la vicomtesse d’Illa I de Canet, et d’une noble dame valencienne, deux favorites de la duchesse de Gérone, puis de la reine d’Aragon.” Etudes Roussillonnaises 20 (2003): 75–88. ———. “Un témoignage de la Culture en Cerdagne, la correspondence de Violant de Bar (1380–1431).” Etudes Roussillonnaises Revue d’Histoire et d’Archéologie Méditerranéennes: Le Moyen Age dans les Pyrénées catalanes; Art, culture et société 21 (2005): 147–93. ———. “Des lettres, le livre et les arts dans les relations de Violant de Bar et de Gaston Fébus vers 1388–1389.” In Froissart à la cour de Béarn. L‘Ecrivain, les arts et le pouvoir, edited by Valérie Fasseur. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. ———. “La Correspondance de Yolande de Bar, reine veuve d’Aragon: une source sur Benoït XIII et le concile de 1408.” Etudes Roussillonnaises 24 (2009): 81–118. ———. “Distiller ses conseils ou donner son avis, les solutions épistolaires de Violant de Bar.” In Consulter, délibérer, décider. Donner son avis au moyen âge (FranceEspagne, VIIe–XVIe siècles), edited by M. Charageat and C. Leveleux-Teixeira (2010). ———. “Car amic dans les correspondance de Yolant de Bar: Un discours épistolaire convenu de l’amicitia ou celui d’une affectivité durable et d’un bénéfique?” In Méridiennes (Conference Proceedings, “Amor, amicitia, esquisse d’un discours savant sur l’amour er l’amitié au Moyen-Age”) (forthcoming). ———. “L’Intervention de la reine d’Aragon Violant de Bar dans les designations épiscopales: Etude de quelques-unes de ses lettres envoyées entre 1387 et 1396.” In Devenir évêque au Moyen Age, Du choix de la personne à la prise de possession du bénéfice: Sources et vocabulaire (forthcoming). Ponsich, Pierre. “Aperçu historique sur la seigneurie et la vicomté de Canet.” Etudes Roussillonnaises 11 (1992): 39–54. Quilligan, Maureen. The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s “Cité des Dames.” Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991. Reizler, Sigmund. Geschichte Baierns. Gotha: F.A. Perthes, 1899. Roca, Josep Maria. “La Reyna empordanesa.” Memorias rablb 10 (1928): 9–211. Rohr, Zita Eva. “Late Medieval Queenship and the Practice of Political Motherhood: Yolande of Aragon, Bonne-Mère of France.” In Image and Perception of Monarchy in

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Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Sean McGlynn. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014. ———. “True Lies and Strange Mirrors: The Uses and Abuses of Rumour, Propaganda, and Innuendo during the Closing Stages of the Hundred Years War.” In Queenship, Reputation, and Gendered Power, edited by Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz St John. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming). Ruys, Juanita Feros, “Didactic ‘I’s and the Voice of Experience in Advice from Medieval and Early Modern Parents to their Children,” in What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in Medieval and Early Modern Periods, edited by Juanita Feros Ruys (Turnhout: Brepols), 2008, 129–162. Ryan, Michael A. A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011. Sanpere i Miquel Salvador. Las Damas d’Aragó. Barcelona: Imp. de la Renaixensa, 1879. Silleras-Fernández, Núria. “Spirit and Force: Politics, Public and Private in the Reign of Maria de Luna (1396–1406).” In Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, edited by Theresa Earenfight, 78–90. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. ———. Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship: Maria de Luna. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ———. “Money Isn’t Everything: Concubinage, Class and the Rise and Fall of Sibil.la de Fortià, Queen of Aragon (1377–87).” In Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, edited by Theresa Earenfight, 67–88. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Thibault, Marcel. Isabeau de Bavière, reine de France: La Jeunesse, 1370–1405. Paris: Perrin, 1903. Vale, Malcolm G.A. Charles VII. London: Eyre Methuen, 1974. Varon, R. Padre Fr. Marco Antonio. Historia del Real Monasterio de Sixena. Pamplona: Pasqual Ibañez, 1773. Vendrell Gallostra, Francesca. Violante de Bar y el Compromiso de Caspe. Barcelona: Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, 1992. Viera, David J. La Dona en Francesc Eiximenis. Barcelona: Curial, 1987. Walters, Lori J. “The Vieil Solitaire and the Seulette: Contemplative Solitude and Political Theology in Philippe de Mézières, Christine de Pizan and Jean Gerson.” In Philippe de Mézières and His Age: Piety and Politics in the Fourteenth Century, edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Kiril Petkov, 119–44. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Willard Cannon, Charity. Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works. New York: Persea Books, 1984.

chapter 3

Moor or Mallorquín? Anselm Turmeda’s Ambiguous Identity in the Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca David Gugel Com per alguns honrats mercaders de Mallorques sia estat pregat afectuosament que faés e ordonàs un tractat de a divisió del dit regne, supòs que lo meu enteniment sia grosser e no sobtil en l’art d’atrobar, emperò per dar alguna satisfacció a llurs precs he fetes algunes cobles grosseres en pla català, segons que veurets.1 (While I was asked, affectionately, by several honored merchants from Mallorca to create and write down a treatise on the division of the aforementioned kingdom, I think that my understanding of the art of composition is crude and not at all subtle, but to offer some satisfaction to their requests I have created some crude verses in simple Catalan, which you see below.) With these words begins one of the most remarkable, if generally less known, examples of “convert literature” produced within the late medieval Mediterranean world: the Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca. Written in Catalan in 1398, the Cobles is an elegiac poem to the island of Mallorca and a plea to its citizens to heal the “divisions” tearing apart the social fabric of their society.2 Yet what makes the Cobles especially remarkable for most scholars is not solely its literary merit but also the insight the poem provides into the mind of its author, known at the time by two distinct names that correspond to two distinct, though not always easily distinguishable, identities. 1 Anselm Turmeda, “Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca,” in Obres Menors, ed. Marçal Olivar (Barcelona: Editorial Barcino, 1927), 103. Translations of all Catalan passages are mine unless noted otherwise. 2 Hereafter referred to as the Cobles. Additional information on later editions and printings of this and other of Turmeda’s works can be found in Obres Menors, ed. Olivar, 13–4. The most extensive analysis of the poem is that of Martí de Riquer, included as part of his broader discussion of Turmeda’s life and works in the Història de la Literatura Catalana (Barcelona: Edicions Ariel, 1964), vol. 2, 280–5. Another fairly lengthy discussion of the text was carried out by Zaida Giraldo in her doctoral thesis, “Anselm Turmeda: An Intellectual Biography of a Medieval Apostate, Including a Translation of ‘The Debate between the Friar and the Ass’” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1974), 108–14.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291003_005

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The first, used by the author to identify himself within the poem, is that of Brother Anselm Turmeda, the name he used during the first half of his life while a child, a student, and, eventually, a member of the Franciscan Order. The second name, representing his actual public identity during the period in which he wrote the Cobles, was Abdallah al-Tarjuman, who was an official in the Tunisian maritime customs office, a married man with several children, and a Muslim. The first name was that given to him at birth; the second is that which Turmeda created for himself following his decision to abandon his Mallorcan homeland and his Franciscan vows to travel to North Africa and convert to Islam. For modern scholarship, Turmeda’s extant body of writings is particularly noteworthy because it stands as one of the few examples of convert literature written in a Romance language that is also written by a convert from Christianity to another faith. Moreover, the highly autobiographical nature of Turmeda’s works provides an unusual opportunity to examine how Turmeda’s self-perception and public projection of identity changed and developed over an extended period of time. Yet among all of his works, the relatively brief Cobles has generally received less scholarly attention than Turmeda’s lengthier, and later, philosophical and polemical works. This is unfortunate because the Cobles offers perhaps the best insight into the ambiguous and sometimes contradictory relationship that Turmeda maintained between his Christian and Muslim identities, an ambiguity demonstrated not least by the fact that all of Turmeda’s extant Catalan writings—works written in his natal tongue and clearly intended for a Christian audience— were composed in the years and decades following his conversion. What is more, most of these works contain elements that run directly counter to basic tenets of Islamic doctrine as laid out in the Koran and, instead, continue to espouse elements of Christian dogma, often without any apparent qualification or reservation. Over the past century, this apparent dichotomy between Turmeda’s public and literary identities has led many scholars to either, on the one hand, question Turmeda’s motives, beliefs, and even his moral character or, on the other, celebrate him as a uniquely “modern” figure, unbeholden to the strict confessional divides that defined his age (as well as our own). For the most part, these reactions are rooted in the fact that Turmeda’s unusual, seemingly cryptoChristian, literary identity varies wildly from most established tropes of what literature written by a convert should look like. In most instances, this entails an utter and unequivocal rejection of the convert’s previously held religious beliefs that, subsequently, delineates a clear disjuncture between his or her present and past identity. One scholar has eloquently described this process as

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“symbolically to die in one community and be reborn in another.”3 Thus, for some converts, the composition of post-conversion polemic served as a deliberate mechanism to demonstrate the conquest of a new cultural and confessional identity and the rejection and death of the old, as was arguably the case for converso polemicists like Nicholas Donin and Pablo Christiani.4 In fact, even Turmeda himself eventually composed a polemic of this sort, albeit only near the end of his life. Written in 1423, only a few years before his death, the Tuḥfat al-arīb fi al-rad ‘alà ahl al-ṣalīb (The Gift of the Learned Man to Refute the Partisans of the Cross) is his only work composed in Arabic rather than Catalan and is a full-throated refutation of Christian doctrine and belief and an unequivocal endorsement of the Islamic faith.5 Yet because of this tendency by both modern and medieval writers to view conversion in absolutist terms, the fact that Turmeda’s post-conversion Catalan-language writings do not demonstrate the expected absolutist rejection of his previous Christian faith has led some to conclude that Turmeda was inherently deceptive, a Muslim writing from behind a Christian façade who 3 Richard Bulliet, “Conversion Stories in Early Islam,” in Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, eds. Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1990), 129. Also cited in Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 101–2. 4 For a discussion of Nicholas Donin’s campaign against French Jews, see Robert Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), especially Chap. 4. Chazan has also written several articles on Pablo Christiani, especially focusing on his disputation against Jewish rabbis, including that against the famous scholar Nachmanides in 1263. These articles include “Confrontation in the Synagogue of Narbonne: A Christian Sermon and a Jewish Reply,” Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974): 437–57, as well as “The Barcelona ‘Disputation’ of 1263: Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response,” Speculum 52, no. 4 (1977): 824–42. Ryan Szpiech has recently offered an updated interpretation in the intersection between conversion and polemic in Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), as well as in a shorter article, “The Original Is Unfaithful to the Translation: Conversion and Authenticity in Abner of Burgos and Anselm Turmeda,” eHumanista 14 (2010): 146–77. 5 The authoritative edition of the Tuḥfat al-arīb fi al-rad ‘alà ahl al-ṣalīb (hereafter referred to as the Tuḥfa) is that of Míkel de Epalza, included in his larger study Fray Anselm Turmeda (Abdallāh al-Tar� umān) y su Polémica Islamo-Cristiana: edición, traducción y estudio de la Tuḥfa, ed. and trans. Míkel de Epalza, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Libros Hiperión, 1994). There has been some argument that Turmeda did not write the polemical chapters that form the bulk of the work, but this essay follows the tentative view of Epalza himself that, while Turmeda may have had outside assistance or while a later author may have modified the text, the most likely author remains Turmeda himself. Epalza, Fray Anselm Turmeda, 166–9.

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deviously sought to confuse and confound his Christian audience.6 Or, alternately, others have made the opposite claim, that he remained fully Christian, albeit likely heterodox, even after his conversion and only wrote his polemical Tuḥfa to placate his Muslim co-religionists and hide his true beliefs.7 In both cases, however, he is viewed as fundamentally deceptive. However, while both of the above-mentioned viewpoints are compelling in some respects, neither reflects a sufficiently nuanced view to offer a truly satisfactory explanation of the bifurcated identity presented by Turmeda in his various post-conversion writings. Instead, this chapter will suggest that Turmeda is best viewed as an individual caught between worlds, for whom a binary view of the convert as either one faith or the other is insufficient. Rather, Turmeda’s conversion, as reflected in his writings, particularly the Cobles, is better viewed as a protracted process in which elements of his pre-conversion Christian identity continued to exercise considerable influence over his understanding of self and his construction of his own identity. 6 Doubts about the authenticity of Turmeda’s beliefs have been expressed most strongly in recent years by Rafael Alemany Ferrer, “Presències i ecos d’un jo individuat en Anselm Turmeda,” Estudis de llengua i literatura catalanes 29 (1994): 5–24. He sees Turmeda as entirely motivated by the desire for self-aggrandizement and possessing no real religious conviction at all. In this he reflects earlier judgments of Turmeda that tended to be much harsher, such as those of Miret y Sans and Menendez Pelayo. A good summary of their claims can be found in Agustín Calvet’s biography of Turmeda, in the section discussing the reconnection of Turmeda’s Mallorcan and Tunisian identities in the late 19th century. Agustín Calvet, Fray Anselmo Turmeda:Heterodoxo español, 1352–1423-(32?) (Barcelona: Casa Editorial Estudio, 1914), esp. 43–55. Views similar to this, if admittedly more nuanced in their formulation, can be seen in the writings of Roger Boase, “Autobiography of a Muslim Convert: Anselm Turmeda (c. 1353–c. 1430),” Al-Masaq 9 (1996–1997), 45–98; and Lourdes Maria Alvarez, “Anselm Turmeda: The Visionary Humanism of a Muslim Convert and Catalan Prophet,” in Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen (New York: Routledge, 2002), 172–91. Ryan Szpiech has also recently seemed to question the authenticity of Turmeda’s Christian face in his works, but softens this view by citing Robert Beier’s view of Turmeda’s Muslim and Christian identities as mutually interdependent. Szpiech, “The Original Is Unfaithful to the Translation,” 166–7. For Beier’s discussion of Turmeda’s interculturality, see Robert Beier, Anselm Turmeda: eine Studie zur interkulturellen Literatur (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1996), 160–2. 7 This is the general view of both Calvet and Riquer (both op. cit.). Interestingly, however, Riquer also calls Turmeda a “skeptic” and an “unbelieving friar,” showing some lingering uncertainty regarding Turmeda’s true beliefs on his part. Riquer, Historia, 304. A similar judgment was made by Manuel de Montoliu, deeming Turmeda a false convert to Islam, but one who also remained somewhat skeptical of Christianity. Manuel de Montoliu, Eiximenis, Turmeda, i l’inici de l’humanisme a Catalunya: Bernat Metge (Barcelona: Editorial Alpha, 1960), 95–8.

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In further approaching an examination of Turmeda’s confusing, seemingly bifurcated identity, one useful approach is to bring to bear the elements and process of identity formation first suggested by Stephen Greenblatt in his seminal monograph on Renaissance “self-fashioning.” In this work, Greenblatt describes the process of identity formation as being rooted in how an individual perceives himself in relation to an array of competing cultural discourses with which he comes into contact over the course of his life.8 As part of this process, the individual constructs his identity by submitting himself to particular belief systems or ways of understanding the world, which Greenblatt terms the “authority” and which represents the set of core values or beliefs that an individual accepts as true. These core beliefs then form the basis for the individual’s moral understanding of the world and his sociocultural position within it.9 Opposing this, and further defining the limits of the self, is the “alien,” something or someone “perceived as alien, strange, or hostile.”10 In Greenblatt’s view, self-identity is created out of the inherent tension between these two forces “at the point of encounter between an authority and an alien,” where the individual must decide how best to adhere to those beliefs deemed authoritative and deny or destroy those deemed alien.11 Thus, arising out of struggle, the self-fashioned identity bears the scars of the conflict out of which it emerges. What is more, sometimes some elements of the alien are even incorporated into the individual’s identity, which Greenblatt believes allows for self-fashioned identities to continue to change over time as former authorities become, at times, the alien of an individual’s new identity construction. When applied to the writings of converts such as those mentioned above, Greenblatt’s model of authority and alien explains their vehement rejection of previous confessional affiliation as a means through which the convert attempts to re-establish the boundary lines between his or her newly selffashioned identity’s notions of authority and alien. In short, because those sources of authority previously considered unquestionable are now deemed alien, converts’ attempts to write about their current and previous faith tend to exaggerate their newfound confessional affiliations in order to show both submission to the new authority and rejection of prior belief. In Turmeda’s Catalan writings, however, such a vehement denial of his previous faith and previous Christian identity as a Franciscan friar simply 8

Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 9 Ibid., 9. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid.

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does not occur. Instead, his personal and confessional identity remains ill defined precisely because his “conversion” to Islam remained incomplete far after the point that he had publicly “converted.” Thus, rather than presenting an identity that was either exclusively Muslim or Christian, the Cobles presents an image of a self-constructed identity somewhere “in-between,” with Turmeda remaining unwilling to entirely sever his connection to his Christian past, both culturally and theologically, even as he also increasingly came under the influence of Arab-Islamic sources of authority in the cultural milieu of his adopted North African home. In many respects this view of Turmeda’s conversion process is reminiscent of similar conclusions drawn more recently by other scholars of the converts and the conversion process. Frequently, these scholars have emphasized the often protracted, hesitant path of the convert as he or she seeks to fashion a new identity for him or herself.12 Moreover, as has already been noted, it is the intent of this essay to extend this interpretation of “the convert experience” to Anselm Turmeda by highlighting how his extended, incomplete conversion is reflected in his presentation of self-identity in the Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca. Essentially, rather than adhering to a strictly Arabo-Islamic or Euro-Christian construction of authority and alien, Turmeda’s post-conversion identity was instead fashioned around multiple loci that drew simultaneously from both religious and cultural traditions, sometimes in a manner that required no small amount of cognitive dissonance on Turmeda’s part to reconcile. Furthermore, only at the end of his life was Turmeda able to finally leave behind his earlier Christian identity as the friar, Anselm Turmeda, and fully enter into his adopted identity as Abdallah al-Tarjuman, the Muslim customs official. Yet before proceeding further, more should first be said about Turmeda’s biography and those events which he claims led him on his eventual path from a religious life as a Franciscan to that of a secular Muslim in North Africa, since 12

David Wacks has recently suggested that a glimpse into a conversion at a still-incomplete stage can also be found in the writings of the earlier, 12th-century Jewish convert, Petrus Alfonsi, lending further credence to this view in relation to Turmeda. David Wacks, “Conflicted Identity and Colonial Adaptation in Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus contra judeos and Disciplina clericalis,” in Marginal Voices: Studies in Converso Literature and Golden Age Spain, eds. Gregory B. Kaplan and Amy Aronson-Friedman (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 69–90. For an earlier analysis of Alfonsi and his historical significance, see John Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993). Further examples of this can be found in the works of Tijana Krstić (op. cit.) and Paola Tartakoff, Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250–1391 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

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only through such a review can his unusual, bifurcated existence as both Friar Anselm and Abdallah al-Tarjuman truly be understood.

The Biography of an Unexpected Convert

Unlike for many medieval authors, the life of Anselm Turmeda is relatively well documented, largely due to the extensive account of his own life, which he included in his contentious Tuḥfa and which precedes and introduces the more polemical sections that follow.13 Because of this, it is possible to examine the intersection between Turmeda’s biography and literary output to a much greater extent than is possible for less well-documented convert authors. According to his account, Turmeda’s life began in the city of Palma de Mallorca, where he was born to parents of some importance and wealth, likely involved in the cloth industry.14 Seemingly destined for a career in the Church from an early age, he began his formal education at the age of six and, as a teenager, continued his studies at the university at Lleida. Soon after, he entered the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor and began to pursue advanced studies in Paris and Bologna.15 13

Some additional information has also been found in other sources, including scattered references contained in royal and ecclesiastical registers. Nonetheless, the Tuḥfa remains the most extensive and fully realized account of Turmeda’s life and conversion and is even generally considered to be reliable in spite of its polemical nature. Consequently, since its original translation from Arabic in the late 19th century, it has remained a central source for the study of Turmeda’s life and body of work. 14 Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 204. All translations of this work into English are mine. Still, however, it must also be recognized that they are also dependant on Epalza’s initial translation of the original Arabic text into Castilian. No additional information is given by Turmeda regarding his parents or other family, but one hint is suggested by a notarial document recording a donation to Turmeda by his godfather (padrastro), one Pedro Silvestre, who was a member of the local weaver’s guild (Calvet, Fray Anselm Turmeda, 85, 89). Turmeda was around 23 years old at the time and likely was residing at the Franciscan convent of Montblach. It is the earliest extant document that mentions Turmeda and has provided some basis for speculation that his father was also involved in the cloth trade. Additionally, another document, located in the Vatican Archives, records Turmeda’s installation as a deacon of the Cathedral at Palma on June 4, 1378, and has been transcribed and published by J.M. Pou y Martí, “Sobre Fray Anselmo Turmeda,” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 7 (1914): 467–9. 15 His study at Bologna is well documented in the Tuḥfa (Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 202–6). His study at Paris is only suggested parenthetically in another of his works, La Disputa de l’Ase, a later work that only survives in French translation. The work has been extensively analyzed and translated by Giraldo, “Anselm Turmeda,” 219. The translation runs from page 165 to page 288.

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It was during his time at Bologna that Turmeda’s life took the dramatic turn that resulted in his conversion. As he recounts the course of events, soon after arriving in Bologna he entered into the service of “a very old priest of great eminence,” prominent enough that “all classes of eminent persons, including kings and others, consulted with him on religious matters.”16 Unfortunately, in spite of this reported prominence, the identity of Turmeda’s master, whom he identifies as Nicolo (Nicholas) Frateel (Fratello/Martil), still remains uncertain, primarily due to the fact that no corroborating records document a Bolognese master with that name during the relevant period.17 Nonetheless, whoever this teacher may have been, Turmeda claims to have idolized the man, living with him for more than ten years. Turmeda states that Nicholas was a man with whom he “was always in agreement” and whom he considered one of his closest friends.18 In many respects, Nicholas appears to have served as an idealized father figure for Turmeda, who sought his advice in all matters and, when given, seems to have heeded it unquestioningly. In fact, Turmeda’s esteem for his master and his willingness to accede to his master’s advice are precisely the factors that led him onto his path towards his final conversion. When it did occur, Turmeda’s initial motivation to convert arrived suddenly, following a discussion between Turmeda and other students of the university that postulated possible alternate identifications for the “Paraclete”—the ambiguous prophetic figure prophesied by Jesus to come into world subsequent to the Crucifixion and commonly equated by Church authorities with the Holy Spirit, the third element of the Christian, Trinitarian deity. Turmeda 16 Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 208. 17 For a discussion of additional, possible names for his master, based on possible orthographical changes during the text’s lengthy manuscript history, see Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 208, 4n. In his transcription of the text, Epalza records the consonants used as f-r-t-y-1 (the name in Arabic script is (‫)نقالو فرتيل‬, but the name given in his translation is Martello. The reason for the orthographical switch of the first consonant is not explained. Interestingly, in the Cobles Turmeda praises a Franciscan named Nicolau Martí, a name tantalizingly close to that suggested here in the Tuḥfa as his Bolognese master, but there is no definitive link that anyone with a name either like Nicolau Martí, Martello, or Fratello ever taught at Bologna. Recently, Roger Boase has offered an alternate suggestion of Nicola da Moimacco, a Dominican friar teaching at the university during the last decades of the 14th century, discussed in an appendix to his article cited above. (Boase, “Autobiography of a Muslim Convert,” app. 1, 94–6.) Basing his identification on a reading of the Arabic consonants different than that used by Epalza, his identification is compelling in that it, at the very least, matches a particular teacher in a position of influence at the University of Bologna, who was also of the proper age to match with Turmeda’s description. His identification has yet to achieve broader acceptance, however. 18 Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 210.

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returned home and shared the entire discussion with his master, Nicholas, including in his report the various identifications offered by the other students.19 After listening to his account, however, Nicholas informed Turmeda that the group was on the right track, since the Paraclete was not the Holy Spirit, but that none of the identifications offered were correct. Rather, the Paraclete was a coded name for Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. Following Turmeda’s astonished, slightly incredulous protest, Nicholas then explained that not only did Islam offer a more pure religious path than the contemporary Roman Church but also Turmeda, in order to ensure his salvation, should immediately endeavor to travel to North Africa, where he could convert and practice the “true” faith of Jesus and the Prophets, which the Christian Church had entirely abandoned.20 As it relates to Turmeda’s later construction of his post-conversion identity, this episode is vital in two ways. First, the emotional weight of such a revelation, particularly when coming from someone so highly respected as his master, must have been enormous for Turmeda. Recently, Ryan Szpiech has commented on the extreme influence that Nicholas appears to have exercised over Turmeda, suggesting that the way in which he describes his master reflects a deliberate effort to connect himself to “Martello’s eminence and authority.”21 In this respect, Turmeda’s lionization of his mentor fits quite nicely with Greenblatt’s model of identity formation; for Turmeda, his “authority” was his master, a figure of great eminence and, at least outwardly, of deep Christian faith. Given this, Turmeda’s almost reflexive decision to act on Nicholas’s advice, even as he has entirely overturned Turmeda’s expectations regarding his religious understanding of the world, only highlights his master’s authoritative role. Furthermore, if Turmeda’s decision to convert was based on the authoritative desire of his master rather than on any preconceived desire to convert on his own, as is suggested here, it may offer a partial explanation for Turmeda’s 19

The proclamation of the Paraclete’s coming can be found in John 14:16 and 16:7 as well as Matthew 3:10–2 and Luke 3:9–17. Epalza notes that the common understanding was that this referred to the coming of the Holy Spirit ten days after Christ’s crucifixion (Epalza, Fray Anselm Turmeda, 212, 2n). In a subsequent note, he adds that such a discussion would have been highly unorthodox and might betray the possible influence of Joachim di Fiore, the 11th-century Italian mystic and heretic. 20 Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 216. 21 Szpiech, Conversion and Narrative, 202. Riquer is more inclined to doubt that his master’s words were the sole reason for Turmeda’s conversion, though he still emphasizes his fundamental belief in Turmeda’s truthfulness in his account. Riquer, Història de la Literatura Catalana, 302–3.

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confused identity found in his writings. If, for Turmeda, the decision to convert was not the result of long consideration and inner reflection but, rather, a sudden, likely violent, swerve from one set of beliefs to another, brought about by the sledgehammer-like weight of influence wielded by Master Nicholas over his student, it suggests that the fundamental values of Christian doctrine— being doctrines which he had studied and accepted for his whole life—likely remained largely unchallenged even at the point he decided to convert to Islam; only after his conversion did Christian authority even begin to become alien. In essence, the source of authority in Turmeda’s life became fragmented, split between the still-unchallenged authority of Christian dogma and Scripture that he had studied for decades and the personal authority of his master pulling him in the new direction towards conversion and, eventually, the dogmatic authority of Islamic Scripture. Particularly indicative of the continued importance of Christianity as a source of authority in Turmeda’s understanding of his own identity are the terms in which he claims his master framed his conversion. Notably, rather than urging him to convert to Islam because it was an inherently superior faith, Turmeda states instead that Nicholas framed the need to convert as an opportunity to practice a better, purer form of Christianity, telling Turmeda: “My son, if the Christians had remained firm in the primitive religion of Jesus, certainly they would stand in the religion of God, because the religion of Jesus and all the Prophets—peace be on them—is the religion of God.”22 Therefore, Anselm Turmeda may well have understood his conversion less in terms of an actual change in religious belief than as a change in religious practice carried out in an effort to practice his “Christian” faith in a better, less corrupted manner that would be more conducive to his salvation.23 Thus, it is possible that Turmeda’s conversion may never have been intended to be a break from his previous identity at all. Whatever his intentions, though, following his master’s revelation Turmeda states that he quickly departed Bologna to travel to Tunis, where he began to work towards arranging an audience with the sultan, Abu al-‘Abbās Aḥmad (d. 1394), the man most likely to provide him with income and security as a Muslim convert. Because he was unable to speak Arabic, however, his efforts were hampered somewhat, and it took several months to make all of the arrangements. Nonetheless, soon thereafter he stood before the sultan and his 22 Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 216. 23 The assertion that Islam was a “more pure” or “perfected” form of Christianity is not uncommon in Islamic polemical works. For a brief discussion of this view as it relates to Turmeda’s writings, see Epalza, Fray Anselm Turmeda, 79–84.

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court, including several Christians with whom he had previously lodged, and crossed the interconfessional Rubicon, leaving behind (at least outwardly) his life as a Christian ecclesiastic and entering into the sultan’s service. Moreover, after having learned sufficient Arabic, he was appointed as a translator in the Tunisian maritime customs office. But while his public proclamation before the sultan seemingly should have been the point at which his conversion was most firm and his will most resolute, as suggested above, this was not the case. Instead, it is likely that his professional posting actually served as an additional, significant factor hindering his full integration into his adopted faith and culture. Working as a translator in a busy Mediterranean trading port, Turmeda necessarily maintained frequent and close contact with members of his former culture and faith community. As seen in the opening lines of the Cobles reproduced at the beginning of this essay, the impetus for the composition of the work only arose from his continued contact with Mallorcan merchants at whose request he claims to have written the work. Therefore, while it is clear that Turmeda’s conversion was genuine, the evidence provided by his own writings suggests that, as already has been noted, his conversion was never intended as a rejection of his natal culture or, necessarily, his previous identity. Instead, his adopted faith and culture only gradually exerted an increasing pull and influence, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Cobles, to which attention will now be turned.

Anselm Turmeda’s Ambiguous Identity as Seen through the Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca

The basic narrative that Turmeda constructs in the Cobles is one that is often only loosely connected, giving the poem an almost episodic feeling. Repeatedly, narrative devices that appear at one point in the work are suddenly dropped, never to reappear, as the focus of the poem shifts to new subjects. In spite of this, the one thematic element that remains constant, even to the point that one can see it as holding the poem together, is Turmeda’s basic exhortation to his former countrymen to heal the societal fissures that were, in his mind, destroying the social fabric of the Mallorcan community.24 24

Turmeda never specifically outlines what the “divisions” are that so plague the island, but they likely have to do with the protracted political and economic tensions between the capitol city and the other communities of the island that continued throughout the 14th century and into the 15th. For a more extended discussion of this, see Historia de Mallorca, ed. J. Mascaró Pasarius (Palma de Mallorca: Vicente Colom Roselló, 1978), especially vols. 3 and 5.

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Thus, in pursuit of this goal, Turmeda imagines an intratextual version of himself who, while on a leisurely ride through an idyllic meadow, discovers a fantastical castle in a verdant valley. Being quickly welcomed by the castle’s female inhabitants, Turmeda is then invited to enter the castle, where he encounters a personification of the island of Mallorca, taking the form of a beautiful, courtly queen. After introducing herself, the island queen, distraught by the “divisions” plaguing the Mallorcan people who inhabit her kingdom, begs the intratextual Turmeda’s assistance to reconcile the island’s inhabitants. Consequently, the two begin a lengthy conversation, discussing the source of the island’s troubles and what can be done to solve them, and this becomes the sole focus of the poem from that point on. Beginning by mentioning the many glories of the island as well as of its inhabitants, the island queen extols the nobility of the island’s knights, the industriousness of its merchants, the skill of its sailors, and the urbanity of its peasants.25 But far outpacing all of the other descriptions in sheer volume is a 14-stanza celebration of those sons of the island who were also members of monastic orders, with members of Turmeda’s own former Franciscan Order receiving particular acclaim. Notably, these men are the only individuals both identified by name and given individual descriptions of their admirable qualities. In all other cases, the island’s other groups are only described collectively, giving the reader a clear impression that Turmeda particularly desired to emphasize the importance of those following a religious office. Moreover, while the unusual nature of this extended digression has also been noted by other scholars, it has usually only been viewed as a means through which Turmeda might mollify the poem’s intended Christian readership, serving as a balm for those who may have been aware of his apostasy and were still resentful of it.26 25

26

The list would likely continue on even longer if not for a caesura in the text. A good example of the tone of these descriptions is that of the peasants: “Mos pageses, ab falcons/a cavall van a la caça;/ab filats e ab furons/cascú son delit percaça” (My peasants, with falcons/go on the hunt on horseback; with nets and with ferrets/each one follows his pleasure). Turmeda, Cobles, 115. The correlation of the peasantry with activities traditionally reserved for the aristocracy is unusual, as well as notable in its own right. At the very least, it further bolsters Turmeda’s claim of Mallorcan exceptionalism. Giraldo suggests that Turmeda may have had political purposes in discussing the Franciscans, but goes no further in impugning his character. Giraldo, Anselm Turmeda, 110. Alemany Ferrer views Turmeda’s entire literary corpus as one extended attempt to curry favor with whatever audience he happened to be addressing, with no conviction behind anything he says. In this regard, he shares a closer affinity to the earlier generation of Turmeda historians, such as Menendez Pelayo, cited by Calvet as describing Turmeda as a “vicious apostate,” fluctuating between Islam and Christianity. Alemany Ferrer, “Presències d’un jo individuat,” 44–5. See also note 6 above.

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Thus, in this view, the passage functioned primarily as an intentional deception, devoid of any underlying belief or conviction whatsoever on Turmeda’s part. Yet by applying Greenblatt’s criteria of self-fashioned identity, another possibility becomes apparent, in which the extraordinary praise lavished by Turmeda onto his former companions and coreligionists was, in fact, genuine and offers a first glimpse of the continued reliance on Christian sources of authority that Turmeda maintained even after his conversion, and which he continued to seek to incorporate into the outward portrayal of self provided by his writings. In support of this assertion, several features of his descriptions of the various friars are worth mentioning. First, nearly all of the friars mentioned by Turmeda were active in the later 14th century, making it quite likely that he knew many of them personally.27 Moreover, it is equally likely that at least some would also have been known to Turmeda’s intended readership, which likely served to prevent him from patently exaggerating in his descriptions and praise, thereby diminishing his credibility rather than raising it. Second, the Mallorcan ecclesiastics he describes all possessed intellectual and theological pre-eminence of a similar sort to that which he lauded so highly in his description of his own master at Bologna. Like Frateel (or Fratello), all of the ecclesiastics described in the Cobles are described as having dedicated themselves to the pursuit of a pure, simplified form of Christianity, not unlike that espoused by the founder of Turmeda’s order, Saint Francis himself. Because of this, Turmeda grants them a form of “authority” similar to that enjoyed by his Bolognese master. They too are portrayed as idealized models to be emulated. One example of such a figure included by Turmeda among those lauded in this section of the Cobles is Brother P[ere] Cima, whom he describes as “a great doctor who followed the true path of St Francis,” clearly suggesting the uprightness of his religious life.28 In addition, Cima was also a man of great learning, the presiding bishop for the island of Mallorca, and the personal confessor to King Pere III. But even more important for Turmeda was that Cima was the bishop who had presided over Turmeda’s ordination in 1379.29 Thus, in this one 27 Giraldo, Anselm Turmeda, 110. This personal connection between Turmeda and the subjects he writes about has also been noted by Riquer, Historia, 282. 28 Turmeda, Cobles, 117. “Aprés ve lo confessor/de l’excel · lent rei don Pere,/Fra P. Cima, gran doctor/ qui seguia la bandera/de sent Francesc vertadera” (Subsequently, I saw the confessor/of the excellent king, Don Pere,/Brother P. Cima, a great doctor who followed the true path of Saint Francis). 29 Pere Cima, the bishop of Elne, headed the diocese of Palma from 1377 to 1390. Epalza, Fray Anselm Turmeda, 12. Turmeda never mentions his ordination in any of his writings, but it is recorded in several ecclesiastical records both in Palma and in the archives of the Vatican. Pere III (1319–87, Pedro IV using Aragonese numeration) ruled the Crown of Aragon from 1336 until his death.

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individual, all the elements important to Turmeda were combined: he was a powerful, influential man; he was not corrupted by his power but remained devoted to Franciscan simplicity; he was a man of great learning; and he was known to Turmeda personally, even playing a pivotal, if perhaps brief, role in Turmeda’s pre-conversion religious formation. Moving beyond Cima, Turmeda’s praise of other prominent Mallorcan religious men follows a similar model. For example, he describes two other friars in the following manner: De sciència la flor en mi florint refloria, era hom de gran valor e mestre de Teologia; e io creu que son nom sia Frare Nicolau Martí. Gran honor per ell rebí en lo temps que ell vivia. Encara corre la font, gran flum gitant de sciença; de nos a Déu és fet pont, hom és de gran consciença; per la sua gran prudença io l’acompar a sent Paul. Est és master Nicola Sacosta, qui molt m’agença.30 (In science the flower flowering in me flowered again, he was a man of great valor and a master in Theology; and I believe that his name was Brother Nicolau Martí. I received great honor through him in the time that he was alive Still the fountain flows, sending forth a great stream of science; from us to God a bridge is made, 30 Turmeda, Cobles, 118.

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there is a man of great conscience; because of his great prudence I compare him to Saint Paul. This one is Master Nicola Sacosta, who pleases me much.) In both cases, these men, like Pere Cima, can be seen as influential models for Turmeda’s own identity not only because of their intellectual acumen but also because they are specifically portrayed as men who shared the same spiritual ideals as those important to Turmeda, particularly being the pursuit of theological understanding and spiritual fulfillment more than the pursuit of secular or worldly power, as expressed in his description of master Nicholas in the Tuḥfa.31 Further suggesting that Turmeda’s description of the friars in the Cobles is not disingenuous is the fact that elsewhere in his writings Turmeda was not always so complimentary to members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy as he is in the Cobles. In particular, in several of his later works, written at the point that he had become more thoroughly entrenched in Islamic, North African culture, he increasingly criticized members of the secular and regular clergy, often using examples similarly drawn from individuals he had actually known. In fact, even his Bolognese master, whom he idolized in so many ways, comes in for criticism at one point, with Turmeda condemning his unwillingness to convert to Islam, in spite of his belief, saying, “that which he said [his excuse that he was too old and infirm] is no justification… God is right to castigate him.”32 In addition, several extended passages found in the Disputa de l’Ase (The Debate between the Friar and the Ass) are also remarkable. Written approximately two decades after the Cobles, in 1417, this work follows a narrative form similar to that of the Cobles, consisting of a brief narrative introduction followed by a discussion/disputation involving a literary personification of the author, called “Friar Anselm.” Yet in this case, rather than a pleasant conversation with a beautiful island queen, in the Disputa Friar Anselm is instead called 31

Calvet was the first to notice the similarity between the names of Nicolau Martí provided here in the Cobles and that of Turmeda’s Bolognese master, Nicholas Fratello/Martello. Unfortunately, little else is known about Martí beyond Turmeda’s description, so it is impossible at the present time to establish a direct link between the two. See also note 17 for more on the identity of Turmeda’s Bolognese master. Riquer claimed that Martí was the confessor to several members of the Aragonese royal house, but this has subsequently been called into question. 32 Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 218.

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upon to debate his belief that Man is superior to animals and rules over the animal kingdom. His adversary in this disputation is an ass, who is ugly and coarse in every way but whose mental acuity soon gives the intratextual Friar Anselm no end of trouble. In fact, during the course of their disputation, Turmeda makes it clear that the opinions of the Ass, rather than those of the intratextual Friar Anselm, fall more closely in line with those he himself holds. Consequently, Turmeda repeatedly allows Friar Anselm to be outwitted and convincingly refuted by his opponent, while consistently bolstering the relative credibility of the Ass in the mind of the reader. Thus, when the intratextual Turmeda asserts that humans are superior to animals because many of them engage in religious vocations, thereby allowing them to lead morally superior lives, the Ass, and by extension Turmeda himself, responds with series of exempla that, instead, castigate the sins of the secular and regular clergy, including some who were members of Turmeda’s former Franciscan Order. In marked contrast to the portrayal of individuals in religious orders in the Cobles, who were held up as individuals worthy of emulation, the ecclesiastics of the Disputa universally represent the alien that must be denigrated and, ultimately, rejected. Linking together all of the exempla offered by Turmeda is a fundamental disgust with members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy who pursue secular wealth and power rather than the basic, Franciscan ideals of humility, poverty, and simplicity. In this respect, Turmeda certainly is not unique; what is unusual, though, is his willingness to attack specific individuals who were still alive and active in his Mallorcan homeland and whom he (or his audience) may have known personally.33 Therefore, although his literary method is similar to that employed in the Cobles, in which he also singled out individuals who would have been known to his audience, the effect of such personalization would have been entirely opposite, serving to alienate him from his audience through an overt rejection of certain of his co-religionists, some of whom who appear to have been rather influential. One example from the Disputa that demonstrates Turmeda’s willingness to attack particular individuals within the Mallorcan religious community is when he, speaking through the Ass, attacks a Franciscan friar named Francesc Citges, who lived in the city of Mallorca and who, according to the Ass, “still 33

Epalza has come to the same conclusion as that suggested here. Míkel de Epalza, “Conversió i Narrativa Oral Islàmiques a les Narracions Literàries Autobiogràfiques d’Anselm Turmeda (Abdàl·lah at-Tarjuman),” in Actes del Novè Col·loqui Internacional de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes, eds. Rafael Alemany, Antoni Ferrando, and Lluís B. Meseguer (Valencia: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1993), 1:153–9.

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lives there today in 1417.”34 Then, in what is the beginning of a string of invective, the Ass states that the friar “had such a feminine voice that anyone who heard him speak without seeing him would justly say that it was a woman speaking.”35 Moreover, while he was intellectually unremarkable, “neither very smart or very stupid,” he was “very diligent in amassing money and … noble in appearance and knowledgeable in making confession.” Therefore, even though he couches his writing within backhanded compliments—Citges’s “noble appearance” for instance—Turmeda still undermines the compliment by suggesting that Citges used his noble appearance for personal profit as a confessor. Thus, Turmeda shows a remarkable willingness to harshly criticize one who was not only a member of the Mallorcan Franciscan Order, which he had praised so unreservedly in the Cobles, but also one who was still living and likely would have been known to many among Turmeda’s Catalan-speaking audience, which, again, would have lent an additional weight of personal judgment to Turmeda’s words. Furthermore, while it is possible that Turmeda’s description of Citges is the product of personal enmity rather than disgust at his corrupt practices, this possibility is contradicted by the broadness of many of the Ass’s statements, along with the consistently negative portrayal of the Church hierarchy and its members. To give but one example, following his recitation of the story of the corrupt, money-hungry Friar Citges, the Ass then broadens his critique of the Church from Friar Citges himself to the clergy more generally, whom he claims also try to “amass money by means of great tricks so that they can go to the court of Rome with the money and make themselves bishops nulla tenens and be free of the vow of obedience in order to do anything they wish.”36 Therefore, the problems discussed in the exempla are not restricted to a few corrupt individuals but are endemic to the Church itself. What is more, the descriptions of corrupt clergymen in the other seven exempla recited by the Ass only further underscore and reiterate the same core belief that the institutional Church had increasingly been suffused by morally suspect individuals whose activities debased the institution as a whole. Therefore, in illustrating the ease with which members of the clergy fall into sin, Turmeda’s exempla in the Disputa stand in stark contrast to the unequivocally positive portrayal found in the Cobles. In addition, they likely are a first glimmer of the more substantive turn from Christian sources of authority that is seen most explicitly in the unabashedly anti-Christian Tuḥfa. In essence, Turmeda’s notably more negative 34 Turmeda, La Disputa, 244. Trans. by Giraldo. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., 243–4.

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assessment of his former ecclesiastical companions found in the Disputa likely is indicative of a broader dissatisfaction with the moral and structural composition of the Roman Church—which, it should also be remembered, his Bolognese master advised him to abandon in order to practice a more “pure” Christianity—and the beginnings of his final turn from his Christian sources of authority.37 When writing the Cobles, however, this shift had not yet occurred, even though a decade had already passed since his conversion. Thus, as noted above, his characterization of his former co-religionists remained substantially positive, reflecting the continued authority of these individuals over Turmeda’s construction of his own identity, a fact which likely also explains his continued use of his pre-conversion sobriquet “Fra” or “Frare” Anselm in his Catalan compositions, up until he transforms “Brother Anselm” into something of a dunce in the Disputa, and does away with him in the Tuḥfa. Thus, in the Cobles, the identity projected by Turmeda is still very much rooted in that of his Christian past, as demonstrated during the discussion between the intratextual Turmeda and the embodied island queen, when the topic of conversation turns to a discussion of the particular causes of the societal divisions that beset the island’s population that were giving the queen such sorrow. When asked by the queen to identify the cause of the island’s troubles, Turmeda takes a step that many might consider unusual for a Muslim convert by placing the blame for the island’s problems entirely on the shoulders of the island’s previous Moorish king (lo rei moro), who commanded one of the councilors of his court to perform a magic spell that would foment division among his subjects. What is more, Turmeda even puts the words that condemn the Moorish king directly into the mouth of the intratextual Turmeda, who tells the queen: Senyora, antigament, ans que fóssets crestiana, havia gran uniment en la vostra gent pagana … Vostre poble, poc e gran, molta amor se portaven … 37

Continuing this trend, in the Tuḥfa Turmeda even goes so far as to openly mock a former friend, a Franciscan, who had come to North Africa to try to convince Turmeda to abandon Islam and return to Europe. If nothing else, the mocking tone he employs throughout the episode suggests that, at least on the surface, Turmeda’s rejection of Christianity was complete. For this episode, see Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 240.

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tan coralment se aimaven que, tots ajustats en u, per mantenir bé comú a llur rei se rebel · laven.38 (Lady, previously, before you were Christian, there was a great unity in your pagan people … Your people, great and small, had great love for each other … They loved each other so intensely that, united together as one, in order to maintain Good Government they rebelled against their king.) Thus, in his description of the cause for the poor estate in which his homeland had come to find itself, Turmeda not only places the blame on the sole figure of identifiably North African, and almost certainly Muslim, origin but also creates a clear distinction between the king and the other inhabitants of the island, who are described not as moros but as paganos.39 As a result, the reader is left with the impression that Turmeda is intentionally trying to disassociate the island from its Islamic past, minimizing it to such an extent that it can be almost entirely overlooked, beyond serving as an easy scapegoat for the island’s problems. In fact, Turmeda undermines the legitimacy of the Moorish king’s rule even further by going into great detail regarding the impious—and even diabolical—nature of the spell used by the Moorish king to bring about the societal division that he hoped would prevent his ouster by his rebellious subjects. Therefore, when describing the ceremony that brought the spell into 38 Turmeda, Cobles, 121. 39 While it is possible that Turmeda is using the term “pagan” as shorthand for “Muslim,” this seems unlikely, especially given Turmeda’s own status as a voluntary convert to Islam. Nonetheless, there is some precedent for European authors describing Muslims as pagans, albeit several centuries earlier, such as those found in John Tolan, “Muslims as Pagan Idolaters in Chronicles of the First Crusade,” in Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Michael Frassetto and David R. Blanks (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 97–117.

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effect, Turmeda claims that it involved the sacrifice of small mammals, the creation of idolatrous figurines, and the creation of a potion that contained ingredients of an obviously polluted, though magically powerful, nature, including wood ticks, menstrual blood, and the leaves of the Thorn-apple, a poisonous fruit with hallucinogenic properties used in many medieval magical formulae.40 Given this list, one can only conclude that Turmeda did not intend his audience to view the Moorish king in anything approaching a positive light. In fact, throughout the episode, the strong implication given by Turmeda is that the Moorish king’s reliance on supernatural means to continue his reign—at its core being his impulse to rule as a tyrant, against the will of his subjects— effectively served to delegitimize any claim he may have possessed to legitimate rule over the island.41 Consequently, according to Turmeda, shortly after the completion of the spell, which worked exactly as planned, the king himself was rightfully deposed by the conquering armies of Jaume I, the “comte de Barcelona.”42 Implicit in this is the judgment that the Moorish king was never the “true” leader of the island, as demonstrated by the rebellion of the Mallorcans against him, but remained “alien” throughout. Thus, more alien than legitimate, and more Moor than Mallorcan, his alien status both legitimized and justified his deposition by the Jaume I and his Christian forces. Contrasting with the negative portrayal of the Moorish king, his successors, the Christian kings of the island, are portrayed in uniformly positive terms. As mentioned above, Jaume I is described by Turmeda as a legitimate successor to the Moorish king, in spite of the violent means by which he came to rule the island. But Turmeda also further legitimizes Christian rule when the island queen subsequently describes her relationship with “Don Martí,” the reigning monarch of the Crown of Aragon, Martí I, as her bridegroom, stating: 40

For medieval use of the Thorn-apple in medieval magic, see Christine Worobec, “Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Prerevolutionary Russian and Ukrainian Villages,” Russian Review 54, no. 2 (April 1995): 165–87, esp. 170. 41 Similar sentiments can be seen in the writings of many medieval political theorists. To give but one example, the English jurist Henry de Bracton argued along similar lines in his On the Laws and Customs of England (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1968–1977), 305, saying that a king “is called rex not from reigning but from ruling well, since he is a king as long as he rules well but a tyrant when he oppresses by violent domination the people entrusted to his care.” 42 Turmeda, Cobles, 124–5. “Despuis del dia ençà/cascun son par abandona;/la u a l’altre tot mal fa … [Però el rei] havent son poble partit,/valentment fó desconfit/pel comte de Barcelona” (Ever since that day/everyone abandons his bretheren;/the one does all sorts of evil to the other…[But the King], having divided his people, was overthrown forcefully by the count of Barcelona).

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Fins ací io em puisc lloar de la sua senyoria. No crei al món n’haja par; dretura és la seu via. Segurament vui en dia viu son poble verament, Si no fos l’espordiment dels moros de Berberia.43 (As of now I revel in his lordship. I do not believe that there is equal in the world; just is his path. Truly secure today would I see his people if not for the terror [caused by] the moors of Barbary.) In essence, Martí I is described as just the sort of ruler that the earlier Moorish king was not: beneficent, just, and concerned for the welfare and security of his subjects, all qualities which further highlight the distinction Turmeda draws between the “good” Christian ruler and the “bad” Muslim ruler. Moreover, his censure of his fellow North Africans for their continued raids on the island only accentuates the contrast. The result is that the reader is left with little doubt that Turmeda intended to portray the Christian rule of Jaume I and his successors down to Martí I as inherently more legitimate than that of their Moorish, and ostensibly Muslim, predecessors. As such, within the context of the Cobles, Turmeda continues to project a socio-cultural understanding in which the political paradigm of legitimate Christian rule over the island remains authoritative against the illegitimate alien represented by the Moorish king.44 At the very least, this suggests that Turmeda, at the point that he composed the Cobles, remained strangely conflicted about the political and cultural hegemony that his adopted society could, or should, exert over his natal society. At the very least, based on the evidence provided in the Cobles, the 43 Turmeda, Cobles, 128. 44 As in the case of the Mallorcan ecclesiastics above, Turmeda’s appraisal of Muslim rulers in the Tuḥfa offers the exact opposite portrayal to that given by the Cobles. In fact, Turmeda devotes an entire section of the work to an account of the great deeds of both of the Tunisian sultans he had served. Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 230–71.

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impression given by Turmeda is that he did not want Islamic rule to return to his homeland, suggesting that the element of Turmeda’s identity that clung to its earlier Christian and Mallorcan identity remained strong. Yet at the same time that Turmeda sought to minimize, if not completely sever, the connection between the island’s Christian present and its Muslim past, other elements of the Cobles betray what can only be seen as the growing influence of Islamic scientific, philosophical, and astrological thought on Turmeda in the years following his conversion. Therefore, following Greenblatt’s framework discussed above, these new sources of authority were the fundamental blocks through which the Christian and European sources of authority he had relied on previously could increasingly be alienated and Turmeda’s final Muslim, post-conversion identity could be built. As a result, it should come as little surprise that even in a work as seemingly Euro-centric and Christo-centric as the Cobles, several passages betray the influence of Islamic source material, even if they were not used for explicitly Muslim purposes.45 The first example of Turmeda’s use of Islamic source material in the Cobles was initially identified by Julio Samsó, who, in several articles, argued that the entire episode of the Moorish king and his spell was, in fact, a loose amalgamation of literary elements drawn from two works of Arabo-Islamic origin. The first source he identified was the Ġāyat al-Hakīm (Goal of the Wise), an 11th- or 12th-century treatise on magic, translated into Latin in the 13th century for Alfonso X of Castile and dispersed throughout Latin Europe under the title of The Picatrix. The second source was the Maqāla fī ṭillismāt, known to Latin Europe as the De Imaginibus and linked by medieval Christian scholars to the 9th-century Iraqi polymath Thābit ibn Qurra.46 While the first of these two sources, the Picatrix, provided Turmeda with many elements ultimately 45

46

Julio Samsó makes a very similar point to this, in which he also sees Turmeda’s use of Arabic source material as signaling a fundamental openness to Islamic scholarship and Islamic cultural influence. For this, see Samsó, “Turmediana,” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 34 (1971–1972): 77–8. For the spell’s Arabic origins, see Julio Samsó, “Dos Notas sobre Astrología Medieval,” Al-Andalus 36, no. 1 (1971): 215–22; and Julio Samsó, “Turmediana,” 51–85. When discussing the influence of the Picatrix on the episode in the Cobles, Samsó cites bk. 1, Chap. 5 as particularly relevant. For additional information on the Picatrix, see Béatrice Bakhouche, Frédéric Fauquier, and Brigitte Pérez-Jean, Picatrix: un traité de magie médiéval (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003). The text of De Imaginibus exists in several Latin translations, but the original Arabic version (or versions) has been lost. The attribution of the work to Thābit ibn Qurra derives from the Latin texts, which claim his authorship. For more on the complex manuscript history of this work, see Francis J. Carmody, The Astronomical Works of Thabit B. Qurra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960).

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incorporated into the conjuration performed by the Moorish king’s councilor, the overall narrative framework for the episode as a whole, as well as its use of astrology as a source of magical potency, are both drawn from one particular section of the De Imaginibus. Importantly, though, while Turmeda’s account of the Moorish king and his spell clearly draws on the De Imaginibus, the stories follow very different narrative paths, as Samsó rightly notes. In particular, while both versions of the story involve a king and a magic spell designed to do harm to the king’s realm, in the version contained in the De Imaginibus, the spell is performed at the request not of the king but, instead, of a philosopher/magician named Falix, who created the spell of his own volition with the intent to destroy the kingdom. Learning of his plan, the king quickly captured Falix and, through promises of future rewards, convinced him to destroy his own spell. The king, however, perhaps fearing future threats of a similar nature, ultimately reneged on his promise and killed Falix, saving his kingdom. Thus, instead of being a villain, as is so clearly the case in Turmeda’s version of the story, the king of the version included in the De Imaginibus is instead the hero, and Turmeda, in adapting the story for the Cobles, effectively overturned the original version’s narrative arc, making the king the villain and his councilor, who takes the place of Falix, into another unlucky victim of the lord’s tyrannical cruelty. Unfortunately, the reason for this stark difference in the portrayal of the king between the two versions of the stories must stay largely speculative. The most likely reason, however, remains that, by making the story’s lone identifiable North African, Islamic character into its primary villain, Turmeda sought to effectively delegitimize Muslim rule of the island and legitimize the Christian conquest of the island, albeit by using source material of a demonstrably Arabo-Islamic origin to do so. This suggests a familiarity with these sources sufficient to allow him to blend and combine various elements from them into a cohesive narrative whole, which he could then use for entirely contrary ideological purposes. As a result, Turmeda was able to project a representation of self that remained fundamentally aligned with Christian authority, on the one hand, even as it began to incorporate elements of the Islamic cultural tradition, on the other.47 47

Such usage of Arabic texts has also been noted in the Disputa de l’Ase. For a discussion of the Arabic source of this work, see Giraldo, Fray Anselm Turmeda, 122–38, as well as Everette Larson, “The Disputa of Anselmo: Translation, Plagiarism, or Embellishment?” in Josep María Solà-Solé: Homenaje, Homenatge (miscelánea de estudios de amigos y discípulos), eds. Victorio Agüero and Nathaniel B. Smith (Barcelona: Puvill Libros, 1984), 1:285–96. There is insufficient space to develop the idea here, but the very fact that both works were available in Latin translation well before Turmeda’s time may suggest that Islamic

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The second example of Turmeda’s incorporation of Arabic language source material into the Cobles immediately follows the episode discussed above. When asked by the island queen to return to Mallorca in order to return it to its former state of peace and concord, Turmeda demurs from doing so and explains his reticence by citing a parable in which a chicken defends his mistrust of humans by recalling the “seven companions, that I have seen roasted in front of me.”48 Seeing the fate of his friends, the chicken felt justified in his fear; likewise, Turmeda also claims that he too knows the fate in store for him should he return to his homeland, having similarly seen several of his companions burned in the years before his conversion.49 The parable that Turmeda cites in this section is drawn from a part of a zoological treatise called the Ḥayāt al-Ḥayawān, written by Muḥammad ibn Mūsá Damīrī in Egypt around 1370 and was first connected to Turmeda’s work by Martí de Riquer.50 It is also particularly significant because it shows his adroit use of an Arabic source that almost certainly was not available to him in a translated edition in the period before his conversion, having been composed less than a decade before his conversion. Consequently, the work is one that Turmeda could almost certainly only have encountered after his arrival in Tunis and his mastering of Arabic in the year thereafter. Therefore, through his use of this parable in Cobles, Turmeda again demonstrates a connection to North African Islamic culture and an openness to Islamic sources of cultural and moral authority, even going so far as to integrate them into the ostensibly “Christian” identity put forth in the Cobles as a whole. Once more, although Turmeda’s self-fashioned identity in the Cobles reflects a strong Euro-Christian ­philosophy, albeit mediated by Christian culture through the process of translation, was already a source of authority for Turmeda, especially given his predilection for astrology and prophesy demonstrated in others of his works. For his use of astrology, see Michael Ryan, A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011). Ryan also treated on the same topic, though within the context of the Great Western Schism, in an essay entitled, “Byzantium, Islam, and the Great Western Schism,” in A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378–1417), eds. Joëlle Rollo-Koster and Thomas Izbicki (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 197–238. 48 Turmeda, Cobles, 131. 49 Scholars have frequently cited this enigmatic statement as evidence of Turmeda’s heterodoxy even preceding his conversion. Unfortunately, since additional evidence is lacking, the various suggestions are entirely speculative. What can be said is that Turmeda, by his own admission, feared for his life should he return to Mallorca. 50 Riquer, Història de la Literatura Catalana, 2:285. Samsó also discusses the parable at some length in his “Turmediana,” 72–5. For a discussion of the Ḥayāt al-Ḥayawān itself, see Joseph de Somogyi, “Ad-Damīrī’s Ḥayāyat al-ḥayawān: An Arabic Zoological Lexicon,” Osiris 9 (1950): 33–43.

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orientation, elements of Islamic authority emerge from the shadows when one actively searches for them. Continuing on in his narrative, because the intratextual Turmeda continued to fear what would happen if he should return to Mallorca, he offered instead to compose an open letter to the island’s inhabitants, exhorting them to mend their ways, while also creating an interesting meta-textual conversation between the voice of the author, composing the letter, and the intratextual narrator, who supposedly “composed” the letter. Beginning it with a series of examples drawn from scriptural and secular history, in which “division” amongst individuals or societies had led to collective ruin, the letter then takes what can only be seen as a highly unorthodox turn, in which Turmeda invokes the name and divine power of the Virgin Mary, so that she might lend her assistance in restoring peace and harmony to Mallorca’s citizenry, in her role as divine intercessor with her son, Jesus.51 If this were not unusual enough for one who had, at least ostensibly, converted to Islam, at various points throughout the letter Turmeda also unequivocally affirms the divinity of Jesus Christ as well as a continued belief in the Christian notion of the Holy Trinity. Thus, despite the fact that the work contains elements of Arabo-Islamic culture, it is an influence that is strongly mediated by Turmeda’s continued assertion of a thoroughly Christian identity in the Cobles. The magnitude of Turmeda’s assertion of Christian dogmatic beliefs can be seen at several points in the letter. In one instance, he describes the Virgin Mary as: “Virgin most excellent/who is the daughter of your Son.” It is a turn of phrase that only makes sense if Jesus, the son of Mary, is also understood as consubstantial with God the Creator, making Jesus, effectively, Son and Father at the same time, since God is the ultimate “father” of all creation. Similarly, when discussing the benevolence of God in another passage of the letter, Turmeda again makes explicit reference to Jesus Christ as a divine son of God: Déus lo Pare, per amor e per gran bé que ens volia, adobar volent la error que Adam feta havia, son Fill tramés en la via en semblança humanal. Con Ell fos tot immortal, per nós morir lo jaquia.52 51 Turmeda, Cobles, 142. “O Verge molt excellent/qui del vostre Fill sóts filla!” (O most excellent Virgin/who is the daughter of your Son!). 52 Ibid., 134.

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(God the Father, because of the love and because of the great goodness that He wishes for us, desiring to correct the error which Adam made, sent his Son into the living world53 in human form. Since He was entirely immortal, He sent him [Jesus] to die for us.) Here the assertion of a Christian understanding of Jesus Christ as part of the Holy Trinity is quite explicit: Jesus, the “Son” of God, was sent into the world “in human form” to die for the sins of humanity.54 When coupled with the assertion, quoted above, describing the Virgin Mary as “Daughter of your Son,” there can be no mistaking the explicit assertion (and likely implicit acceptance) of Christian doctrinal belief, which would have been equally obvious to any educated member of clerical and secular elite of either religion. Because of this, in the past scholars have been continually baffled by Turmeda’s inclusion of such passages in his works. In no small part, this is because their inclusion would have put Turmeda at risk of being condemned as an apostate from Islam as well as Christianity. In both passages quoted above, Turmeda makes statements that contradict Islamic doctrinal understandings laid out in the Koran: namely, the account of the lives of Jesus and Mary recounted in several chapters (sūrahs) of the Koran is uniformly adamant that, while both Jesus and Mary were exceptional humans who were particularly graced by divine favor, neither of them were divine, nor should they be given any specific devotion or adoration beyond that due to any other of God’s prophets. They certainly did not have the power to independently return the island of Mallorca to a state of pacific concord, as Turmeda requested of the Virgin Mary in his letter. Illustrating these points, in the fifth sūrah of the Koran there is an episode in which Jesus, summoned before God, is asked to explain whether he had ever demanded his followers to revere him as divine—an obvious jab at the 53

54

The word given in both modern editions of the text is via. While reading this word in its traditional sense as “way,” “path,” or “course” does not necessarily obscure the overall meaning that Turmeda intends, the context of the sentence argues in favor of the alternate reading given here (vida), especially given Turmeda’s need to preserve the rhymed ending “-ia” within the stanza, making the dropped “d” necessary to preserve the rhyme scheme. While the referent of the pronouns ell and lo in the final two lines is rather ambiguous, perhaps intentionally so, the context suggests that both pronouns refer to Jesus Christ.

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Christian belief in Jesus’s divinity.55 According to the text of the Koran, the conversation transpired in the following manner: And behold! Allah will say: “O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, ‘Worship me and my mother as Gods in derogation of Allah’?” He will say: “Glory to thee! Never could I say what I had no right (to say).”56 In this passage, the Koran sets up a fundamental separation between Jesus and God/Allah, unequivocally distinguishing between the divine God and the human Jesus. This notion is only reinforced further by Jesus’s statement later in the same sūrah that, “thou knowest what is/in my heart, though I/know not what is/in thine.”57 Ignorant of the mind of God/Allah, Jesus could only be considered, ipso facto, unequal to him; certainly he could not be understood to be of the same substance as God/Allah, as Christian Trinitarian doctrine also asserted. Building even further on this belief, the Koran also denies the divine paternity that Christians claimed for Jesus, instead claiming that while God/Allah did cause Mary’s impregnation, this did not make him Jesus’s father. Recounted in Sūrah 19, the Koran tells that, subsequent to giving birth to Jesus, Mary was confronted by members of the local community who suspected that her pregnancy was the result of unchastity. When asked about the baby, she simply pointed to him, as if indicating that they should ask the child. In response: They [the accusers] said, “How can we talk to one who is a child in the cradle?” 55

The name God, rather than the name given in the Koran, Allah, is used throughout this section at least in part as a means to highlight the fact that both faiths worship the same deity, whatever the name given. Moreover, for Turmeda, the recognition of a deity shared by both faiths seems to have been central to his decision to convert. 56 Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Koran (Beltsville, md: Amana Publications, 2001), 5:116–7, 286. 57 Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Koran, 5:117.

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He [Jesus] said: “I am indeed a servant of Allah: he hath given me revelation and made me a prophet;” … “(He) hath made me kind to my mother, and not [omnipotent] or miserable”58; “So peace is on me the day I was born, the day that I die, and the day that I shall be raised up to life (again)!” … It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to him! When He determines a matter, He only says to it, “Be,” and it is.59 Since Jesus was “made kind” to his mother and not jabāra (strong, oppressive, or omnipotent), like God, he was human, even if exceptional. Moreover, any suggestion to the contrary was a denigration of the omnipotence, holiness, and divinity of God/Allah and was, therefore, completely unacceptable. In fact, in his polemical Tuḥfa, Turmeda himself espouses a very similar belief to that expressed by the Koran, providing several arguments intended to refute the divinity of Jesus Christ before finally concluding:  58

The term given in Ali’s translation is “overbearing,” but an alternative translation for the Arabic word jabāra (‫ )جبارا‬has been inserted in brackets and, in my opinion, provides a better sense of the word consonant with the context within which it is used in this passage. Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic: Arabic-English, ed. J. Milton Cowan (Urbana, il: Spoken Language Services, 1994), 133. The entire entry for the word is worth quoting in full and reads: “giant; colossus; tyrant, oppressor; almighty; omnipotent (God); gigantic, giant, colossal, huge; mighty, powerful... .” 59 Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Koran, 19:29–30, 32–3, 35.

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We have now destroyed the arguments they [Christians] use to affirm that Jesus is God and the Son of God. God is the most holy and exists above all else. There is nothing more Godly than He and there is no one who should be venerated other than Him.60 Given this sentiment, the beliefs about the nature of Jesus put forth in the Cobles are dramatically out of step with the Islamic orthodoxy expressed by the Koran—and even Turmeda himself in his later years. On its face, such a discrepancy is hard to reconcile, but again, when one looks further beneath the surface of Turmeda’s words, the prayer to the Virgin Mary, like the earlier examples given above, betrays indications of an active engagement with the religious and cultural traditions of his adopted Islamic culture. When viewed through the prism of Greenblatt’s idea of identity as the product of clashes between those things deemed authoritative or alien, Turmeda’s seemingly ambiguous mixture of authoritative referents can be seen in the context of a gradual shift of his past Euro-Christian identity from authoritative to alien, with many elements from his pre-conversion identity still remaining authoritative during the period in which he composed the Cobles. As a result, because his conversion was a process rather than a unique event, he may well have been in a state where he tried to maintain both sets of beliefs, even though they were contradictory and actively opposed to each other. One indication of the growing influence of Islamic sources of religious authority in Turmeda’s thought can be seen in his use of the metronymic “son of Mary” throughout his letter when referring to Jesus Christ.61 This suggests that Turmeda possessed a sufficiently deep knowledge of certain Koranic literary conventions that he may well have made use of the uniquely Koranic metronymic in an almost reflexive manner in his letter, a work so patently Christian in its theological outlook. That the source of the metronymic is Koranic can be seen throughout the sections pertaining to Jesus and his mother, although the significance of its use has been the source of some debate among scholars.62 60 Turmeda, Tuḥfa, 394. 61 Other uses of the metronymic by Turmeda can be found in Turmeda, Cobles, 134 and 139. The address of Jesus as “Jesus, son of Mary” occurs throughout the Koran in various sections. Examples can be found in Sūrah 3, 5:75, 116, and 19:24, among others. See Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Koran. The metronymic appears only once in the New Testament (Mark 6:3). Interestingly, those who doubt Jesus’s status as a religious reformer use the metronymic here, saying, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” 62 Some see the use of the metronym merely as a literary device to emphasize the filial connection between Jesus and Mary, who, because he does not have a father, can only be associated matrilineally. Others, however, see it as a subtle means to reinforce the link

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For example, in the fifth sūrah, in a section discussing the errors of Christians and Jews, the Koran states: Christ, the son of Mary, was no more than a Messenger … Say: “Will ye worship, besides Allah, something which hath no power either to harm or benefit you?”63 Here the metronymic clearly is used as a means of identifying Jesus, but also, because it is used in a passage particularly focused on denying the divinity of Jesus, the metronymic also underscores the larger argument being made, in that it reinforces that Jesus, “the son of Mary,” was not divine and therefore should not be worshiped. Furthermore, perhaps because the metronymic emphasizes the familial link between Jesus and Mary rather than between Jesus and God, it does not appear at all in any of the books of the Christian New Testament, suggesting that Turmeda’s adoption of the metronymic likely does not stem from anything other than his contact with Arabo-Islamic literary conventions encountered subsequent to his conversion. Moreover, given the potential dogmatic attack on Christianity strongly implied in the Koran’s use of the metronymic “son of Mary,” Turmeda’s repeated use of it in his letter at the end of the Cobles further suggests that, while he still incorporated elements of Christian authority into his self-fashioned identity, certain Koranic forms had been sufficiently internalized to such an extent that he would incorporate them into a letter that had such a profoundly different dogmatic thrust, as when he writes:

between a human Jesus and his human mother that discounts any possible association with a divine father and, thus, reinforces Jesus’s fundamental humanity. Likely, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, with the use of the metronymic having multiple interpretations in which it functions simultaneously as a simple marker of affiliation and also as a polemical argument writ small. The interpretation of the metronymic as a reinforcement of Jesus’s humanity is advanced by Maulana Muhammad, ‘Ali, The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Lahore: W. Pakistan, 1951), 40n. Geoffrey Parrinder disputes this, saying that it was, instead, either a simple declaration of his familial association or part of an honorific title. Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’ān (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965), Chap. 3, 22–9. 63 Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Koran, 5:75–6.

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Aquell sobiran doctor Jesuchrist, fill de Maria, dix vendria en error tot regne qui divís sia; e la una casa cauria sobre l’altre, verament.64 (That supreme Doctor Jesus Christ, son of Mary, said that any kingdom that is divided will come into error; and the one house shall fall upon the other, truly.) In this case, in the midst of a stanza in which he paraphrases Jesus’s own words from the Christian New Testament, Turmeda simultaneously adheres to the uniquely Koranic description of Jesus as the “son of Mary,” while at the same time quoting a man whom elsewhere he identifies as the “Son of God,” a dizzying display of his adherence to wildly disparate, and even contradictory, elements of authority and the alien. In addition, even if the metronymic were included for another reason, perhaps to maintain the poem’s meter and rhyme, it still does not undermine its significance as a marker of the rising influence of Islamic sources of authority in Turmeda’s presentation of his self-identity. In sum, while the Cobles is a work suffused in a Christian and European ethos, it also betrays several indications of the rising importance of Islamic and North African religious and cultural “authorities” that were beginning to compete with the old “authorities” of Turmeda’s pre-conversion identity. Yet if the Cobles does represent the result of Turmeda’s attempt to forge an identity somewhere between Christian and Muslim orthodoxy, a question remains: why? Why, even after such a dramatic break from his past life, could Anselm Turmeda not make a similar break with his Christian and Catalan pasts? It is to this fundamental question that the essay will now turn, by way of conclusion.

Conclusion: The Conversion after the “Conversion”

Drawing together the various threads explored to this point, the evidence provided by the Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca, along with that found in 64 Turmeda, Cobles, 135.

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Turmeda’s other works, clearly reinforces the hypothesis that Turmeda’s postconversion identity did not represent a fundamental turning-away from his natal culture or even his basic pre-conversion theological belief. Rather, it was likely carried out as part of a loosely conceived effort to follow through on the exhortation of his Bolognese master. Consequently, at the time of his conversion to Islam, it is quite likely that he thought of his own conversion process and consequent post-conversion identity using authoritative referents that were themselves still rooted in European and Christian sources of authority. Moreover, his cultural (and perhaps political) attachment to his natal home remained unchallenged as the primary building block of his self-fashioned identity, even as his conversion itself represented a dramatic and marked shift in the political and cultural allegiances he expressed publicly. Thus, although conversion is usually seen as a symbolic death in one community and rebirth in another, the evidence provided by the Cobles indicates that Turmeda, at the point of his conversion to Islam, was either unwilling or unable to decisively kill his past identity until he was near the end of his life. In the intervening decades, Turmeda’s identity remained a site of continued contest (though admittedly mixed with some elements of coexistence as well) between the differing sources of authority and alien he encountered as a religious convert, political expatriate, and cultural neophyte—a contest that was only fully concluded over the span of more than two decades. In the same article in which he advances the ideal of conversion as symbolic death, Richard Bulliet also notes that while the ideal of conversion can be characterized in this manner, when one looks at conversion as it was most commonly experienced, the ideal simply cannot be considered as normative. Instead, the “conversion stories” he analyzes demonstrate that many converts to Islam in the early and high medieval period, “first became a member of a Muslim community and later discovered, or tried to discover, what it meant to be a Muslim.”65 Certainly it is an assessment that could not match any better the picture of Anselm Turmeda’s own experience of conversion, in which he leapt, seemingly blindly, into a new life and only afterwards attempted to regain his social, cultural, and theological footing. Thus, given the tenor of Turmeda’s writing in the Cobles, it is likely that his conversion process fit into the pattern described by Bulliet and that his open proclamation of faith before the sultan only symbolized the beginning of his conversion process rather than its culmination. Further bolstering this view is Tijana Krstić’s recent study of Christian converts to Islam during the Ottoman period, in which she examines the writings 65

Bulliet, “Conversion Stories,” 131. This idea is also used by Krstić, for much the same purpose.

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of one Murad bin Abdullah, a Hungarian-born convert to Islam who was taken captive during the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and who wrote an account of his conversion approximately 100 years after Turmeda’s death.66 In this work he describes his own process of conversion in a manner strongly reminiscent of the path suggested here for Turmeda, stating: When I was offered the Muslim faith, I did not have the courage to accept it because I was familiar with the ways of that [I.e., Christian] side but never had any inkling about this [I.e., Muslim] one. I educated myself through profuse reading. God granted me grace [‘ināyet], and it is my hope that my last profession of faith [hātimemüz] will be sealed with belief [īmānla hatm ola].67 Interpreting this passage, Krstić concludes that even though Murad likely had no contact with Christian culture for several years following his capture and before his eventual entry into the Ottoman diplomatic service as a translator, his conversion can still best be understood as a slow and protracted process in which his adherence to earlier sources of authority only gradually lessened over time. Going even further, she then highlights the fact that Murad himself saw his previous Christian education—his “familiarity” with the ways of Christians—as his greatest obstacle to a complete conversion, similarly suggesting that his continued contact with Christians and Christian culture hindered his full acceptance of Islam.68 Therefore, given the difficulty that Murad bin Abdullah describes in achieving what he considered to be a complete conversion, the fact that Turmeda’s own conversion remained incomplete after more than a decade should come as no surprise. Having converted to Islam around age 35, 18 years older than Murad, and having been exposed to Christian teachings in both the convent and classroom for more than 30 years before he converted, it only makes sense that Turmeda would have found his conversion even more difficult to effect. Furthermore, if Krstić is correct in her belief that Murad bin Abdullah’s continued contact with elements of his previous culture hindered his conversion, the 66

67 68

Interestingly, Krstić notes that by the early 17th century, Turmeda’s polemical Tuḥfa was used in the Ottoman-Islamic world as a model for subsequent converts who wished to write similar works that more clearly discussed their conversion in terms of death and rebirth. Ironically, centuries after his death, Turmeda became a model convert for a society unaware of his earlier Catalan-language writings. Quoted in Krstić, Contested Conversions, 101. Translation and notes hers. Ibid., 101.

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fact that Turmeda followed a similar professional path as a translator would only reinforce the hypothesis that such contact would have resulted in similar difficulties for him as well. Therefore, given Turmeda’s post-conversion professional situation, coupled with the extent of his pre-conversion Christian religious training, the fact that his post-conversion identity presents itself as an uncertain, ambiguous mixture of past and present conceptions of authority and alien is not only understandable but should be expected. As noted at the beginning of this essay, what makes the Cobles particularly noteworthy is its ability to open a window into the mind of a convert at a point where his conversion was far from complete. Moreover, when attempting to understand such a mind in transition, Greenblatt’s ideas regarding the nature of identity formation and self-fashioning are quite useful in helping to navigate the iterative, external loci of authority and the alien that constantly shift, compete, and reinvent themselves in the process of a convert’s reinvention (or lack thereof) of his or her self-identity following conversion. Through this lens, a work such as the Cobles becomes more comprehensible because it lays bare the competing sources of “authority” and “alien” forming Turmeda’s post-conversion self-identity: the seemingly excessive adulation of the Mallorcan, Franciscan community seen in the Cobles can be reconciled with his later mockery of ecclesiastical officials and mainland Christians in the Disputa and Tuḥfa; the ostensibly backwards portrayal of the Christian kings of Mallorca as holy and heroic and the former, Muslim leaders as villainous and destructive reflects a continued political and cultural affinity to his homeland while also demonstrating the growing influence of Arabo-Islamic sources of authority in Turmeda’s thought and writings; the mixture of ambiguous, or even contradictory, theological beliefs that seem to combine elements of Christianity and Islam in the Cobles can be reconciled with the Tuḥfa’s dogmatic certainty by blending elements from both traditions, albeit subtly. In all cases, the contradictions noted here are merely reflections of the instability of Turmeda’s cultural and confessional identity overall, as he reoriented the “authority” and “alien” of his own self-identity in the decades following his conversion. In conclusion, at the time of the composition of the Cobles, Turmeda cannot be considered entirely Christian or wholly Muslim, but, rather, was an uneasy mixture of both, stuck in the midst of an extended process of conversion that often pulled him in multiple directions simultaneously. He should, therefore, not be dismissed merely as a man without real religious convictions or as an intellectual relativist content to draw on any and all sources available to him. Instead, Turmeda’s writings show that, even for those who willingly adopt another faith, their incorporation into that culture and adoption of its system of belief is not a singular act with definite and easily definable ends but, instead, is a process

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requiring great amounts of time, struggle, and, likely, pain. While changeable, personal identity is, ultimately, difficult to change. Furthermore, when considered within the context of the broader historiography of conversion, the experience of Anselm Turmeda (alias Abdallah al-Tarjuman) leads one to wonder how often the polemical writings of other converts hide what was, in fact, a similarly complex, ambiguous process of conversion and a similarly complex, ambiguous relationship with the pre-conversion identity perhaps not entirely left behind. Bibliography

Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

Ali, Abdullah Yusuf. The Meaning of the Holy Qur’ān. Beltsville, md: Amana Publications, 2001. Metzger, Bruce and Roland Murphy, eds. The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Deuterocanonical Books. Peabody, ma: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., in conjunction with Oxford University Press, 2005. Turmeda, Anselm. “Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca.” In Obres Menors, edited by Marçal Olivar, 103–43. Barcelona: Editorial Barcino, 1927. ———. “La Disputa de l’Ase.” In Anselm Turmeda: An Intellectual Biography of a Medieval Apostate, Including a Translation of ‘The Debate between the Friar and the Ass’, edited and translated by Zaida Giraldo, 165–288. Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1974. ProQuest (7504550). ———. “Tuḥfat al-adīb fi al-rad ‘alà ahl al-ṣalīb” (“The Gift of the Learned Man to Refute the Partisans of the Cross”). In Fray Anselm Turmeda (Abdallāh al-Tar� umān) y su Polémica Islamo-Cristiana: edición, traducción y estudio de la Tuḥfa, edited and translated by Míkel de Epalza, 202–497. 2nd ed. Madrid: Libros Hiperión, 1994.

Alemany Ferrer, Rafael. “Presències i ecos d’un jo individuat en Anselm Turmeda.” Estudis de llengua i literatura catalanes 29 (1994): 5–24. Ali, Maulana Muhammad. The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation, and Commentary. Lahore: W. Pakistan, 1951. Alvarez, Lourdes Maria. “Anselm Turmeda: The Visionary Humanism of a Muslim Convert and Catalan Prophet.” In Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, edited by Albrecht Classen, 172–91. New York: Routledge, 2002. Bakhouche, Béatrice, Frédéric Fauquier, and Brigitte Pérez-Jean. Picatrix: un traité de magie médiéval. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003.

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Beier, Robert. Anselm Turmeda: eine Studie zur interkulturellen Literatur. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1996. Boase, Roger. “Autobiography of a Muslim Convert: Anselm Turmeda (c. 1353–c. 1430).” Al-Masaq 9 (1996–1997): 45–98. de Bracton, Henry. On the Laws and Customs of England. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1968–1977. Bulliet, Richard. “Conversion Stories in Early Islam.” In Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, 123–33. Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1990. Calvet, Agustín. Fray Anselmo Turmeda: heterodoxo español, 1352–1423-(32?). Barcelona: Casa Editorial Estudio, 1914. Carmody, Francis J. The Astronomical Works of Thabit B. Qurra. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960. Chazan, Robert. Medieval Jewry in Northern France. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. ———. “Confrontation in the Synagogue of Narbonne: A Christian Sermon and a Jewish Reply.” Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974): 437–57. ———. “The Barcelona ‘Disputation’ of 1263: Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response.” Speculum 52, no. 4 (1977): 824–42. de Epalza, Míkel. “Conversió i Narrativa Oral Islàmiques a les Narracions Literàries Autobiogràfiques d’Anselm Turmeda (Abdàl·lah at-Tarjuman).” In Actes del Novè Colloqui Internacional de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes, edited by Rafael Alemany, Antoni Ferrando, and Lluís B. Meseguer, vol. 1, 153–59. Valencia: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1993. ———. Fray Anselm Turmeda (Abdallāh al-Tar� umān) y su Polémica Islamo-Cristiana: Edición, traducción, y estudio de la Tuḥfa. 2nd ed. Madrid: Libros Hiperión, 1994. Giraldo, Zaida. “Anselm Turmeda: An Intellectual Biography of a Medieval Apostate, Including a Translation of ‘The Debate between the Friar and the Ass’.” Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1974. ProQuest (7504550). Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Krstić, Tijana. Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. Larson, Everette. “The Disputa of Anselmo: Translation, Plagiarism, or Embellishment?” In Josep María Solà-Solé: Homenaje, Homenatge (Miscelánea de estudios de amigos y discípulos), edited by Victorio Agüero and Nathaniel B. Smith, vol. 1, 285–96. Barcelona: Puvill Libros, 1984. Mascaró Pasarius, Josep, ed. Historia de Mallorca. 8 vols. Palma de Mallorca: Vicente Colom Roselló, 1978.

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de Montoliu, Manuel. Eiximenis, Turmeda i l’inici de l’humanisme a Catalunya: Bernat Metge. Barcelona: Editorial Alpha, 1960. Parrinder, Geoffrey. Jesus in the Qur’ān. New York: Barnes and Noble Inc., 1965. Pou y Martí, J.M. “Sobre Fray Anselmo Turmeda.” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 7 (1914): 467–69. de Riquer, Martí. Història de la Literatura Catalana, vol. 2. Barcelona: Edicions Ariel, 1964. Roth, Norman. Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Ryan, Michael. “Byzantium, Islam, and the Great Western Schism.” In A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378–1417), edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster and Thomas Izbicki, 197–238. Leiden: Brill, 2009. ———. A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011. Samsó, Julio. “Dos Notas sobre Astrología Medieval.” Al-Andalus 36, no. 1 (1971): 215–22. ———. “Turmediana.” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 34 (1971–1972): 51–85. Sevillano Colom, Francisco. “Mercaderes y Navegantes Mallorquines.” In Historia de Mallorca, edited by J. Mascaró Pasarius, vol. 8, 1–90. Palma de Mallorca: Vicente Colom Roselló, 1978. de Somogyi, Joseph. “Ad-Damīrī’s Ḥayāyat al-ḥayawān: An Arabic Zoological Lexicon.” Osiris 9 (1950): 33–43. Szpiech, Ryan. “The Original Is Unfaithful to the Translation: Conversion and Authenticity in Abner of Burgos and Anselm Turmeda.” eHumanista 14 (2010): 146–77. ———. Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Tartakoff, Paola. Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250–1391. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Tolan, John. Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993. ———. “Muslims as Pagan Idolaters in Chronicles of the First Crusade.” In Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Michael Frassetto and David R. Blanks, 97–117. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Wacks, David. “Conflicted Identity and Colonial Adaptation in Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus contra judeos and Disciplina Clericalis.” In Marginal Voices: Studies in Converso Literature and Golden Age Spain, edited by Gregory B. Kaplan and Amy AronsonFriedman, 69–90. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Wehr, Hans. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J. Milton Cowan and Hans Wehr. 4th ed. Urbana, il: Spoken Language Services, 1994. Worobec, Christine. “Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Prerevolutionary Russian and Ukrainian Villages.” Russian Review 54, no. 2 (1995): 165–87.

chapter 4

The Marques de Santillana’s Library and Literary Reputation Daniel Hartnett A great deal of information regarding library ownership and formation is available to scholars of 15th-century Spanish culture. Whether seen in the long lists of often vaguely described books in late medieval library inventories, the monumental studies of influence and imitation of models characteristic to many 19th- and 20th-century studies, or in the more recent application of contemporary social and cultural theory to these original texts, each piece of evidence surrounding the late medieval library chronicles part of the acquisition and use of physical texts at the time. From these studies, the community of scholars has pieced together valuable information regarding this important era, but most of the attention continues to address the cataloguing, transcription, and description of what libraries hold or held. When undertaking a study of self-fashioning and the personal library in late medieval Iberia, the existing descriptive work serves a crucial role as the backdrop before which Iberian library owners create distinctive selves to present to their communities. Social agents’ positioning vis-à-vis the objects in their possession, the reading that they flaunt, the manuscripts that they possess and commission, the way they authorize their voices, and the access they allow or prohibit to their collections permits them to exercise power over others in the form of authority or prestige. Managing their libraries allows them to manage their public image. This study seeks to take up this interpretive work where the personal library and social fashioning overlap in the case of the bestdocumented library of the mid-15th century in Castile, the case of Íñigo López de Mendoza, the Marques de Santillana (1398–1458), and the library at his ancestral home in Guadalajara. By analyzing how Santillana managed his library holdings, paying particular attention to his acquisition and use of Dante manuscripts, this study seeks to illuminate the role that library formation played in courtly advancement and positioning at the court of Juan II of Castile (1405–54). Santillana has enjoyed a reputation as the paragon of arms and letters since his own time when he was praised by his contemporaries for accomplishments in both arenas. He has received no less adulation from 19th-, 20th-, and

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21st-century literary critics including José Amador de los Ríos1 and Julian Weiss.2 Though his military credentials are beyond reproach, a significant debate has surrounded Santillana since the 19th century because there is doubt regarding whether he knew how to read and write Latin. Tomás Antonio Sánchez3 and José Amador de los Ríos believe he did, though he may have denied it due to excessive modesty.4 Menéndez y Pelayo believes he could only read Latin with great difficulty.5 Morel-Fatio believes, along with Santillana’s contemporaries Juan de Lucena and Vespasiano da Bisticci, that Santillana did not know Latin.6 David William Foster’s The Marqués de Santillana simply contends that he read “French, Italian, Galician, Catalan, and some Latin.”7 Even the evidence brought to this debate is often difficult to interpret directly. For instance, in a letter to his son Pero Gonzalez de Mendoza, Santillana asks him to translate parts of the Latin Iliad that he has just received from a friend in Italy, and he continues on to justify the request by writing, “[L]o yo non [sé], porque yo non lo aprehendí[.] […] [D]ifícil cosa sería agora, que después de assaz años é non menos trabajos, yo quisiesse ó me despusiesse á porfiar con la lengua latina” (I don’t know it [i.e., Latin] because I did not learn it. […] It would be difficult now, after so many years and no fewer setbacks, if I tried or set my mind to take on the Latin language). Though this would seem unambiguous, Amador de los Ríos believes this passage to be a modesty trope very common in writing of the period.8 Even Santillana’s Latinate vocabulary in Castilian is perplexing, as some difficult forms are incorporated seamlessly and other simpler terms appear labored and curiously applied.9 The simple fact that this debate can rage on without conclusion stems from an apparent contradiction in Santillana’s character: Santillana was one of the intellectual lights of Castile during the reign of Juan II, implying all sorts of skills and knowledge that accompanied intellectual excellence at the 1 José Amador de los Ríos, Obras de Don Iñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana (Madrid: Imprenta de la calle de S. Vicente baja, 1857). 2 Julian Weiss, The Poet’s Art: Literary Theory in Castile c.1400–1460, Medium Aevum Monographs, new series 14 (Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1990). 3 Tomás Antonio Sánchez, “Noticias para la vida de Don Iñigo López de Mendoza,” in Colección de poesías castellanas anteriores al siglo XV. Tomo 1 (Madrid: Don Antonio de Sancha, 1779), xxx–xxxi. 4 Amador de los Ríos, Obras de Don Iñigo López de Mendoza, cxxi. 5 Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Antología de poetas líricos castellanos. Tomo V (Madrid: Librería de la Viuda de Hernando y C.a, 1894), lxxxi. 6 Alfred Morel-Fatio, “Les deux Omero castillans,” Romania 25 (1896): 121. 7 David William Foster, The Marqués de Santillana (New York: Twayne, 1971), 17. 8 Amador de los Ríos, Obras de Don Iñigo López de Mendoza, 482. 9 Regula Rohland de Langbehn, prologue to Comedieta de Ponza, Sonetos, Serranillas y otras obras, by Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana (Barcelona: Crítica, 1997), lxxvii.

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time, but there is little evidence that he had a strong command of Latin. In fact, much of the evidence from his contemporaries suggests that he did not know Latin to read it or write it. This raises a crucial question: given that Latin was practically a prerequisite for being considered among the intellectual elite in 15th-century Iberian court culture, how did Santillana acquire his learned reputation in spite of his questionable Latin skills? Santillana’s literary production has some impressive characteristics, but it is puzzling that Santillana would be considered so great an exponent of letters in his time when one considers some other figures’ accomplishments. Enrique de Villena, who, like Santillana, was reputed to have an excellent library, translated Virgil’s Aeneid and Dante’s Divine Comedy into Castilian, penned lengthy and original poems, and wrote several treatises on subjects so varied as poetry, astrology, and the art of carving. During the early 15th century, he took up residence in Castile and became Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava. Juan de Mena served as Secretary of Latin Letters and Chronicler at the court of Juan II, translated the Latin Iliad, and wrote vernacular poems such as El laberinto de Fortuna, a Dantesque allegory, to great acclaim. Deeply influenced by his study of classical languages and texts, Mena’s verse showcases his mastery of Latin through his imitation of literary and grammatical models applied to innovating Castilian literary expression. In contrast, the Marques de Santillana was a powerful member of the Mendoza family who spent much of his life embroiled in the political intrigues of Iberian court affairs. His persistent presence at the court of Juan II of Castile after serving as a boy in the court of Fernando de Antequera, the first Trastamaran king of Aragon, made him extremely well acquainted with courtly culture. Supporting this reputation, his poetry shows him to be a regular contender in the use of poetry at court. He takes part in collaborative riddle poems on scholarly topics opposite Juan de Mena, writes a coronation and elegiac poetry for Iberian contemporary poets of earlier generations such as Enrique de Villena, and seeks out novel forms of authority, mostly Italian, on which to base his innovative poetics. Yet these endeavors are not sufficient to crown him as the leading intellectual of his time, a distinction that one could argue he held. In the following pages, this study explores a possible explanation for Santillana’s learned reputation in the intersection between his library and self-presentation to the world.

Reimagining Santillana’s Library through Bibliographic Habits

The analysis of Santillana’s library in Mario Schiff’s 1905 landmark La bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane serves this study, as it has served others for over

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a century, as the authoritative resource on one of the most extensive personal libraries in 15th-century Iberia.10 As Schiff records and describes the individual manuscripts that composed Santillana’s collection, he includes copious information from the sources available to him to assemble all the information on Santillana’s manuscript ownership in one place. Schiff and Pedro Cátedra, more recently, along with other scholars have treated Santillana’s library holdings as sources for Santillana’s literary production with good reason.11 The literary importance of Dante or stoic philosophy, for example, is crucial to understanding Santillana’s sense of history, poetry, and philosophy. These important critical works treat Santillana as the inheritor and perpetuator of various traditions ranging from classical to medieval to biblical and successfully situate him in relation to his intellectual past and future. What this approach does not take into account, however, is the possible social function of Santillana’s library holdings during his lifetime by projecting an image for the courtly political community. Library inventories from the Late Middle Ages often tell us very little about the library’s owner. Beyond infuriatingly vague descriptions of the contents of the library (often described by the color and material of their covers), it can be difficult to discern what materials the owner acquired through great effort, inherited in spite of a lack of interest, or sought but never attained. However, in the case of Santillana, Schiff has put a great deal of effort into learning when manuscripts entered Santillana’s library. From this, we can see what collecting habits prevailed during Santillana’s adulthood and extrapolate from these what logic lay behind them. Several different collecting habits allowed Santillana to adopt his privileged intellectual position at the Castilian court. Among the most prominent in this study are: being the lender in lenderborrower relationships, developing authoritative collections, specializing in some scarce works, promoting his own collections, and naturalizing his notion of good taste. For much of the discussion, Santillana’s collection of Dante manuscripts will serve as an example of some collecting strategies because these documents participate in all of the strategies listed above and make it easier to show continuity from one technique to the next. Based on the evidence remaining to us, as we shall see in the case of Dante manuscripts in Castile, access to manuscripts known to be in Castile was always contingent upon material and social factors. In a cultural context such as the early 15th century, the great expense of copying or purchasing manuscripts could 10 11

Mario Schiff, La bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane (Paris: Librairie Émile Bouillon, Éditeur, 1905). Pedro-Manuel Cátedra, “Sobre la biblioteca del Marqués de Santillana: La Iliada y Pier Candido Decembrio,” Hispanic Review 51, no. 1 (1983): 23–8.

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not be met by many, and access to manuscripts needed to proceed through visiting personal libraries and borrowing from them. In a courtly community in which the aristocracy and even the bureaucracy achieved renown to a progressively greater degree by its knowledge of the literature, history, and philosophy contained in libraries, access to manuscripts and the management of that access was a form of power to be exercised and recognized when establishing hierarchy.12 As a social strategy, libraries gave their owners the opportunity to lend their holdings. Since borrowers required the cultural knowledge contained within library manuscripts, lenders reaped the social rewards of library ownership from anyone who wished access. Granting access to one’s library not only created positive social bonds but also inspired indebtedness in borrowers. A lender could show particular favor to a borrower by allowing the books to leave the library in the borrower’s care or make a borrower show deference by traveling to the site of the library itself to consult it. By denying access gracefully, a potential lender could extend the receipt of favors from an aspiring borrower who hoped to attain access. Those who wanted to consult Santillana’s library had to stay in his good graces, travel to his ancestral home, and enter the private library that he had constructed—conforming to these conditions made a display of his erudition alongside his dominance in the intellectual relationship.13 This is not to say that Santillana may not also have been an avid borrower of manuscripts from others’ libraries, simply that his library allowed him the opportunity to be the powerful lender in lenderborrower relationships. Both parties stood to gain when manuscripts were lent because, beyond the advantages listed above for borrowers and lenders, the flow of cultural goods between like-minded individuals could strengthen social bonds critical to success at court. Not only was it fashionable for noble gentlemen to be literary but also there were specific literary fashions that reflected favorably on their practitioners. Without a doubt, one of the most developed of these literary fashions in Castile in the 15th century derived from the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The interest in their works is well documented from studies dating to the mid-19th century. As the works of these three Italian authors found greater diffusion in the Iberian Peninsula, texts flourished that imitated their style, responded to their ideas, and adopted their forms. Figures as early as Teofilo Braga noted the great proliferation of overt referencing and imitating that took place as allegory inspired by Dante grew to be one of the dominant techniques in literary art in Castile as 12 Weiss, The Poet’s Art, 14–5. Weiss explains how poetry had come to be an essential ingredient in an aristocrat’s “true nobility” in the Castilian court at this time. 13 Ian Michael, “Private Book-Collecting in Spain from St. Isidore (570–636) to the Marqués de Santillana (1398–1458),” Donaire 12 (1999): 31.

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the century progressed.14 For this reason, there is a question of timing implicit in library management; possessing fashionable manuscripts prior to other libraries rendered one’s library more attractive to borrowers. Commissioning the copying or translation of a fashionable manuscript proved an expensive undertaking, but many Castilian nobles decided that the expense was worth the benefits derived from the manuscript. By managing library holdings—promoting holdings, including sought-after texts, and controlling access to those texts—a library owner could create social leverage to benefit his or her standing at the Castilian court.

The Case of Dante

Castilian poetry composed in the first decade of the 15th century by Francisco Imperial (himself a prominently placed transplant from Genoa serving the Castilian navy) piqued interest in acquiring and drawing on these works as literary sources at the Castilian court of Juan II. By all accounts, approximately 20 years later, Andreu Febrer and Enrique de Villena translated Dante’s Divine Comedy into Catalan and Castilian, respectively, to increase access to these sought-after texts. Santillana’s Comedieta de Ponça and Infierno de los enamorados among others demonstrated his access to Dante’s primary texts but also commentaries of the Florentine’s work. These longer poetic works show some of the benefits of imitating Dante’s poetry or even entering into poetic dialogue with it. Original poetry became, for Santillana and others, one avenue for showing skill and taste while simultaneously suggesting what texts their libraries held. As Dante-inspired allegories became fashionable in Castilian poetry shortly before the middle of the 15th-century, access to Dante’s original works and commentaries became more important for Castilian courtiers, but the documentary evidence relating to Castilian Dante manuscripts shows them to be scarce at best. The Dante manuscripts present in Santillana’s library resided at the root of his management of Dante in his public image, but these same library holdings can only be understood in the context of the Dante manuscripts available in Castile at the time. Since personal libraries at this time operated as a means of controlling access to rare texts, rare versions of texts, or combinations of these, it is necessary to understand how abundant or rare the texts in Santillana’s library were at their time. Only then can one appraise how the scarcity or seeming ubiquity of a manuscript can influence the value it brings to a library and the library’s owner. It must be stated at the outset that some crucial information regarding these manuscripts is missing or imprecise. Few of them provide sufficient details of their 14

Teophilo Braga, Historia da Litteratura Portugueza: Seculo XV. Poetas Palacianos (Porto: Imprensa Portugueza, 1871), 10–3.

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composition or purchase, and fewer still can be traced back to individual owners. As one can see below, most of the dates of composition simply represent a field of possibilities up to and beyond a century in which the manuscript could have been written. It is also impossible to know when many of the Italian manuscripts came to the Iberian Peninsula, because they could have been brought as early as the 14th century or as late as the 20th century. In the best of cases, this information is available, but in many cases it is not. Some of these manuscripts are luxury items that lead us to infer that the owners were of the highest social and economic distinction, but even Santillana possessed some manuscripts that were not made of the finest materials with the richest adornment. In spite of this possibly faulty information, it must be remembered that manuscripts are specifically linked to the concrete settings of their use. Manuscripts are contexts as well as texts, and this study seeks to infer from the information available what general trends can be noted from a study of Castilian Dante manuscripts contemporary to Santillana. The working definition of a Castilian Dante manuscript is a document that may have been owned or a text owned that contained a text written by Dante, in the original Tuscan or translated, a commentary analyzing one or more of Dante’s works, or a biography of the author himself. By focusing on these manuscripts, this study draws attention to access to Dante’s works and also the traditional apparatuses for interpreting. Below is the record of as many as fifteen Dante manuscripts that may have been in Castile during Santillana’s lifetime, but details on them vary greatly. Their shorthand names are derived from where they are currently located or, in the case of lost manuscripts (shown with an asterisk), where they were last known to be located. 1.

Escorial A15 Divina comedia (I); Comedia del Dante (I) (Infierno) Monasterio del Escorial, S-II-13 Olim: ii.D.4; III Author/Translator: Dante and Benvenuto da Imola/Anonymous Language(s): Castilian

2.

Madrid A16 Divina Comedia; Comedia Dantis Biblioteca Nacional de España (bne), ms 10186

15

Dante Alighieri and Benvenuto da Imola, “Divina comedia I,” manuscript, S-II-13 Olim: ii.D.4; III (Monasterio del Escorial, San Lorenzo del Escorial, Spain). Dante Alighieri, “Divina comedia,” trans. Enrique de Villena, manuscript, ms 10186 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain).

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Author/Translator: Dante/Enrique de Villena Language(s): Tuscan and Castilian 3.

Madrid B17 Comentario al Purgatorio de Dante bne, ms 10196 Author/Translator: Benvenuto da Imola/Martín González de Lucena Language(s): Castilian

4.

Madrid C18 Comentario a la Divina Comedia de Dante bne, ms 10207 Author/Translator: Pietro Alighieri/Anonymous Language(s): Castilian

5.

Madrid D19 Comentario al Infierno de Dante bne, ms 10208 Author/Translator: Benvenuto da Imola/Anonymous Language(s): Castilian

6.

Madrid E20 La Divina Commedia bne, ms 10057 Author/Translator: Dante Language(s): Tuscan

7.

Madrid F21 La Divina Commedia

17

Dante Alighieri and Benvenuto da Imola, “Comentario al Purgatorio de Dante,” trans. Martín González de Lucena, manuscript, ms 10196 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Pietro Alighieri, “Comentario a la Divina Comedia de Dante,” manuscript, ms 10207 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Benvenuto da Imola, “Comentario al infierno de Dante,” manuscript, ms 10208 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Dante Alighieri, “La Divina Commedia,” manuscript, ms 10057 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Dante Alighieri, “La Divina Commedia,” manuscript, Vitr/23/2 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain).

18 19 20 21

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bne, Vitr/23/2 Author/Translator: Dante Language(s): Tuscan 8.

Madrid G22 Obra Selecta (Convivio, Canzoniere, Vita Nuova) bne, ms 10258 Author/Translator: Dante Language(s): Tuscan

9.

Madrid H23  rigine, vita, costume et studii del chiarissimo poeta Dante Aldighieri, O Giovanni Boccaccio (1–27). Dante Alighieri, Canzoni (h. 27v–51). Stefano Porcari, Orazioni (h. 52–71v). Cicero, De senectute (h. 72–95) bne, ms 10227 Author/Translator: Boccacio, Dante, Porcari, and Cicero Language(s): Tuscan

10. Madrid I24 Vida de Aristóteles (h. 1–24v). Vidas de Dante e de Petrarca (h. 25–62). Conparacion de Gayo Jullio Cesar e de Alexandre por Pedro Candido (h. 62v–90v). Tractado de los officios e officiales de Roma conpuesto muy omillement por David, famoso e sotil doctor en utroque jure (h. 90v–114v) bne, ms 10171 Author/Translator: Leonardo Bruni Language(s): Tuscan 11.

Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz) A*25 Comedias del Dante en Franzés

22

Dante Alighieri, “Obra Selecta,” manuscript, ms 10258 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Dante Alighieri et al., “Canzoni,” et al., manuscript, ms 10227 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Leonardo Bruni, “Vidas de Dante e de Petrarca,” manuscript, ms 10171 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Ma. Carmen Alvarez Márquez, “La biblioteca de don Antonio Juan Luis de la Cerda, VII Duque de Medinaceli, en su palacio del puerto de Santa María (1673),” Historia Instituciones Documentos 15 (1988): 251–390.

23 24 25

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 ersonal Library of D. Antonio Juan Luis de la Cerda, VII Duque de P Medinaceli, Lost Author/Translator: Dante/Unknown Language: French (and another?) 12.

Seville A*26 “Dante” Personal Library of D. Fadrique Enríquez de Ribera, I Marqués de Tarifa, Lost Author: Dante Language: Unknown (listed in Álvarez Márquez 1986)

13.

Seville B27 Commento al Inferno di Dante Biblioteca Colombina, 07-5-40 (Barcode: 1007222) Author: Graziolo Bambaglioli Language(s): Tuscan and Latin

14. Seville C28 Commentum super Purgatorium Dantis Biblioteca Colombina, 05-7-04 (Barcode: 1009234) Author: Benvenuto da Imola Language(s): Tuscan and Latin 15.

Seville D29 Expositio super tertiam partem Dantis que Paradisus dicitur Biblioteca Colombina, 05-5-10 (Barcode: 1008840) Author: Benvenuto da Imola Language(s): Tuscan and Latin

26

Ma. Carmen Alvarez Márquez, “La biblioteca de don Fadrique Enríquez de Ribera, I Marqués de Tarifa (1532),” Historia Instituciones Documentos 13 (1986): 1–40. Graziolo Bambaglioli, “Commento al Inferno di Dante,” manuscript, 07-5-40 (Biblioteca Colombina, Seville, Spain). Benvenuto da Imola, “Commentum super Purgatorium Dantis,” manuscript, 05-7-04 (Biblioteca Colombina, Seville, Spain). Benvenuto da Imola, “Expositio super tertiam partem Dantis que Paradisus dicitur,” manuscript, 05-5-10 (Biblioteca Colombina, Seville, Spain).

27 28 29

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Understanding the presence, absence, abundance, or scarcity of different Dante texts in Castile can signal the diversity of Dante manuscripts and their potential uses within their community of readers. A quick survey will show that seven or eight contained original texts by Dante; seven or eight were commentaries on the Divine Comedy; two contain biographical information about Dante; and four were translations of the text of the Divine Comedy or its commentaries. The Divine Comedy is the text most represented in the original text, translation, or commentary, while a few other texts were available in unique examples. I have eliminated all manuscripts from consideration if they could not have been present during Santillana’s lifetime. These numbers only reflect extant manuscripts and best estimates of their diffusion over time. It is reasonable to surmise that many Iberian Dante manuscripts have been lost since the 15th century. Some manuscripts, such as the Benvenuto da Imola commentaries to the individual canticles of the Divine Comedy, were virtually worthless without a copy of the poem at hand, because they did not routinely appear attached to the poem’s verses but, rather, appeared with phrases from the poem that were then explained at length.30 It is reasonable to infer that few individuals could derive much benefit from the Benvenuto da Imola commentaries without having access to the poem. Where these commentaries existed without extant Divine Comedy manuscripts, we can safely conclude that there may have been some access to the poem at the time the commentary manuscripts were acquired. Some manuscripts or fragments have been rediscovered, such as a fragment of the Inferno found in the 20th century by Martín de Riquer in the binding of an ecclesiastical book.31 Although the concrete numbers may not reflect the true number of 15thcentury Castilian Dante manuscripts, they can serve to represent a likely, if incomplete, pattern of proliferation during Santillana’s time. Of the 15 Dante manuscripts in Castile listed above, Santillana’s library appears to have held eight of them. It held the broadest range of texts relating to Dante and the greatest number of translations. Madrid A, B, C, D, F, G, H, and I were all manuscripts from Santillana’s library, according to Schiff and later researchers. A brief examination of each can elucidate some of the collecting habits in play when Santillana’s library was assembled and developed. By

30 31

Four commentaries of this sort are present in the Castilian Dante manuscripts listed above: Escorial A, Madrid B, Seville B, and Seville C. Martín de Riquer, “Fragmentos de un manuscrito del Infierno de Dante con glosas en catalán,” Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft 21 (1963): 250–3.

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noting the presence of translations commissioned, duplicates acquired, luxury manuscripts, and interaction with the text on the page, the value of these manuscripts as cultural artifacts that imbue their possessor with knowledge and prestige in the eyes of his community can begin to emerge. Madrid A is a Castilian translation of the Divine Comedy, and the translation has long been attributed to Enrique de Villena. Originally copied in Italy in the 14th century with the date of November 10, 1354, the translator has used the space in the margins to create a prose translation in Castilian which has been dated to the first half of the 15th century.32 If this is, in fact, Enrique de Villena’s translation that was created at the behest of Santillana, the Castilian text would have been completed in 1427, as he states in the prologue to his translation of the Aeneid.33 The manuscript also contains helpful glosses in Castilian that aid the reader in understanding which character is speaking at a given moment, pointing fingers in the margins, and what appear to be Santillana’s own notes to himself in a scrawled hand with large letters. As an exchange of favors, then, it appears that Villena translated the Divine Comedy into Castilian prose for Santillana. Later, not only did Santillana make use of the manuscript (though it is impossible to tell if he was reading the Castilian or Tuscan on the page) but also he wrote nota in the margins at several points in order to return to passages of interest. Madrid B, Madrid C, and Madrid D are Castilian translations of Latin commentaries of one or more canticles of the Divine Comedy created during the first half of the 15th century. Madrid B and Madrid D are the Benvenuto da Imola commentaries of the Purgatorio and Inferno, respectively, and Madrid C is the Pietro Alighieri commentary of the entire Divine Comedy. Though the translators for Madrid C and Madrid D remain anonymous, Madrid B was translated by Martín González de Lucena, a member of Santillana’s household, probably at Santillana’s request. In each case, these commentaries reproduce a part of the verse in Tuscan followed by the Castilian translation of the commentator’s explanation. These curious commentaries are useful in that they provide access to the content of the Latin commentaries for those who do not read Latin, but they still require either a bilingual reader who can read both Castilian and Tuscan easily or a bilingual manuscript of the Divine Comedy showing Tuscan and Castilian and a very patient Castilian reader. As documents, these translated commentaries draw a sharp distinction between a Castilian reader who can approach the Tuscan poem in the original and one who cannot, perhaps heightening the distinction between a Tuscan-reading Santillana and those who wished to use his library. 32 Dante Alighieri and Imola, “Divina comedia I,” fol. 194v. 33 Schiff, La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane, 285.

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These commentary translations, therefore, are manuscripts that depend on the presence of other manuscripts. They can only find their greatest utility in a large library that offers all of the other texts that are necessary to use them. When the question of status arises, we can consider that the implied contingency of these documents made them all the more status-bearing. These translated commentaries depend directly on the presence of a Dante manuscript fitting the description of Madrid A to be of use to their possessor. Given that Madrid A appears to have been an extremely rare if not unique document at the time Santillana was alive, Madrid B, Madrid C, and Madrid D can only make it more valuable through their dependence on it. Madrid A, in turn, depends on the translated commentaries because they provide the traditional interpretations of Dante’s allegory laid out methodically from multiple sources. These three manuscripts form the basis for the interpretation of Dante’s poetry by connecting his work directly to Aristotelian thought and allegorical representation. Pietro Alighieri, Dante’s son and self-described “dottor en decretos i sçientifico ombre” (doctor of law and learned man),34 places an emphasis on the importance of Aristotelian causes in his explanation of the start of the Inferno, explicating the form, the matter, the efficient cause, and the final cause of the text.35 Benvenuto da Imola equally appears interested in the philosophy behind the Divine Comedy and even begins his prologue to the commentary by quoting Averroes and explaining that he believes that Averroes misinterpreted Book VII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Pietro Alighieri claims to have access to his father’s entençion (intention) when writing and recognizes only an allegorical reading, describing the work as: “fablar que fizo este poeta fingiendose desçender al infierno e veer al estado delas animas que son partidas desta vida mortal” (a text that this poet made, pretending to descend to hell and see the state of souls departed from this mortal life).36 The emphasis on “pretending” to descend into hell continues throughout the commentary to allow for non-literal interpretation at each step. This allegorical presentation and philosophical content may be significant contributing factors to Santillana’s own poetic sensibility in his decires. These commentaries also offered Castilian poets such as Santillana a model for exegesis that they could apply to their own texts. The self-exegesis of Santillana’s Proverbios or Mena’s Coronación follow a model inspired in Benvenuto da Imola and Pietro Alighieri explicating Dante’s works and became something of a fashion in their community.

34 35 36

Pietro Alighieri, “Comentario a la Divina Comedia de Dante,” fol. 2v. Ibid., fol. 1r. Ibid., fol. 2v.

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Madrid F is much more ornate than the four Madrid manuscripts described before this point. It contains three full-page illuminations and three large historiated initials that not only add decoration to this Tuscan-only manuscript of the Divine Comedy but also contain a small amount of allegorical interpretation as it identifies allegorically, for example, the three beasts over their depiction in the first illumination.37 The illuminations are rendered in multiple colors with considerable amounts of gold leaf. Its regular, perfect tercets are written in black and red ink with very few glosses. This manuscript of the Divine Comedy is intended to be seen and admired as a beautiful object. It is important to note that the information contained in this manuscript duplicates the Tuscan text contained in Madrid A without providing a Castilian translation or extensive glosses. If it were collected merely for its informational content, Madrid F would be made obsolete by the presence of Madrid A, but their simultaneous presence in the same library suggests that they are fulfilling different roles. Where Madrid A has the look of a manuscript used for study with its pointing fingers on the margins and its notes in Santillana’s own hand, Madrid F appears to be solely a showpiece meant to impress onlookers. Santillana’s library, as evidenced by these two Dante manuscripts, serves at least two different functions. Madrid A, with its prose translation and explanatory glossing, is intended to increase informational access to the text of the Divine Comedy. It helps Santillana declare authority over matters relating to Dante and the interpretation of his texts by providing him with rare information regarding those texts. Madrid F, with its illuminations and formal perfection, is intended to impress those who visit the library. It is an extravagant display of wealth applied to literature that reflects the tastes and priorities of its owner. Madrid G, Madrid H, and Madrid I all provide more context for the interpretation of the Divine Comedy by providing a broader look at Dante’s works or information about his biography and its relation to his works. Madrid G contains Dante’s Convivio, Canzoniere, and Vita Nuova in a manuscript with some luxury features. Madrid H reproduces Boccaccio’s biography of Dante as well as Dante’s Canzoniere in an ornate manuscript. Madrid I is an anonymous Castilian translation of Leonardo Bruni’s Lives of Dante and Petrarch. These three manuscripts are the only known versions of these texts in Castile at the time of Santillana’s life (though one must suppose that there was probably an Italian original of Bruni’s Lives from which the translation was made). All of these texts provide Santillana with contextual knowledge that lends him authority when interpreting or imitating Dante. Santillana’s possession of Dante’s Convivio and Vita Nuova gives him insight into Dante’s philosophy and poetics 37

Dante Alighieri, “La Divina Commedia,” Vitr/23/2, fol. 1v.

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that is unavailable through other means. The biographies of Dante by Boccaccio and Bruni allow Santillana to separate cleanly between life and art, biography and allegory. The acquisition of the two copies of the Canzoniere may not be intentional, since the manuscripts themselves have very different content, but it may also point to manuscript hoarding as a phenomenon in which multiple copies or versions of the same text are contained within the same library. Since Madrid G and Madrid H both have similarly impressive luxury features, manuscript hoarding may indicate that there were perceived benefits of possessing duplicates independent of their informational and prestige values.

The Economics of Dante Manuscript Distribution

This survey of manuscripts may seem to paint a picture of relative availability of Dante texts in Castile, but distribution of these texts was not homogeneous. An excellent example of this comes from a historical study of only one part of Aragon in the 15th century. The data yielded from a thorough dissertation by María Rosario Ferrer Gimeno summarizes the ownership of books in what is now the Province of Valencia.38 Through the use of notary documents (wills, bills of sale, etc.), Ferrer Gimeno compiles a list of manuscript owners in Valencia, the part of society they represented, the number of volumes owned, and the titles of those volumes. The most revelatory fact for this study is that, of the hundreds of individuals who possessed books, only one document contained information regarding Dante. In spite of the numerous contacts that Aragon and Aragonese Italy had with Dante manuscripts, none of these manuscripts left any trace in Valencia other than the Andreu Febrer translation of the Divine Comedy. Granted, it is possible that Dante was described vaguely (as was customary) in a description such as: “Item, hun altre libre en paper, […] en lengua ytaliana” (Another book on paper […] in Italian).39 Although there were as many as 12 extant Dante manuscripts in the kingdom of Aragon during the time period that was the focus of Ferrer Gimeno’s study, only one of those Dante manuscripts was present in Valencia.40 This has important implications; many of the Catalan manuscripts, illuminated and sizeable, would have caught the eye if being appraised upon the owner’s death or massive debt. As such, 38 39 40

María Rosario Ferrer Gimeno, “Lectura en Valencia (1416–1474): Una Aproximación Histórica” (Ph.D. diss., Universitat de Valencia, 1993). Ferrer Gimeno, “Lectura en Valencia,” 227. Daniel Hartnett, “The Political and Social Uses of Dante in Fifteenth-Century Iberian Court Culture” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2009), 94.

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we  can presume that few of the other Catalan Dante manuscripts were bought  or sold in Valencia during this era. That most likely means that the remaining Catalan Dante manuscripts were either possessed by families wealthy enough to maintain ownership of them or they were in another part of Aragon, raising the concentration in that area. If there is evidence of fewer Dante manuscripts in Valencia, the remaining ones were necessarily compressed in the other parts of Aragon in this period, increasing the effective concentration and likely access. This phenomenon can be further exacerbated by a library owner such as Santillana. The availability of manuscripts, relative to area or population, decreases when multiple manuscripts are found in one place or one person’s library. Rather than deal solely with the number of manuscripts present, it might be more appropriate to consider the number of places Dante manuscripts were available to Castilian readers. The number of places per geographic region can give us a sense of manuscript concentration. That is to say, the number of manuscripts per million inhabitants or hundred thousand square kilometers can give a sense of the availability of manuscripts in a larger, if relative sense. Though Castile appeared to have as many as 15 Dante manuscripts in the mid-15th century, eight of them were in Santillana’s library, meaning that there was only a maximum of nine places where one could feasibly consult these texts. If we divide the number of places where one can consult Dante manuscripts among the estimated population of Castile at this time, we find that there was only approximately one site for accessing Dante manuscripts per 1,000,000 people in Castile in the 15th century.41 This is a low number for Castile when compared to Aragon, which had somewhere around 12 sites for accessing Dante manuscripts per 1,000,000 people. In essence, Castile had a much lower manuscript concentration than Aragon when comparing their estimated populations. If we consider the geographic area of Castile as compared to Aragon, we find that the concentration per 100,000 km2 for Castile is 2.32 and the concentration for Aragon is 10.19. In other words, whether availability of manuscripts (as represented by concentration) is calculated in reference to population or area, Castile almost certainly had much lower availability of Dante manuscripts than its neighbor to the east. These numbers do not pretend to record the actual numbers of manuscripts at the time but, rather, record a rough ratio between regions that shows the relative poverty of Castile 41

Joseph F. O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1975), 604–5. Callaghan provides an estimated population in Castile of 9,500,000 at this time.

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in matters pertaining to Dante access. For this reason, conditions of scarcity in Castile likely inflated the value of Dante manuscripts in the middle of the 15th century in a way that was not consistent across the Iberian Peninsula. The actions of the Marques de Santillana in expending a small fortune to send a purchasing agent to Italy and commission translations of Dante manuscripts may appear on their surface to be frivolous, but only if we are viewing his book collecting as a hobby rather than a social strategy. Since no one in Castile at this time could simply come across eight different manuscripts relating to Dante by happenstance, Santillana’s decision to pay to acquire them was a conscious and costly one. Santillana’s actions reflect the high value that he placed on these manuscripts for advancing his own interests. To put this into microeconomic terms, the kingdom of Castile suffered from a lack of supply that raised the value of manuscripts relating to Dante in the middle of the 15th century. One must not think of a manuscript’s value as simply being monetary; it is also cultural, because of its ability to imbue its owner with prestige in the eyes of the community. The rarity of Dante manuscripts makes them attractive objects in the first place, but Santillana’s luxury editions, philosophical works, short poetry, commentaries, and translations of Dante make his library truly exceptional in its holdings. In the same courtly community that had canonized Francisco Imperial’s dantesque Dezir a las siete virtudes in their cancioneros a generation earlier, Santillana nearly cornered the market on Dante manuscripts in Castile to control access to them and become the authority in their interpretation. From this point, he could use his own works to increase Dante’s profile and his own cultural cache in the process as the interpreter and gateway to Dante in Castile. In other words, multiple factors are crucial to understanding the cultural and social importance of Dante manuscripts contained in Santillana’s library, including Santillana’s collecting habits, the nature of the Dante manuscripts themselves, the number of Dante manuscripts in his possession, and how that number related to a broader scarcity of Dante manuscripts in Castile. All of these factors serve to highlight the great social importance of this small corner of Santillana’s library in its concrete historical context.

Further Collecting Habits

Schiff’s work not only describes Dante manuscripts but also chronicles Santillana’s other remarkable library holdings, including a broad assortment of Petrarch’s texts, an excellent collection of Boccaccio manuscripts, and the work of numerous 15th-century Italian contemporaries. Many of these Italian manuscripts, like his Dante collection, could only have been acquired under

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Santillana’s watch and provided a modern complement to his impressive collection of biblical texts and commentaries, classical texts, and histories. To build his library and its appeal, Santillana often commissioned translations from friends and associates. Rubio Tovar outlines the extent to which Santillana promoted translation of classical, Italian, and French manuscripts into Castilian, even though it seems he was able to read Tuscan and French quite well.42 One of the translators associated with the Marques, Antón Zorita, reports that Santillana requested that he translate Honnoré de Bouvet’s Árbol de las batallas for the “consolacion e plazer de los leedores de España” (consolation and pleasure of the readers of Spain).43 So, Santillana’s interest in having works rendered in Castilian goes beyond his own desire to read or understand them. We cannot even view his use of translators as serving an editorial function to improve comprehension since Zorita confesses of his own knowledge of French, “puramente yo non se aquesta lengua” (I clearly do not know that language).44 Santillana’s patronage toward translators is not entirely motivated by the hopes of gaining access to texts written in languages unfamiliar to him. Instead, by introducing multiple texts translated from other languages to Castilian, Santillana manages to provide, at times, the only Castilian version of a particular text. This is especially important for recently composed Italian texts and rediscovered classical texts from Italy. Santillana’s purchasing agent, Nuño de Guzmán, sought out manuscripts on his behalf in order to supply the library with unique pieces that were rarities in the Iberian Peninsula. Indeed, the only other Iberian figure we know to have had such extensive library holdings of Italian texts was the Aragonese king, Alfonso the Magnanimous, who moved his court to Naples and supported a learned court of Italian poets. Considering Santillana’s access to works by courtiers from Alfonso’s court, it is likely that Alfonso also supplied Santillana with some new manuscripts. Commissioning translations, whether paid in money or showing favor to the  translator, served Santillana as an important strategy in his library ­development. By rendering works into Castilian and incorporating them into his library, Santillana was able to build his offerings while increasing the attractiveness of his collection to those who only read Castilian. This cunning move created unique documents to populate his library and summoned those who 42

Joaquín Rubio Tovar, “Traductores y traducciones en la Biblioteca del Marqués de Santillana,” in Medioevo y Literatur: Actas del V Congreso de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval, IV, ed. Juan de Paredes Núñez (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1995), 244. 43 Schiff, La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane, 377. 44 Ibid.

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would seek to benefit from firsthand, albeit translated, knowledge of Plato, Seneca, or Dante. In terms of the strategy behind his patronage of translations, Santillana achieved the complementary goals of developing authoritative collections and specializing in scarce works. With each new translation that entered his library, Santillana became a greater perceived authority on its contents, and the presence of scarce or unique works lent him authority unavailable to others. This does not imply that he had read all of the works in his library necessarily; even so, the works in his library were reflected in his public reputation.

Advertising Library Holdings with the Prohemio e Carta

To follow the act of assembling his library and its rare or unique holdings, Santillana used his Prohemio e Carta qu’el Marqués de Santillana enbió al Condestable de Portugal (Preamble and letter that the Marques de Santillana sent to the Constable of Portugal) in order to argue in favor of its importance within the Castilian literary-political community.45 By using this grand statement and its history of poetry to link poetry to political power, establish a definition of poetic taste, and base that taste on his own library holdings, Santillana established the necessary connections to link his ownership of bibliographic treasures with the appearance he desired to project at court. The lengthy history of court poetry within the document accomplishes at least two goals. First, it defines the margins of his community by explaining who forms part of the powerful and tasteful. By showing the chronological margins with references to Homer, Moses, and others, he presents the group as an unbroken lineage of leaders of men who use and appreciate verse. Second, Santillana defines the aspirations of the group through a discussion and redefinition of taste. The taste that Santillana represents in his literary history is most markedly his own. While this may seem self-evident, it is not without a coercive intent. Proposing his own taste accompanied by his erudition confuses the authority of his knowledge and the authority of his opinion. The community digesting this statement never hears that Santillana owns this text or that; instead, he presents his history of poetry as if it were objective and founded upon authorities. When dissected, however, his history and the taste it implies prove to be more accurately a validation of his library’s holdings than an 45

Iñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana, “Prohemio e Carta qu’el Marqués de Santillana enbió al Condestable de Portugal,” in Comedieta de Ponza, Sonetos, Serranillas y otras obras, ed. Regula Rohland de Langbehn (Barcelona: Crítica, 1997), 11–29.

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objective overview of poetry’s history. Santillana’s style and tone make his history seem organic and natural even though it is a construct that serves his own ends. It is an advertisement of the manuscripts in his possession and the validation of their worth to those who would understand poetry and politics. This interpretation conflicts with Jeremy Lawrance’s reading of Santillana’s earlier Defunsión de don Enrique de Villena (The Death of don Enrique de Villena), which he characterizes as a “parade of erudition” brought about through “sly compilation from secondary sources.”46 In the intervening decade or more between the Defunsión (1434) and the Prohemio e Carta (between 1444 and 1449), Santillana’s library grew to incorporate more works that could populate his history of poetry in the latter work. Even so, as we shall see below, a few of Santillana’s references do not appear in Schiff’s study. After beginning his history of poetry with Isidore of Seville’s authorizing voice, Santillana methodically amends Isidore’s prevailing cosmogony with information and techniques from Dante’s worldview and Divine Comedy. In a telling moment, in order to recommend Virgil’s poetry, Santillana quotes Dante’s Sordello (a contemporary poet to Dante), who describes Virgil as Gloria de’Latin (Latin’s glory).47 This, like many others in Santillana, is a perfect quotation from Dante because it holds multiple meanings that support Santillana’s intentions. In the first place, it validates the role of the poet in a community, language, and civilization. Santillana clearly endorses Sordello’s characterization of Virgil as Gloria de’Latin because it is the poet’s role to bring fame and glory to the language, and poetry becomes the most privileged form of language in a great poet such as Virgil. Second, Santillana’s quote from Dante validates the role that Dante plays in the rules of taste and authority that Santillana lays out for his readers. Santillana’s Prohemio e Carta defends Dante as a contemporary source of truth, taste, and power by making him the correcting voice of Isidore (whose citation in the Prohemio e Carta neglects to include Virgil), a quotable authority for the discussion of poetry, and the mouthpiece of a new, poet’s-eye-view of society, history, and culture. Since Santillana is the individual most in control of Dante manuscripts in Iberia at this time, he has the most to gain from centering rules of taste on the Florentine and controlling access to documents surrounding him. Third, and finally, this quote validates the role of the poet who appreciates classical poetry. Sordello is the poet who knows Virgil’s works and, in Santillana’s text, can be seen as an equal to Isidore in this matter. Perhaps not 46

47

Jeremy N.H. Lawrance, “Juan Alfonso de Baena’s Versified Reading List: A Note on the Aspirations and the Reality of Fifteenth-Century Castilian Culture,” Journal of Hispanic Philology 5 (1981): 105. López de Mendoza, “Prohemio e Carta,” 16.

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every Iberian poet can aspire to be like Virgil (far removed in time and the glory of his language), but every Iberian poet can aspire to be like Sordello (recently active and renowned, if not supreme). In order to become like Sordello, however, they must educate themselves in the poetry of the past, and Santillana offers his Prohemio e Carta and library to help. In sum, Santillana positions this Dante quote at a point in the text where it can make the greatest impression. It hits the major points of the text—Santillana as a guide, poets as powerful individuals, Dante as an authority on taste, and the study of tasteful poets as desirable—to authorize and justify the poetic education that Santillana will lay out. Santillana establishes himself as the authority on good poetic taste in the Prohemio e Carta and uses the document to heap praise on many of the texts that compose his library. On the one hand, it is logical that Santillana will use the information he has at hand to compile a history of poetry. As the owner of one of the most extensive personal libraries in Castile at the time, he can hardly be expected to ignore his own library holdings in favor of texts he has never read. On the other hand, the praise that Santillana includes and the hierarchical categorization that he establishes render the document as anything but objective. In fact, through these judgments and categories, Santillana teaches the reader how to appreciate poetry, and the poetry in question derives largely from his library holdings. As an instrument for organizing literary taste, Santillana divides poetry into three groups: sublime—made up of solely classical texts; mediocre—acceptable vernacular compositions; and ínfimo—unacceptable vernacular compositions. These three categories divide all poetic creation based on the language of its composition, its adherence to established rules, and the social status of its consumer. At first it appears rather neutral toward the mediocre category, simply crediting its authors with the first uses of sonnet form and terza rima.48 Later, however, it explores the authors making up this group with considerably more admiration. Santillana mentions Guido Guinizelli, Arnauld Daniel, Dante “que escrivió en terçio rimo elegantemente las sus tres comedias, Infierno, Purgatorio e Paraíso” (who wrote his three comedies, Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise in terza rima elegantly), Petrarch, Cecco d’Ascoli, Boccaccio, and Boethius. The last five are all represented in his library’s manuscript holdings; the first two, not contained in his library, come to him from his knowledge of Dante. All taste in vernacular poetry, then, is established with reference to and through texts in Santillana’s library. When one compares references in Santillana’s Prohemio e Carta to his library holdings directly, it becomes clear that he is often promoting his possessions. 48

López de Mendoza, “Prohemio e Carta,” 18.

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Among the references that he makes to literature in the Prohemio e Carta, one finds the following also on his shelves: the Bible,49 Cicero,50 Homer,51 Dante,52 Virgil,53 Benvenuto da Imola,54 Suetonius,55 Boccaccio’s Genealogía o Linage de los Dioses Gentiles,56 Cecco d’Ascoli’s Acerba,57 Boccaccio’s Ninfale d’Ameto,58 Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae,59 Le Roman de la Rose,60 several works by Alain Chartier,61 the Libro de Alexandre,62 and Ovid.63 Numerous references in the Prohemio e Carta are not mentioned in Schiff’s study, including (unbelievably) Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, which was an extremely well-known text and one to which Santillana makes repeated reference.64 Additionally, Santillana certainly owned numerous works by Petrarch, but there is no evidence in Schiff that he owned either the Trionfi or the De rerum memorandarum, the two works mentioned in the Prohemio e Carta.65 These anomalies and a few others may show that Santillana was taking part in some of the braggadocio that Lawrance cites in the Marques’s earlier work or that he had borrowed these works from someone else’s library. Alternatively, they may indicate that Schiff’s thorough work was performed on a corpus that had already been separated before modern descriptions. It is not outside the realm of possibilities that all of these played a role.66 Santillana’s final strategy for converting his library into social influence consists of his ability to make poetry, from its inception and throughout the history 49 Schiff, La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane, 235–46. 50 Ibid., 56–64. 51 Ibid., 1–7. 52 Ibid., 271–319. 53 Ibid., 89–91. 54 Ibid., 271–319. 55 Ibid., 150–1. 56 Ibid., 333–9. 57 Ibid., 355. 58 Ibid., 333. 59 Ibid., 174–86. 60 Ibid., 368–70. 61 Ibid., 371–2. 62 Ibid., 386–7. 63 Ibid., 84–8. 64 López de Mendoza, “Prohemio e Carta,” 15. 65 Ibid., 17, 19. 66 For a more extensive analysis of Santillana’s sources and manuscripts, see Angel Gómez Moreno, Notes to El Prohemio e Carta del Marqués de Santillana y la teoría literaria del S. XV, by Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana (Barcelona: Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, S.A., 1990), 85–148.

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he crafts, appear natural and organic. From the beginning of the Prohemio e Carta, poetry is universal to all: “[D]exadas agora las regiones, tierras e comarcas más longínicas e más separadas de nos, no es de dubdar que universalmente, en todas, de sienpre, estas sçiençias se ayan acostunbrado e acostunbran” (emphasis mine) (Now leaving behind regions, lands, and areas far away from us, it cannot be doubted that universally, everywhere, and always, poetry has been the custom and continues to be).67 Building on the naturalized state of poetry, he crafts the history of poetry to connect poetry and the exercise of power at every turn. Santillana exposes the relationship between political power and poetry across time and place in order to lay claim, the claim he causes to appear natural, to political influence on behalf of poets and students of poetry. In doing this he hopes to lay down new avenues to political power passing through poetry and erudition where they predominantly passed through political, bureaucratic, or dynastic positions before. Also in writing his Prohemio e Carta, Santillana hopes to place himself in the dominant position of this community by creating a document that favors the skills, knowledge, and possessions that distinguish him from others. Since his erudition is highly dependent on his library holdings, his references to the manuscripts he owns constitute a way to exercise authoritative control over them in his history. Santillana also makes a case for his perceived erudition through his interpretive skills and knowledge. Considering that the Prohemio e Carta was sent along with his original poetry, this can be considered a second poetic activity that Santillana endorses. As further justification for his dominance, Santillana ends the document by solidifying his relationship with relatives and friends that he considers to possess good taste and skill in poetry, all of whom are well known and powerful.

Conclusion: Santillana’s Bibliographic Habits and Self-fashioning

Accepting that self-fashioning, to the degree it was practiced in Greenblatt’s Renaissance, was likely not available to all inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula in the middle of the 15th century, this study would like to suggest that it was available to some at limited times and in limited spaces. Though not the only space or time, it seems that a strong argument can be mounted for considering the royal court to be a customary social space of self-fashioning. It provides its courtiers the opportunity to jockey for power by positioning themselves in relation to the larger power structures that they sustain or oppose. It provides courtiers a ready audience and the possibility of political or social power that 67

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can result from adept self-representation. The court is a social theater for the influential and talented of Juan II’s Castile. Courtiers take turns as performers and spectators as they contentiously mete out power and influence to each other based on the strength of their performances. These same courtiers partake in the same performance and spectatorship when they compose, circulate, and read the literary documents that we study today. The culture of compiling the cancioneros, or poetic anthologies, of earlier poets and contemporaries permitted individual poets to reach beyond those present at court in a particular moment, extending their words to a broader audience while the anthology simultaneously reflected the good taste of the compiler. Through word, action, and text at court, the aristocratic and literary elite held themselves and their ideas up for comparison with their fellow courtiers. Since poetry was among the most public and persistent means of forcing comparison with other courtiers, not only through the common poetic forms that involved more than one poet but also through adjacent placement in cancioneros, many of those who sought power at court sought to entertain or move their audience through the cultivation of the literary arts. The courtly competitive performance is often brought to mind more by knightly games such as jousts or the melee. Joachim Bumke describes these tournaments as giving knights the opportunity to demonstrate in public that they were motivated not “by greed but by a courtly attitude and a desire for fame.”68 In the same way, courtliness and a desire for fame, rather than a desire for worldly power, run rampant throughout cancionero poetry as practitioners make references to earlier writers who have achieved fame and serve as biblical, classical, and medieval sources of authority. Courtiers could harness this authority and cultivate prestige through poetry which was converted into a reputation for intellectualism. The raw material they harvested from poetic models could give them greater efficacy in shaping these reputations. Personal libraries were fundamental to court poets because they were the greatest sources of literary raw material and the means of staying fresh and fashionable at court. Greenblatt concludes Renaissance Self-Fashioning with these final meditations that seem to remove much of the freedom from the process of forming subjects: [F]ashioning oneself and being fashioned by cultural institutions—family, religion, state—were inseparably intertwined. In all my texts and documents, there were, so far as I could tell, no moments of pure, unfettered subjectivity; indeed, the human subject itself began to seem 68

Joachim Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, trans. Thomas Dunlap (New York: Overlook Press, 2000), 266.

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remarkably unfree, the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular society. Whenever I focused sharply upon a moment of apparently autonomous self-fashioning, I found not an epiphany of identity freely chosen but a cultural artifact. If there remained traces of free choice, the choice was among possibilities whose range was strictly delineated by the social and ideological system in force.69 A study of Santillana’s library and reputation certainly cannot claim to provide scholars with the free human subject for which Greenblatt is looking. Íñigo López de Mendoza was a man who, like all others, operated within the material and ideological constraints of his community. His ability to change himself was always contingent upon the parameters of possible achievement of a high noble background. Yet, though the parameters could not be moved directly by a subject within the ideological system, the ideological system that established those parameters was malleable in small ways. Courtly prestige derived from the display and interpretation of cultural knowledge that was, at its core, unstable and constantly changing. In a community driven by cultural knowledge and access to the texts that could provide it, controlling the cultural knowledge available allowed for some minimal control over the ideological system itself. Rather than situate himself in relation to existing authorities and aliens (to use Greenblatt’s terms),70 Santillana used his library and bibliographic habits to alienate some existing authorities, such as Isidore of Seville, while authorizing new authorities, such as Dante. By rewriting the rules of authority within his community, Santillana created himself as the ultimate expert on what culture is important and the gateway through which to attain access to such culture. As Santillana fashions his library, develops and advertises its holdings, explains his books’ importance, and defines and naturalizes taste for his audience, he changes his audience’s perspective in order to situate himself centrally in his community. Santillana rewrote the rules of the cultural game at court so that he was no longer a player but the referee to whom the players look to define the game. Self-fashioning can be understood as a performative dialogue between individual and ideology before the eyes of others. When faced with an ideological climate based on Latin authorities that reduces him to a secondary status, the Marques de Santillana expends exorbitant amounts of money to acquire rare or unique vernacular texts, often in luxury manuscripts. He takes care to

69 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 256. 70 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 9.

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acquire manuscripts that will enhance the social attraction of his library even if the texts contained in the manuscripts offer nothing to the expansion of his personal intellect. He pens his Prohemio e Carta to produce what appears to be an objective history of poetry but serves him by naturalizing poetic tastes based on his possessions. He has both created a source of prestige in his library and given it value and social import within his community. When all of this is accomplished, Santillana is the central figure within his community’s conception of poetry and its connection to power at court. He has fashioned himself by manipulating the objects that surround him and interpreting their value for the community he seeks to direct. He has converted money into intellectual and political status through careful management of his property, patronage, and presentation to the community. As an act of self-fashioning, Santillana has domesticated and taken possession of tasteful court poetry in his community through effective construction and interpretation of his library. This, in turn, has created the public persona that he desires. Bibliography Alighieri, Dante. “Divina comedia.” Translated by Enrique de Villena. Manuscript. 10186 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). ———. “La Divina Commedia.” Manuscript. Vitr/23/2 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). ———. “La Divina Commedia.” Manuscript. 10057 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). ———. “Obra Selecta.” Manuscript. 10258 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Alighieri, Dante, and Benvenuto da Imola. “Comentario al Purgatorio de Dante.” Translated by Martín González de Lucena. Manuscript. 10196 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). ———. “Divina comedia I.” Manuscript. S-II-13 Olim: ii.D.4; III (Monasterio del Escorial, San Lorenzo del Escorial, Spain). Alighieri, Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Stefano Porcari. “Canzoni,” “Origine, vita, costume et studii del chiarissimo poeta Dante Aldighieri,” “De senectute,” and “Orazioni.” Manuscript. 10227 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Alighieri, Pietro. “Comentario a la Divina Comedia de Dante.” Manuscript. 10207 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Alvarez Márquez, Ma. Carmen. “La biblioteca de don Fadrique Enríquez de Ribera, I Marqués de Tarifa (1532).” Historia Instituciones Documentos 13 (1986): 1–40.

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———. “La biblioteca de don Antonio Juan Luis de la Cerda, VII Duque de Medinaceli, en su palacio del puerto de Santa María (1673).” Historia Instituciones Documentos 15 (1988): 251–390. Amador de los Ríos, José. Obras de Don Iñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana. Madrid: Imprenta de la calle de S. Vicente baja, 1857. Bambaglioli, Graziolo. “Commento al Inferno di Dante.” Manuscript. 07-5-40 (Biblioteca Colombina, Seville, Spain). Braga, Teophilo. Historia da Litteratura Portugueza. Seculo XV. Poetas Palacianos. Porto: Imprensa Portugueza, 1871. Bruni, Leonardo. “Vidas de Dante e de Petrarca.” Manuscript. 10171 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). Bumke, Joachim. Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. New York: Overlook Press, 2000. Cátedra, Pedro-Manuel. “Sobre la biblioteca del Marqués de Santillana: La Iliada y Pier Candido Decembrio.” Hispanic Review 51, no. 1 (1983): 23–28. Ferrer Gimeno, María Rosario. “Lectura en Valencia (1416–1474): Una Aproximación Histórica.” Ph.D. diss., Universitat de Valencia, 1993. ProQuest (C408704). Foster, David William. The Marqués de Santillana. New York: Twayne, 1971. Gómez Moreno, Angel. Notes to El Prohemio e Carta del Marqués de Santillana y la teoría literaria del S. XV, by Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana. Barcelona: Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, S.A., 1990. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Hartnett, Daniel. “The Political and Social Uses of Dante in Fifteenth-Century Iberian Court Culture.” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2009. ProQuest (3362833). Imola, Benvenuto da. “Comentario al infierno de Dante.” Manuscript. 10208 (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain). ———. “Commentum super Purgatorium Dantis.” Manuscript. 05-7-04 (Biblioteca Colombina, Seville, Spain). ———. “Expositio super tertiam partem Dantis que Paradisus dicitur.” Manuscript. 05-5-10 (Biblioteca Colombina, Seville, Spain). Lawrance, Jeremy N.H. “Juan Alfonso de Baena’s Versified Reading List: A Note on the Aspirations and the Reality of Fifteenth-Century Castilian Culture.” Journal of Hispanic Philology 5 (1981): 101–22. López de Mendoza, Iñigo, and Marqués de Santillana. “Prohemio e Carta qu’el Marqués de Santillana enbió al Condestable de Portugal.” In Comedieta de Ponza, Sonetos, Serranillas y otras obras, edited by Regula Rohland de Langbehn, 11–29. Barcelona: Crítica, 1997. Menéndez y Pelayo, Marcelino. Antología de poetas líricos castellanos. Tomo V. Madrid: Librería de la Viuda de Hernando y C.a, 1894.

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Michael, Ian. “Private Book-Collecting in Spain from St. Isidore (570–636) to the Marqués de Santillana (1398–1458).” Donaire 12 (1999): 21–32. Morel-Fatio, Alfred. “Les deux Omero castillans.” Romania 25 (1896): 111–39. O’Callaghan, Joseph F. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1975. de Riquer, Martín. “Fragmentos de un manuscrito del Infierno de Dante con glosas en catalán.” Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft 21 (1963): 250–53. Rohland de Langbehn, Regula. Prologue to Comedieta de Ponza, Sonetos, Serranillas y otras obras, by Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana, xxxiii–c. Barcelona: Crítica, 1997. Rubio Tovar, Joaquín. “Traductores y traducciones en la Biblioteca del Marqués de Santillana.” In Medioevo y Literatura. Actas del V Congreso de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval IV, edited by Juan de Paredes Núñez, 243–51. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1995. Sánchez, Tomás Antonio. “Noticias para la vida de Don Iñigo López de Mendoza.” In Colección de poesías castellanas anteriores al siglo XV: Tomo 1, i–xlvii. Madrid: Don Antonio de Sancha, 1779. Schiff, Mario. La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillane. Paris: Librairie Émile Bouillon, Éditeur, 1905. Weiss, Julian. The Poet’s Art: Literary Theory in Castile c.1400–1460. Medium Aevum Monographs, new series 14. Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, 1990.

chapter 5

Ludology, Self-fashioning, and Entrepreneurial Masculinity in Iberian Novels of Chivalry Michael Harney The four romances that are the focus of this essay present themselves as the life story of their respective protagonists. They confirm Daniel Eisenberg’s definition of the Spanish chivalric romance as the “fictitious biography” of a knighterrant.1 This biographical armature is revealed by such works as the Libro del Caballero Zifar (early 14th century; hereafter, Zifar), Curial e Güelfa (late 15th century; hereafter, Curial), and Tirant lo blanc (late 15th century; hereafter, Tirant). The extant version of the most popular fictional chivalric biography of them all, Amadís de Gaula (hereafter, Amadís), dates from the early 16th century but closely adapts earlier versions dating back to the mid-14th.2 In their ostensibly biographical form, these stories are comparable to the lives of real-world knights, as recounted, for example, in the 15th-century Victorial. Unlike the latter narrative, however, which attempts to convey in plausible terms the personal history of a verifiably real historical personage, the chivalric romances discussed here are entertainments designed to take their readers away from the real world.3 Recounting a kind of ego’s-progress along an eventful and circuitous itinerary, they reflect an artisanal conception of the self on the part of their respective protagonists and other characters. Constantly preoccupied with the fabrication and maintenance of a self-image, 1 Daniel Eisenberg, Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age (Newark, de: Juan de la Cuesta, 1982), 7. 2 The present essay does not cover the various works of the Palmerín series or individual romances and romance series of the 16th century. Demonstrably inspired by the plot and publishing success of Amadís and its sequels, the Palmerines and other later romances comprised a corpus of more than 70 individual works whose aggregate popularity made the genre one of the mainstays of the printing industry in the 16th and 17th centuries. See Juan Manuel Lucía Megías, “Introducción,” Antología de libros de caballerías castellanos, ed. Lucía Megías (Alcalá de Henares: Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, 2001), xiii–xv. 3 For a discussion of the thematic and stylistic biases that distinguish the Victorial from its fictional counterparts, see Rafael Beltrán, “Introducción,” Gutierre Díaz de Games, El Victorial, ed. Rafael Beltrán (Madrid: Clásicos Taurus, 1994), 60–85; also Rafael Beltrán, “Díaz de Games, Gutierre,” in Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, eds. E. Michael Gerli and Samuel Armistead (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 278–79.

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donning and replacing personae, sometimes in the latter term’s literal original sense of masks, they exhibit skillful artifice within the highly competitive environment of their literary universe. The motives and behavior of the characters in this universe are illuminated by applying Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning. The latter concept, argues Greenblatt, implies a notion of personal autonomy, which is to say, “the power to impose a shape upon oneself.” This power of self-shaping, in turn, is “an aspect of the more general power to control identity.” In the early modern context, this control is exerted within an environment whose intellectual, social, and psychological structures “govern the generation of identities” and in which we may discern “a new stress on the executive power of the will.” Furthermore, argues Greenblatt, this emphasis on will power manifests in a generally “increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process.”4 Within the greater socio-historical realm, self-fashioning as a socially prevalent personal style encompasses, notes Greenblatt, the practices of parents and teachers, the discourse of “manners or demeanor,” and the “representation of one’s nature or intention in speech or actions.” At the same time, selffashioning occurs “without regard for a sharp distinction between literature and social life.” It thus necessarily “crosses the boundaries between the creation of literary characters, the shaping of one’s own identity, the experience of being molded by forces outside one’s control.”5 Greenblatt points out several caveats. The mere profiling of authors as historical actors would, for example, yield a mere series of literary biographies. Nevertheless, while attempting to situate authors and their works within “larger networks of meaning,” we must not read literary works solely as “the expression of social rules and instructions.” To do so risks absorbing literature into “an ideological superstructure.” Literature cannot be seen as a mere “detached reflection upon the prevailing behavioral codes,” nor can individuals and institutions be regarded as the elements of an “obligatory” historical background.6 “Social actions,” writes Greenblatt, are necessarily “embedded in systems of public signification, always grasped, even by their makers, in acts of interpretation.” The literary works he scrutinizes are thus created as the interplay among texts, authors, and “the larger social world as constituting a single, complex 4 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 1–2. 5 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 3. 6 Ibid., 4.

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process of self-fashioning.”7 Knowing this enables us to understand the formation of “literary and social identities” in the context of “particular institutions” such as court, church, or family. The analysis of such interactions conduces, he allows, to an engagement of authors in “a kind of historical drama.” The critic and reader participate in personal dramas analogous to those represented in literary works, given that readers and critics, like authors, lead lives that are “saturated with experience artfully shaped.” In the historical context, then, “the written word is self-consciously embedded in specific communities, life situations, structures of power.”8 Greenblatt’s analysis of the historical context of self-fashioning, involving the reciprocity of textual creation and authorial biography, is made difficult, in the case of the romances discussed here, by the works’ anonymous authorship. Even in the case of Amadís, where a verifiable historical personage, Rodríguez de Montalvo, may be assigned the role of author, the complex antecedents of the original materials he adapts, and the ambiguity of his function as a reworker of bequeathed materials, problematize direct biographical references.9 At the same time, Spanish chivalric romances, as historical performers in literary markets, invite analysis of self-fashioning as it is represented within their narratives. The genre’s protagonists and antagonists personify the executive power of the will; they are obsessed with their self-image and with rules of courtesy and deportment; they are mindful of social institutions. This self-representation, while it satisfies many of Greenblatt’s criteria, cannot be called realistic. In probable contrast to the experience of real-life knights—for whom errantry, if practiced, was presumably less idealistic and more sporadic than that of their literary counterparts—the genre’s self-made protagonists commit to a prolonged sequence of encounters with numerous adversaries. The sequence amounts to an ever-growing résumé of deeds and experiences designed, first, to comply with the code of knighthood as the hero understands it and, second, to please and impress a certain target community within his world. The ultimate goal of this accumulated portfolio is the knight’s attainment of social predominance. This attainment is confirmed by the knight’s acquisition of a fiefdom or kingdom and by marriage to his beloved. Robert Hanning shows how the medieval romance, from its inception, is characterized by a conflict between the protagonist’s “yearning to complete himself or herself through union with the beloved,” and such social factors as 7 Ibid., 4–5. 8 Ibid., 6–7. 9 Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, Amadís de Gaula: el primitivo y el de Montalvo (México City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1990), 101–32.

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“conventions of modesty” and “familial prohibitions” that thwart realization of individual agendas. Hence the self-centeredness of the romance universe, which tends to ignore “any context larger than the lives of its protagonists.” A characteristic element of romance storytelling is thus a plot “which organizes incidents ranging widely in time and space around the life of the hero without any larger controlling narrative context.” The typical romance plot, “episodic as well as biographical,” is a highly digressive story line filled with adventurous interludes, incidents of misunderstanding or amnesia, crises induced by separations and reunions, exile, warfare, and political upheaval, disguise and traveling incognito. Amid these vicissitudes, the hero’s principal objective remains the reconciliation with an “earthly beloved” and the resolution of a constant tension between “a private world of love and the public world of responsibilities.”10 In his circuitous pursuit of union with his beloved, the fictional knighterrant adheres to rules of engagement that limit the social world to a realm in which status and kinship trump all other considerations of identity and group membership. The collective that matters most is an imagined homeland around which the knight gravitates as determinedly as he gravitates around his beloved. In present-day terms, he seeks membership in a gated community. The knight’s self-making is therefore not the consolidation of identity per se; it is a performance unto itself, designed to please an audience. In the terminology of method acting, the knight is always “in the moment.” He does not really care about having a self; he only goes through the motions of self-fashioning to please his target audience, which is the greater community of polite society, and, within and atop that community, his intended, her family, her superior status group. Fictional self-fashioning and chivalric performance may be better understood by referring to concepts developed by Erving Goffman with respect to the presentation of self within a rule-bound social regime. According to his dramaturgical model of the self, individuals are social performers interacting with others in social contexts that are tantamount to a kind of theatrical production. In making use of the space established by the broad and variable array of interactions, the social actor postulated by Goffman elaborates a variety of “fronts.” These, in their aggregate, are sets of different elements to be manipulated by the actor, including props and set decoration, distinctive attributes and statuses, gestures and habits, etc.11 10 11

Robert W. Hanning, “The Social Significance of Twelfth-Century Chivalric Romance,” Medievalia et Humanistica 3 (1972): 9, 10–12, 21. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 32–40.

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The dramaturgical environment allows for multiple, variable, but equally valid roles, to be emphasized as each actor sees fit. To be an effective performer, the actor “infuses his activity with signs which dramatically highlight and portray confirmatory acts.” Among the statuses that particularly lend themselves to convincing dramatization are those embodied by certain highly visible, publically recognized roles: “prizefighters, surgeons, violinists, and policemen.” Such activities, argues Goffman, support “so much dramatic self-expression that exemplary practitioners—whether real or fictional—become famous and are given a special place in the commercially organized fantasies of the nation.”12 The knight-errant is the late medieval and early modern analog of the exemplary practitioners highlighted by Goffman. The knight’s multiple encounters, presented as a one-at-a-time sequence of unpredictable challenges and predicaments, are the rough equivalent of the present-day action movie’s car chases, the western’s gunfights. The sequence of encounters confirms the hero’s superiority as a practitioner of his specific, prestigious skill set. This probative continuity is further substantiated by the hero’s preternatural indestructibility (cf. Don Quijote’s puzzlement, in Part I, Chapter 1, at Don Belianís’s miraculous recoveries). This repetition with scant variation of the same basic type of encounter amounts to a constantly reiterated confirmation of the hero’s “irreproachability,” as Mikhail Bakhtin phrases it. Because the hero’s ­virtue must be continually confirmed, Bakhtin suggests, the trial is “the organizing principle” underlying the plot of Amadisian romance and of most modern adventure fiction.13 In the highly formulaic and repetitive action component of their narrative, the chivalric romances bear a striking resemblance to the elaborate story lines of present-day video games. In an analysis of the role-playing dynamics of narratively structured video games, Bob Rehak defines the virtual reality designed by and for such games as a “recounted story.” Such games map out “the total world of the story action.” Extrapolating from this concept, Rehak perceives the “narrative-strategic space” of video games as a “virtual environment determined by unique rules, limits, goals, and ‘history’, and additionally designed for the staging and display of agency and identity.”14 12 13

14

Ibid., 40–41. Mikhail Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotype in the Novel,” in his The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 107, 390–91. Bob Rehak, “Playing at Being: Psychoanalysis and the Avatar,” in The Video Game Theory Reader, eds. Mark Wolf and Bernard Perron (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 124, 3n.

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In the ludological context, the insatiable wanderlust of the knight-errant allows him, as it were, to run up the score. Readers experience this as a vicarious simulacrum of the real-world game of credits and deficits within the reputational economy. In other words, the readership of the romances was a gaming culture. By this I mean that romance readers saw the social world in terms of competitive gamesmanship. The innumerable one-on-one encounters of the romance genre are part of a ludic cultural environment that ­supported dueling between males, on the one hand, and, on the other, tournaments and festivities that involved characters, costumes, and episodes from chivalric literature. The impact was verified by real-world challenges and jousts conforming to the confrontational styles and protocols of Amadís and other chivalric romances. Courtly circles and bourgeois households preferred chivalric romances as the inspiration for masks, tableaux, tournaments, and other entertainments in a milieu in which the relationship between real-world theatrics and literary fiction is highly reciprocal. Production details of such diversions included elaborate costuming, scenic architecture, stage design, special effects (e.g., pyrotechnics, light shows), settings, personages, and narrative themes.15 This early modern milieu, as Anthony Close has demonstrated, backgrounds Cervantes’s scenes in the ­palace of his Duke and Duchess in part two of the Quijote (Chapters 40–42). The elaborate theatrics underwritten by these idle nobles rely on literary knight-errantry as a plentiful source of themes, situations, characters, and lines of dialog.16 The chivalric romances’ pervasive influence begins with their early circulation in manuscript culture. In competition with competing genres, romance authors borrowed themes, motifs, and story concepts from a wide array of sources. This eclectic borrowing, already established before the age of print, is greatly expanded by the latter technology. This market expansion included not only adaptations, editions, and re-editions of late medieval works in addition to the Amadís but also many original works.17 15

16

17

Rafael Beltrán, “Urganda, Morgana y Sibila: el espectáculo de la nave profética en la literatura de caballerías,” in The Medieval Mind: Hispanic Studies in Honour of Alan Deyermond, eds. Ian MacPherson and Ralph Penny (London: Támesis, 1997), 21–22, 25–28. Anthony Close, “Fiestas palaciegas en la segunda parte del Quijote,” in Actas del segundo coloquio internacional de la Asociación de Cervantistas: Alcalá de Henares, 6–9 Nov. 1989, Serie Cervantina de la Asociación de Cervantistas, Actas II (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1991): 475–76, 477–82. Lucía Megías, De los libros de caballerías manuscritos al Quijote (Madrid: Sial Ediciones, 2003), 19–28, 34–37.

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The romance plot, then, is staged within an interactive story environment in which honor, gallantry, and manly confrontation are glorified according to an ethical system that paraphrases the sportive standards of contemporary tournament culture. This system has been characterized by Noel Fallows as a “chromatic spectacle defined in large part by its specifically designed, iconographic kit.”18 Concerning this iconography, Fallows notes a “typological connection” between the publishing histories of chivalric romances and those of jousting manuals, as exemplified by the use of the frontispiece of the first Amadís edition as cover art for a treatise on tournaments. Fallows argues that the printer “considered the book not just a jousting manual per se, but a key, or a reader’s or an aspiring author’s guide, to the technical aspects of combat as they were described in the enormously popular chivalry novels of the time.”19 A further confirmation of the interaction between chivalric readership and tournament culture is the criticism leveled by writers of tournament manuals of jousters who slavishly imitate the topoi and conventional themes of chivalric fiction. An example of the frequent details of fictional combat between knights, as described in such works as the Amadís, is that of using one’s sword to strike sparks when smiting an opponent’s shield or armor. The authors of jousting manuals, notes Fallows, argue that contestants should impress by their skill and prowess rather than by reliance on crowd-pleasing flourishes inspired by fictional works well known to all spectators.20 However, despite its obsession with one-on-one encounters and other gamelike features, and despite its influence on the real-world gamesmanship of jousters, the romance narrative is not itself a ludic scenario. It is, rather, a gamelike, utopic fantasy whose escapist logic allows the best gamer to “win the game” by getting the girl and achieving social and political ascendancy. At the same time, the narrative-strategic space of this fictional universe is subject to certain rule-systems borrowed from social reality. One of the most important of these reality-based rule-sets concerns reputation and public opinion within the fictional universe. In this world, an omnipresent public opinion oversees and evaluates promises, vows, pledges, boons, and other promissory formulae. These covenantal practices are exemplified by a scene in Book One of Amadís, in which the hero’s brother Galaor is engaged by a damsel in distress to undertake a perilous encounter. When Galaor mistakenly kills her beloved, she threatens him, if he does not grant a certain boon, with a relentlessly negative 18

Noel Fallows, Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010), 26. See also Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 91–94. 19 Fallows, Jousting, 21. 20 Ibid., 178–80.

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publicity campaign: “por todas partes serás de mí pregonado y abiltado” (everywhere, you will be denounced and vilified by me).21 Similarly, pledges of mutual security exact guarantees from strangers, heralds, or foes, as when the protagonist of Zifar demands of messengers from an opposing army: “Fazetnos omenaje que por vos nin por vuestro consejo non venga daño a la villa nin a ninguno de los que y son” (Make us a promise that neither by you personally, nor with your assistance, will any harm come to the town, nor to any who reside therein). The knights in question, even as they comply, impose a provision of their own: “E vos seguradnos […] que non resçibamos daño nin desonrra por esta entrada?” (And do you assure us…that we shall not receive any harm or dishonor by our entry?).22 Similarly, in Curial, a prioress demands a preemptive boon (i.e., one whose conditions are not revealed to the guarantor) of a knight who has been fighting the hero: “yous prech […] que vos me vullats atorgar vna gracia” (I pray you…deign to grant me a boon). The knight accedes, imposing—after she has revealed that the boon in question is peace between him and Curial—a stipulation of his own: “ab condicio quem do la donzella per la qual hauem combatut” (on the condition that he hand over to me the damsel for whose sake we have engaged in combat).23 In Tirant, the Hermit King (Guillem de Varoic) vows to avenge the treachery of a Moorish captain: “Ara jo faç vot solemne […] de jamés entrar dins casa coberta, si no és església per oir missa, fins a tant que jo haja llançat tota aquesta morisma fora de tot lo regne” (I now make solemn vow…never to enter any building with a roof, unless it be a church for hearing mass, until such time as I have thrown out this Moorish horde from the kingdom in its entirety).24 The foregoing examples of promissory utterances presuppose, from the viewpoint of authors and audiences, a verbal economy in which reputation is determined by positive or negative publicity circulating within a judgmental milieu. Keeping promises and fulfilling vows are public acts that add to one’s social profile; reneging on promises and ignoring one’s vows compromise that profile. The implied social environment, incongruously efficient and widespread within the fantastic settings of the stories, evokes Foucault’s concept of 21 22

23 24

Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís de Gaula, ed. Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua, 2 vols (Madrid: Cátedra, 1987), 459. El libro del cauallero Zifar (El libro del cauallero de Dios), ed. Charles Phillip Wagner, University of Michigan Publications, Language and Literature 5 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1929), 73. Curial e Güelfa, ed. Antoni Ferrando (Toulouse: Anacharsis, 2007), 152. Joanot Martorell and Martí Joan de Galba, Tirant lo blanc, ed. Martí de Riquer (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1969), 149.

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the carceral or panoptic society collectively obsessed with divisions and boundaries—with erecting, in effect, “enclosures in the open air.” This carceral society is “a system of exclusion and confinement,” grounded in the principle of isolation. The included normal (sane, law-abiding, responsible) and the excluded abnormal (insane, transgressive, delinquent) exist in segregated “homelands” set apart by “unsurpassable boundaries.”25 The Foucaultian model, assuming a homogeneously normalized collectivity overseeing a vast tableau of heterogeneous abnormality, must be applied with caution to the study of self-formation as implied or depicted in literary works. Assuming the prevalence of a surveillant and coercive orthodoxy, the panoptical model readily lends itself to the concepts of collective ethos, judgmental public opinion, and communal conformity within a kin-ordered, supposedly homogeneous society. However, in all the romances discussed here, the action takes place within a broadly international and sometimes explicitly multiracial geography. The setting of Zifar is a notional “India” populated with exotic peoples, including dark-skinned races. Amadís has its not-quite-human giants; its sequel, Las sergas de Esplandián (The Deeds of Esplandián, hereafter, Esplandián) confronts its hero with black Amazonian warrior-women and other alien races. Tirant and Curial have extended episodes in North Africa. Wherever the knight-errant goes, and whatever the racial types he interacts with, he remains fixated on the homeland and its self-fashioning criteria. Even if, as in the case of Zifar and his son Roboán, that homeland is a supposedly exotic local, the setting in question remains an allegorical simulacrum, a Eurocentric stand-in, for a homeland as conceived by European authors and readers. As Elizabeth Spiller observes, when it comes to other identity issues of the day, issues that matter in the society of the time, such as race and religion, the chivalric romance is uneasily reticent, even phobic. Romance, as she aptly phrases it, was “comfortable with the idea that identity was fixed and immutable.” This notion of identity tends to disregard the implicit ambiguities of real-world issues of race, ethnicity, and religion.26 25

26

Cited by Syed Manzurul Islam, The Ethics of Travel: From Marco Polo to Kafka (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996), 27. See also Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 197–229; also his Les mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 351–54. Elizabeth Spiller, Reading and the History of Race in the Renaissance (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 52. See also her extended discussion of race and religion in Tirant (62–65) and her demonstration of how Montalvo, in Esplandián, seeks to channel the individualist knight-errantry of Amadís into the religiously and racially oriented crusading of his son Esplandián (66–70).

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In conjunction with the chivalric romance’s axiomatic assumption, within its fictional world, of a ubiquitous and ever-watchful collective, it must be recalled that for many contemporary readers—including in countries and linguistic communities beyond the Peninsula where the genre enjoyed an extensive reception—these romances were perceived as manuals of courtesy and general social comportment. As Simone Pinet points out, this preceptive component is readily correlated with self-fashioning in the context of chivalric narratives predicated “on the binome love/war,” and on the influence of women and courtly society on the articulation of the amorous component of this dichotomy. The opposition of love and war is accentuated by the activity of men, the passivity of women. “Duels, tournaments and wars are waged among men,” notes Pinet, while “damsels serve as witnesses or pretexts.” At the same time, gender’s role in chivalric fiction emerges with the representation of monstrous creatures and races as the embodiment of “a deviant desire that requires the presence of the female.” The depiction of monstrosity, she argues, adheres to notions of behavioral deviation that can be correlated with debates on female virtue and vice that were standard themes in misogynist literature of that era.27 Spanish examples of literary misogyny, such as Alfonso Martínez de Toledo’s Corbacho, reflect, as Michael Solomon points out, a “relentless” anti-feminine bias fostering representations of women as “envious, vain, lustful, lazy, avaricious, anthropophagous.”28 Arguing against critical perspectives that see medieval Spanish misogyny as merely the rhetorical continuation of a literary tradition exemplified by Tertullian, Andreas Capellanus, or Boccaccio, he points to a historical milieu that promoted misogynist institutions and ideologies and encouraged “writing against women.”29 The general drift of medieval misogynist discourse in its various versions, as R. Howard Bloch deftly summarizes, reduces woman “to the status of a category,” thus subjecting her to the 27

Simone Pinet, “The Animal Within: Chivalry, Monstrosity, and Gender in Renaissance Spain,” in Gender and Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Culture, ed. Katherine P. Long (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 121–22. See also, for a summary of the influence of Amadisian courtesy as a widely consulted set of guidelines regarding courtly urbanity, Edwin B. Place, “Amadís de Gaula como manual de cortesanía en Francia,” Revista de Filología Española 35 (1954): 169. For an extended appraisal of Amadís in comparison with such well-known courtesy books as Castiglione’s The Courtier, see Francesco Raimondo, Ideal of the Courtly Gentleman in Spanish Literature (Bloomington, in: Trafford Publishing, 2013), 1–80. 28 Michael Solomon, The Literature of Misogyny in Medieval Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1. 29 Solomon, Literature of Misogyny, 3.

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“double bind” of such polarities as that of seducer and redeemer, while provoking male resentment of women’s “power to dispose” in their socio-economic roles of widows and heiresses.30 The chivalric romance, while not systematically vituperative toward women, is often oblique or equivocal with regard to gender. Pinet’s model of feminized deviation appears, for example, in Amadís’s comparison of good and bad giantesses. The narrator correlates beauty with virtue and ugliness with perversity, observing that ugly women, “tomando más figura de hombre que de mujer” (taking on appearance more of a man than of a woman), are afflicted by a “soberbia y desabrimiento varonil” (mannish pride and sharpness of temper). Pretty women, by contrast, “dotadas de la propia naturaleza de las mujeres” (endowed with a truly feminine temperament), are possessed of “la boz delicada, con las carnes blandas y lisas, con la gran fermosura de su rostro, que la ponen en todo sosiego y la desvían de gran parte de la braveza” (the delicate voice, the soft, smooth skin, and the great beauty of their faces, that keeps their temper entirely peaceful and for the most part free from brutality).31 Another example of a perversely mannish woman is depicted in the closing chapters of Esplandián, the fifth book of Amadís. Queen Calafia, ruler of the Amazon-like Californians, is outraged when, attempting to render her unconscious, her opponent Amadís uses a broken lance rather than a sword. “¿Cómo, Amadís, en tan poco mi esfuerço tienes que a palos me piensas vencer?” (How, now, Amadís? Do you hold my strength in so little regard, that you think to defeat me with wooden sticks?). As Amadís justifies his leniency by citing his lifelong commitment to “servir y ayudar a las mugeres” (serve and assist all women), the warrior-queen responds: “¡Cómo en la cuenta dessas me pones? ¡Pues agora lo verás!” (So you take me for one of them? Well, then, you’ll soon see for yourself!).32 Where the romances are most susceptible to gender confusion, however unconsciously, is in their abject submission to what Bloch calls the female “power to dispose.” This is seen in the romances’ organization of their plots around the conflict between two opposing systems of marriage. What Georges Duby calls the lay model unites two different houses in order to ensure the perpetuation of family lines. Amounting to a treaty between two lineages, marriage, according to this concept, was seen as “too important to be left to the 30 31 32

R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 195–96. Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís, 1652–53. Rodríguez de Montalvo, Las Sergas de Esplandián, ed. Carlos Sainz de la Maza (Madrid: Castalia, 2003), 764–65.

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individuals concerned.”33 The second type of marriage adhered to an ecclesiastical model, whereby the sacrament of matrimony, establishing a sacred bond between the spouses, was grounded in the freely given consent of the persons concerned. All other parties, including the families of the spouses, were nonessential bystanders. Canon Law on this matter further asserted the equality of the sexes in contracting marriage and asserted the autonomous free will of both spouses. The Church thus not only contradicted the traditional lay conception of misalliance but also subverted the very notion of patriarchal supremacy.34 A conversation in Tirant implies a pervasive awareness of the issues involved, if not the real-world frequency with which women eluded patriarchal control. The conversation in question assumes amorous tactics to be a function of a woman’s free will. In it, the courtier Lady Estefania expounds, for the benefit of Princess Carmesina, heiress to the Byzantine throne, on the three basic kinds of love. One, Estefania explains, is virtuosa e honorosa (virtuous and honorable). Centered on a relationship with “algun gran senyor, infant, duc, comte o marquès, qui serà molt favorit e cavaller molt virtuós” (some great lord, prince, duke, count, or marquise, who is likely to be very popular and a most virtuous knight), it allows a lady to exult in the knowledge that everyone knows her lover dances, jousts, or goes to war per amor d’ella (for love of her), and that he performs in her honor “fets honorosos de renom e fama” (honorable deeds of great fame and renown). The second kind of love, Estefania continues, is merely profitos (profitable). This type of love occurs when “algun gentilhom o cavaller d’antic llinatge e molt virtuós, amarà una donzella e ab donatius la induirà a sa voluntat” (some gentleman or knight of ancient lineage, and very virtuous, comes to love a damsel and wins her over by means of lavish gifts). Such a love, she declares, is much less satisfying and enduring, for as soon as “lo profit cessa, l’amor defall” (as soon as the material benefits run out, love fades away). The third kind of love, finally, is “viciosa, com la donzella ama lo gentilhom o cavaller per son delit” (depraved, since the damsel only loves the gentleman or knight on account of physical pleasure it affords her).35 33

Georges Duby, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from 12th-Century France, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 4–5. 34 Duby, Medieval Marriage, 16–17. See also James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 325–27, 331–46; Thomas P. Doyle, Introd. and commentary to Title VII, “Marriage,” cc. 1055–1165, in The Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, eds. James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, and Donald E. Heintschal (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 737. See also, with specific reference to the romances, Michael Harney, Kinship and Marriage in Medieval Hispanic Chivalric Romance, Westfield College Publications in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001), 107–08. 35 Martorell, Tirant lo blanc, 406–07.

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The amorous typology outlined by Estefania is based, ultimately, on the idea of female consent as the definitive factor in both love and marriage. Such notions inevitably conflict with patriarchal interests that focus on controlling female sexuality for the sake of lineal advantage. That power, wealth, and status are the components of a good match is taken for granted by the foppish Patín, the younger brother of the Roman emperor. Arriving at the court of Lisuarte of Great Britain, and quickly infatuated with Amadís’s beloved Oriana, Patín proposes a marriage with smug assurance of its attractions to the prospective bride’s father: “pensó que seyendo él de tan gran guisa y tan bueno en sí y que auría el imperio, que si la demandasse en casamiento, que le no sería negada” (he thought that since he was so high-born, and such a good fellow in his own right, and that he would someday inherit the imperial throne, that if he asked for her hand in marriage, he would not be denied).36 Among the practices arising due to the contractual implications of an emphasis on individual consent was clandestine marriage. The ecclesiastical model encouraged the notion that a matrimonial bond existed from the moment the couple exchanged their freely given vows; all other parties were therefore seen as superfluous, including not only parents but also other witnesses. No formal ceremony and no presiding clergy were required for a legitimate marriage to take place. Even after the Tridentine reforms of the late 16th century, aimed at closing the consensual loophole by requiring the presence of a clergyman in order to authenticate the marital bond, the centrality of individual consent remained a fixture of the popular understanding of what makes a marriage.37 The pervasive durability of the notion that individual consent makes a marriage is strongly suggested by the treatment of the theme in Don Quijote. We see the axiomatic application of the concept in Dorotea’s account of Don Fernando’s promise of marriage in Part One, Chapter 28: “aquí te doy la mano de serlo tuyo, y sean testigos desta verdad los cielos, a quien ninguna cosa se asconde” (here I give you my hand, in token of being betrothed to you, and let the heavens above be witness, from whom nothing can be hidden).38 Dorotea, continuing her account, then describes Don Fernando’s further confirmation 36 37

38

Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís, 696. On the Tridentine reforms regarding clandestine marriage, see John O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, ma: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2013), 133–34, 224–27, 256–57. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Francisco Rico (Madrid: Real Academia Española/Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, 2005), 282.

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of his vow. His words clearly show that he takes as axiomatic the contractual efficacy of his freely given consent: Con palabras eficacísimas y juramentos estraordinarios, me dio la palabra de ser mi marido, puesto que…le dije que mirase bien lo que hacía y que considerase el enojo que su padre había de recebir de verle casado con una villana vasalla suya. (With these most binding words and extraordinary oaths, he gave me his word to become my husband, despite the fact that… I told him to consider well what he was doing and to take into account the indignation his father was bound to feel at seeing him married to a peasant girl, one of his own vassals).39 Later, Fernando, having seen the error of his ways, renounces his claim to the hand of Luscinda and confirms his understanding of the binding significance of his original vow: Pues [Luscinda] halló y alcanzó lo que deseaba, y yo he hallado en vos lo que me cumple, viva ella segura y contenta luengos y felices años con su Cardenio, que yo rogaré al cielo que me los deje vivir con mi Dorotea. (Since [Luscinda] has found and attained her heart’s desire, and I have found in you that which fulfills me, may she live long and happy years, safe and content, with her Cardenio, and I will pray to Heaven grant me the same with my Dorotea).40 Such notions give rise to the primary conflict in Amadís, where the point of contention between, on the one hand, the hero and his allies and, on the other, King Lisuarte and his faction, is the forced marriage between Patín and the hero’s beloved, Oriana, Lisuarte’s eldest daughter. The match, decided upon by Lisuarte exclusively in terms of status, prestige, and political alliance, effectively disinherits Oriana, as her father surrenders her to Patín’s clan while declaring his intention to name Oriana’s younger sister Leonoreta his principal heir.41 The impending marriage, arranged without Oriana’s consent, provokes a very negative public opinion: “todos le dezían que…que era cosa en que mucho contra Dios erraría quitando su hija aquel señorío de que eredera auía de ser y ponerla en sujeción de hombre estraño de condición liviana y muy mudable” 39 Cervantes, Don Quijote, 282–83. 40 Ibid., 382. 41 Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís, 1224.

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(everyone was saying that…that it was something concerning which he would be very much in the wrong, dispossessing his daughter of that domain which she should rightfully inherit, while subjecting her to the authority of a foreigner of frivolous and fickle disposition).42 Amadís’s rescue of his beloved from this unwanted marriage is not presented merely in terms of a lover saving his beloved for himself. For the hero, the rescue serves as a pretext to exemplify chivalry as a protective ethos whose principal beneficiaries are women but whose purview is implicitly extensible to other vulnerable categories (widows, orphans, the oppressed, etc.). This tutelary ideology, defining the core mission of all true knights, is enunciated by Amadís in a speech delivered before his friends and allies: Muchas tierras extrañas he andado y grandes aventuras han pasado por mí, que largas serían de contar; pero las que más me ocuparon y mayores peligros me atrajeron fue socorrer dueñas y donzellas en muchos tuertos y agravios que les hacían, porque así como éstas nacieron para obedecer con flacos ánimos y las más fuertes armas suyas sean lágrimas y sospiros, así los de fuertes corazones extremadamente entre las otras cosas las suyas deben tomar, amparándolas, defendiéndolas de aquellos que con poca virtud las maltratan y deshonran, como los griegos y los romanos en los tiempos antiguos lo hicieron, pasando los mares, destruyendo las tierras, venciendo batallas, matando reyes y de sus reinos los echando, solamente por satisfacer las fuerzas e injurias a ellas hechas, por donde tanta fama y gloria dellos en sus historias ha quedado, y quedará en cuanto el mundo durare.43 (Through many lands have I roamed, and many great adventures have I undergone, which would be long in the telling. But those that most engaged me and exposed me to the greatest danger were those in which I came to the aid of ladies and damsels in regard to the many wrongs and grievances being done to them. Because just as women are naturally faint of heart, and their most forceful weapons are tears and sighs, just so should stout-hearted men undertake, among their other obligations, the defense of women’s interests, coming to their aid and defending them from those of meager virtue who mistreat and dishonor them, in the same way that the Greeks and Romans did in ancient times, crossing seas, laying waste to whole countries, winning battles, slaying kings and casting them out of their kingdoms, with the sole purpose of redressing the 42 43

Ibid., 1236. Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís, 1282–83.

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wrongs and insults done to women, by means of which deeds such great fame and glory have redounded to them in their histories, and will continue to redound so long as the world endures.) This courtly advocacy of women begins to be associated with knighthood and with chivalric literature in the 12th and 13th centuries. The trappings and activities of knighthood (tourneys, duels, chivalric tableaux, amorous dalliance, role-playing, vendettas, etc.) further emphasize the compulsive and ritualistic nature of itinerant, gynocentric masculine enterprise. The knight, observes Maurice Keen, must be discreet regarding his amorous involvements: “he does not bray his conquests.” The need for amorous discretion stems from the extreme influence exerted by women on the knightly sub-culture. For the truly chivalrous knight, argues Keen, women are not mere spectators but, rather, a vital catalyst to chivalric accomplishment. Love, in short, is “a human passion which, rightly regulated, sharpens and refines the honorable ambitions of martial men.” The persistent identification of chivalry with gallantry, Keen summarizes, results from this amalgam of courtly love and martial knighthood.44 The knight-errant of the romances is one among many knights who all want the same thing: the hand of a princess and the acquisition of an autonomous domain. This is the ultimate, if often unstated, goal of manly enterprise in these narratives. The domain in question is not, in the literal terms of the story, the indirectly acquired title and estates of the hero’s beloved. Such an outcome would correspond to real-world patterns of heiress-hunting within the medieval masculine youth culture, as defined by Georges Duby for France and Europe in general and by Susan Belmartino for León and Castile. This youth culture, in which younger sons excluded from inheritance by primogeniture constituted a significant element, was constantly on the move, searching for prestigious tournaments, profitable wars, and good marriages. The pattern’s Peninsular analogues, as verified by Belmartino, imply a youth culture which, like the masculine youth demographic described by Duby, values nomadic adventure, the tournament circuit, and warfare but allows for the decisive significance of marriage as the conclusion of youth as a life phase.45 In the medieval Peninsular society described by Heath Dillard, ambitious, opportunistic males sought wealth and property by means of the system of 44 45

Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 13–14, 117–18. Duby, “Dans la France,” 216–23; Susana M. Belmartino, “Estructura de la familia y ‘edades sociales’ en la aristocracia de León y Castilla según las fuentes literarias e historiográficas (siglos X–XIII),” Cuadernos de Historia de España 47–48 (1968): 313–19.

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marriage and inheritance. Within this system, women exerted, as both inheritors and transmitters of property, considerable social and economic leverage.46 These political and economic conditions affected marriage and property for centuries, especially after the Reconquest finally put an end to the age of plunderous adventure, once commonly practiced as a means of upward social mobility. During the 14th and 15th centuries, the accelerating expansion of both royal and seigniorial influence, as well as the development of trade and capitalist economies, rendered the once-important hidalgo class increasingly marginal or expendable. This late medieval decline of the Peninsular hidalgo class coincided precisely with the growing popularity of the chivalric romances.47 The escapism of the chivalric romances is therefore marked, not surprisingly, by its side-stepping of such real-world issues. In that real world, socialclimbing males ever on the lookout for heiresses and widows were probably more akin to the Cantar de Mio Cid’s venal Infantes de Carrión than to the gallant knights-errant of the romances. The latter narratives glorify all the knight’s accomplishments, including the winning of a princess, as the meritorious confirmation of individual social virtue, martial valor, and charismatic leadership. In the romances, sneaky connivance and naked self-seeking characterize back-stabbing courtiers, like those who harass Amadís, Tirant, and Curial, or shamelessly evil adversaries, like Amadís’s Arcalaus the Sorcerer. Chivalric escapism requires that the dauntless and charismatic hero establish his independent power base not through social climbing or political acumen but through plot contrivances that highlight his virtue. Examples include Roboán’s Empire of Trigridia in Zifar and Amadís’s fabulous Firm Isle. Other protagonists, though also heroic, adhere more closely to the heiress-hunting pattern of social reality. Zifar, for example, weds a princess-heiress after performing, during his wandering phase, like other chivalric adventurers. His heiress-hunting is a more frankly depicted version of the amorous involvements of Amadís, Curial, and Tirant. In no case does the fictional universe of the romances tolerate the notion that passion might be understood as a mere pretext for acquiring the property or titles of an heiress. For audiences, on the other hand, the idea that courtly gallantry could be interpreted as the sublimation of real-world greed and ambition might well have intensified the stories’ escapist prurience. 46 47

Heath Dillard, Daughters of the Reconquest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 26–27. Michael Nerlich, The Ideology of Adventure, trans. Ruth Crowley, 2 vols (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 1:29.

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The romance’s knight-errantry, a paradoxically gynocentric peregrination, tacitly supports what constitutes the real grail quest of chivalric enterprise. In all four of our romances, amorous and/or marital relationships involve male suitors whose social status is inferior to that of their beloved. Tirant’s Carmesina, the princess-heiress of the Byzantine Empire, provides her lover with the means to shine in society, as we see in her deathbed confession to having taken money from her father’s treasury to give to her lover, so that he could appear generous before other knights. In the same work, the hero’s nephew Hipòlit becomes involved with the Byzantine Empress, who transforms his life by her munificence, furnishing him with fine garments and jewelry, assigning him three hundred retainers, and presenting him with a whole chest of treasure.48 Similarly, Curial’s beloved Güelfa constantly supports her lover in his wanderings and in maintaining a sumptuous life style appropriate for the kind of man she wants him to be, while Zifar, an impoverished exile, owes everything to the princess-heiress of Mentón, who bequeaths him both monarchical sovereignty and the wealth of her prosperous kingdom.49 Tirant, Hipòlit, Curial, and Zifar, are, in effect, kept men who depend on the material generosity of socially superior women. Their virtuosic chivalry makes them the fantasized homologues of the social-climbing suitors of historical reality. Chivalric enterprise in the romances supports the essential fantasy: that the seemingly superior female is subtly beholden to the apparently inferior male. In the case of Amadís, however, status discrepancies and male dependency are refracted by narrative contrivance. At first a youth of unknown parentage and limited resources, then a wandering knight with no kingdom of his own, Amadís is clearly the social and economic inferior of Oriana, the princess-heiress of Great Britain. The taint of bastard origins is only partially attenuated by Perión’s recognition of his long-lost son.50 This thorny issue is resolved by the protagonist’s winning of a separate and independent realm of his own, the fabulous Firm Isle. Reminiscent of the early 13th-century Prose Lancelot, an influential narrative model, Amadís thus provides its reconciled lovers with a marvelous residence and fortress against the world, very like the Joyeuse Garde of the Lancelot cycle.51 The chivalric romance’s handling of these themes has led some to call this a feminist genre. Avalle-Arce points out this paradoxical appeal of these 48 Martorell, Tirant lo blanc, 676, 766–67. 49 Ferrando, Curial e Güelfa, 112; Wagner, El libro del cauallero Zifar, 244. See also, for further discussion of this point, Harney, Kinship and Marriage, 191–92. 50 Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís, 325–29. 51 Harney, Kinship and Marriage, 145.

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romances to female readers. Despite obsessive depiction of machista elements (sword fights, duels, warfare, etc.), the chivalric romance was very likely aimed at an audience of both sexes.52 The genre’s advocacy of the legal and social empowerment of women, seemingly calculated to pander to the female audiences, is represented in terms of a struggle between those who would perpetuate the subordination of women, in terms of controlling a daughter’s sexuality and marital choice, and the knights who champion the autonomy of women within their family and clan.53 The knights champion the Church’s consensual ideology, according to which marriage is made by the “I do” of the spouses, rather than by families. At the same time, women in the romances are the passive beneficiaries of active masculine intervention and protection. To understand how the romances dignify passive ladies and active men, we must bear in mind that, as Judith Gardiner observes, the concepts of masculinity and femininity are variable and loosely defined historically. Emerging from a collective attribution of interrelated “social ascriptions,” they are assigned to “persons with certain kinds of bodies.” Traditional sexual identities (“cultural groupings” rather than “facts of nature”) legitimate gendered inequality. The latter condition, in turn, diverts such groupings toward interaction with the social and political categories of kinship, religion, and the state. The causes and methods of male domination thus vary widely from culture to culture.54 It may be that real-world institutions are indeed shaped to favor male interests, even when seeming to advance the cause of women. This may well have been the case in the late medieval and early modern contexts, as Gardiner and many other feminist commentators would probably contend. However, the physical non-involvement of female characters in the man-to-man encounters of duels, jousts, and warfare does not necessarily reflect a straightforward favoring of the masculine side by this literary genre. In fact, the portrayal of woman as bystander could be seen as endorsing the concept of woman’s power over man. Within a status regime that emphasized avoidance of the stigma of work, physical inactivity, in effect, marked social superiority. Professional opportunity and workplace equality, liberating aspirations for women in the socially mobile world of later capitalized centuries, were alien or irrelevant issues to medieval women of the bourgeoisie and nobility, for whom such 52 Avalle-Arce, “Tirant,” 25–27. 53 Harney, Kinship and Marriage, 108–10. 54 Judith Gardiner, “Men, Masculinities, and Feminist Theory,” in Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, eds. Michael S. Kimmel, Jeff Hearn, and R.W. Connell (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2005), 35–38.

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matters, or their medieval analogs, would have been associated with the servile classes. For medieval women readers who transcended servility—or sought to transcend it—the empowering fantasy was to become the mistress of a large household, the queen of one’s own domain, one who presides over the labor of others.55 Female passivity in the romances, a stereotypical feature with many analogs in other adventure genres down to the present day, must therefore be understood in terms of women’s function as an audience. This aspect of the romances is illuminated by Goffman’s discussion of the several types of what he calls “frames.” The basic concept of the frame, he insists, refers to the organization of experience rather than of society. Frames are the collaboratively maintained units of performance of human beings in daily interaction with one another. Every experience or activity may be variously framed, yielding distinct versions or framings that maintain relationships among themselves while acting to stabilize the representation of reality. Such divisions orient the perceptions and influence the participation and conduct of social actors.56 Among several types of frame, Goffman designates one which he calls “the theatrical.” In applying dramaturgical metaphors to the analysis of “unstaged, actual social life,” one must, he warns, be careful to distinguish the various definitions of the term “role.” The latter concept, referring to innumerable specialized, institutional, or improvisational functions, is necessarily separate from the individual person, the “concrete organism…perduring over time and possessing…a biography.” “Role” as a specialized capacity or function may occur in real life “or its staged version.” The term “person,” he clarifies, is the subject of a biography; the terms “part” or “character” refer to the “staged version thereof.”57 Among the real-life roles which real persons are liable to play is that of theatergoer. This role has many and varied aspects. The theatergoer, among other things, “collaborates in the unreality onstage.” He or she “vicariously participates” in the onstage interplay of the characters.58 This difference between real persons and the roles they play helps us to understand the viewpoint of both women within the chivalric romances and female readers of that genre. Characters and readers would have been quite aware of the role of the spectator, as opposed to that of a participant, in 55 Harney, Kinship and Marriage, 245–46. 56 Goffman, Frame Analysis (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986), 13. My summary of the concept, which cannot hope to do justice to the nuance of Goffman’s explication, is chiefly based on his introductory Chapter, 21–38. 57 Ibid., 128–29. 58 Ibid., 130–31.

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tournaments. Persons of both sexes, within and outside the fictional universe, could have played the role of spectator within the jousting culture. Presumably this non-participation did not necessarily compromise one’s sense of selfworth, nor did it make one feel socially marginalized, any more than modern theatergoers, male or female, feel marginalized by the traditional rule that audience members must remain in their seats. This pragmatic division of labor between audience member and onlooker/performer would have therefore served as a real-world analogue of the gender-determined contrast of the fictional knight’s perambulations and bellicose activities with the stay-at-home or seemingly passive spectatorship of his beloved. Bibliography Avalle-Arce, Juan Bautista. Amadís de Gaula: el primitivo y el de Montalvo. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1990. ———. “Tirant lo Blanc, Amadís de Gaula y la caballeresca medieval.” In Studies in Honor of Sumner M. Greenfield, edited by Harold L. Boudreau and Luis T. González del Valle, 17–31. Lincoln, ne: Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 1985. Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Discourse in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination, edited by Michael Holquist, 259–422. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. ———. “Forms of Time and of the Chronotype in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination, edited by Michael Holquist, 84–258. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Belmartino, Susana M. “Estructura de la familia y ‘edades sociales’ en la aristocracia de León y Castilla según las fuentes literarias e historiográficas (siglos X–XIII).” Cuadernos de Historia de España 47–48 (1968): 256–328. Beltrán, Rafael. “Díaz de Games, Gutierre.” In Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, edited by E. Michael Gerli and Samuel Armistead, 278–79. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. ———. “Introducción.” In Gutierre Díaz de Games, El Victorial, edited by Rafael Beltrán, 21–159. Madrid: Clásicos Taurus, 1994. ———. “Urganda, Morgana y Sibila: el espectáculo de la nave profética en la literatura de caballerías.” In The Medieval Mind: Hispanic Studies in Honour of Alan Deyermond, edited by Ian MacPherson and Ralph Penny, 21–47. London: Tamesis, 1997. Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Brundage, James A. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

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de Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Edited by Francisco Rico. Madrid: Real Academia Española/Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, 2005. Close, Anthony. “Fiestas palaciegas en la segunda parte del Quijote.” In Actas del segundo coloquio internacional de la Asociación de Cervantistas: Alcalá de Henares, 6–9 Nov. 1989, 475–84. Serie Cervantina de la Asociación de Cervantistas, Actas II. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1991. Dillard, Heath. Daughters of the Reconquest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Doyle, Thomas P. “Introduction and commentary to Title VII: ‘Marriage,’ cc. 1055–1165.” In The Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, edited by James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, and Donald E. Heintschal, 737–833. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. Duby, Georges. “Dans la France du Nord-Ouest au XIIe siècle: les “Jeunes” dans la société aristocratique.” In Hommes et structures du Moyen Âge, edited by Georges Duby, 213–25. Paris: Mouton, 1973. ———. Medieval Marriage: Two Models from 12th-Century France. Translated by Elborg Forster. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Eisenberg, Daniel. Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age. Newark, de: Juan de la Cuesta, 1982. Eskelinen, Markku, and Ragnhild Tronstad. “Video Games and Configurative Performances.” In The Video Game Theory Reader, edited by Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, 195–220. New York: Routledge, 2003. Fallows, Noel. Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010. Ferrando, Antoni, ed. Curial e Güelfa. Toulouse: Anacharsis, 2007. Foucault, Michel. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. ———. Surveiller et punir. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “Men, Masculinities, and Feminist Theory.” In Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, edited by Michael S. Kimmel, Jeff Hearn, and R.W. Connell, 35–50. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2005. Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1974. ———. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin Books, 1959. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Hanning, Robert W. “The Social Significance of Twelfth-Century Chivalric Romance.” Medievalia et Humanistica, new series 3 (1972): 3–29. Harney, Michael. Kinship & Marriage in Medieval Hispanic Chivalric Romance. Westfield College Publications in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001. Islam, Syed Manzurul. The Ethics of Travel: From Marco Polo to Kafka. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

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Keen, Maurice. Chivalry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Lucía Megías, José Manuel. De los libros de caballerías manuscritos al Quijote. Madrid: Sial Ediciones, 2003. ———. “Introducción.” Antología de libros de caballerías castellanos, edited by José Manuel Lucía Megías, xiii–xxviii. Alcalá de Henares: Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, 2001. Martorell, Joanot, and Martí Joan de Galba. Tirant lo blanc. Edited by Martí de Riquer. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1969. Nerlich, Michael. The Ideology of Adventure. Translated by Ruth Crowley. Theory and History of Literature 42–43. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. O’Malley, John. Trent: What Happened at the Council. Cambridge, ma: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2013. Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM. 2nd ed. Version 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pinet, Simone. “The Animal Within: Chivalry, Monstrosity, and Gender in Renaissance Spain.” In Gender and Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Culture, edited by Katherine P. Long, 115–38. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Place, Edwin B. “Amadís de Gaula como manual de cortesanía en Francia.” Revista de Filología Española 35 (1954): 151–69. Raimondo, Francesco. Ideal of the Courtly Gentleman in Spanish Literature. Bloomington, in: Trafford Publishing, 2013. Rehak, Bob. “Playing at Being: Psychoanalysis and the Avatar.” In The Video Game Theory Reader, edited by Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, 103–27. New York: Routledge, 2003. Rodríguez de Montalvo, Garci. Amadís de Gaula. Edited by Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua. 2 vols. Madrid: Cátedra, 1987. ———. Las Sergas de Esplandián. Edited by Carlos Sainz de la Maza. Madrid: Castalia, 2003. Solomon, Michael. The Literature of Misogyny in Medieval Spain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Spiller, Elizabeth. Reading and the History of Race in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Wagner, Charles Phillip, ed. El libro del cauallero Zifar (El libro del cauallero de Dios). University of Michigan Publications, Language and Literature 5. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1929.

chapter 6

In Search of the Author: Self-fashioning and the Gender Debate in Fifteenth-Century Castile Wendell P. Smith The topic we will discuss is the use of the gender debate in 15th-century Castile as an instance of self-fashioning. Although the texts of this debate were ostensibly about the nature of women, we will use them as illustrations of the creation of identities by male authors. The examples we will discuss come from scholarship on cancionero poetry, historiography, and the treatises of the querelle des femmes in 15th-century Castile. The authors we will examine are figures such as Álvaro de Luna, Juan de Mena, Diego de Valera, Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Diego de San Pedro, Juan de Flores, Fernando del Pulgar, and Fernando de Rojas. We will demonstrate how the seemingly opposite strategies of courtly idolization and misogynistic denigration of women both served as a means for the projection of a male identity designed to allay, disguise, or negotiate man’s need for woman. Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning seems particularly applicable to the way in which the texts of the gender debate demonstrate that “selffashioning occurs at the point of encounter between an authority and an alien.” Self-fashioning for these Castilian authors is either “submission to an absolute power” that makes Woman an authority, or the creation of an idea of Woman as “something perceived as alien, strange or hostile . . . [a] threatening Other [that] must be discovered or invented in order to be attacked and destroyed.”1 In addition, this project necessitates a position on the construction of the self historically. At issue in our effort will be the applicability for late 15th-century Castile of what Greenblatt outlined for England under Elizabeth I. We will advance a theory of how the identities defined by self-fashioning responded to new forms of expression of consciousness, and new forms of surveillance of conscience, popularized with the rise of Renaissance humanism, and we will examine the question of whether a new type of modern self arrives in this period. To provide a working definition of how the “Renaissance” of Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning applies, it is useful to first define how he sees the changes in the period affecting the generation of identities. As Greenblatt 1 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980), 9.

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characterized it, Jacob Burkhardt’s crucial perception about the Renaissance was that the political upheavals in Italy in the later Middle Ages and the transition from feudalism to despotism fostered a radical change in consciousness: the princes and condottieri, and their secretaries, ministers, poets, and followers, were cut off from established forms of identity and forced by their relationship to power to fashion a new sense of themselves and their world. What emerged were the self and the state as works of art.2 A constant throughout the process that Greenblatt describes is that self-fashioning has to do with the interaction of these three key elements: subjects who are exposed to the ways of power, who are devoid of traditional means to create an identity, and who as a result forge a new way of seeing and articulating who they are through the written word.

Fashioning a Knight

Our discussion begins with one mode in which relationships of power and ­gender intertwined: self-fashioning through courtly love service. If we are to speak of self-fashioning in the context of Renaissance England and 15th-century Castile, what is it that was fashioned? Particularly in Greenblatt’s chapters on Thomas Wyatt and Edmund Spenser, the self that was fashioned was that of a gentleman and knight, a way of being in the world that was capable of negotiating the twisting turns of power and influence by the creation of a masculine persona in word and deed. This has proven to be one of the most fruitful and well-established avenues for adapting the concept of self-fashioning to 15th-century representations of male comportment in Castile. The most obvious model for adaptation from Greenblatt is the role he identifies of the cult of Queen Elizabeth I in his chapter on Spenser, “To Fashion a Gentleman,” which provides a useful framework for understanding the caba­ llero culture that formed around 15th-century Castilian queens such as María of Aragon and Isabel I. Greenblatt describes a court culture under Elizabeth I in which “male sexual aggression—the hunt, the loathing, the desire to master— is yoked to the service of ideal values embodied in a female ruler, and it is through this service that identity is achieved.”3 If the product of self-fashioning is a knight, then a powerful lady is the mirror in which that identity is verified. What sort of subject is created when the power with which these authors deal is gendered as feminine, when it is romanticized in a way that employs “the mutual interest of both ruler and subject in the transformation of power 2 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 161–62. 3 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 178.

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relations into erotic relations”?4 And, more broadly, what sort of subject is created when such gendered, courtly, intellectual, and martial display becomes a means for ascent? This is the model we will identify with the contention that self-fashioning “involves submission to an absolute power or authority situated at least partially outside the self.”5 For the profeminine6 authors we will study, that authority is a princess or queen. Under the guise of defending a female sovereign, these authors construct a model of Woman whose primary purpose is to create a space for legitimizing male prerogative through a defense of female capacity to rule. As Barbara Weissberger states, “sovereignty does not exist apart from constructions of gender; rather it is a means of perpetuating and transforming those constructions.”7 The gender debate we will describe was one in which women wielded real political and social power. The first premise of this article is that, as Florence Serrano states in analyzing the texts of the mid-15th-century gender debate, in these texts about women “lo que se juega es la legitimidad del poder”8 (what is in play is the legitimacy of power). A second premise is that the gender debate actually took the form of a debate. Recent scholars such as Robert Archer have questioned whether the term “debate” is appropriate to these texts.9 The term, as used here, does not mean that these texts represent an exercise in arriving at a truth (although both sides used a display of erudition as their main weapon) but, rather, that they are opportunities for a display of humanistic learning and rhetorical skill that is always framed in terms of an answer to, or attack against, an opposing side. Third, this display of rhetorical skill created an opening for the portrayal of male subjectivity, and it is in this subjective stance that self-fashioning 4 Ibid., 169. 5 Ibid., 9. 6 Because it makes clearer the important distinction between the defenses of women and modern-day feminism, we follow Blamires and Archer in using the term “profeminine,” defined by Blamires as “those pre-modern texts which develop constructions of ‘woman’ which are positive according to the cultural ideology of their period.” Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 12. 7 Barbara Weissberger, “ ‘Deceitful Sects’: The Debate about Women in the Age of Isabel the Catholic,” in Gender in Debate From the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, eds. Thelma S. Fenster and Clare A. Lees (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 208. 8 Florence Serrano, “Del debate a la propaganda política mediante la Querella de las Mujeres en Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Diego de Valera y Álvaro de Luna,” Talia dixit 7 (2012): 112. 9 Archer questions the polarizing influence of Jacob Ornstein’s categorization of the texts of the gender debate into profeminine and misogynist camps, and the applicability of the French querelle des femmes surrounding the Roman de la Rose to medieval Iberia. Robert Archer, The Problem of Woman in Late-Medieval Hispanic Literature (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2005), 6.

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occurred. This article will focus on those instances where “gender statements as often articulate a speaker’s personal agenda as they contribute to the gender debate itself.”10 To begin, we will discuss four texts that appeared contemporaneous to each other in the reign of Juan II of Castile: the Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho (1438) by Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Juan Rodríguez del Padrón’s Triunfo de las donas (1440), the Defensa de virtuosas mugeres (before 1445) of Diego de Valera, and Álvaro de Luna’s Virtuosas e claras mugeres (1446). Although there is disagreement over whether and how these works responded to each other, all of them have to do, on one level or another, with the court of Maria of Aragon as Queen of Castile during the reign of her husband Juan II.11 All of them are responses, in one form or another, to the arrival of the works of Boccaccio in Castile, in particular his De claris mulieribus and Corbaccio.12 As we will see, this mid-century debate was revisited and revised by an even more radical instance of female sovereignty, the reign of Isabel I of Castile at the end of the century.13 Under a female sovereign, the gender debate transitioned from an instance of carving out territory for self-creation, to one of staging the dialogue of contradictory and conflicting selves. In this way, the authors of the debate insulate themselves from its consequences by creating fictitious treatments in texts such as Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor, Juan de Flores’s Grisel y Mirabella, and Fernando de Rojas’s Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. But first, it is necessary to define the creation of caballero identities in the middle of the 15th century in Castile. A successful application of Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning for mid-15th-century Castile is found in Julian Weiss’s “Álvaro de Luna, Juan de Mena, and the Power of Courtly Love.”14 In this article Weiss created a model for speaking simultaneously about courtly love and political power in an Iberian context. Weiss goes through the very same steps 10 Blamires, The Case for Women, 241. 11 María del Pilar Rábade Obradó notes that after 1439 the court of María of Aragón was in many ways separate, only occasionally crossing paths with that of her husband, and that the works in question take place in an environment in which she had acquired an evident role as a protagonist in political events. “La visión de la mujer en la Crónica del Halconero de Juan II,” Mirabilia 17 (2013): 321. 12 Lola Pons Rodríguez’s introduction to Virtuosas e claras mugeres (1446) by Álvaro de Luna (Burgos: Junta de Castilla y León, 2008), 62–82, provides an overview of the reception of Boccaccio in the gender debate and Luna’s debt to De claris mulieribus. 13 Barbara Weissberger, Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Authority (Minne­ apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004) gives an indispensable treatment of how notions of gender changed under the reign of Isabel I of Castile. 14 Foundational to Weiss’s approach is J.N.H. Lawrance, “The Spread of Lay Literacy in Late Medieval Castile,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 62 (1985): 79–94.

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of “fashioning a gentleman” that Greenblatt identifies, presenting Álvaro de Luna and his apologist, Juan de Mena, as figures whose ascents were achieved, in part, by their adoption of the stance of the courtly lover in deed and text. He explores a court culture in which the rule of the game was that “being in love was both product and proof of nobility. It also entailed what might be called a dialectic of display and dissimulation: love is to be vaunted, yet it is also a pretence.”15 Like Greenblatt’s explication of “fashioning” as both to make or create and to participate in a social milieu (as with the modern sense of fashion), Weiss shows Juan Alfonso de Baena focusing on the verb fingir. For the noble poet, it is necessary that “siempre se precie y se finja de ser enamorado” (he should always hold himself and appear to be in love), the verb fingir meaning, in this case, both “to feign” and “to create.”16 To add to Weiss’s interpretation, Baena was not the only 15th-century Castilian poet who used this term. Witness the Marquis of Santillana’s definition of poetry in his Prohemio y carta, in which fingir is identified as the basic act of mimetic representation: ¿E qué cosa es la poesía, que en el nuestro vulgar gaya sçiençia llamamos, sino un fingimiento de cosas útiles, cubiertas o veladas con muy fermosa cobertura, conpuestas, distinguidas e scandidas por çierto cuento, peso e medida?17 (And what is poetry, which in our vulgar Castilian we call the gay science, but a fashioning of useful things, covered or veiled with a beautiful covering, composed, set and scanned via a certain count, weight, and measure?) Although he does not come out and say it, Weiss indicates a lexical equivalence with important implications for how we are to translate “to fashion” from Greenblatt’s Renaissance England to 15th-century Castile: “to fashion” is fingir. Like Greenblatt, Weiss focuses on “how masculine identities are created and manipulated” and how “the creation of a powerful self, which exercises mastery over politics or women, can be achieved through the force of one’s imagination harnessed to the written word.”18 In Gonzalo Chacón’s chronicle, Álvaro de Luna rejects a potential bride because he wishes, on his own, to “ver o conoscer de sí lo 15 16 17

18

Julian Weiss, “Álvaro de Luna, Juan de Mena, and the Power of Courtly Love,” mln 106 (1991): 241. Weiss, “Álvaro,” 241. Marqués de Santillana, in Poesías completas, eds. Maxim P.A.M. Kerkhof and Ángel Gómez Moreno (Madrid: Castalia, 2003), 643 (emphasis mine). As the editors note, Santillana’s usage of fingir is also found in Petrarch, the commentators of Dante, and Enrique de Villena (n. 20). Weiss, “Álvaro,” 243.

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que valía” (see or know by himself what he was worth). Weiss explains his rejection thus: “he wished to see whether he could create himself, rather than be created by others. This process of self-creation is in large part depicted through his relationships with women.”19 It is this self-creation that Luna displays which we take as Weiss’s synonym for the self-fashioning that Greenblatt described. Echoing Greenblatt’s emphasis on court ritual as a very dangerous and often apparently false game, when he turns from Álvaro de Luna’s deeds to Juan de Mena’s lyric poems, Weiss introduces them as resembling “masks donned according to the needs of the ceremony.”20 One key aspect of this chivalric self-creation was that it left little distance between the written word and the semiotics of material culture. For example, Álvaro de Luna is portrayed as a fashionable dresser: Fizo muy vivas e discretas canciones de los sus amores, e muchas bezes declaraba en ellas misterios de otros grandes fechos. Vistióse siempre bien, e así le estaba bien lo que traya, que si vestía de monte o de guerra, o de arreos, a todo paresçía bien. Fue muy inventivo e mucho dado a fallar invenciones, e sacar entremeses en fiestas, o en justas, o en guerra; en las quales invenciones muy agudamente significaba lo que quería.21 (He made very lively and wise songs about his loves, and many times declared mysteries of other great deeds in them. He always dressed well, and he was equally well turned out whether he dressed for hunting, or war, or riding. He was very inventive and given to creating stories, in devising court masks at parties or jousts or war, in which devices he very cleverly indicated what he wanted.) Writing love poetry, dressing appropriately and well, and writing riddles and court masks for the occasion were only some of the practices with which don Álvaro was skilled at signifying his meaning. Entering the gender debate by writing his Libro de virtuosas e claras mugeres was yet another. A measure of the extent to which male self-creation was more important than love service to the lady is found in the fact that sometimes the goal of projecting an authorial self even violated the rules of the game of courtly love. Weiss shows the poet aggressively violating the rules by revealing his beloved’s 19 20 21

Ibid., 245. Ibid., 248. Gonzalo Chacón, Crónica de don Álvaro de Luna, condestable de Castilla, maestre de Santiago, ed. Juan de Mata Carriazo (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1940), 207. The practice of the motes or invenciones that knights wore when they jousted melds the practices of writing and physical self-creation; during combat the knight literally wears a fragment of writing to declare the mystery of his identity and purpose.

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name, and even his own name at the end of the poem, when he pleads for her to “guaresçer un Juan de Mena”22 (succor a Juan de Mena). The poet rushes forth to define himself and his own autonomy against and in terms of the power of Woman to define him. In the act of fashioning a noble gentleman, Woman serves as both authority and alien; hence the courtly poet’s need to assert himself both as her unquestioning servant and as radically different from Woman in his autonomous masculinity. To be a man, in this courtly context, was both to display worship of, and to define one’s self as completely unlike, a woman. Greenblatt illustrates this point with a comment on Thomas Wyatt’s roles as diplomat, lover, and poet. In his participation in the assertion of power and its fictions through diplomacy or poetry, Any expression of need or dependence or longing is . . . perceived as a significant defeat; the characteristic male as well as national dream is for an unshakeable self-sufficiency that would render all relations with others superfluous . . . The single self, the affirmation of wholeness or stoic apathy or quiet of mind, is a rhetorical construct designed to enhance the speaker’s power, allay his fear, disguise his need. The man’s singleness is played off against the woman’s doubleness—the fear that she embodies destructive mutability, that she wears a mask, that she must not under any circumstances be trusted, that she inevitably repays love with betrayal. The woman is that which is essentially foreign to the man, yet the man is irresistibly drawn into relations with her.23 This contradictory play of forces, in which male authors must place their fate in the hands of a woman with power that they could not trust, demonstrates the pressures that created the profeminine position. Perhaps the best Castilian examples of the attempt to both praise and simultaneously distinguish one’s self from the category of Woman come from the prologues to the profeminine treatises on famous women that authors such as Luna composed. In this genre courtly display included the assertion of the power of categorization, the mastery of the word that extended unto the very definition and history of Woman as a gender. With the gender debate, it is not just male subjectivity but the idea of Woman that is fashioned.24 22 23 24

Weiss, “Álvaro,” 253. Ibid., 141–42. See Julian Weiss, “ ‘¿Qué Demandamos de las Mugeres?’: Forming the Debate about Women in Late Medieval Spain (With a Baroque Response),” in Gender in Debate From the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, eds. Thelma Fenster and Clare A. Lees (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 239.

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The most compelling figure in this regard is Mosén Diego de Valera. His Tratado en defenssa de virtuossas mugeres, written prior to 1445, is another key text in the history of self-fashioning in medieval Iberia. Like Luna, Valera joined in the game of creating nobility by displaying his mastery of the field of Woman. What is more, Valera defined the gender debate as a serious intellectual battleground by his insistence upon knowledge of previous authorities and logical argument as the basis for his defense. A key moment in his construction of Woman as Authority comes in his proemio addressed to Queen María of Aragon. In it Valera sallies forth against the nueva seta (new sect) of the misogy­ nists in the best possible caballero fashion, by creating a long list of women from classical precedent famous for their virtue and power. He employs humanism in the service of chivalry. This is neatly captured in his first sentence, which explains the origin of his treatise to his queen: Como yo fuese certeficado, muy ínclita Reina e Señora, aver algunos que de la femenil nasción generalmente detraen, movido con zelo de verdat, penssé la temerosa diestra esforçar, constriñiéndola por entrañable sentimiento ronper el silencio de la péñola.25 (As I was convinced, most illustrious Queen and Lady, that there were some who generally detracted against the feminine nation, moved by the zeal of truth, I thought to encourage my fearful right hand, compelling it with touching sentiment to break the silence of my pen.) Valera’s synechdochic conflation of the right hand that bears both his sword and his pen neatly emblematizes the profeminine project of the caballero estate: to defend the Authority of Woman with both arms and letters.26 What 25 26

Diego de Valera, Tratado en defenssa de virtuossas mugeres, in Prosistas castellanos del siglo XV, ed. Mario Penna (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1959), 55. Serrano concludes that of the three profeminine texts written at mid-century, Juan Rodríguez del Padrón tried to enlist Queen María of Aragon over to the side of the king’s rivals, the Infantes de Aragón, and Luna identified himself and his plight with the loyal but unjustly accused famous women of his treatise. In contrast to these two Valera, for Serrano, attempts to establish a “realist” position in the gender debate that reinforces feminine inferiority through an emphasis on female chastity. To support this she cites Valera’s conversion of the biblical Deborah into a prophetess instead of a reigning queen, concluding that this demotion of her powers is indicative of Valera’s attempt to praise female passivity, “Del debate,” 105–06, 112. Valera’s description of Deborah, however, clearly indicates that she “con veril ossadía fue rregidora y governadora” (with virile daring was ruler and governed), although this was accomplished through the agency of “un cavallero del dicho pueblo, llamado Barea” (a knight of the said people, named Barea). Valera affirms women’s rule but conditions it on employing the knights by her side. Tratado en defenssa, 70.

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is more, it creates a dramatic situation out of Valera’s act of authorship: the interior battle of his will is projected onto the larger screen of the treatise publicly addressed to the queen. This is not the only dramatic device that Valera acts out in introducing his chivalresque defense. Valera also invents a male interlocutor, addressed as muy caro amigo (a very dear friend) who is the ostensible audience of his treatise. At the same time, he admits to the queen in his prologue that this friend is merely a fiction. Suddenly, a mysterious voice guides him on the correct path: Como penssase a quién más dignamente destinaría [mi obra], a mi imaginación previno el tal tratado, como quiera fingiese en él fablar con un mi amigo, devía ser dado a la más virtuosa de las mugeres . . . E como yo comigo vacilase pensando quién sería ésta, una boz a mis orejas se pressentó, bien asi como increpándome, disiendo: «¡O enpecible agua de Leté! ¿Cómo tienes así los sentidos de aquéste turbados? ¿Dubdas tú quién sea ésta, consciendo la muy esclarecida Reina de Castilla, a quien la corona de virtudes mayormente que otra de las mugeres es devida?»27 (As I thought to whom I could most deservedly address [my work], to my imagination came the idea that the treatise, although I pretended to talk to a friend in it, ought to be given to the most virtuous of women . . . And as I debated with myself about who this would be, a voice presented itself to my ears, as if it were reprehending me, saying: “O damaging water of Lethe! How do you have the senses of this man so clouded? Do you doubt who this might be, knowing the most illustrious Queen of Castile, to whom the crown of virtues is owed more deservedly than any other woman?”) The interior dramatic situation of Valera’s decision to write is augmented by a manufactured crisis of authorship over his choice of a dedicatee.28 His decision involves both awakening to a courtly “truth”—the excellence of Queen María—and a revelation of the conceit of his work—that he is speaking to a male friend. In this he follows tradition. Since Ovid and Andreas Capellanus, 27 Valera, Tratado en defenssa, 55. 28 The frame story of Juan Rodríguez del Padrón’s Triunfo de las donas could be said to be a similar “revelation” of the excellence of the queen: the narrator, while debating the goodness or evil of women in front of a fountain, hears the voice of Cardiana coming from the water. Cardiana proceeds to enumerate 43 reasons why women are superior to men; afterwards, the narrator realizes that he must dedicate his work to the queen. Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Triunfo de las donas, in Obras completas, ed. César Hernández Alonso (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1982), 258.

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texts of the gender debate had framed the discussion of Woman as a dialogue of advice from one man to another. This last is presented, once again, by use of the crucial verb fingir: the creation or display of a dramatic representation or mimetic construct and also the dissimulation of his feigned dialogue. Although Valera appears to be contrasting a false persona (his reasoned argument to his friend) to a real one (his desire to defend the queen), both of these stances are merely masks donned to fit the expectations of the genre of the defenses of women.29 In the treatise itself, Valera’s attempt at mastery of the subject and his skill at demonstrating his philosophical proof are so excessive in their scholarly assertions that his apparatus of gloss and footnotes explaining his history of famous women exceeds the text itself in length.30 This pretension to speak from a base of knowledge, and to win the debate as if it were an intellectual combat, is prominent. One of the remarkable features of the texts of the gender debate was that, from its beginning in sources such as Ovid and Andreas Capellanus, authors spoke on both sides of the question of the praise or blame of women. This, in turn, depended upon the speaker’s position as one either rewarded or rejected by his lady. The Art of Love was often paired with its antidote, the Remedy of Love. The pretension to scholarly debate would collapse in the speaker’s revelation of his own subject position, a subject position that often achieved more importance than the debate itself.31 Valera’s assertion of intellectual rigor in his Tratado, however, allowed no such room for ironic games. One of the primary ways that he establishes his own authority on the topic is to dismiss two of the auctoritates who preceded him, Ovid and Boccaccio, on grounds of self-contradiction and fablar . . . desonesto (dishonest speech).32 Valera uses Ovid’s own evidence against him, since in several places of his De 29

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32

Jesús Rodríguez Velasco notes that this grounding of Valera’s text in affectus or poetic inspiration allows his text, and the image of himself within it, to participate in both literary and scientific discourses. Rodríguez Velasco, “Autoglosa: Diego de Valera y su Tratado en defensa de virtuosas mujeres,” Romance Philology 61 (2007): 31–32. Rodríguez Velasco examines the display of erudition of this style of self-documentation as a kind of autoglosa in which, for example, instead of using the simple term olvidanza, Valera writes “oh empecible agua de Leté” and then, in a marginal gloss, explains that the river Lethe makes one forget. In this way, Valera’s prose sits astride the borderline between pedantry and a display of exegetical skill. Valera, “Autoglosa,” 33–34. Archer, echoing Blamires, emphasizes that although the authors seemed to be playing a game by arguing both sides of the question, the debate about women did have the capacity to change attitudes and was not, as Jill Mann expressed it, “just a convenient way of manufacturing a literary subject.” Archer, Problem of Woman, 5. Ibid., 61.

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arte amandi he demonstrates the chastity of women and then reverses his praise of them because of his excessive lust: “Yo no sé ninguno que así más claro contradixera que tú a ti mesmo feziste porque bien meresces ser desechado en testigo”33 (I know of no one who more clearly contradicted himself than you, for which you well deserve to be discarded as a witness). Valera finds the same problem in Boccaccio, who wrote an exemplary text of the profeminine camp, De claris mulieribus, but then undid this with his Corbaccio, written at a point in which, in his old age, Boccaccio fell for a woman: “las amortiguadas llamas de amor rebivaste, por las quales fueste costreñido tus loables fechos con poquillas letras manzillar . . . ¡O vergonçosa cossa, no solamente para ti, mas aun para el hombre del mundo que menos supiese!”34 (You revived the extinguished flames of love, by which you were forced to stain your praiseworthy deeds with small letters . . . O what an embarrassment, not just for you, but even for the man of the world who knew the least!). Boccaccio is discarded as an authority because late-life misogyny from being spurned by a woman ruined the erudite status that his earlier praise of women had achieved. Valera’s treatise represents a key moment in the history of defenses of women in Castile. Valera created an orthodoxy out of what had been regarded as a type of rhetorical exercise or entertainment. He not only discarded those sources who reversed their position on women but also ascribed moral values to their motivations for doing so. Misogyny was not just wrong but was also reprehensible, and there was no room for double-voiced, ironic distancing in the debate. It is not surprising, then, that Valera would go on to become a key and very public advisor, historical chronicler, and arbiter of noble protocol under Fernando and Isabel. Valera’s efforts were key to turning the self-creation of nobility in relation to a queen into an orthodox faith that could be used more broadly for the needs of the state. His self-creation became the model of a created self for an entire later generation that aspired to knighthood during the reign of the Reyes Católicos.35 During that time, Valera’s chivalric stance in defense of Woman, and the advantages to be gained in the court from adopting it, would find successors in such texts as Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor, in which the culminating scene is a knight dying for love of his lady. In this way the self-creation of the gender debate would meld with the religion of love to form a new orthodoxy around service of a female sovereign. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 This contention is more fully treated in Wendell Smith, “Rescuing Damsels: Chivalry and Salic Law in the Chronicle of Fernando del Pulgar,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 42 (2008): 444–53.

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Woman as Alien: Arcipreste de Talavera

If Valera created an orthodoxy, it is also instructive to examine his heterodoxy, the “new sect” of the misogynists. Although Weissberger identifies the conflation of misogynists with converted Jews evident in Valera’s term nueva seta, we will focus instead on Valera’s other target in speaking of them, one of the most likely suspects of his reference to the detractors of the feminine sex, the Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho, written as much as seven years prior to his Tratado in 1438.36 What we can gather by comparing the other side of the debate is that the issue involved—the nature of Woman—had little to do with the real agenda, which was the display of male subjectivity. The letrados adopted a different strategy around the subject of Woman: to define her not as authority but solely as alien.37 We can see this in the example of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo’s famous portrait of the avaricious woman in the Arcipreste de Talavera’s section on perversas mugeres.38 This portrait could not be further from the selfidentity that the Archpriest creates for himself by his ordered, scholarly exposition of the virtues and vices of the feminine sex, by his assertion of the power to define “qué cosa son mugeres” (what kind of thing women are).39 Where he is rational, generous, and controlled in his speech, Woman is greedy, vengeful, talkative, and uncontrolled. That women love to talk and gossip and cannot keep secrets is a general rule: La muger ser mucho parlera, regla general es dello: que non es muger que non quisiese siempre fablar e ser escuchada. E non es de su costumbre dar logar a que otra fable delante della; e, si el día un año durase, nunca se fartaría de fablar e non se enojaría día nin noche.40 (It is a general rule that women are talkative: for there is not a woman who does not always want to talk and be heard. And it is not her custom to make room for another woman to speak before her; if the day lasted a 36

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38 39 40

Barbara Weissberger, “ ‘Deceitful Sects’,” 213. Archer denies that the defenses of women of Rodríguez del Padrón, Valera, and Luna were responses to the Arcipreste de Talavera (129– 31). He fails, however, to fully engage the implications of Valera’s label of misogynists as a new sect. Instead, Archer proposes Pere Torrella’s Maldezir de mugeres as the seed text of the mid-15th-century importation of misogyny into Castile (177, 182, 185). The opposition between caballeros and letrados is apparent in Martínez de Toledo’s mockery of the pride and social cluelessness of the typical courtly gallant. Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste o Corbacho, 3rd ed. (Madrid: Cátedra, 1983), 127. Ibid., 145. Ibid., 144. Ibid., 194.

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year, she would never tire of talking and would not grow weary of it day nor night.) In the case of the muger avariçiosa, the broad humanist perspective of the Archpriest’s survey of scriptural and classical authorities contrasts with her narrow obsession with a missing egg. Although the first part of his treatise has criticized the love of women, the woman who most memorably comes through and, in many senses, overtakes his treatise is an old crone prattling on about nothing. The power of the word, for Martínez de Toledo, comes solely from its proper masculine control, a control that must deny that same power to the opposite gender. However, the feminine speech, and revelation of feminine subjectivity, that makes the most lasting impression on the reader contains nothing but disordered, if highly verisimilar, babble: a woman complaining to invisible interlocutors about a missing egg, in a speech that, according to some interpretations, reproduces the human-like cackle of a crow41: ¡Ay huevo mío, de la meajuela redonda, de la cáscara tan gruesa! ¿Quién me vos comió? ¡Ay, puta Marica, rostros de golosa, que tú me as lançado por puertas! Yo te juro que los rostros te queme, doña vil, suzia, golosa! ¡Ay huevo mío! Y ¿qué será de mí? ¡Ay triste, desconsolada! ¡Ihus, amiga! y ¿cómo non me fino agora? ¡Ay, Virgen María! y ¿cómo non rebienta quien vee tal sobrevienta?42 (Oh my egg, the one with the round blood spot, with the shell so thick! Who took you and ate you? Oh, Marica you whore, you glutton-face who has escaped me through the doors! I swear I’ll burn your face, base, dirty, lady glutton! Oh my egg! And what will become of me? Oh sad me, with no help! Zounds, my friend! And how is it I don’t just up and die? Oh, Virgin Mary! And how is it that whoever witnesses such a shock doesn’t burst with grief?) The comic drama of the stolen egg and the implications of the circumstances surrounding it overtake Martínez de Toledo’s ostensible purpose of classifying all women as avaricious. 41

42

Ryan Giles comments upon how the very distinction that Martínez works so hard to create—between himself and the woman he characterizes—breaks down: both of them end up being, by the end, plucked crows. See his “Depluming the Author: The Corbacho and the Crow of Myth and Fable,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 85 (2008): 630, 633. Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste o Corbacho, 149.

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Although it was clear that the Arcipreste was a vociferous denunciation of women, perhaps even more instructive for our purposes was the frame given to it by later audiences. Both its second title identifying it as a Castilian version of Boccaccio’s misogynist work, Corbacho, and the author’s apology to women at the end of the work in a postscript called the Demanda, appeared for the first time in the incunable edition of the Arcipreste published in 1498.43 Whether it was added by a later publisher or not, the ending that was thought to be most fit for Martínez’s work was the author’s revelation of a dream vision in which women (she who kills without violence and tortures without being tortured herself) violently take their revenge upon him, hitting him with shoes and distaffs. The work, whether for Martínez de Toledo or for his Isabelline publishers, did not make sense without an autobiographical detail that locates its source in a love lament. Only the author’s final “¡Guay del que duerme sólo!” (Woe to he who sleeps alone!) could supply the interior drama and exposition of subjectivity needed to balance his exposition of the vices of women. As Giles comments, the addition of the Demanda was “a way of exposing a constructed authorial persona.”44 The “histrionic power” of the inward exposition of selffashioning had a disadvantage, for “inwardness turns upon self-fashioning and exposes its underlying motives, its origins in aggression, bad faith, self-interest, and frustrated longing.”45 Once again, the posture of an autonomous self—free of the demands of women and desire—had to be shown to be simply a rhetorical construct, the balloon of freedom from need punctured by want even in a text as resolutely determined to treat Woman as an intellectual problem as the Arcipreste. The rhetoric of misogyny—equally as much as that of courtly love—was reduced from a system of knowledge to the display and dissimulation of a particular author who, in one way or another, had his own complicated relationships with actual women.

The “Real” Self

The addition of the Demanda shows that the reception of the texts of the gender debate seemed to call for the creation of an author. This need only increased 43

Ryan Giles, “Hanging Bells on the Cat: Charivari and the Theatrics of the Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho,” in “Recuerde el alma dormida”: Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Essays in Honor of Frank A. Domínguez (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2009), 131; see also Giles, “Depluming the Author,” 625–28. 44 Giles, “Hanging,” 131. 45 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 156.

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at a time when the pretenses of dissimulation were dropped, when the self revealed was taken to be an authentic one, a ‘real’ identity, instead of a created stance. The type of interiority that Greenblatt posits for authors such as Thomas More or Thomas Wyatt is of a different category than what we can establish for authors of the gender debate in mid 15th-century Castile such as Martínez de Toledo, Rodríguez del Padrón, Valera, and Luna. For example, Greenblatt opens his investigation with Thomas More remembering, while locked up in the Tower of London, a dinner party at which he lost the contest to most fervently praise Cardinal Wolsey’s speech. From this captured moment Greenblatt develops More’s sense of self-cancellation, his sense of absurd detachment from the spectacle of power in which he was obligated to participate.46 With More, Greenblatt writes, “There is always, it seems, a ‘real’ self . . . buried or neglected,” a persistent idea of a private identity behind the roles he is compelled to play that contrasts with the many selves he asserts in his political persona.47 Peter Burke resurrects Michel de Montaigne’s metaphor for this private identity: “Montaigne remains one of the most memorable examples of Renaissance self-awareness. For his time, he placed unusual stress on the need for privacy, for what he called ‘a room behind the shop which is completely our own, une arrière boutique toute nostre’.”48 The contrast between public selfcreation and this guarded, private identity is something that, from the evidence, seems to arise only in the late 15th century. By way of contrast, let us return to Weiss’s analysis of Juan de Mena’s lyric poetry, where the performance of an inner self is also evident. In spite of all of the ways in which Juan de Mena’s courtly stance corresponds to the list of attributes for self-fashioning as defined by Greenblatt, a rich interiority is one characteristic that Juan de Mena does not display. The measure of the difference between Greenblatt’s self-fashioning and the display of interiority of the courtly lover in cancionero poetry resides, perhaps, precisely in this: Mena puts a self on display, but it is never any other than the self demanded by the dictates of the performance in which he engages. As Weiss writes in speaking of the “interiorized” nature of Mena’s poetry, “the passion with which the poet sings . . . does not inhabit the conceptual inner world . . . since the medieval love lyric was essentially a ceremonial mode.”49 Instead, the poet’s passion is “exemplary”: it fulfills the dictates of the genre within which it resides. The 46 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 16. 47 Ibid., 32. 48 Peter Burke, “Representations of the Self from Petrarch to Descartes,” in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1997), 24. 49 Weiss, “ ‘¿Qué Demandamos de las Mugeres?’ ” 251.

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interiority that Mena displays is always the mask, never the idea of removing the mask entirely to reveal a more authentic and true self, independent of socially enforced roles and identities. The poet’s subjectivity is not characterized by a phenomenon Greenblatt sees in Wyatt, the “revelation of the self in discourse,” in which, “the audience is not being manipulated but invited to experience the movement of the poet’s mind through assurance, doubt, dread, and longing. This painstaking rendering of inner life seems to surpass any social game, though the poems remain clearly embedded in such a game.”50 For Weiss, there is never an attempt in Juan de Mena’s lyric to circumvent, surpass, or withdraw from the genre-defined game. This is not solely a characteristic Weiss attributes to Juan de Mena. He finds it in other 15th-century poets as well. Summing up the poetics of Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Weiss warns that We should not view his preoccupation with selfhood and his sporadic autobiographical interventions within his work as a sign of the Renais­ sance . . . there is a danger here of adopting too great a biographical reading of his verse and of placing too great an emphasis on encountering a “real” man behind the texts. Ultimately, Fernán Pérez’s poetic persona is best viewed less as a product of an autobiographical impulse than as (in the broadest sense) a political maneuver . . . [as] someone who participated fully in the aristocratic struggle to define personal and national identities.51 Greenblatt’s sense of self-fashioning involves a contrast, at times stated and at times inferred, between the socially created self and autobiography. In Weiss’s analysis of Pérez de Guzmán, there are only the masks.52 Within the context of the gender debate, the best evidence we have of the historical shift from the self-creation that Weiss describes to the idea of an “authentic” self that Greenblatt describes comes in the reign of the Catholic kings Fernando and Isabel (1474–1504). From the mid-century of the treatises of Martínez de Toledo, Rodríguez del Padrón, Valera, and Luna to the period after 1474, a change had come in the form and tone of the discussion of women. Along with Weissberger, most scholars attribute these changes to the rise of a strong 50 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 156. 51 Julian Weiss, “Fernán Pérez de Guzmán: Poet in Exile,” Speculum 66, no. 1 (1991): 107–08. 52 Weiss’s contention here aligns him with Erving Goffman’s Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, which analyzed all social interaction as role play (London: Penguin Books, 1959). For Goffman, there is no authentic self, only masks, and even the pretense of authenticity is simply yet another disguise.

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female sovereign and the discordance between ideas of power and gender that the activist reign of Isabel of Castile created.53 Archer, emphasizing the tradition of debate texts instead of their circumstances, points the finger at the introduction of a Catalan tradition of misogynistic verse into Castile via Pere Torellas’s Maldezir de mugeres and subsequent reactions to it. One change the debate underwent was that the treatments of the theme became more and more removed from the direct circumstances of the author and a first-person voice and, increasingly, were framed in terms of literary experiments, particularly with the rise of the genre of the novela sentimental.54 One way of viewing the novela sentimental is simply as a fictional mode for staging the gender debate. Cárcel de amor—long considered one of the exemplary texts of the genre—presents a dramatization of the profeminine position at its most pathetic. Leriano’s love service to the princess Laureola, including his passionate torture in the allegorical tower of the cárcel de amor or prison of love, and his military expedition to rescue Laureola from unjust imprisonment by her father the king, culminates in his decision to let himself die of lovesickness when Laureola finally rejects his suit. At this point, his friend Tefeo decides to intervene, to “cure” him: Viendo que su mal era de enamorada pasión . . . díxole infinitos males de las mugeres; y para favorecer su habla truxo todas las razones que en disfamia dellas pudo pensar, creyendo por allí restituuille la vida.55 (Seeing that his illness was from the passion of love . . . said to him infinite evils of women; and to reinforce his argument he brought up all the reasons to dishonor them that he could think of, believing by that means to restore his life.) Leriano, however, rejects Tefeo’s arguments and proceeds to a deathbed sermon on the goodness of Woman. In Cárcel’s culminating scene, Diego de San Pedro created a willing martyr to the profeminine cause. The ending of another novela sentimental, Juan de Flores’s Grisel y Mirabella, stages the misogynist side of the debate.56 Although it is presented as a 53 54

55 56

See Weissberger, “Deceitful Sects” and Isabel Rules. Archer points out that the idea of a literary treatment of the debate was already there in Juan Rodríguez del Padrón’s Siervo libre de amor, which gave a literary frame to the gender debate present in his debate treatise, Triunfo de las donas. Archer, The Problem of Woman, 169. Diego de San Pedro, Obras completas II: Cárcel de amor, ed. Keith Whinnom (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1972), 155. See also Archer, Problem of Woman, 86–87. For a recent overview of scholarship on Grisel and its connection to Torellas’s role in the gender debate, see Emily C. Francomano’s Introduction to Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel y Mirabella, The Slander against

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problem of law, the final and problematic “justice” given to the arch-misogynist Torellas in a scene of collective female action defies an easy resolution. Like Orpheus and the Ciconian women, Torellas is lured to a banquet given by the queen, tortured, and torn to pieces.57 This nightmare scenario, for the misogynist, of what would happen if women collectively took vengeance is highly reminiscent of the Demanda portion of the Arcipreste de Talavera. The seed planted with Valera’s accusation that the misogynists were a nueva secta had grown into an increased use of the conflation of misogyny with heresy and, conversely, the equation of courtly love with religion in the hiperbole sagrada (sacred hyperbole). Issues of what was heterodox and orthodox, and their consequences, had become much more critical. The evidence suggests that in this changed environment a new way of talking about identity emerged. The question scholarship has struggled with is whether this new sense of self indicates the birth of modernity. While we cannot in the space provided attempt to resolve this question, a review of the most important aspects of it gives greater relief to the consequences of the gender debate in this period. Increasingly, it was not enough to simply argue one side of this debate. The addition of the Demanda as a coda to the Arcipreste offers a clue as to how things would change. Whereas before self-fashioning had meant the assertion of a unified identity or role, more and more this same assertion of self became a liability as medieval auctoritas ceded ground to a more personalized concept of authorship. Simultaneously, the earlier display of male subjectivity in the service of Woman gradually turned from a performance of the self to a hiding of it. Along with Greenblatt, an entire school of criticism has posited that this idea of a more authentic self behind the masks arises historically with the Renaissance. It is part of the change in consciousness that these critics see in the advent of the modern era. Because it has been the cause of so much polemic, it is important to briefly review this unresolved question. Greenblatt himself was ambivalent on this point. He began Renaissance Self-Fashioning with the idea that “there is in the early modern period a change in the intellectual, social, psychological, and aesthetic structures that govern the generation of identities . . . in the sixteenth century there appears to be an increased

57

Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers: A Bilingual Edition and Study (Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013), 1–51. Blamires calls the example of Orpheus’s death “the chief antecedent for mass female intervention” available in the gender debate in medieval Europe, although he cautions that it proceeds along lines of “personal vengeance” and not “consolidated female protest at society’s oppression of women.” The Case for Women, 233.

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self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process.” This contrasts directly with his caution on the same page that the phenomenon he explores “does not suddenly spring up from nowhere when 1499 becomes 1500.”58 Others have critiqued the master narrative of how subjectivity has been said to develop by New Historicism, “The Authorized Version” of the “standard way of telling the story of the self.”59 In particular, medievalists have quarreled with the idea that modernity begins with the Renaissance and that the Middle Ages is merely a millennium of middleness, a temporal space that serves simply to hold apart the first beginning of civilization from its Renaissance rebirth.60 According to this, the Renaissance is the point at which humanism, nationalism, the proliferation of competing value systems, the secure grasp of a historical consciousness, aesthetic production as an end in itself, the conception of the natural world as a site of scientific investigation and colonial exploitation, the secularization of politics, the idea of the state, and, perhaps above all, the emergence of the individual commence. Roy Porter recapitulates this same story but then goes on to ask how we can contest and re-examine it. The story of “how the West discovered a unique self unknown to former times, an inner psyche unfamiliar in other cultures . . . has the ring of myth, even an air of soap-box rhetoric, especially when recounted as an epic in which the heroic self is portrayed as surmounting ridge after ridge until it reaches its perfection in our own times.”61 More recently, Margareta de Grazia has updated the sources, and consequences, of this “Modern Divide” in scholarship, in which “continuums of any stripe (teleological, evolutionary, developmental) are decidedly out of favor,” and even the methods used to study the medieval and early modern differ.62 For Hispanism this question of the arrival of a modern self and the vexed question of periodization that is its base often focus on the meaning of one year: 1492. Recent scholars have questioned the “cleaving” of Hispanic studies represented by 1492 as a dividing line between medieval and early modern, as a time marker that “changes everything.”63 To this effect, Barbara Fuchs cites 58 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 1–2. 59 Roy Porter, “Introduction,” in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (London: Routledge, 1997), 1. 60 Lee Patterson, “On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies,” Speculum 65, no. 1 (1990): 92. 61 Porter, “Introduction,” 8. 62 Margareta de Grazia, “The Modern Divide: From Either Side,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 3 (2007): 461. 63 Barbara Fuchs, “1492 and the Cleaving of Hispanism,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 3 (2007): 497.

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the continuity with the Middle Ages demonstrated by the “lengthy gestation of humanism in Spain.”64 And yet, she simultaneously points to the persistence of 1492 as a dividing line that “has functioned as a kind of guarantor that, despite its exceptional, eccentric history, Spain had a Renaissance, and a modernity.”65 Whether celebrated as a starting point for national greatness and its accompanying cultural developments in Spain’s “Golden Age,” or contested as a moment when national homogenization impoverished the peninsula and brought its elements into conflict, the date of 1492 continues to function as a dividing line, but there is no longer agreement as to what we should think of what it divides. Given this larger polemic, it becomes crucial to examine how the gender debate changed from the middle of the 15th century to its end. If we ask what changed in the transition from the foundational texts of the Arcipreste de Talavera, Rodríguez de Padrón, Valera, and Luna under Juan II, and the resurgence of the debate under Fernando and Isabel (1474–1504), we do find the appearance of one marker associated with modernity: an increased awareness of a difference between the public and the private self, between the roles that one must play in public and a more closely guarded core identity that often is not or cannot be shown. The self-fashioning that authors asserted in the Castilian court of Juan II turned, more and more, to an opposite strategy of self-fashioning after 1474: self-cancellation.

Converso Identity

Two of Greenblatt’s examples, Thomas More and William Tyndale, demonstrate a consciousness of a rift between what can and must be said in public in the wider world and what is thought and felt in private. For Greenblatt, this separation is driven by the schisms and reversals of the 16th-century England of the Protestant Reformation. Its examples are the Catholic More and the Protestant Tyndale, both of whom end up losing their heads on the chopping block for their respective faiths. What we see driving their public performance is its forcible divorce from a set of private feelings that—because they could be scrutinized as traitorous or heretical—were too dangerous to acknowledge. The question that then arises is whether a similar situation applied in 15th-century Castile.

64 65

Ibid., 493. Ibid., 494.

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The obvious answer comes in scholarship that has looked at the question of converso identity. If Greenblatt is concerned with a type of self developed when potentially heretical private thoughts or feelings must be shielded from the new scrutinizing power of the state, late 15th-century Spain was, lamentably, far more developed than England in this respect. As Dayle SeidenspinnerNúñez reminds us, the rise of the institution of the Inquisition after 1480 was “coincident with the emergence in Spain of the first modern state,” an institution whose obsession was “to guarantee its own omnipotence by imposing total ideological conformity and to regulate private as well as public forms of behavior.”66 If Greenblatt maintains that “one of the highest achievements of power is to impose fictions upon the world and one of its supreme pleasures is to enforce the acceptance of fictions that are known to be fictions,”67 then the fiction that the Trastámara dynasty imposed upon late medieval Castile was that of a homogeneous, monolithic, Christian society devoid of the religious Other that had supposedly been suddenly eliminated from the Iberian peninsula through conquest, expulsion, conversion, or Inquisition. Scholars of the “converso voice”—about which the main area of agreement seems to be that it was a chorus of very different voices—have long sought to demonstrate how the situation of those converted from Judaism created a doubling of consciousness and a problematization of identity.68 Gregory Hutcheson defines a “voice from ‘in-between’, in essence, a converso voice” that rests upon a “duality of self that resists resolution within the social-cultural context of Trastamaran Spain.”69 It is important to note that Hutcheson identifies this 66

Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, “Inflecting the Converso Voice: A Commentary on Recent Theories,” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 25, no. 1 (1996): 12. 67 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 141. 68 See Michelle Hamilton, “Hispanism and Sephardic Studies,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 1, no. 2 (2009): 181, and David Nirenberg, “Figures of Thought and Figures of Flesh: ‘Jews’ and ‘Judaism’ in Late-Medieval Spanish Poetry and Politics,” Speculum 81, no. 2 (2006): 398–426, for more recent approximations of the possible meaning of, or misreading of, converso identity. Nirenberg specifically warns against the “confusion” of attempts to see converso experience as a template for the development of modern subjectivity: “The lineages of Spain’s converts have even come to serve as the foundation for any number of genealogies of European modernity . . . Today it is common, in fields ranging from intellectual history to psychoanalysis, to discover the roots of skepticism, irony, hybridity, and other concepts believed to be constitutive of modernity, in the flesh of the descendants of the converted Jews of late-medieval Spain,” 425. 69 Gregory S. Hutcheson, “Cracks in the Labyrinth: Juan de Mena, Converso Experience, and the Rise of the Spanish Nation,” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 25, no. 1 (1996): 43.

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voice precisely with the circle of poets and authors who used the verb fingir to define the act of poetic creation listed above—Juan de Mena, Juan Alfonso de Baena, and the Marquís de Santillana. However, the most relevant study of a converso voice for our current topic is E. Michael Gerli’s exploration of Diego de Valera’s converso identity. Gerli portrays Valera as a converso who, from an early age, resided at the royal court cut off from established forms of elite identity such as lineage. Despite this, Valera went on to become an acknowledged master of the forms and display of nobility. Valera’s answer to the dilemma of identity was the creation of “an essentially civil notion of nobility” based upon virtue and the recognition of the sovereign.70 Gerli characterizes this assertion of control over the meaning of nobility as “a masterful instance of what Stephen Greenblatt calls ‘self-fashioning’, or the conscious creation of an integrated rhetoric of the self that captures the codes by which behavior is shaped.”71 It is this creation of an integrated, caballero self that we can take as Valera’s reaction to being cut off from the available identities that linaje offered. In essence, Valera’s reaction to his converso status was to outdo those who would remind him of it by beating them at their own game. His position on the gender debate was a result of this projection of a publicly projected and defended identity as a champion of the feminine sex. From this position of established authority on nobility and knighthood, Valera was able to securely continue to function as a royal chronicler and advisor well into the reign of Fernando and Isabel.

Self-Cancellation: The Letters of Fernando del Pulgar

This same safety and stability evaded another converso author who also emphasized the theme of nobility based on works and virtue, and chivalry as civic duty, but who did not have the advantage of identifying with an established expertise in nobility or Church office. The life and works of Fernando del Pulgar are a lesson in how self-fashioning could also be an evasion of self rather than a projection. The information we have about Pulgar’s life demonstrates a change in status that converso humanist intellectuals underwent in the era of the Catholic kings. Pulgar fights the same battles as Valera, but he does so in a much more guarded way, as an intellectual who shifts between putting 70

71

E. Michael Gerli, “Performing Nobility: Mosén Diego de Valera and the Poetics of Converso Identity,” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 25, no. 1 (1996): 26. Gerli “Performing,” 30.

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arguments in his own voice and presenting the arguments of others. Ideologically, Pulgar repeats his fellow converso Valera’s defense of a civic nobility and adhesion to the crown. In his “Letra XIV,” “Para un su amigo de Toledo” (For a friend in Toledo), Pulgar argues against nobility of birth and defends the idea that “todos somos nacidos de una masa e hovimos un principio noble”72 (we are all born of one material and had a noble beginning). Those who would argue against this are fighting against a law of nature, which distributes talents and abilities to individuals based not upon birth but by means of inclinación natural73 (natural talent). For Pulgar, the foundation of nobility is virtue and its duty is to always obey the God-ordained sovereign. But unlike Valera, Pulgar was much more vulnerable to the shifting winds of power. This is due in part to his identity as part of the new class of humanist intellectuals at court, the letrados.74 In contrast to Valera’s right hand that holds both pen and sword, the right hand that emblematizes Pulgar’s profession only serves to write, as Pulgar himself shows. As he comments to the king’s uncle, Enrique Enríquez, in a letter inquiring about a wound Enríquez received in battle: “usando vuestra merced de su oficio y yo del mío, no es maravilla que mi mano esté de tinta e vuestro pie sangriento”75 (exercising your grace your profession and I mine, it is no wonder that my hand is stained with ink and your foot with blood). Whereas Valera insistently repeated that it was his right and responsibility as a knight to counsel his sovereigns, Pulgar’s only weapon with which to approach their power was his words. Scholars have remarked that Pulgar seems to maintain a conscious strategy of limiting his own presence. In “The Silences of Fernando del Pulgar,” Michael Agnew demonstrates the radical contrast between Pulgar’s authorial stance in his letters, in which some private subjectivity is demonstrated, and the loss of identity, self-effacement, and enforced orthodoxy evident in his history of Fernando and Isabel, Crónica de los reyes católicos.76 Pulgar’s response to the scrutiny of power as royal chronicler is a strategy of self-cancellation in his 72

Fernando del Pulgar, Letras: Glosa a las coplas de Mingo Revulgo, ed. J. Domínguez Bordona (Madrid: Clásicos Castellanos, 1958), 64. 73 Ibid., 65. 74 Pulgar made no direct pronouncements on the gender debate, but for a review of the gender politics of his role as court chronicler under Isabel, see Weissberger, Isabel Rules, 93–98. In his chronicle Pulgar chose to defend Isabel’s accession and rule by emphasizing the legitimacy of female inheritance of the crown, thus avoiding a defense of the feminine sex in general. See Smith, “Rescuing Damsels,” 444–53. 75 Pulgar, Letras, 51. 76 Michael Agnew, “The Silences of Fernando de Pulgar in his Crónica de los Reyes Católicos,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 36 (2002): 484, 492.

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work. As author and historian, he is evident everywhere but visible nowhere. His adoption of the second person plural pronoun and his omission of his presence even at events we know he witnessed in person demonstrate the rhetorical strategy of cancellation of self by which he bolstered his authority as a royal chronicler and converso. Agnew examines Pulgar’s work by comparing it to Greenblatt’s example of Thomas More: “The dilemma of the humanist at the service of the state . . . involves a constant tension between a double imperative: to fashion an individual persona and the requirement to submit to [a] higher authority—individual ambition versus self-effacement.”77 This self-cancellation through submission contrasts with the self-affirmation and creation of a humanist persona evident in Pulgar’s published letters, although even here the historian Juan de Mata Carriazo remarks that Pulgar reveals very little about himself, providing the scholar scant autobiographical evidence.78 Although they contain displays of wit and erudition that mark them as the published intellectual performance they were, and although many of them are addressed to important figures in order to advance a political agenda, Pulgar’s letters also discuss such everyday minutiae as the aches and pains of old age, a request that a friend send him a melon, or advice to his daughter in a convent.79 Pulgar’s letters provide an important, humanizing contrast to his self-erasure as a historian.80 One of the few things that has been established about Pulgar’s biography is that, as a converso, he had reason for wanting to hide the vulnerability of his own circumstances. The contradictions of converso identity shine through in Pulgar’s “Letra XXI” to an anonymous detractor, “A un su amigo encubierto” (To his disguised friend). In this case, the loose energy of Pulgar’s written critique of the creation of the Inquisition in Andalusia in 1478 grounded itself in accusations against him because he was a converso. As with the gender debate, the substance of argument was forced into the channels of ad hominem attack. The extant evidence is Pulgar’s own presentation of the situation and the discussion found in Carriazo’s introduction to the Crónica. Pulgar’s patron, 77 78 79 80

Ibid., 494. Juan de Mata Carriazo, “Introduction,” in Crónica de los Reyes Católicos, 2 vols (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1943), 1:xx–xxi. Fernando del Pulgar, Letras: Glosa a las coplas de Mingo Revulgo, ed. J. Domínguez Bordona (Madrid: Clásicos Castellanos, 1958), 3, 90, 92–113. Burke points out the importance of letters in self-presentation, since they express thoughts at the moment they happen. “Representations of the Self,” 23. He also points out that our idea of the self in the past is dependent upon the survival of often-lost, private documents, concluding, “It is obviously dangerous to argue from the rarity of ego-documents before 1500 that self-consciousness was undeveloped,” 21.

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Cardinal Mendoza, requested that he write a letter stating his criticisms of the actions of the Inquisition in 1478. Subsequently, an anonymous letter was sent to Cardinal Mendoza, accusing Pulgar of heresy and of speaking ill of Queen Isabel and her ministers. Although Pulgar defended himself in writing, the accusations were enough to exile him from the royal court from 1479 to 1482.81 The letter itself is a carefully worded exercise in balancing what can be said with what cannot be said. It is addressed to the unknown writer of the missive, which was passed to Pulgar by yet another anonymous friend after being left at night on Cardinal Mendoza’s door. Pulgar has very difficult rhetorical maneuvering to make in order to both refute the claims made by his accuser and simultaneously not repeat exactly what those accusations are. Interestingly, Pulgar denies these twinned accusations of heresy and criticism of the queen by bringing up the possibility that the queen could be wrong, not through bad intentions but because of false information from others.82 His savvy denial involved refuting the accusations while also highlighting his commitment to Christianity and belief in the good intentions of the queen. As a humanist trained in the art of decir no diciendo83 (saying without saying), Pulgar was able to defend himself well enough to return to court some years later and be appointed official royal chronicler to Fernando and Isabel. The letter itself was published, along with his Claros varones de Castilla, in 1486. After this point Pulgar largely disappears from the historical record, leaving us only with his history of the Catholic kings. Even here, though, his historical method let through some of his own thoughts and expressions in the form of his “ventriloquizing.” As Carriazo, Agnew, and Gerli have demonstrated, Pulgar’s history puts his own words in the mouths of other historical actors at key moments. His letter defending nobility of virtue reappears as a speech given by Gómez Manrique to a rebellion against royal authority in Toledo. The criticism of the creation of the Inquisition in Seville in his letter to Cardinal Mendoza is repeated in his denunciation of these events in the Crónica.84 His “Letra XXXIII” was written to the Count of Cabra asking the count which of two versions of a speech he should put in his mouth while recounting the momentous victory of the capture of Boabdil in the Granada war. We know from this that Pulgar shifted from self-rhetoric to putting words in the mouths of others 81 Carriazo, “Introduction,” xxxviii–xlii. 82 Pulgar, Letras, 89. 83 Carriazo, “Introduction,” lvii. 84 For a detailed discussion of this part of the chronicle see E. Michael Gerli, “Social Crisis and Conversion: Apostasy, and Inquisition in the Chronicles of Fernando del Pulgar and Andrés Bernáldez,” Hispanic Review 70 (2002): 155–65.

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and that those words were sometimes pre-approved by the speaker in question.85 The theme of menosprecio de corte was certainly not a new one, but it is significant that we see Pulgar, like Thomas More, reacting to the dangerous game of court politics by distancing himself from the spectacle of power upon his return: Yo, señor, soy aquí más traído que venido; porque estando en mi casa retraído, e casi libre ya de la pena del cobdiciar, e començando a gozar del beneficio del contentamiento, fuí llamado para escribir las cosas destos señores.86 (I, sir, have been more brought here than come; because having been retired to my house, and almost free of the pain of wanting and striving, and beginning to enjoy the benefits of contentment, I was called to write the things of these lords.) The fact that he can call what he writes “the things of these lords” shows the gap between Pulgar’s activity as a writer and who he thought he was or wanted to be, even though his other stance, of the humanist intellectual who would retire to a bucolic setting, is equally a rhetorical product. Pulgar had learned how to limit the danger of putting too much of his own self out into his writing. Instead, he created people, situations, and other voices to deliver his message.

A Dialogic Art: La Celestina

From a modern point of view, perhaps the most significant feature of the gender debate as it had developed in mid-15th-century Castile was that on neither side did the controversy allow for the voices of actual women. Even the most ardent defender of women, Diego de Valera, did not allow the queen to speak in his work. For this reason we conclude this essay with the contrast offered by the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea or La Celestina (1499), in which the voice of a woman, and a marginalized one at that, comes to dominate the work. The development of a textual portrayal of an inner private self may have depended, not surprisingly, upon a linguistic artistry capable of depicting it. What makes the character of Celestina remarkable in the context of our 85 Pulgar, Letras, 141–43. See also Carriazo, “Introduction,” lxiv–lxx. Another example of this pre-censure is his presentation of early parts of his chronicle for the approval and correction of the queen. See “Letra XI,” in Letras, 53. 86 Pulgar, Letras, 133.

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investigation is that she provides an instance of a female voice that, because of the theatrical technique of monologic asides, gives us a greater distinction between the socially constituted self and the more authentic, private self, however briefly glimpsed. If self-fashioning is a performance of identity, then it should comes as no surprise that La Celestina—astride the generic borderline between the theatrical techniques of humanistic comedy, the dialogues of the novela sentimental, and misogynist treatises—provided a breakthrough in rendering that type of dialogic activity in writing.87 What is more, one of the most prominent instances of dialogism in La Celestina is its incorporation of the gender debate. With a treatment of the gender debate such as that found in Cárcel de amor, the idea of a debate is present, but only one side, the profeminine, is actually presented. We only hear secondhand that Leriano’s friend, Tefeo, told him all the bad things he could think up about women, but his actual speech is suppressed. In contrast, La Celestina takes the radical step of placing the speakers of the profeminine and misogynist sides of the debate in the same room, actually speaking to each other as the work opens, in the opening dialogue between Calisto and Sempronio. The idea that Calisto, whose “Melibeo soy y a Melibea adoro y en Melibea creo” (I am Melibean and it is Melibea I adore and Melibea I believe in) converts his beloved into his god, represents the hiperbole sagrada that was the exaggerated endpoint of the profeminine position of the debate, and that Sempronio’s attempt to cure him of his lovesickness employs the discourse of misogyny, is a long-established one in criticism of La Celestina.88 In particular, the sources that Sempronio cites (the writings of Séneca and Aristotle, the examples of Adam, Solomon, David, and Virgil) demonstrate a strong affiliation of La Celestina with the Arcipreste de Talavera.89 In essence, Celestina takes the debate and stages it in a new way. This staging gives us a measure of how the debate and its uses had changed from the middle of the 15th century to its end. It also gives us an idea of the serious implications, under the rule of Isabel I, of authoring a text that took up the terms of the debate. 87 88

89

See the introduction of María Eugenia Lacarra’s edition of La Celestina (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1995), x, xiv–xxviii. Joseph Snow lists nine articles under the subject heading “Antifeminism in La Celestina,” in “Celestina” by Fernando de Rojas: An Annotated Bibliography of World Interest 1930–1985 (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1985), 99. See E. Michael Gerli, “Celestina, Act I, Reconsidered: Cota, Mena . . . or Alfonso Martínez de Toledo?” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 23 (1976): 29–45. As authors such as Michael Solomon and Anthony Cárdenas have shown, the usage of misogyny common to the Arcipreste and Celestina owes a great deal to medical discourse.

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Critics have questioned whether the gender debate had any real impact on society or whether it was simply an elite intellectual and social entertainment. A rejoinder to this idea is found in the ability of Calisto and Pármeno to wholly inhabit the debate in their interaction, and the expectation that Calisto and Sempronio’s deep knowledge of the debate is believable. However, it is not just that Calisto and Pármeno know the debate so well but also that they are playing roles when they engage in it, and we are aware that they are doing so. Their “real” identity is the one behind the mask. We see this when Sempronio jokes that Calisto’s courtly love pose (mourning his lovesickness in a darkened room) is a sin worse than those in Sodom, since the Sodomites engaged in abominable practices with unknown angels, while Calisto wants to do the same with what he calls his god. In reaction, Calisto laughs: Calisto: ¡Maldito seas! Que me has hecho reír, lo que no pensé ogaño.90 (Calisto: Damn you! You made me laugh, which I didn’t plan to do today.) Calisto’s momentary slip into laughter reveals the role-playing of the courtly lover that he performs. His self-created identity is shown to be false by a momentary shift into a more natural and comprehensible way of being. This type of role-playing pervades La Celestina. Melibea must play the role of the chaste daughter uninterested in men to preserve her honor. Celestina plays a multitude of roles demanded of her.91 The method that La Celestina establishes from its first scene is to contrast socially expected roles with the “real” inner thoughts and feelings of its characters. Another aspect of the method introduced in this first dialogue between Calisto and Sempronio is that of asides. When Calisto says that the fire that burns him is worse than the one in Purgatory, Sempronio comments to himself that Calisto is not just crazy but a heretic to boot. Calisto: ¿No te digo que hables alto cuando hablares? ¿Qué dices? Sempronio: Digo que nunca Dios quiera tal; que es especie de herejía lo que agora dijiste. (Calisto: Didn’t I tell you to speak aloud when you speak? What are you saying? 90 91

Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina, ed. Dorothy Severin (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1992), 51. Melibea asks for the patience to disimular (hide) her passion. Rojas, La Celestina, 154. Celestina, in one of many examples, seems to be praying her rosary in church while she is actually counting the profits from her virgin-mending trade (Ibid., 142).

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Sempronio: I said may God never wish it to be so; that what you just said is a type of heresy.) As the audience, we learn from the beginning that communication between the characters is imperfect, that what they present to each other is filtered in ways that conform to the interlocutor to whom they speak. Sempronio has the opportunity to say what he really thinks—that his master is both crazy and a heretic—but this becomes instead a less-inflammatory, and more factual, comment that his master has just said something that is heretical.92 Calisto and Sempronio inhabit the gender debate in ways previously unimagined by the authors of the mid-century profeminine and misogynist treatises, but what is new is not just that the debate is performed but also how irrelevant it is to the sordid world of La Celestina. What is more, their protagonism, and the male subjectivity projected through their use of the debate, is overshadowed in the work by the antithesis of courtly love, the very embodiment of Woman as alien, Celestina. If La Celestina conditions its readers to expect that all the characters are roleplaying to each other (performances that are, it must be said, intimately tied to the tragedy unleashed in the latter part of the work), this heightens even further those moments when the characters engage in soliloquy. What happens, we wonder, when the characters speak but there is no one present to hear? What identity will they have then? An answer is provided in E. Michael Gerli’s “ ‘Agora que voy sola’: Celestina, Magic, and the Disenchanted World,” where he asserts that one of Celestina’s soliloquies represents a break in the epistemology of representations of the self from the medieval to the modern era. Gerli’s thesis is that there is reason to doubt Celestina’s own belief in the efficacy of the magic spells she casts and that this doubt presents itself as a competition between epistemologies. Like a text with which Celestina has long been identified— Martínez de Toledo’s Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho—the telling object of comparison, and the voice that takes over the narrative, is a greedy old crone who talks to herself.93 Central to Gerli’s argument is the observation that 92

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As María Rosa Lida de Malkiel wrote of these asides, “La diferencia entre el aparte y su supuesta repetición pinta, y no siempre con colores cómicos, los antagonismos de los personajes” (The difference between the aside and its supposed repetition indicates, and not always with comic colors, the antagonisms of the characters). La originalidad artística de La Celestina (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1962), 137. Martínez de Toledo paints a character very similar to Celestina when he speaks of women who are so talkative that they will even talk when no one else is present: “E por ende verás muchas mugeres que, de tener mucha continuaçión de fablar, quando non han con quién

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All the characters, but especially Celestina, possess a heightened awareness of themselves; what they underscore more than anything else is Rojas’s unprecedented ability to construct three-dimensional personalities and to plumb the depths of new, private—even secret—forms of feeling, thinking, and being. It is for this reason that all the characters often gainsay their audible public statements in mumbled asides, or pronounce risky soliloquies that bring forth hidden, dangerous thoughts, inconsistencies, contradictions, and furtive objectives whispered to themselves as they look the other way, or utter them under their breath as they hasten down the lane in solitude.94 What Greenblatt sees in the private life of More is a constant for the characters of La Celestina: we see them not just as subjects but as subjects in motion, contradicting themselves, revealing hidden motives, and flitting from one version of the self to another to fit the needs of the moment. Gerli’s case in “ ‘Agora que voy sola’ ” comes from Celestina’s soliloquy at the beginning of Act IV. Celestina is on her way to Melibea’s house, having cast a spell by invoking Triste Plutón on the skein of thread she carries. As she goes, she begins to doubt the efficacy of her enterprise, revealing her own lack of belief in the powers of the Dark One she has just invoked. Instead of relying on magical thinking and the observance of omens such as crows to encourage her to continue with the enterprise of Melibea’s seduction, Celestina rationally considers her options. Key to this change of thought is a transition from analogical thinking to a notion of difference, a change in mentality that Gerli explains via Timothy Reiss and Foucault. According to Reiss the first type of magical thinking “is a kind of patterning which refuses the ontological and epistemological distinction . . . between an exterior and an interior, which assumes therefore that all ‛objects’ are ‘signs’, all signs objects.” While the more modern episteme—one which culminates in Descartes’s cogito ergo sum—“is a ‘telling’ (relating) of exterior things and events.”95 Most of all, it presents Celestina as filled with doubt, but with a set of doubts that are, unlike the muger avariciosa of the Arcipreste, coherent.

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fablar, están fablando consigo mesmas entre sí” (And therefore you will see many women who, in order to keep talking, when they don’t have anyone to talk with will talk with themselves under their breath). Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho, 194. E. Michael Gerli, “ ‘Agora que voy sola’: Celestina, Magic, and the Disenchanted World,” eHumanista 19 (2011): 159. Timothy J. Reiss, The Discourse of Modernism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1982), 30.

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¡Ay, cuytada de mi, en qué lazo me he metido! Que por mostrar solítica y esforçada pongo mi persona al tablero. ¿Qué haré, cuytada, mezquina de mí, que ni el salir afuera es provechoso, ni la perseverancia careçe de peligro? ¿Pues yré, o tornarme he? ¡O dubdosa y dura perplejidad! No sé quál escoja por más sano. En el osar, manifiesto peligro, en la covardía, denostada pérdida.96 (Oh, woe is me! What a snare I’ve caught myself in! Trying to show off how diligent and strong I am I’ve put my own neck in the noose. What will I do, oh unfortunate wretch that I am, when neither abandoning the enterprise is profitable, nor keeping with it lacks danger? Should I keep on, or turn back? O dubious and difficult dilemma! I don’t know which is the healthier path. In daring to keep on clear danger, and in cowardice, notable loss.) This is the private moment when a respite from the presence of power allows Celestina, a character who is identified as alien, to become capable of displaying a more “authentic” self. This is the moment when Fernando de Rojas’s work displays that “change of consciousness” which is the elusive target of definitions of the arrival of modernity. “As she muses to her private self, Celestina is transformed into a fleeting but significant incarnation of an insurgent skepticism and rationality; her private views unexpectedly conjure a world empty of the marvelous and of amazing events.”97 Gerli identifies this consciousness as an epistemological doubling between a world in which magic is believed and one in which it is not. This doubling extends beyond Celestina’s belief to her consciousness itself, which is able, for a moment, to cast aside her identity as bawd, witch and go-between and to give us a glimpse of her as simply a fearful—and rational—old woman. As Gerli describes it, “just as she is about to cross the threshold of Pleberio’s house, Celestina in her own mind briefly crosses the threshold of modernity.”98 The alternative to Gerli’s interpretation of magic and witchcraft in Celestina was provided by P.E. Russell, who contended that in 15th-century society, “the men of Rojas’s time believed in the efficacy of magic.”99 For Russell, the past was a distant country whose essential and unfathomable difference from us it is our task, as critics, to explicate. What Gerli counters with is an end to the idea of monolithic discourses and pure states of consciousness. What a 96 Rojas, La Celestina, 149. 97 Gerli, “ ‘Agora’,” 164. 98 Ibid., 168. 99 Elizabeth Sánchez, “Magic in La Celestina,” Hispanic Review 46, no. 4 (1978): 481.

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“Renaissance self” means for him is the depiction of a consciousness that is doubled, one in which Celestina can doubt her magical abilities one minute and return to believing in signs the next. The past is different from us and like us, simultaneously. Celestina, and our ability to analyze her conjurations, exactly straddle “the Modern Divide” that de Grazia decries. Celestina embodies all the elements of the “threatening Other” central to Greenblatt’s theory of self-fashioning. She is the quintessential “heretic, savage, witch, adulteress, traitor, Antichrist,” the alien that the process of self-fashioning must first build up in order to later tear down. A singular achievement of La Celestina is that in spite of this distancing, audiences throughout the centuries have identified with the flawed humanity of its titular character. The reified stances of the male-authored gender debate have unexpectedly allowed the voice of a woman to be heard. That said, there is another self that in this display of the revelation of “authentic” interiority becomes even more hidden. What is remarkable is the extent to which readers have no real indication in Celestina as to an author’s position on the question of women, nor has scholarship even been able to determine with certainty who the author of the first act, which features the gender debate, might have been. It is impossible to know whether this is because of a lack of surviving documentation or an active attempt to conceal identity. However, it seems likely that Fernando de Rojas, like Pulgar, actively attempted to thwart the projection of an authorial self into this immensely popular and successful work. Rojas took up the terms of the gender debate, but we see no clearer vision of him than two prologues and some acrostic verses identifying him, verses that simultaneously praise the virtues of silence and the dangers of breaking it. The self-fashioning of an earlier era had become the self-cancellation of a more dangerous time. Bibliography Agnew, Michael. “The Silences of Fernando del Pulgar in his Crónica de los Reyes Católicos.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 36 (2002): 477–95. Archer, Robert. The Problem of Woman in Late-Medieval Hispanic Literature. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Tamesis, 2005. Blamires, Alcuin. The Case for Women in Medieval Culture. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997. Burke, Peter. “Representations of the Self from Petrarch to Descartes.” In Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Roy Porter, 17–28. London: Routledge, 1997.

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Carriazo, Juan de Mata. “Estudio Preliminar.” In Crónica de los Reyes Católicos por su secretario Fernando del Pulgar, edited by Juan de Mata Carriazo, ix–clx. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1943. Chacón, Gonzalo. Crónica de don Álvaro de Luna, Condestable de Castilla, Maestre de Santiago. Edited by Juan de Mata Carriazo. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1940. Francomano, Emily C. “Introduction.” In Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel y Mirabella, The Slander Against Women, and The Defense of Ladies Against Slanderers: A Bilingual Edition and Study by Pere Torellas and Juan de Flores, edited and translated by Emily C. Francomano, 1–51. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013. Fuchs, Barbara. “1492 and the Cleaving of Hispanism.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 3 (2007): 497. Gerli, E. Michael. “‘Agora que voy sola’: Celestina, Magic, and the Disenchanted World.” eHumanista 19 (2011): 157–71. ———. “Celestina Act I Reconsidered: Cota, Mena, or Alfonso Martínez de Toledo?” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 23 (1976): 29–45. ———. “Performing Nobility: Mosén Diego de Valera and the Poetics of Converso Identity.” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 25, no. 1 (1996): 19–36. ———. “Social Crisis and Conversion: Apostasy and Inquisition in the Chronicles of Fernando del Pulgar and Andrés Bernáldez.” Hispanic Review 70 (2002): 147–67. Giles, Ryan. “Depluming the Author: The Corbacho and the Crow of Myth and Fable.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 85 (2008): 625–37. ———. “Hanging Bells on the Cat: Charivari and the Theatrics of the Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho.” In “Recuerde el alma dormida”: Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Essays in Honor of Frank A. Domínguez, edited by John K. Moore and Adriano Duque, 117–39. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2009. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1959. de Grazia, Margareta. “The Modern Divide: From Either Side.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 3 (2007): 453–67. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980. Hamilton, Michelle. “Hispanism and Sephardic Studies.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 1, no. 2 (2009): 179–94. Hutcheson, Gregory S. “Cracks in the Labyrinth: Juan de Mena, Converso Experience, and the Rise of the Spanish Nation.” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 25, no. 1 (1996): 37–52. Lacarra, María Eugenia. “Introduction to La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas,” vi–lxvi. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1995.

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Lawrance, J.N.H. “The Spread of Lay Literacy in Late Medieval Castile.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 62 (1985): 79–94. Lida de Malkiel, María Rosa. La originalidad artística de La Celestina. Buenos Aires: eudeba, 1962. Mann, Jill. Apologies to Women: Inaugural Lecture Delivered 20th November 1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Martínez de Toledo, Alfonso. Arcipreste de Toledo o Corbacho. Edited by Michael Gerli. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1983. Nirenberg, David. “Figures of Thought and Figures of Flesh: ‘Jews’ and ‘Judaism’ in Late-Medieval Spanish Poetry and Politics.” Speculum 81, no. 2 (2006): 398–426. Patterson, Lee. “On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies.” Speculum 65, no. 1 (1990): 87–108. Pons Rodríguez, Lola. “Introducción.” In Virtuosas y claras mugeres (1446) by Álvaro de Luna, 11–206. Burgos: Instituto Castellano y Leonés de la Lengua, 2008. Porter, Roy. “Introduction.” In Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Roy Porter, 1–14. London: Routledge, 1997. del Pulgar, Fernando. Letras: Glosa a las coplas de Mingo Revulgo. Edited by J. Domínguez Bordona. Madrid: Clásicos Castellanos, 1958. Rábade Obradó, María del Pilar. “La visión de la mujer en la Crónica del Halconero de Juan II.” Mirabilia 17 (2013): 305–36. Reiss, Timothy J. The Discourse of Modernism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1982. Rodríguez del Padrón, Juan. Obras completas. Edited by César Hernández Alonso. Madrid: Nacional, 1982. Rodríguez Velasco, Jesús. “Autoglosa: Diego de Valera y su Tratado en Defensa de Virtuosas Mujeres.” Romance Philology 61 (2007): 25–47. de Rojas, Fernando. La Celestina. Edited by Dorothy Severin. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2010. Sánchez, Elizabeth. “Magic in La Celestina.” Hispanic Review 46, no. 4 (1978): 481–94. de San Pedro, Diego. Obras completas II: Cárcel de amor. Edited by Keith Whinnom. Madrid: Castalia, 1971. de Santillana, Marqués. Poesías completas. Edited by Maxim P.A.M. Kerkhof and Ángel Gómez Moreno. Madrid: Castalia, 2003. Seidenspinner-Núñez, Dayle. “Inflecting the Converso Voice: A Commentary on Recent Theories.” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 25, no. 1 (1996): 6–18. Serrrano, Florence. “Del debate a la propaganda política mediante la Querella de las mujeres en Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Diego de Valera, y Álvaro de Luna.” Talia dixit 7 (2012): 97–115.

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Smith, Wendell. “Rescuing Damsels: Chivalry and Salic Law in the Chronicle of Fernando del Pulgar.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 42 (2008): 433–57. Snow, Joseph T. Celestina by Fernando de Rojas: An Annotated Bibliography of World Interest 1930–1985. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1985. de Valera, Diego. Tratado en defenssa de virtuossas mugeres. In Prosistas castellanos del siglo XV, 55–86. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1959. Weiss, Julian. “Álvaro de Luna, Juan de Mena, and the Power of Courtly Love.” mln 106 (1991a): 241–56. ———. “Fernán Pérez de Guzmán: Poet in Exile.” Speculum 66, no. 1 (1991b): 96–108. ———. “‘¿Qué demandamos de las mugeres?’: Forming the Debate about Women in Late Medieval Spain (With a Baroque Response).” In Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, edited by Thelma Fenster and Clare A. Lees, 237–73. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Weissberger, Barbara “‘Deceitful Sects’: The Debate about Women in the Age of Isabel the Catholic.” In Gender in Debate From the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, edited by Thelma S. Fenster and Clare A. Lees, 207–35. New York: Palgrave, 2002. ———. Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

chapter 7

A Theology of Self-fashioning: Hernando de Talavera’s Letter of Advice to the Countess of Benavente Mark D. Johnston For any study of “self-fashioning” in the medieval era, an essential resource is the voluminous corpus of texts on conduct and behavior. Depending on how broadly one defines this corpus, it can embrace a plethora of distinct genres, ranging from wisdom literature and treatises on moral theology to “mirrors for princes,” manuals of chivalry, courtesy books, letters or poems of advice from parents to children, guides to estate management, monastic rules, and many other specialized texts of instruction on behavior.1 Examples of conduct literature appear in virtually every period of the Middle Ages, but proliferated in the vernacular languages especially after the 13th century. In Castilian, there is a rich tradition of wisdom literature (literatura sapiencial) but far fewer examples of the other, more specialized genres.2 Scarcely half a dozen individual treatises exclusively focused on conduct exist in Castilian, and three of these are the work of Hernando de Talavera, who published them at Granada in 1496, in a collection of his writings, while serving as the newly acquired Muslim territory’s first archbishop.3 Talavera presumably compiled this collection as a 1 For convenient introductions to this diverse material, see Medieval Conduct, eds. Kathleen Ashley and Robert L.A. Clark (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001); and Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides to Behaviour for Youths, with English Translations, ed. Mark D. Johnston (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). 2 Useful surveys of the literatura sapiencial are Marta Haro Cortés, Literatura de castigos en la Edad Media: libros y colecciones de sentencias (Madrid: Ediciones de Laberinto, 2003); and Alicia Esther Ramadori, Literatura sapiencial hispánica del siglo XIII (Bahía Blanca: Universidad Nacional del Sur, 2001). 3 Breue y muy prouechosa doctrina de lo que deue saber todo christiano con otros tractados muy prouechosos conpuestos por el Arçobispo de Granada (Granada: Meinhard Ungut and Johann Pegnitzer von Nürnberg, 1496). On the circumstances and exact date of this printing, see Felipe Pereda, Las imágenes de la Discordia: Política y poética de la imagen sagrada en la España del cuatrocientos (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2007), 269–80. A very unreliable transcription of this volume, prepared by Miguel Mir, is available in the first volume of Escritores místicos españoles, Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 16 (Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, 1911), 1–103. All references in this study to the 1496 edition of Talavera’s works cite the pagination of the digital reproduction of the copy held by the Real Academia de la Historia; url: http://bvpb. mcu.es [hereafter “rah”]. For ease of reading, I have modernized the punctuation and capitalization (but not orthography) in all quotations; all translations into English are my own. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291003_009

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guide to pastoral care for the clergy of his new archdiocese. The thirteen extant copies of this 1496 collection display curious codicological variations, suggesting that Talavera’s printers perhaps assembled each copy individually from separately printed texts.4 While some of the texts included clearly served the needs of clergy responsible for evangelizing the kingdom’s Muslim population, the relevance to this task of the three conduct texts is less obvious.5 These three works, all written earlier in Talavera’s career for different audiences and occasions, offer very diverse kinds of moral and ethical guidance. They are the Tractado contra el murmurar y maldezir (an undated theological treatise against slander)6; Tractado contra la demasia de vestir y de calçar y de comer y de beuer (a defense of sumputary laws adopted by the city of Valladolid in 1477)7; and the Tractado de como deuemos espender el tiempo (a letter of advice on the management of daily affairs, written for María Pacheco, Countess of Benavente).8 Talavera also produced texts offering instructions for a female religious house, the Suma y breve compilación de cómo han de bivir y conversar las religiosas de Sant Bernardo,9 guidelines for the organization of his own archiepiscopal household,10 and an untitled memorial (memorandum) of terse mandates on religious conformity, apparently composed after 1502 for the newly baptized Muslim population of Granada.11 Of all these works, the most intriguing for studying individual norms of self-fashioning is his letter to María Pacheco, because of its attention to how she must fulfill the very practical and

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I thank my colleague Isidro Rivera for this possible explanation of these variations. In separate studies, currently in preparation for publication, I examine the import of these works for Talavera’s moral and social leadership as archbishop of Granada’s mixed Muslim and Christian population. rah, 212–50. I am currently preparing an edition of this text for publication. rah, 314–414. Available edited by Teresa de Castro, “El tratado sobre el vestir, calzar y comer del arzobispo Hernando de Talavera,” Revista Espacio, Tiempo, Forma, Serie 3, Historia Medieval 14 (2001): 11–92. rah, 419–62. Pages 449–50 in this copy are blank; quotations below from the text in these missing pages are from the corresponding folios of an earlier manuscript version, preserved in Escorial b-IV-26, fols 1r–27v. I am grateful to my colleague Núria SillerasFernández for sharing with me a digital reproduction of this manuscript. Cécile Codet, “Edición de la Suma y breve compilación de cómo han de bivir y conversar las religiosas de Sant Bernardo que biven en los monasterios de la cibdad de Ávila de Hernando de Talavera (Biblioteca del Escorial, ms. a.IV-29),” Memorabilia 14 (2012): 1–57. Ed. J. Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción de fray Hernando de Talavera para el regimen interior de su palacio,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 96 (1930): 785–835. Tarsicio de Azcona, Isabel la Católica: Estudio crítico de su vida y su reinado (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1964), 761–63.

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material demands of her daily duties. Modern scholars have frequently mined this text for nuggets of colorful detail about courtly culture; many more have cited it as a manifesto of late medieval anti-feminism. The analysis below seeks to suggest how this characterization as “anti-feminist” is, at worst, simply wrong and, at best, an incomplete reading of Talavera’s text, which in fact offers a careful defense of the Countess’s right to craft for herself the daily regimen appropriate to her estado (status). Finally, it will suggest how Talavera applies basic principles of moral theology to “theorizing” commonplace advice on aristocratic conduct, thereby creating an unusually coherent model for María Pacheco’s ongoing “self-fashioning” of her role as a noblewoman and for the realization of her individual agency in that role.

Hernando de Talavera

Hernando de Talavera remains one of the most neglected major figures from the history of late 15th-century Spain. A brief summary of his life can scarcely do justice to his multifarious influence in the political affairs of Castile under the Catholic Monarchs. He was born around 1430 of humble and probably converso origins. No known documentation conclusively supports the claims regarding his converso heritage, but Coleman, assessing the consensus of modern scholarship on this question, concludes that the lack of proof probably confirms such an assumption.12 Suberbiola Martínez does not hesitate to cite Talavera’s converso background as an explanation for his subsequent choices of political associates and allies.13 Data about Talavera’s early life are almost wholly conjectural, but after reaching adolescence he was able, with support from Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the powerful Lord of Oropesa, to study at the University of Salamanca, where he eventually became a professor of moral theology. He abruptly abandoned this academic post to join the Hieronymite Order in 1466. He quickly rose to prominence in the Order, gaining fame as a compelling preacher and effective reformer, which evidently led to his recruitment into royal service by Queen Isabel around 1475 or 1476. Talavera subsequently served for more than 20 years as her personal confessor, acting also as her chief political advisor and operative. He played a decisive role in some of the 12 13

David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada: Society and Religious Culture in an Old-World Frontier City, 1492–1600 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 84. Jesús Suberbiola Martínez, Real Patronato de Granada: El arzobispo Talavera, la Iglesia y el Estado Moderno 1486–1516 (Granada: Caja General de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad, 1985), esp. 51, 61–62, 101, 136, 268 and passim.

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major events of her reign, such as: leading the difficult campaign to recover royal rents previously abandoned to the nobility by her brother King Enrique IV; chairing the commission that evaluated Columbus’s plans for overseas exploration; negotiating the privileges that would give the Crown almost exclusive control over the future Church of Granada (the Real Patronato); and finally, serving for fifteen years as the first archbishop of Granada after the kingdom’s ultimate surrender to Castile in 1492. He died in 1507, just as a papal review exonerated his archiepiscopal household from harsh inquisitorial charges of “judaizing,” accusations almost surely engineered by the many lay and ecclesiastical enemies that he attracted in his long career of service to the crown.14 The vast scope of Talavera’s activity during the reign of Isabel and Fernando is probably the main reason that we still have no full account of his career by any modern historian. Almost fifty years ago, Tarsicio de Azcona noted in his critical biography of Isabel that modern scholarship “no ha dedicado todavía la atención que merece” (has still not dedicated the attention that he merits).15 Since then, knowledge of his career has advanced piecemeal, beginning with the research published by the late Francisco Márquez Villanueva in 1960–61, which served to make Talavera’s religious polemic Cathólica impugnación the best known of his many writings to modern readers.16 Suberbiola Martínez and Vega García-Ferrer have produced, respectively, excellent detailed studies of his archiepiscopal administration and liturgical works, which interested readers should consult for the wealth of data that they offer on these aspects of Talavera’s career.17 The 1992 quincentenary of Granada’s surrender to Castile also inspired several publications and republications of works about Talavera, but these contributed almost no new information, and often imitated the quasi-hagiographical perspective of many previous biographies of the first archbishop of Granada.18 Readers seeking a reliable brief account of his career 14

As suggested by Suberbiola Martínez, Real Patronato de Granada, 125, 253, 268, and 272–73. 15 Azcona, Isabel la Católica, 226. 16 Francisco Márquez Villanueva, Investigaciones sobre Juan Álvarez Gato: Contribución al conocimiento de la literatura castellana del siglo XV (Madrid: S. Aguirre Torre, 1960); and Hernando de Talavera, Cathólica impugnación, ed. Francisco Márquez de Villanueva (Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1961). 17 Suberbiola Martínez, Real Patronato de Granada, 144–314; María Julieta Vega GarcíaFerrer, Fray Hernando de Talavera y Granada (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2007). 18 Alonso Fernández de Madrid, Vida de Fray Fernando de Talavera, primer arzobispo de Granada, ed. F.G. Olmedo (Madrid, 1931), ed. F.J. Martínez Medina (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1992); Luis Resines Llorente, Hernando de Talavera, Prior del Monasterio de Prado (Salamanca: Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León, 1993).

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can still profitably consult Aldea’s introduction to his edition of Talavera’s will; Ladero Quesada’s essay “De la corte a la misión” provides a well-balanced, summary appreciation of Talavera’s endeavors as archbishop of Granada.19

Talavera’s Letter to María Pacheco: Text and Context

María Pacheco was the eldest daughter of the powerful Castilian magnate Juan Pacheco, who married her in 1466 to Rodrigo Alonso Pimentel, Count of Benavente.20 The circumstances of Talavera’s letter to María Pacheco are obvious from its preface: she requested guidance regarding the orderly conduct of her daily affairs, and he complied by writing this missive.21 At the time, Talavera was evidently her “confessor” and “chaplain,” as the letter indicates.22 Ignoring the mention of this role, Cécile Codet conjectures that Talavera wrote the letter during the first years of his service to Isabel, probably during 1475–76, when Pacheco’s husband was a prisoner in Portugal, because the letter never mentions the Count’s role in managing their estate.23 However, Talavera’s text nowhere invokes this circumstance, and such advice for noblewomen was in any case a commonplace of conduct literature for aristocratic readers, so references to María Pacheco’s duties of estate management are not 19

20

21 22 23

Quintín Aldea, “Hernando de Talavera, su testamento y su biblioteca,” Homenaje a Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel osb, Studia Silensia 3 (Silos: Abadía de Santo Domingo, 1976), 1:513–47; Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, “Fray Hernando de Talavera en 1492: De la corte a la misión,” Chronica nova 34 (2008): 249–75. Interesting for its speculation about the conflict between Talavera’s evangelizing tactics and its opponents is Stefania Pastore, Il vangelo e la spada: L’Inquisizione di Castiglia e i suoi critici (1460–1598) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003). Of unfortunately limited value is Isabella Iannuzzi, El poder de la pa­labra en el siglo XV: fray Hernando de Talavera (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 2009), which devotes more than 600 pages to “contextualizing” Talavera’s career within the history of 15th-century Iberia and Europe while adding virtually no new insights about him or his life. On the Pacheco family and its almost omnipresent role in the politics of this era, see Nancy F. Marino, Don Juan Pacheco: Wealth and Power in Late Medieval Spain (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006). rah, 421–22. Ibid., 419, 462. Cécile Codet, “Hablar de la mujer o hablar a la mujer en tiempos de los Reyes Católicos: visiones contrastadas en tres tratados de Hernando de Talavera,” La Clé des Langues 2 (2010–11): 1–18, esp. 1, 12; url: http://cle.ens-lyon.fr/espagnol/hablar-de-la-mujer-ohablar-a-la-mujer-en-tiempos-de-los-reyes-catolicos-visiones-contrastadas-en-trestratados-de-hernando-de-talavera-95016.kjsp.

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necessarily conclusive evidence for dating the text, which probably predates his service to Isabel. Talavera’s letter to María Pacheco survives in two witnesses: an early, undated manuscript version (Escorial b-IV-26, fols 1r–27v); and the version printed in the omnibus volume of his writings at Granada in 1496. The two versions are essentially identical in their content. The lone substantive difference is replacement of the manuscript text’s division into sections (in the manner of a learned treatise) with a simpler division into serial chapters for the printed version. Apart from variations in orthography, virtually all other differences between the manuscript text and the 1496 edition are stylistic: Talavera adds or deletes a word here and there, reshapes a phrase for rhetorical emphasis, updates references to his own ecclesiastical titles,24 or adds a scriptural reference. The frequency of these revisions diminishes somewhat in the course of the printed text, suggesting perhaps some fatigue on Talavera’s part as he amended his work for publication. The only completely new idea in the 1496 edition is a sentence from Chapter 13, inserted into his recommendations about the Countess’s visitation of local churches to observe major feast days. Talavera censoriously comments, perhaps echoing his defense of Valladolid’s sumptuary laws, that “Verdad es que las dueñas salen con tanta pompa & con tanto aparato, que no sé si seria mejor todos días oyr en casa los officios” (Truthfully, ladies go out publicly with such pomp and display that I don’t know if it would be better [for them] every day to hear services at home).25 In its genre and style, Talavera’s letter to María Pacheco is among the least academic of his writings, but it still displays characteristics of a Scholastic quaestio, most obviously in the earlier manuscript version’s division of the texts into topical sections. As one might expect from someone who began his career teaching moral theology, Talavera poses and answers questions, counters objections, and typically offers a final judgment on each issue that he treats. He does all this in the same easy but elegant style found in so many of his other writings, a feature of his work that led Bertini, decades ago, to praise Talavera as one of the best vernacular stylists of the Spanish “Pre-Renaissance.”26 Talavera’s humanist affinities and talents deserve emphasis: his first known work, done as a student, was a translation of Petrarch’s invective Contra 24 25 26

Compare Escorial b-IV–26, fols 1r and 27v, with rah, 419 and 462. rah, 460. Giovanni Maria Bertini, “Hernando de Talavera, escritor espiritual (siglo XV),” in Actas del Cuarto Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas (1971), eds. Eugenio Bustos Tovar et al. (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1982), 1:173–90.

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medicum quendam, made for his patron, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo.27 The personal library that he left on his death included many classical and humanist authors; most interesting, as perhaps relevant to his advice for a powerful noblewoman such as María Pacheco, is a Castilian translation of Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris.28 The attention to style imbibed from his life-long humanist interests is obvious in Talavera’s careful revisions of his original letter to María Pacheco for publication in the 1496 volume. Regarding the contents of Talavera’s letter, Codet concludes that ultimately he “no se independiza de los planteamientos tradicionales” (he does not depart from traditional statements) regarding women, their status, or roles in society.29 This judgment aptly recognizes the very conventional character of nearly all the specific advice that Talavera offers, but ignores its overall scheme of argumentation, which the analysis below seeks to explicate more exactly. Selective readings of Talavera’s letter to María Pacheco have popularized the claim by modern scholars that his text seeks to impose a quasi-religious regimen on her life. This interpretation, evidently initiated by Oñate y Pérez,30 continues to appear in recent studies of his advice to the Countess. Codet argues that Talavera prescribes a conventual (monastic) lifestyle.31 Christoph Strosetzki cites the letter as an example of “ascetic” guides to conduct.32 Such characterizations contradict Talavera’s own words. He specifically tells María Pacheco that she owes to God only a tithe of her daily time, which he therefore calculates at no more than 2.5 hours per day for all religious and spiritual activities, and that a clerical schedule of prayer and devotion “es para los ecclesiasticos, mas non para vuestro estado” (is for religious, but not for [one of] your status).33 Any interpretation of Talavera’s advice to María Pacheco as a quasiclerical regimen of behavior too facilely leaps to definition of that advice as a “ritualization” of her daily activity, ignoring the many pragmatic qualifications that he introduces. To avoid such reductive distortions of Talavera’s text, a careful analysis of his argumentation is imperative. 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Invectivas o reprehensiones contra el médico rudo y parlero, ed. I. Scoma (Messina: Edizioni Di Nicolò, 2000). Aldea, “Hernando de Talavera,” 537. Codet, “Hablar de la mujer,” 16. María del Pilar Oñate y Pérez, El feminismo en la literatura española (Madrid: EspasaCalpe, 1938), 32–36. Codet, “Hablar de la mujer,” 9. Christoph Strosetzki, La literatura como profesión: En torno a la autoconcepción de la existencia erudita y literaria en el Siglo de Oro español (Kassel: Reichenberger, 1997), 32–33. rah, 441–42 and 445.

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The Argumentation of Talavera’s Letter to María Pacheco

Hernando de Talavera’s letter to María Pacheco comprises four discrete parts: first, a lengthy defense of the Countess’s desire to manage well her time; second, an explanation of the time owed to God, to one’s self, and to others; third, a model schedule for daily affairs; and fourth, a brief concluding exhortation to persevere in the self-discipline of managing one’s life. The first section is by far the longest in Talavera’s letter: five chapters and 17 of 41 pages in the 1496 printed edition. Chapter 1 opens by defining time as the most precious material good: Porque ninguna cosa tenemos despues de las spirituales que mas nin tanto valga: la fazienda, la honrra, el linaje, la hermosura y la salud aprouecha nada ó muy poco, si no ay tiempo para vsar bien dello.34 (Because we have nothing, after spiritual goods, worth so much: wealth, honor, lineage, beauty, and health accomplish little or nothing if there is no time to use them well.) He adds as well the sententious advice that “El tiempo vençe lo que la razon nin la fuerça no puede” (time overcomes what reason or force cannot),35 an anticipation of his concluding advice that the Countess “persevere” in the effort to manage her life.36 Next, Talavera explains in detail how time is part of the natural order of God’s material creation, governed by the movement of the heavens, and invokes a scriptural condemnation of people who ignore the natural order of time that even birds recognize: Y quexase [el Señor] que el cernicalo, la cigüeña, la tórtola, y la golondrina conoscan el tienpo en que han de anidar y sacar sus pollos, y que muchos ombres no conozcan ni entiendan la diferencia de los tiempos ni como dellos se han de aprouechar.37 (And [the Lord] complains that the kestrel, stork, turtledove, and swallow know the time to nest and bear their young, but that many men do not know or understand differences in time or how they should use them.)

34 35 36 37

rah, 422. Ibid., 426. Ibid., 446, 461. Ibid., 427.

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Talavera’s lengthy explanation of time well ordered and well spent as conforming to nature is critical to his defense of the Countess’s desire to manage well her daily affairs, because it ultimately establishes her intention as a natural and moral imperative for fulfillment of her noble duties within the very practical circumstances of her situation, as will become clear. He concludes his first chapter with an unambiguous endorsement of her intention: “Pues digo y es verdad que vos, muy noble señora, demandays grand cosa, necessaria & muy prouechosa” (So I say and it is true, very noble lady, that you seek something great, necessary, and beneficial).38 In Chapter 2, Talavera begins enumerating possible objections to María Pacheco’s intention, starting with the difficulty of bringing order to the disorder of court life, a topic that elicits one of his most impassioned rhetorical flourishes: O quien pudiesse dezir y escreuir por menudo quantos y quantos peccados & males se cometen á esta causa en los palacios & casas de muchos grandes! O quantas luxurias, quantas palabras & obras dissolutas! O quantos pecados cometen los rapazes guardando de noche a las puertas de los grandes las mulas ó los cauallos! O quantos pecados & quantas dissoluciones los pages esperando con las hachas! O quantas son las parlas demasiadas, murmuraciones, juyzios & maldiciones que fazen & dizen los otros que estan aguardando!39 (O who can say or write in detail how many, many sins and evils are committed from this cause in the palaces and houses of many great people? O how much lust, how many dissolute words and deeds! O how many sins young men commit watching by night mules or horses at the doors of the great! O how many sins and how much dissipation the pages waiting with torches! O how many are the unnecessary chatterings, murmurings, opinions, and curses done and said by the others waiting!) And so on, for almost an entire page, in a veritable diatribe of menosprecio de corte (scorn for the court). In Chapter 3, Talavera introduces the most serious objections to María Pacheco’s request, namely, the constraints imposed on her good intentions by her gender and her marital status: Aun deueys mirar, noble señora, que no soys libre para hazer vuestra voluntad, ca el dia que fuistes ayuntada al marido en el estado matrimonial, 38 39

Ibid., 428. Ibid., 430–31.

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esse dia perdistes vuestra libertad … no podeys contra su querer & voluntad, saluo si soys muy hazendosa, ó si tenes algund parafrenal, que es alguna hazienda de mas de la que vos dieron en dote.40 (You should see, noble lady, that you are not free to do your will, for the day that you were joined to your husband in matrimony, that day you lost your freedom … you cannot act against his desire and will, unless you are very industrious, or have some parafrenal, which is some property beyond what was given to you in dowry.) The last lines cited are a typical example of the various qualifications that Talavera invokes in this chapter to counter the conventional definition of women’s subjection to men. Nonetheless, this definition appears unambiguously a few lines later, in the words most often cited by modern scholars as evidence of Talavera’s anti-feminism. After recalling Eve’s original transgression in Paradise, which incurred the punishment of subjection inherited by all women, he adds: Y avnque no ouiera peccado, era cosa natural y mucho razonable que la muger, que comunmente como tiene flaco el cuerpo y mucho menor el esfuerço, assi no tiene tan complida discrecion, sigua y obedesca el seso y querer del varon, que en todo es mas perfecto. Ca es ley general que todas las cosas inferiores & menores sean mouidas & regidas por las superiores & mayores.41 (And even had there been no sin, it was a very reasonable and natural thing that the woman, who commonly has a weak body and much less strength, and so has less capable judgment, follow and obey the mind and desire of the man, who in everything is more perfect. For it is a general law that all inferior and lesser things be moved and ruled by superior and greater ones.) To this apparently inescapable condition of naturally ordained servitude, Talavera counters, in Chapters 4 and 5, with a theological argument: the Countess is morally obligated to seek, to know, and to do good. He summarizes this argument succinctly at the end of Chapter 5 by insisting that “Menos mal es por cierto saber lo bueno & no fazerlo que querer no lo saber porque no se aya de fazer” (It is certainly less evil to know the good and not to do it than to

40 Ibid., 433. 41 Ibid.

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refuse knowing it in order not to do it).42 He concludes by asserting again the merit, and even the divine inspiration, of María Pacheco’s right intention: Avnque sea, como es dicho, graue la execucion dello & mucho difficultosa, antes tengamos y creamos que lo inspira el Espiritu Santo, sembrador y amador de todo buen pensamiento. Y que assi es meritorio y loable á vos, noble señora, dessear y saber aquesta orden que demandays.43 (Although it may be, as has been said, hard to execute and very difficult, none the less we hold and believe that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, the sower and lover of every good thought. And so it is meritorious and laudable for you, noble lady, to desire and to know this order that you seek.) It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this turn in Talavera’s argument. To all the constraints and limitations of María Pacheco’s natural and social condition (such as her gender and marital status), he opposes her divinely legitimated right to realize her own good intentions, to actualize her will in the conduct of her life. In a subsequent passage (discussed below), Talavera reprises and defines even more succinctly her obligation to fulfill her general duties to God, the Crown, and the Church, above and beyond any limitations imposed by her individual circumstances. Having established thus the merit, and indeed the moral imperative, of the Countess’s desire to organize her daily affairs, Talavera turns in the second section of his letter (Chaps 6 through 9, 13 pages) to describing the general division of one’s life in service to God, to one’s self, and to others. Chapter 7 includes the calculation that 2.5 hours daily is sufficient for service to God.44 He explains at length how no particular time is more worthy than any other, because, as Scripture teaches, the first may be as valuable as the last and the least as much as the greatest, ultimately extending application of this principle from the specific organization of her daily schedule to the general hierarchy of society as a whole: “que los que son grandes ó mayores, si se tienen por tales, no aplaze á Nuestro Señor, mas los que son pequeños en sus ojos & humildes de coraçon” (for those who are great or superior, if they consider themselves such, do not please Our Lord, but rather those who are small in His eyes and humble of heart).45 Stated thus as an axiom of Christian society, these lines invoke a 42 43 44 45

Ibid., 436. Ibid., 437. Ibid., 441. Ibid., 444.

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commonplace of medieval moral theology and ecclesiology: the lack of homology between material rank in this world and spiritual merit in the divine order, illustrated in many Gospel stories, such as the beggar Lazarus or the widow’s mite.46 These scriptural passages became a kind of ideological shorthand in defenses of the efforts by women religious, lay preachers, or anyone else of nonecclesiastical status to exercise moral or spiritual leadership outside the hierarchy of the Church. Caciola’s detailed study of one example, the visionary women regarded as “discerning spirits,” analyzes especially well the function of this trope for one category of subjects.47 Invoking “performance theory” (a model of behavior to apply with caution, for reasons discussed below), Caciola describes a process that could easily apply as well to Talavera’s advice for María Pacheco: Thus the self-representations of an individual, as she engages in various actions associated with a particular role, constitute a “performance” of an identity, a stylization of the visible self (i.e., the body and its gestures, clothing, conversation, daily habits, and living spaces) into a recognizable pattern.48 Of course María Pacheco’s role as an aristocratic lady requires far less validation than the agency of visionary religious women. But Talavera’s invocation of this commonplace trope is an intriguing, if not daring, effort to justify comprehensively her management of her daily affairs as the performance of an identity that transcends the limitations of her material circumstances, by invoking the higher authority of divine wisdom. In effect, it privileges her exercise of her individual right intention over her subjection to her socio-economic status. Chapter 8 describes the daily activities that the Countess should reserve to herself, emphasizing how: Para vos, noble señora, aueys de tomar el tiempo necessario á vuestra sustentacion y á vuestra auisacion y para alguna recreacion. Para vuestra sustentatacion aueys de tomar el tiempo que es necessario para dormir, y para vuestro comer. Para vuestra auisacion deueys expender algo en leer 46

47 48

Luke 16:19–31; Mark 12:41–44, Luke 21:1–4. This interpretation of these passages is already canonical in the Glossa ordinaria of the 12th century: Walafridi Strabo Fuldensis Monachi Opera Omnia, 2 vols, Patrologia Latina 113:12–1316 and 114:9–966 (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1852), esp. 114:316A-317B and 334A. Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003). Ibid., 84.

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ó en oyr leer y en comunicar algunas vezes con personas sabias & spirituales, que vos puedan auisar & informar de como vos aueys de saluar. Para vuestra recreacion se deue algo gastar en algunos passatienpos honestos que assi recreen y esfuercen la carne que el alma no pierda nada. Item en alguna obra de manos, la qual á vos ha de ser recreación & no trabajo.49 (For yourself, noble lady, you should take the time necessary for your sustenance and guidance, and for some recreation. For your sustenance you should take the time necessary to sleep and to eat. For your guidance you should spend some time in reading or listening to readings and in conversing at times with wise and devout persons who can advise and inform you regarding your salvation. For your recreation, spend a while in decent pastimes that refresh and invigorate the flesh so that the spirit does not suffer. Likewise in some manual labor, which for you should be recreation and not work.) This last admonition leads Talavera into an intriguing tangential defense of the relative value of manual and intellectual labors. While recognizing that a prince or prelate who “obra con el entendimiento” (works with the mind) is superior to any vassal or subordinate, Talavera adds his own judgment to conclude this question: Pues no quiero dezir aquello, mas digo y esta es mi intention, que yerra gravemente y tiene vida muy mísera el que en burlas y en cosas sin prouecho gasta y pierde el tiempo y quiere bevir del afan y sudor ageno, y que algund grano de sal de occupacion y exercicio corporal a todo hombre puede aprouechar o a nadie puede dañar.50 (However, I do not mean that, but rather I say and this is my intention, that anyone errs gravely and leads a very wretched life who spends and wastes time in nonsense and useless things or wishes to live from the effort and sweat of another, and that some grain of salt from physical endeavors or exercise can benefit or not hurt anyone.) This brief expression of social criticism is not simply a warning against sloth or frivolous excess but reprises Talavera’s foundational argument about the value of time as a material good, worthy of morally responsible stewardship and therefore a rightful object of the Countess’s interest. It is again a 49 50

rah, 446–47. As the pages 449–50 containing this section in rah are blank, I supply the text from Escorial b-IV–26, fol. 20r.

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justification for María Pacheco’s dedication to realizing her right intentions through practical exercise of her role as a noblewoman. The “grain of salt” that he subsequently describes involves far more than the occasional exercise of religious devotion through genteel, gendered handicrafts (such as embroidering altar linens), but instead extends to all aspects of the “handson” management of her household affairs (such as providing audiences to her vassals, reviewing her household staff, and conferring with her mayordomo). In Chapter 9 from this section, Talavera delineates the service due to one’s superiors, peers, and inferiors, explaining that the Countess’s superiors include: Todos los que tienen sobre vos jurisdicción, y los parientes y affines de mayor edad, agora sean eclesiasticos, agora seglares; y entre estos es mucho principal el magnífico señor conde, vuestro marido, cuya voluntad y querer vos ha de ser continua lei, como arriba fue apuntado, en lo que no fuere contra dios ni contra el rey ni contra vuestro perlado.51 (Everyone who has jurisdiction over you, both relatives and older associates, whether clergy or lay; and among these the first by far is the magnificent Lord Count, your husband, whose will and desire must be for you a constant law, as indicated above, in so far as it is not contrary to God, nor contrary to the king, nor contrary to your clergy.) This final caveat explicitly defines the higher obligations—God, Crown, and Church—that the Countess must respect above submission to her husband’s will. Here, more explicitly than in any other passage of his letter, Talavera defines the social, political, and spiritual orders that, in his plan for María Pacheco’s life, both delimit her behavior and authorize her freedom to act within those limits. Finally, Talavera urges the Countess to be a buen despensero (good dispenser) of justice, reserving at least one-third of her day for meeting her vassals and giving “lo que á cada vno es deuido” (to all their due), which is, of course, the canonical ancient and medieval definition of justice.52 He concludes review of this duty with a rhetorical question about the capacity of women to fulfill this responsibility, which he answers by citing, from María Pacheco’s own experience, the example of her famous mother María Portocarrero (d. 1471):

51 52

Escorial b-IV-26, fol. 20v, and rah, 451, which lacks this passage up to contra dios due to pages 449–50 being blank. rah, 451–52.

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Quien será este, como dize el sabio, y alabarle hemos, especialmente en las mugeres que son naturalmente fechas para ser regidas & subjectas? Respondo que quien no procura la prelacion ni el estado, y el que lo toma porque le es mandado & pone toda diligencia en dar dello buen recabdo. Nin vos, noble señora, deueys desesperar, pues soys fija de madre que tuuo mayor estado & manera, y creen los que la conoscieron que á Dios y al mundo dio dello buena cuenta.53 (Who will this be, as the sage says, and whom we should praise, especially among women who are naturally made to be ruled and subject? I reply that one who does not seek rank or status, but accepts it because required and who applies all diligence in giving a good reckoning of it. Nor should you, noble lady, despair, because you are the daughter of a mother who had a high rank and condition, and those who knew her believe that she gave a good accounting of it to God and the world.) Just as he has argued before, Talavera insists that the Countess’s putatively inferior condition as a married woman, subject to the will of others, does not excuse her from fulfilling her universal obligations to render justice with due diligence. This duty satisfies the expectations not simply of God but of the world at large. In the third section of his letter (Chaps 10 through 13, nine pages), Talavera offers a model program for daily life. He begins by recognizing, citing the authority of Aristotle, the difficulty of applying universal principles to particular situations54 and then offers a very schematic schedule of activity for morning, afternoon, and evening, with suggested variations to accommodate seasonal differences between the summer and winter months. This section includes the specific details of court life so often cited by modern historians, such as the advice that hearing alguna honesta musica (some decent music) or a buena leccion (good reading) after the midday meal aids digestion; that one should limit the siesta to 30 minutes; that each afternoon she should visit her children, offering them alguna dotrina buena (some good instruction); that all petitioners seeking audience should depart her household by nightfall; that the evening meal should occur no later than eight o’clock; that the Countess should confer with her mayordomo each evening about the management of her estate; that she should retire to read and pray in ­private by ten o’clock; etc.55

53 54 55

Ibid., 452. Ibid., 453. Ibid., 458–59.

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Finally, Talavera’s letter ends with the brief Chapter 14 (two pages) “exhortando a la execucion desta auisacion” (exhorting the execution of this advice).56 Above all, he counsels María Pacheco to persevere: Esforçad vos, noble señora, á poner por obra, syquiera alguna parte, y vereys como Nuestro Señor ayudará cada dia mas para todo lo restante. Esto aued por cierto, que es duro & trabajoso todo buen comienço. Mas puede tanto la costumbre que lo graue torna dulce. Sed constante & perseuerat, ca como dize el santo euangelio el que perseuerare fasta la fyn será saluo.57 (Strive, noble lady, to put this into practice, even if only partially, and you will see how Our Lord helps each day in all the rest. Know for sure that every good beginning is hard work. But custom is so powerful, that it makes the difficult become sweet. Be constant and persevere, for as the Holy Gospel says, “whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.”) With this concluding admonition, Talavera reprises real, lived time as the focus of his advice, through his invocation of “custom” and “perseverance.” Among all the material resources available to the Countess, time is more precious than wealth, honor, lineage, beauty, or health, and the one that she can manage most effectively for the realization of her own right intentions. For modern readers, familiar with the many contemporary social theories of individual agency, subjectivation, or self-fashioning, the temptation to seek a coherent theoretical model is almost inescapable.

Talavera’s Model of Self-fashioning

Many medieval guides to conduct consist of seemingly random strings of precepts, as in the texts of the literatura sapiencial or, better, of advice on behavior and duties arranged topically, like the 15th-century Castilian Castigos y dotrinas que un sabio dava a sus hijas.58 Talavera’s letter to María Pacheco offers something rather different: a single, coherently organized exposition of practical advice “theorized,” as it were, according to the principles of moral theology that Talavera of course knew well. 56 57 58

rah, 461. Ibid., 462. The reference is to Matthew 24:13. Edited by Emily C. Francomano in Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides to Behaviour for Youths, with English Translations, ed. Mark D. Johnston, 250–84 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press and Medieval Academy of America, 2009).

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Talavera’s concluding invocation of custom, as virtually his last word to the Countess, offers an obvious point of departure for understanding his advice as a model of behavior. In the Western tradition, from ancient times to the present, the term “custom” has designated the social or cultural practices that comprise the peculiar traditions of each “nation.” In medieval jurisprudence, these traditions constituted the lowest level of human law, ranking far below natural law, divine law, or the human law created for governance of a body politic.59 By applying the term “custom” to María Pacheco’s own life, Talavera appears to suggest an awareness that collective norms or ideology somehow form, construct, or control the individual subject in the nexus of relations between self and society that so many modern social theories have labored to explicate. As Catherine Bell’s classic critique of these theories reminds us, they too often rely on unanalyzed dichotomies (such as “self and society” or “thought and action”) that deserve more nuanced explication.60 The argumentation in Talavera’s advice to María Pacheco is intriguing precisely for its effort to qualify, to reconcile, and even to problematize those dichotomies—such as matter and spirit, Creator and creation, self and other, or husband and wife—that we would typically expect in a work of medieval moral theology. The model of self-fashioning that he offers certainly cannot satisfy modern expectations of social theory, but it is nonetheless interesting for its emphasis on several elements that we might recognize today as components of a paradigm for defining the relationship between self and society. Foremost among these elements is the material character of lived experience, which Talavera lays out carefully in the first chapters of his treatise: time is the most precious of material goods, and so María Pacheco, like any Christian, is morally obligated to be a good steward of this resource, using it to serve God, one’s self, and others. His subsequent detailed account of the duties and tasks that fulfill this obligation easily lends itself to interpretation as a recipe for the continuous “embodiment” of social norms and responsibilities in the Countess’s physical experience of her material existence.61 In his enumeration of her daily activities, Talavera mentions almost every bodily necessity (eating, 59 60 61

As summarized by Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1–2ae.97, which nonetheless grants to custom rather more force than the jurists usually allowed. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, with a foreword by Diane Jonte-Price (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 118–30. The primacy of the body as the irreducible physical site for constructing social identity has become almost axiomatic in much contemporary cultural criticism, especially in work based on the theories of Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1988), 156–78.

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sleeping, dressing, recreation, manual labor) except the most private functions of her toilette. As a result, almost everything that she must do can easily appear as the performative realization of her public role as an aristocratic lady, in the manner suggested by Richard Schechner and other advocates of “performance theory.”62 However, as Bell cautions, the “performative” analogy reductively elides more elements of behavior than it explicates.63 In Talavera’s advice to María Pacheco, her right intention is the irreducible foundation for the successful management of her daily affairs. Talavera repeatedly uses terms such as voluntad, querer, dessear, desseo, and intencion (will, to want, to desire, desire, intention) to describe the Countess’s wish to manage well her time and household. This deliberate realization of her will probably involves the functions of “misrecognition” so often invoked in modern social theory,64 but explicating these would involve an interpretive privilege on our part that his text consistently strives to deflect. For Talavera, the basic task facing María Pacheco is quite simply to impose her will in her daily life. Talavera’s insistence on her need and her right to do this could easily lead us into prolonged consideration of how his argumentation engages the many complex expressions in late medieval theology and philosophy of so-called “voluntarism,” of how divine grace is necessary to inspire virtuous behavior, how “infused” differ from “acquired” habits, how habits contribute to a “second nature” in humans, and so forth.65 Fortunately, Talavera himself circumvents all these complex issues, telling the Countess simply: Antes tengamos y creamos que lo inspira el espiritu santo: sembrador y amador de todo buen pensamiento. Y que assi es meritorio y loable á vos, noble señora: dessear y saber aquesta orden que demandays.66 (Nonetheless we hold and believe that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, the sower and lover of every good thought. And so it is meritorious and 62

Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction. 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 28–51. 63 Bell, Ritual Theory, 39–44. 64 Ibid., 81–82, 88. 65 The scholarship on these issues is far too vast to cite here. For an older but still useful summary account, see The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600, eds. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), Chaps. 29–39. 66 rah, 437.

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laudable for you, noble lady, to desire and to know this order that you demand.) Were it not for the fact of Talavera’s university training as a moral theologian, it would be easy to dismiss this passage as an example of “theology light,” the kind of popularizing “vernacular theology” that proliferated throughout Western Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.67 But Talavera is not “dumbing down” his argumentation for the sake of his lay reader, the Countess of Benavente. His letter to María Pacheco, who was evidently well educated, displays choices in format and argument that incorporate changes in the discourse of moral theology from his era. For example, modern readers accustomed to medieval accounts of Christian ethics arranged according to the traditional scheme of the seven virtues and vices might be surprised to find that he nowhere avails himself of this paradigm. By the end of the 15th century, this well-known scheme was ceding place to expositions of moral theology organized according to the Decalogue,68 a model that Talavera employs in other writings, such as his Confessional.69 If María Pacheco’s right intention drives the realization of her self and identity, then her estado defines the social duties and obligations that she must fulfill in society at large. Talavera frequently invokes these duties and obligations, using the verbs deber (should) and haber de (ought to), as in so many of the passages cited above. In several of these, he explicitly joins use of these terms with references to María Pacheco’s estado.70 The duties of her estado range widely, from general obligations, such as submission to her husband, to very specific tasks, such as conferring with her mayordomo. Talavera’s advice in the latter part of his letter is relentlessly practical, focusing on the material circumstances of her duties as an aristocratic lady. Here again, in attempting to offer a coherent model of self-fashioning for the Countess, his argumentation departs from the conventions of much precedent conduct literature, such as 67

68

69 70

Though developed originally in application to the circumstances of late medieval England, the term “vernacular theology” applies as well to the developing literate societies of any Western European country in the later Middle Ages; see The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature, eds. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Warren (New York: Palgrave, 2002). See John Bossy, “Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments,” in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 214–34. rah, 19–151. Ibid., 433, 445, 452.

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the contemporary Castigos y dotrinas que un sabio dava a sus hijas, which is replete with (sometimes extensive) narrative exempla. Talavera offers very few appeals to imitatio—that is, to examples from the life of Christ, the saints, legendary or fictional characters, or even other aristocratic women— as models for María Pacheco to imitate. He does mention that she would need the proverbial “patience of Job” to tolerate the desorden of court life, or that the Virgin Mary is the paragon of female virtue, but far more often he simply invokes the Countess’s duty to God, self, and others as the moral compass that must guide her conduct.71 Many late medieval vernacular works of conduct literature adapt their material from the collections of exempla, especially those organized to illustrate the seven vices and virtues, created to serve the needs of preachers seeking well-organized raw material for sermons to mass audiences. Talavera’s letter instead offers to an individual lay reader advice, organized according to basic principles of moral theology, as a model of personal ethics to apply in the daily exercise of her estado. Since his argumentation so often strives to qualify the constraints of that estado by invoking the privilege of María Pacheco’s right intentions, it may be tempting to theorize his advice as an exercise, in contemporary terms, to define the realization of her role as the resolution of socio-­cultural contradictions that she must continually negotiate, applying the theories of Geertz or any of their many subsequent adaptations.72 Construing Talavera’s advice as a guide to “conflict resolution” would, however, require unpacking, through analysis of contextual historical evidence, the contentions presumably inherent in the myriad daily activities of court life and would risk as well the interpretive “ritualization” of these activities in a way that Talavera explicitly seeks to avoid, as indicated above. Likewise, the detailed character of so much of his advice also helps resist the “textualization” of those activities as somehow symbolic of larger social, cultural, or political values.73 In short, Hernando de Talavera’s advice to María Pacheco offers at best a broad overview of how she can apply her right intentions to the fulfillment of her social, political, and cultural obligations, realizing in her subject self the “custom” of her estado. Any attempt to theorize his advice according to modern social theory must adopt an equally broad perspective, in order to avoid 71

72 73

rah, 431, 438, 437. In this respect, his letter to María Pacheco differs notably from his treatise against slander, which often seems simply a concatenation of biblical examples. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). An interpretive impulse cogently criticized by Bell, Ritual Theory, 45, 53.

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misconstruing the irreducibly particular “dynamics of practice,” as Bell suggests in her proposal of a “redemptive hegemony of practice”: [R]edemptive hegemony is not an explicit ideology or a single and bounded doxa that defines a culture’s sense of reality. It is a strategic and practical orientation for acting, a framework possible only insofar as it is embedded in the act itself. As such, of course, the redemptive hegemony of practice does not reflect reality more or less effectively; it creates it more or less effectively. To analyze practice in terms of its vision of redemptive hegemony is, therefore, to formulate the unexpressed assumptions that constitute the actor’s strategic understanding of the place, purpose, and trajectory of the act.74 Even this perspective on Talavera’s text risks claiming for us the privileged role of the ethnographic observer empowered to identify the “true meaning” of the unexpressed assumptions about individual practices that Talavera deliberately elides by framing them, as he does, within principles of moral theology. As interpreters of Talavera’s letter to María Pacheco, we also risk unavoidably inscribing ourselves into its textual dynamic, which is already replete with implied communicative roles. Talavera advises her in his capacity as one of the “personas sabias & spirituales” (wise and spiritual people) who can guide her to salvation, while also positioning himself rhetorically as her humble servant, almost in the role of the chaste (but still male) courtly lover prostrate before his lady, with all the hierarchical privileges implied in this posture. The social tension enacted in this authorial position applies as well, inversely, to all the other “implied readers” of Talavera’s letter. Her husband, the Count of Benavente, along with all her “parientes y affines de mayor edad, agora sean eclesiasticos, agora seglares” (relatives and older associates, whether clergy or lay), constitute potential readers of his advice, as audiences for its realization in her performance of her duties as the Countess of Benavente. This audience extends, given the chronological circumstances conjectured by Codet, to the most powerful potential reader of Talavera’s letter, Queen Isabel. It is tempting to imagine this carefully argued epistle as Talavera’s “job application” for service to a female monarch in full possession of the material resources to implement her will. As such, it would not be simply a set of particular instructions for a noblewoman like María Pacheco but a specular projection of Talavera’s own male gaze of his aspirations to hegemony as a letrado converso, a gendered reflection, in the mirror of conduct, of his own desire for service, to God, the Crown, and the Church. 74

Ibid., 85, adapting concepts from Kenelm Burrdige and Antonio Gramsci.

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Bibliography Aldea, Quintín. “Hernando de Talavera, su testamento y su biblioteca.” In Homenaje a Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel osb. Studia Silensia 3, no.1, 513–47. Silos: Abadía de Santo Domingo, 1976. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Edited by Pietro Caramello, Billuart de Rubeis, P. Faucher, et al. 4 vols. Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1948–50. Ashley, Kathleen, and Robert L.A. Clark, eds. Medieval Conduct. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. de Azcona, Tarsicio. Isabel la Católica: Estudio crítico de su vida y su reinado. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1964. Bell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, with a foreword by Diane Jonte-Price. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Bertini, Giovanni Maria. “Hernando de Talavera, escritor espiritual (siglo XV).” In Actas del Cuarto Congreso Interacional de Hispanistas (1971), edited by Eugenio Bustos Tovar, vol. 1, 173–90. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1982. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Warren, eds. The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Bossy, John. “Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments.” In Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, edited by Edmund Leites, 213–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Caciola, Nancy. Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Castigos y dotrinas que un sabio dava a sus hijas. Edited by Emily C. Francomano. In Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides to Behaviour for Youths, with English Translations, edited by Mark D. Johnston, 250–84. Medieval Academy Books 111. Toronto: University of Toronto Press and Medieval Academy of America, 2009. Codet, Cécile. “Hablar de la mujer o hablar a la mujer en tiempos de los Reyes Católicos: Visiones contrastadas en tres tratados de Hernando de Talavera.” La Clé des Langues 2 (2010–11): 1–18. Coleman, David. Creating Christian Granada: Society and Religious Culture in an OldWorld Frontier City, 1492–1600. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Domínguez Bordona, J. “Instrucción de fray Hernando de Talavera para el regimen interior de su palacio.” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 96 (1930): 785–835. Fernández de Madrid, Alonso. Vida de Fray Fernando de Talavera, primer arzobispo de Granada, ed. F.G. Olmedo (Madrid, 1931), edited by F.J. Martínez Medina. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1992.

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Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Glossa ordinaria. In Walafridi Strabo Fuldensis Monachi Opera Omnia, 2 vols., Patrologia Latina 113:12–1316 and 114:9–966. Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1852. Haro Cortés, Marta. Literatura de castigos en la Edad Media: Libros y colecciones de sentencias. Madrid: Ediciones de Laberinto, 2003. Iannuzzi, Isabella. El poder de la palabra en el siglo XV: Fray Hernando de Talavera. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 2009. Johnston, Mark D., ed. Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides to Behaviour for Youths, with English Translations. Medieval Academy Books 111. Toronto: University of Toronto Press and Medieval Academy of America, 2009. Kretzmann, Norman, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds. The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Ladero Quesada, Miguel Ángel. “Fray Hernando de Talavera en 1492: De la corte a la misión.” Chronica nova 34 (2008): 249–75. Marino, Nancy F. Don Juan Pacheco: Wealth and Power in Late Medieval Spain. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006. Márquez Villanueva, Francisco. Investigaciones sobre Juan Álvarez Gato: Contribución al conocimiento de la literatura castellana del siglo XV. Madrid: S. Aguirre Torre, 1960. Mir, Miguel. Escritores místicos españoles, vol. 1. Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 16. Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, 1911. Oñate y Pérez, María del Pilar. El feminismo en la literatura española. Madrid: EspasaCalpe, 1938. Pastore, Stefania. Il vangelo e la spada: L’Inquisizione di Castiglia e i suoi critici (1460– 1598). Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003. Pereda, Felipe. Las imágenes de la Discordia: Política y poética de la imagen sagrada en la España del cuatrocientos. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2007. Ramadori, Alicia. Literatura sapiencial hispánica del siglo XIII. Bahía Blanca: Universidad Nacional del Sur, 2001. Resines Llorente, Luis. Hernando de Talavera, Prior del Monasterio de Prado. Salamanca: Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León, 1993. Schechner, Richard. Performance Studies: An Introduction. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. Strosetzki, Christoph. La literatura como profesión: en torno a la autoconcepción de la existencia erudita y literaria en el Siglo de Oro español. Kassel: Reichenberger, 1997. Suberbiola Martínez, Jesús. Real Patronato de Granada: El arzobispo Talavera, la Iglesia y el Estado Moderno 1486–1516. Granada: Caja General de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad, 1985. de Talavera, Hernando. Breue y muy prouechosa doctrina de lo que deue saber todo christiano con otros tractados muy prouechosos conpuestos por el Arçobispo de Granada. Granada: Meinhard Ungut and Johann Pegnitzer von Nürnberg, 1496. [rah].

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———. Cathólica impugnación. Edited by Francisco Márquez Villanueva. Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1961. ———. De como cada día se deve ordenar y ocupar para que se expienda bien [Carta a la condesa de Benavente]. rah, 417–62. ———.“Instrucción de fray Hernando de Talavera para el régimen interior de su palacio.” Edited by J. Domínguez Bordona. Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 96 (1930): 785–835. ———. Invectivas o reprehensiones contra el médico rudo y parlero. Edited by I. Scoma. Messina: Edizioni Di Nicolò, 2000. ———. Memorial. Edited by Tarsicio de Azcona. In Isabel la Católica: Estudio crítico de su vida y su reinado. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1964. 761–63. ———. Suma y breve compilacion de cómo han de bivir y conversar las religiosas de Sant Bernardo que biven en los monasterios de la cibdad de Ávila, edited by Cécile Codet. In “Edición de la Suma y breve compilación de cómo han de bivir y conversar las religiosas de Sant Bernardo que biven en los monasterios de la cibdad de Ávila de Hernando de Talavera (Biblioteca del Escorial, ms. a.IV-29).” Memorabilia 14 (2012): 1–57. ———. Tractado contra la demasía de vestir y de calçar, y de comer y de beuer, edited by Teresa de Castro. In “El tratado sobre el vestir, calzar y comer del arzobispo Hernando de Talavera.” Revista Espacio, Tiempo, Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval 14 (2001): 11–92. ———. Tractado muy prouechoso contra el comun y muy continuo pecado que es detraher o murmurar y dezir mal de alguno en su absencia. rah, 212–50. Turner, Victor. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1988. Vega García-Ferrer, Julieta. Fray Hernando de Talavera y Granada. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2007.

chapter 8

Inside Perspectives: Catalina and João III of Portugal and a Speculum for a Queen-to-be1 Núria Silleras-Fernández On November 14, 1543, in the city of Salamanca, Princess Maria Manuela of Portugal (1527–45) was married in a splendid ceremony to her double first cousin, Felipe, Prince of Asturias. Thirteen years later in 1556, after the abdication of his father, Emperor Carlos V, he would become King Felipe II of Spain (b. 1527, r. 1556–98) and would rule over an empire in which “the sun never set.”2 As was customary for the period, this marriage was arranged by their parents, Catalina and João III of Portugal, on the one hand, and Carlos V, on the other (the e­ mperor’s wife, Isabel of Portugal, having already passed away). The agreement was part of a dual betrothal that united not only Maria Manuela and Felipe but also Maria Manuela’s younger brother, João Manuel, the heir to the crown of Portugal, with Juana of Austria, Felipe’s sister. This double marriage duplicated what had happened a generation earlier, when Catalina of Habsburg had been married to João III, while the Portuguese king’s sister Isabel had married the Spanish emperor, Carlos V. In this manner the Avis dynasty of Portugal and the Habsburg dynasty of the Spanish Kingdoms (and the Empire) were becoming increasingly entangled, sealing their political commitment to each other through these overlapping ­marital alliances. Typically, it was the bride who left her family and her kingdom to take up residence in the home of her husband, and it was she who would have to adjust to life in a new family, a new court, and a new land. In the case of Maria Manuela, the closeness of her own and her husband’s families mitigated these 1 I would like to thank the editor, Laura Delbrugge, for her careful planning of the volume, and her assistance with my article. The first part of this article, regarding the texts written by Catalina and João, was presented at a session, also organized by Dr. Delbrugge, at the 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, mi) in May 2014 (“Looking in the Mirror: Catalina, João III of Portugal, and a Speculum for a Queento-Be.”) The section referring to Maria Manuela’s entourage in Spain was presented at the Third Kings and Queens Conference, Entourage, at the University of Winchester (uk) in July 2014 (“An Entourage Proper for a Princess: Maria Manuela of Portugal in the Spanish Court (1543–1544)”). I want to thank the public participants for their comments and questions. 2 The marital agreement dates from December 1, 1542, and the actual signature of the union from May 12, 1543. The wedding ceremonial is described in several accounts: Entrada en España de la princesa María de Portugal, hija del rey de Portugal D. Juan, i su casamiento con el © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291003_010

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pressures to some extent, in that the new environment was hardly culturally alien. Nevertheless, she would have to navigate through the personal politics of an unfamiliar court. There would be no mother-in-law to compete with or to mentor her; her aunt, Empress Isabel, having died four years earlier, in 1539. As for Felipe’s sisters, these would neither present competition nor provide support; Maria and Juana were young and, in any event, would soon be sent off as brides to foreign courts. Hence, from the moment the 16-year-old Maria Manuela arrived she would be the most important woman at the imperial p ­ alace—a role she would face very much on her own. Felipe not only was heir to the throne but also was already serving his father as regent in Spain; Maria Manuela would become, for all intents and purposes, a sort of reigning queen, with all of the responsibility that this entailed, as regards to developing networks of power and influence and crafting the royal image. In fact, it was likely that she too would eventually serve as regent, as Empress Isabel had, and as so many other Habsburg queens and princes­ ses ended up doing—an empire that stretched from the Iberian Peninsula across Europe and to the Americas and beyond could not be effectively controlled without engaging members of the royal family as viceroys and lieutenants.3 She also bore a

príncipe D. Felipe II en Salamanca (bne, sig. 11907, fols 7r–16v); Nuevas noticias de las fiestas que se hicieron en Salamanca a la entrada de la princesa doña María de Portugal el 10 de noviembre de 1543, con motivo de su matrimonio con el príncipe de Asturias, Felipe (Real Academia de la Historia (rah), sig. 9/48); and Recibimiento que se hiço en Salamanca a la princesa Doña María de Portugal viniendo a casarse con el príncipe Don Felipe II (bne, ms 4013, fols 13r–58v). See Fernando Rodríguez de la Flor and Ester Galindo, Política y fiesta en el Barroco (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1997), 15. Maria Manuela and Felipe were double first cousins because Maria Manuela’s father and Felipe’s mother (João III and Isabella of Portugal) were the children of Manuel I of Portugal and Maria of Aragon, and Maria Manuela’s mother and Felipe’s father (Catalina of Habsburg and Carlos V) were the children of Juana I of Castile and Felipe of Habsburg. 3 In 1529 Carlos V appointed his step-great-grandmother, Germana de Foix, along with her husband, as viceroys of Valencia. Likewise, his wife was regent of Spain; his aunt, Margaret of Austria, was regent in the Low Countries for 11 years; in 1531 her niece, Mary of Hungary, replaced the latter. During Felipe II’s reign (1556–98), his sister Juana (Princess of Portugal) was regent of Spain, and his half sister Margaret of Parma was regent of the Low Countries, only to be replaced by the king’s own daughter, Isabel Clara Eugenia, and her husband. See Jane de Iogh, Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands (New York: Norton, 1953); Dagmar Eichberger, ed. Women of Distinction: Margaret of Work/Margaret of Austria (Louvain: Brepols, 2005); Orsolya Rethelyi, ed., Mary of Hungary: The Queen and Her Court 1521–31 (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2005); and Cordula Van Wyhe, ed., Isabel Clara Eugenia: Female Sovereignty in the Court of Madrid and Brussels (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2012). For an overview on queenship, see Theresa Earenfight, Medieval Queenship (New York: Palgrave, 2013); and William Monter, The Rise of Female Kings in Europe 1300–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

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tremendous responsibility to her own family, as it would be her role to foster a strong bond between her husband’s kingdom and her own, and, perhaps most importantly, she needed to bear children: a son, to succeed to the throne and to offer continuity to the dynasty and stability to the kingdom, and others who would serve as insurance against the premature death of the heir and provide material for political marriages. This would depend to no small degree on her ability to capture and hold the attentions and affections of her own husband. Catalina of Habsburg and João III were both experienced rulers and concerned parents and understood the difficulty of the task facing Maria Manuela. Thus, in order to help her, they wrote three short didactic essays or lembranças (recollections, memories) that together constituted their own personal “mirror of princesses.” These consisted of instructions as to how she should self-fashion, how she should behave, what she should do, and what she should expect as she settled into her new household and undoubtedly recapitulated advice they had given her verbally before the marriage.4 Their aim was to fashion their daughter, and her relationship with her husband, in a way that mirrored their own deliberately constructed royal personas and their own marriage, as well as that of their illustrious kinswoman, Empress Isabel. This article will focus on these texts—all written in Portuguese—by two anxious parents who were watching their eldest and very dear daughter moving away and who wanted her to be successful in her new life. Analyzing these essays, along with two more letters that Catalina wrote to her confidante at the Spanish court, will bring to light fundamental but elusive aspects of court and household politics, and of how a royal couple candidly understood their role in society—advice that did not necessarily coincide with the prescriptions typically provided by the moralists and ideologues who usually authored mirrors of princes and princesses.

The Education of a Christian Princess

Catalina and João had produced a total of nine children, but at the time of Maria Manuela’s wedding to Felipe, she and her brother João, then aged six and of fragile health, were the only two surviving offspring. To the royal couple’s 4 They are edited by A. Costa Lobo, “Infanta D. Maria, Princesa de Castella,” Archivo Historico Portuguez 1 (1903): 177–81. Costa reproduced them from a 17th-century copy preserved in England as part of the Memorias do secretario d’estado Antonio Carneiro, a collection that also includes documents of her son, Pero de Alcaçova (British Museum: Additional Manuscript, ms 20805, fol. 167, et al.). See also Núria Silleras-Fernández, Chariots of Ladies: Francesc Eiximenis, and the Court Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, in press), Chapter 5.

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disappointment and despite their great efforts, including recourse to all sorts of medicinal and spiritual remedies, Catalina did not have any more children.5 This made Maria Manuela’s marriage to Felipe all the more significant in terms of unifying the dynasties of Portugal and Spain. As Luis Sarmiento, the Spanish ambassador to the Portuguese court and a key player in the marital negotiations, wrote to Charles V’s secretary, Francisco de los Cobos: “porque acá todos lo creen assy, que la señora infanta será la sucesora deste reyno” (because here everybody thinks that the Lady Princess [Maria Manuela] will be the successor in this kingdom [Portugal]).6 Even though the prospect of a union of Spain and Portugal generated considerable resistance on the part of the Portuguese nobility, João and Catalina were determined to bring it about, and because the success of Maria Manuela’s marriage was key to this, they were determined to prepare their daughter accordingly.7 This was to be a first marriage for both Maria Manuela and Felipe; they were both only 16 years old, and they had never laid eyes on one another. Luis Sarmiento provided the following description of Maria Manuela to her husband to be: La Señora Infanta es tan alta y más que su madre; es muy bien dispuesta; más gorda que flaca, y no de manera que no le esté muy bien; cuando era más muchacha era más gorda, en Palacio, donde hay damas de buenos gestos, ninguna es mejor que ella. Dicen todos que es un ángel de condición y muy liberal, y es muy galana y muy amiga de vestirse bien; danza muy bien y sabe más del canto que un maestro de capilla y también sabe latín; y sobre todo es muy buena cristiana y según sus mujeres es en extremo sana y muy concertada en venille su camisa, después que tuvo tiempo para ello, que dicen que es lo que más va para tener hijos.8 5 Ana Isabel Buescu, Catarina de Áustria: Infanta de Tordesillas, Rainha de Portugal (Lisbon: A Esfera dos Livros, 2007), 210. 6 Félix Labrador Arroyo, “Los servidores de la princesa María Manuela de Portugal,” La corte de Carlos V, ed. José Martínez Millán, vol. 1, t. 2 (Madrid: Sociedad estatal para la conmemoración de los centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 2000), 121; Durval Pires de Lima, “O casamento da infanta D. Maria, princesa dos Asturias, no contexto da História peninsular no século XVI,” Anais 32 (1989): 123–29. 7 The Count of Vimioso, the Marquis of Vila Real, and the infant Don Luis tried unsuccessfully to find alternative matches for Maria Manuela that would not lead to Castilian domination of their kingdom. At any rate, their worst fears were eventually realized when in 1580 Felipe II claimed the Kingdom of Portugal. See Buescu, Catarina de Austria, 266. 8 José María March, Niñez y juventud de Felipe II: Documentos inéditos sobre su educación civil, literaria, religiosa y su iniciación al gobierno (1527–1547) (Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 1942), 2:61. See also Annemarie Jordan, A rainha colecionadora, Catarina de Áustria (Lisbon: Circulo de Leitores, 2012), 128; and Buescu, Catarina de Áustria, 270.

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(The Lady Princess is a little bit taller than her mother. She is very well figured, more fat than thin, but not in such a way that does not look very good. When she was younger she was fatter. In the palace, where there are many very pretty ladies; none is better than she. Everyone says she is an angel in character and very generous, and quite sophisticated, and loves much to dress well. She dances very well and knows how to sing better than a choir-master, and she also knows Latin. And most of all she is a good Christian woman, and according to her ladies, is extremely healthy, and has been very regular with her period since she began to have it, which they say is the most important thing for having children.) Maria Manuela received the typical humanist education of a 16th-century princess; one that was meant to provide a high proficiency of spoken and written Latin, familiarity with classic authors and moralistic texts, music, dance, and, of course, the religious and moral instruction that reminded women— even those who were members of the elite—of the secondary position relative to men that God intended them to have. In addition to this basic education, because Maria Manuela was the daughter of a Castilian queen and was destined to return to that kingdom, she learned not only Portuguese but also Spanish.9 To facilitate her instruction in Castilian/Spanish and that of the ladies-in-waiting who would accompany her, in 1541–42 Queen Catalina ordered the purchase of eight copies of the Spanish grammar of the humanist Antonio de Nebrija (1441–1522).10 As Nebrija had remarked in 1492, in the dedication of this book to Isabel the Catholic, Catalina’s grandmother, the book would be of use to “todos los otros que tienen algún trato y conversación en España y necesidad de nuestra lengua” (anyone who has any relationship or 9

Regarding bilingualism at the Portuguese court, see Pilar Vázquez Cuesta, A lingua e cultura Portuguesa no tempo dos Filipes (Lisbon: Europa-America, 1989), 44; Ángel Marcos de Dios, “Castilian and Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century,” A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2010), 1:418; Ivo Castro, “Sur le bilinguisme littéraire castellan–portugais,” in La littérature d’auteurs portugais in langue castillane, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian 44 (Lisbon and Paris: Gulbenkian, 2002), 3; Ana Isabel Buescu, “Aspectos do bilinguismo portugues– castelhano na época moderna,” Hispania 64, no. 1 (2004): 15, and Buescu, “Y la Hespañola es fácil para todos: O bilinguismo, fenómeno estrutural (séculos XVI–XVIII),” in Memória e poder: Ensaios de história cultural (séculos XV–XVIII) (Lisbon: Cosmos, 1999), 49–66. 10 Buescu, Catarina de Austria, 268. When Catalina was living in Tordesillas with her mother, her tutor also used Nebrija to teach her Latin. Her book inventory shows a copy of his dictionary, among other texts [ags: Casa Real, legajo 16, parte 8, fol. 768 (1521)]. She had learned how to read by 1515 by practicing with books of devotion [ags: Casa Real, legajo 16, parte 1, fol. 16 (1521)].

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conversation in Spain and has need of our language).11 But Castilian was hardly an exotic language, even in Portugal. The royal court of the 16th and 17th centuries was bilingual as a consequence of the series of marriages between the dynasties of Castile and Portugal in the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Indeed, most Portuguese queens of the era came from Castile and arrived accompanied by substantial groups of courtiers, clergy, and noblemen, who either settled there with them or moved back and forth between the two kingdoms, thereby entrenching Spanish, both as a spoken and a literary language, in Portugal. The position of Spanish was further bolstered by the fact that the tremendous political expansion of the Spanish Empire had made Castilian a sort of lingua franca in the Christian world, as well as the fact that this was the Siglo de Oro—the great Golden Age of Spanish literature and the growing importance of theatre. In the 16th century, it was widely held that princesses and ladies of the upper aristocracy needed to be well educated. This is reflected in works such as the Valencian humanist Joan Lluís Vives’s well-known De institutione feminae christianae (The Education of a Christian Woman), which stressed the importance both of education and a solid grounding in religious principles. For Vives these were both essential if women were to be able to control their desires, their bodies, and therefore to guard their honor. Above all, she [woman] should be aware that the principal female virtue is chastity, and it is in itself the equal of all the others in moral worth. If this is present, one needs not look for others, and if it is absent, one should disregard the others.12 Vives did not think that the goal of marriage was procreation, as the Church Fathers had stressed, but was, rather, indissoluble companionship (communionem quondam vitae et indissociabilem societatem).13 He was thereby distancing himself from medieval models of feminine morality that inspired women 11 12

13

Antonio de Nebrija, Gramática de la lengua castellana (Barcelona: Lingua, 2006), 16. Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual, ed. and trans. Charles Fantazzi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 116. For moralistic texts that stressed devotion, see, for instance, Francesc Eiximenis, Llibre de les dones (c.1392) or his Scala Dei (c.1397). See Núria Silleras-Fernández, Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship: Maria de Luna (New York: Palgrave, 2008), 115–37; and SillerasFernández, Chariots of Ladies. Charles Fantazzi, “Introduction: Prelude to the Other Voice in Vives,” in Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual, ed. and trans. Charles Fantazzi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 20.

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to extreme acts of devotion or those which encouraged women to cultivate “masculine” traits in pursuit of virtue. Late medieval moralists were well aware of what Judith Butler would later describe as performative gender.14 The Augustinian Martín de Córdoba had expressed in very clear terms the right of Isabel the Catholic to inherit the crown in his Jardín de nobles doncellas (Garden of Noble Maidens), a mirror of princesses written c.1468 for Isabel (Maria Manuela’s great-grandmother), but noted that, as a consequence, Isabel needed to be “más que mujer y en cuerpo mujeril debe traer ánimo varonil” (more than a woman, and ought to inculcate a manly spirit in her feminine body).15 Vives composed De institutione feminae christianae in 1523 (and revised it in 1538) at the request of Maria Manuela’s aunt, Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England, who was at that point still married to Henry VIII. It was commissioned as a work to educate her own daughter, the seven-year-old Mary (later Mary I). In his text Vives praises all of the Catholic kings’ daughters for their good education and character, including even the notorious Juana “the Mad” of Castile, Maria Manuela’s grandmother.16 The book proved popular among the royal family, and only five years later a Spanish translation by the humanist Juan Justiniano (c.1495–1556) was published in Valencia, with a dedication to Germana de Foix, the widow of Fernando the Catholic, who went on to serve Carlos V as his royal lieutenant in Valencia together with her new husband, Johann of Brandenburg. In fact, De institutione feminae christianae was so successful in Spain that it was the subject of no fewer than seven further editions in the 16th century (1529, 1535, two in 1539, 1545, 1555, and 1584).17 Vives was also certainly known and appreciated in the Portuguese court; he dedicated his De disciplinis (Antwerp, 1531), an encyclopedic survey on education, to João III. These books figure as part of a proliferation of educational treatises produced in the 1500s with the aim of disseminating the new Humanistic ideals of education, conduct, and society, including those championed by Vives’s friend, 14 15 16 17

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 97. Martín de Córdoba, Jardín de nobles doncellas (Madrid: Joyas Bibliográficas, 1953), 87. See Vives, The Education, 61 and 69–70. By contrast, Vives’s De officio mariti (On the Duties of the Husband), dedicated to Juan de Borja, duke of Gandia, was not published in the Peninsula. However, in France both works were published together under the title Livre de l’institution de la femme chrestienne, tant en son enfance que marriage et viduité (Paris, 1542). See Maria de Lurdes Correia Fernandes, Espelhos, Cartas e Guias Casamento e Espiritualidade na Península Ibérica 1450–1700 (Porto: Instituto de Cultura Portuguesa, Facultade de Letras da Universidad do Porto, 1995), 144–46 and 8n. See also Adolfo Bonilla y San Martí, Luis Vives y la filosofía del Renacimiento (Madrid: Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas 2, 1981).

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Erasmus of Rotterdam. According to Norbert Elias, works such as Erasmus’s De civilitate morum puerilium (A Handbook of Good Manners for Children, 1530) were fundamental to what he characterizes as “The Civilizing Process” of European society, in which first the elite, and then other lower social groups, became conscious of the importance of appropriate behavior.18 Although probably not as well known as Erasmus’s works, De institutione feminae christianae had a tremendous influence on subsequent feminine didactic literature. This is surprising, given the severity of Vives’s moral vision, a fact upon which even Erasmus remarked, when he ironically wrote to him that he was hoping Vives was more gentle with his own wife than he was with women in his work.19 In Vives’s view, for example, women should be prohibited all licentious frivolities, even dance. In fact dance was encouraged for young ladies of status and, as Sarmiento mentioned in his letter, Maria Manuela was a good dancer who liked parties.20 But as popular as Vives’s writings may have been, they did not reflect moral education as practiced. The life of women at the royal court was more entertaining and stimulating than he would have liked, and closer to the new aristocratic model epitomized by the male courtier and “donna di palazzo” presented in Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier)—a book Peter Burke has maintained was instrumental in the “Europeanization of Europe” and the homogenization of taste and manners.21 Nevertheless, although Vives’s was not the only book on the instruction of women available at the time, it set the tone for this type of formal moralizing and was used as a model for other authors working in the same genre. In fact Vives inspired two such texts that were intended for women closely associated with the 16th-century Portuguese court, and both of them were dedicated to Maria Manuela’s mother. The first, the Carro de las donas (The Chariot of Ladies), was produced in 1542 by one of Catalina of Habsburg’s chaplains. This was an adaptation and translation to Spanish of a late medieval Catalan work, the Llibre de les dones (The Book of Women), authored by the friar and royal advisor Francesc Eiximenis (c.1327–1409)—a book that had influenced Vives 18

19 20 21

Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (New York: Urizen, 1978); Roger Chartier, “Distinction et divulgation: la civilité et ses libres,” in Lectures et lecteurs dans la France de l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 50–55. Fantazzi, “Introduction,” 14. Vives devoted a whole chapter to the dangers of dancing. At one point he asked rhetorically, “Do We Read that Holy Women Ever Danced?” Vives, The Education, 141. Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 2.

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himself.22 The Carro’s writer was a Franciscan originally from the community at Valladolid, who omitted his name from the book in a deliberate gesture of feigned modesty. He took the original text—which had been written c.1392 for the Catalan noblewoman, Sanxa Ximenis d’Arenós, Countess of Prades—and recast it to suit the tastes and needs of the Early Modern period, as well as to coincide with his own agenda: Se quitaron muchas cosas que él [Eiximenis] avía puesto las quales no eran para estos tiempos, porque ansí lo aconsejaron los letrados que avían visto esta doctrina; e ansí se acrecentaron muchas cosas.23 (Many things that [Eiximenis] had included, which are not apt for these times, have been taken out, as have advised the authorities who have read this work, and by the same token many things have been added.) Whereas the medieval sensibilities of Eiximenis had endeavored to push women to live lives of devotion and charity, whether as a widow or, in the case of Sanxa Ximenis, a divorcée living among nuns, later writers, including Vives and the author of the Carro, endeavored to provide moral instruction to women who would live as wives and mothers.24 Following Vives’s lead, the author of the Carro portrayed Isabel the Catholic as a sort of holy queen devoted to her family and the Franciscan Order and also presented her four daughters as models to emulate. But this book was not merely written as a didactic text; the anonymous friar wanted not only to encourage Queen Catalina and her daughter, Maria Manuela, in their devotion but also to convert them into dedicated protectors and patrons of his own Franciscan Order.25 The second of the didactic works written in Castilian and dedicated to Catalina of Habsburg was the Libro primero del espejo de la princesa christiana (The First Book of the Mirror of the Christian Princess, c.1543) by Francisco de 22

23 24 25

Núria Silleras-Fernández, “Paradoxes humanistes: els escrits de Francesc Eiximenis i de Bernat Metge i la seva recepció a la Baixa Edat Mitjana i el Renaixement,” eHumanista: A Journal of Iberian Studies IVITRA 1 (2012): 154–67; Francesc Eiximenis, Llibre de les dones, ed. Franck Naccarato (Barcelona: Curial, 1981), 1:21; Carro de las donas (Valladolid, 1542), ed. Carmen Clausell Nácher (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, 2007). Carro de las donas, 1:134. See Julia Fitzmaurice-Kelly, “Vives and the Carro de las donas,” Revue Hispanique 81, no. 1 (1933): 530–44. See Núria Silleras-Fernández, “Exceso femenino, control masculino: Isabel la Católica y la literatura didáctica,” in Redes femeninas de promoción espiritual en los reinos peninsulares (siglos XIII–XVI), ed. Blanca Garí (Rome: Universitat de Barcelona and Viella, 2013): 185–202, and Silleras-Fernández, Chariots of Ladies.

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Monzón (or Monçón), one of João III’s chaplains and preachers. This was very much a moral manual following the recommendations of Vives, and, like Vives, Monzón had written the book for a princess (in this case, Maria Manuela) but dedicated it to her mother.26 Together, works such as these contributed to the creation of a discourse relating to the codification of what was seen by contemporaries as “proper” feminine behavior, and those same women who read those texts, like Queen Catalina and her daughter Maria Manuela, understood that it was key for them to respect their content, or at least pretend to follow the advice of moralists such as Vives, Monzón, and the pseudo-Eiximenis. To exercise real power, women needed a high degree of cooperation from their peers, both male and female, and in order to obtain this, they had to safeguard their reputations from harmful gossip. They needed to appear to be devout, chaste, and modest, whether or not they in fact really were. And this is why Catalina and João’s letters of advice are so illuminating. Rather than merely repeating the same recommendations that could be found in the didactic literature of the time, they offered distinct recommendations, based on their own actual experience and tailored to the challenges and demands Maria Manuela would face as consort and queen-to-be—advice written not only in their own hands but also from their own hearts.

Inside Perspectives: Catalina and João’s Mirrors

Regardless of what courtly writers and clerics may have recommended in the treatises on princely conduct that they dedicated to Catalina and João, and regardless of the advice found in the works the king and queen kept in their 26

In 1544 Monzón dedicated his Libro primero del espejo del príncipe cristiano (The First Book of the Mirror of the Christian Prince) to João III, a book which was to be read by his son, then aged seven. After João III’s death in 1557, Monzón dedicated the second edition (Lisbon, 1571) to the king’s grandson, Sebastião. Monzón also dedicated his text Norte de Confessores (Compass of Confessors, 1546), to João III. Another popular text at the Portuguese court at this time was Christine de Pizan’s Le livre des trois virtues, the translation of which from French to Portuguese was promoted by Leonor, the dowager of João II, under the title Espelho de Cristina (The Mirror of Cristina). See Maria de Lurdes Correia Fernandes, “Francisco de Monzón, capelao e pregador de D. João III e de D. Sebastião,” Lusitania Sacra 2 serie, 3 (1991): 44, 49, 56; Correia Fernandes, Espehlhos, cartas e guias, 117–18, and Correia Fernandes, “Francisco de Monzón e a < princesa crista>,” Revista da Facultade de Letras, Línguas e Literaturas Universidade do Porto, Anexo V, “Espiritualidade e corte em Portugal, sécs. XVI–XVII” (1993): 113–16.

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libraries, when it was time to give their own daughter candid guidance in respect to what a queen-consort should expect and what she ought to do, their counsel was personal, concise, and pragmatic—all but devoid of the rhetoric of spirituality.27 The three letters of lembranças that have survived are not dated, but it is obvious that they were intended for Maria Manuela when she was a newlywed. In fact, one can view them as a sort of wedding gift, tailored to her own particular needs and personality. Of the three letters, the queen wrote one and the king wrote two, of which hers is the more detailed text. The king wrote a second letter, apparently because he forgot to cover some of the points in his original composition, namely, some of the nuts and bolts of organizing her move to Castile.28 Each of them wrote in their own hand, addressing themselves to their Senhora filha (Lady Daughter) to signal to what extent these were intimate and private communications. Catalina also noted that João was in support of the advice that she was giving. Again, in contrast to the wordy and exhaustive tracts of the moralists, the pieces written by the royal couple are very brief—only two or three pages long. The idea was that Catalina would carry them on her person and read them frequently. As the queen wrote: “E vos rogo que as vejais muitas vezes, como sey que vós fareis” (and I beg you to read them many times, as I know that you will do).29 Catalina’s lembrança reads like a pragmatic speculum principum dealing with notions of virtue, the princess’s activities at the court, and the nature of her relationship with her husband. As for the king, he concentrated on how to establish a firm bond with her spouse and discussed the individuals at court whom she should trust, how she should expect to be addressed by her subjects, subordinates, and peers, and how she should treat the members of her household, the nobility, and others with whom she came into contact. All of these themes are interrelated, and the fact that the king and queen each covered distinct and complementary topics likely indicates that they collaborated or at least communicated while they were composing them. Together, all of this advice relates to two specific matters that are fundamental to the success of a princess: image and reputation. To borrow Stephen Greenblatt’s terminology, they were trying to 27

28 29

Most of Catalina’s books were Spanish-language works by authors such as Antonio de Guevara, Juan de la Encina, and Juan Manrique, as well as chronicles and song-books (cancioneros), together with works by classical authors including Seneca, Plutarch, Titus Livio, and others. For an inventory of her library, see Sousa Viterbo, A Livraria real, especialmente no reinado de D. Manuel (Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 1901), 26–41. See also Buescu, Catarina de Austria, 268; and Jordan, A rainha coleccionadora. Costa Lobo, “Infanta D. Maria,” 180–81. Ibid., 177.

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influence her self-fashioning: the deliberate process of constructing her identity and public persona by attending to what were considered essential social skills. In Greenblatt’s words, in the Renaissance, “fashioning may suggest the achievement of a less tangible shape: a distinctive personality, a characteristic address to the world, a consistent model of perceiving and behaving.”30 As queen, Catalina had the reputation of being pious and devout, and her husband even more so—indeed, he is known as “The Pious.” Hence, Catalina’s letter begins by advising her daughter not to neglect her religious obligations or her charitable donations. This was not merely a moral recommendation; for a queen to maintain her religious responsibilities, to give generously to charity and to present herself as devout, contributed to her good reputation, which was indispensible for gaining the respect of the kingdom’s clergy. By voicing their satisfaction and approval of the queen, the clergy reinforced her image as a legitimate ruler in the eyes of her peers and subjects, and this, in turn, extended her influence and increased her capacity to rule. As it happens, when Catalina gave this advice to Maria Manuela, she was hoping to inspire her daughter to follow the example of the deceased Empress Isabel of Portugal, who had been the princess’s aunt, her new husband’s mother, and Carlos V’s only wife. So impressive a figure was she that after she died in childbirth in 1539 at age 36, the emperor never remarried.31 There were good reasons for holding Empress Isabel up as a model. As the daughter of Manuel I of Portugal, Isabel was a Portuguese princess who had been raised by a Portuguese father and a Castilian mother and had been sent to Spain as the bride of the Spanish king. By all accounts Isabel’s reign was a great success. Contemporary portraits reveal her to be physically beautiful, and she was much loved by her husband, while the chronicles, letters, and other literature written about her emphasize her intelligence, her competence as a ruler, and the great respect she was accorded at court.32 When the young empress was sent to Castile, she

30 31

32

Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 2. Regarding Empress Isabel, see Marsilio Cassoti, Infantas de Portugal, Rainhas em Espanha (Lisbon: A Esfera dos Libros, 2007), 223–45; Antonio Villacorta Baños–García, La emperatriz Isabel: Su vida al lado de Carlos V, su mundo, su época (Madrid: Actas, 2009), 221–45; Dalmiro de la Valgoma y Díaz-Valera, Norma y ceremonia de las reinas de la casa de Austria (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1958), 2; and María del Carmen Mazarío Coleto, Isabel de Portugal, emperatriz y reina de España (Madrid: Escuela de Historia Moderna, csic, 1951). The most famous among her portraits was painted by Tiziano in 1548; it was modeled on another painting, now lost. Regarding her portraits, see Jorge Sebastián Lozano, “Choices

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had been urged to look to the example of her grandmother, Isabel the Catholic, and to cultivate a court that included Castilian ladies, courtiers, and clergy, as well as those she brought from Portugal. In Isabel the Catholic’s case, the Portuguese connection came through her mother, Isabel of Portugal, who was the granddaughter of João I.33 This reflects an interesting trend: the advice given to each new queen is to follow the example of the most recent and prestigious local figure at her disposal—a sensible recommendation and a dynamic that would help to provide continuity between the courts and smooth the new queen’s transition. Another reason for recommending that Maria Manuela look to Empress Isabel was because her aunt had also played an important role in the politics of her new realm; most notably, she served as regent of Spain during her husband’s absences. The demands of ruling the far-flung and restive Habsburg dominions pulled Carlos V away from Spain, and twice, from 1529 to 1532 and from 1535 to 1539, the empress took control of the kingdom. Indeed the much esteemed Isabel had died only four years before Maria Manuela’s own arrival in Castile; not only was her memory still very much alive at court and among the Spanish nobility, but also most of the ladies whom Isabel had brought from Portugal to people her court were still there—and they were in positions of power. The best strategy for Maria Manuela would be to present herself as the “new Isabel” and step into her deceased aunt’s shoes. Therefore, Catalina advised Maria Manuela to find out as much about Isabel as she could, so she could imitate the empress in the way that she spent her time at court. Moralistic treatises devoted to women always emphasized the point that women were not to be idle, and how they spent their time was a window on their character. Thus, Catalina inveighed on Maria Manuela to Procuray muito por saberdes as couzas, em que se a Imperatriz occupava, e de tudo o que fazia sendo viva, para nisso vos conformardes com ella, e tomardes exemplo de suas grandes virtudes.34 (Endeavor hard to know what types of things the Empress occupied her time with, and everything that she did when she was alive, so that you may do like she did, and take her great virtues as an example.)

33 34

and Consequences: The Construction of Isabel de Portugal’s Image,” in Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, ed. Theresa Earenfight (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 145–62. Ángela Muñoz Fernández, “La cassa delle regine: Uno spazio nella Castiglia del Quattrocento,” Genesis: Rivista della società italiana delle storiche 1–2 (2002): 92–93. Costa Lobo, “Infanta D. Maria,” 177.

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In each of their essays, Catalina and João emphasized that Maria Manuela should show obedience (tende grande acatamento) to both Carlos V and Felipe and make sure that she steered her husband to follow the lead of his father.35 The queen specified that she had to gain the love and respect of both men by her actions and the demonstration of her virtue. She was to show discretion and be careful to keep her husband’s secrets, which were matters of state of the utmost delicacy. This point was of fundamental importance if she was to be trusted by him as a councilor or as a future regent. Moralist writers complained regularly that women talked too much and did not know how to keep secrets. In didactic, or conduct literature, the works intended as guides for women to a virtuous and profitable life, free from idleness and full of devotion, the most common advice was for them to be quiet and to talk only when it was appropriate.36 If Maria Manuela were to distance herself from the misogynous stereotypes of the time, she would have to understand this. That said, there were times when it was absolutely necessary to speak. Thus, in his first lembrança, the king emphasizes that Maria Manuela and Felipe should keep no secrets from each other: “hua das couzas que mais amigos fazem os casados he não haver segredo de hum para o outro nas couzas proprias; isto procurareis que seja asim entre vós” (one of the things that make a married couple closer is for one to never keep a secret from the other regarding their own things; you must manage for it to be like this between the two of you).37 The king points to his own relationship with his wife, Maria Manuela’s mother, as a model to imitate. And this was no mere rhetorical turn; by all accounts João did not keep secrets from his wife, and he trusted her as his most reliable counselor. The Castilian ambassador Lope Hurtado de Mendoza went as far as to say, “todos los consejos los tiene el Rey en casa de la Reyna” (the king holds all of his meetings at the queen’s house).38 Likewise, the friar Luís de 35 Ibid. 36 In sermons it is not unusual to find statements such as: “la mala mujer es parlera y con todos quiere hablar” (the evil woman is talkative and she wants to talk with everybody). In his work, Arcipreste de Talavera or Corbacho (1438), Martínez de Toledo, the Archpriest of Talavera, describes women thus: “La mujer ser mucho parlera, regla general es de ello: que no es mujer que no quisiese siempre hablar y ser escuchada” (Woman is very talkative, and this is a rule: there is no woman that doesn’t always want to talk and to be listened to). Alonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho, ed. Michael Gerli (Madrid: Cátedra, 1998). 37 Costa Lobo, “Infanta D. Maria,” 179. 38 Maria Paula Marçal Lourenço, “O séquito e a casa de D. Catarina de Austria: A Familia Real, a India e os grupos de poder,” in D. João III e o império: Actas do congresso internacional comemorativo do seu nascimento, eds. Roberto Carneiro and Artur Teodoro de Matos (Lisbon: Centro de História de Além–Mar, 2004), 179.

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Sousa wrote: “por suas grandes virtudes e raro entendimento, alcançado tanta autoridade com el rei, que até nas matérias mais importantes ao bem do reino, queria e ouvia com toda confiança seu voto” (for her great virtues and rare understanding, she has attained so much authority before the king, that even in the most important matters relating to the kingdom he has absolute confidence in her opinion).39 All the evidence confirms it; the queen was “muito amada del rei” (very much loved by the king).40 Both João and Catalina understood that such a relationship did not come naturally, that it had to be worked for, and both expected Maria Manuela to work for it. He also insisted that she pay close attention to the information she was given at any particular moment, and guard against the lies, gossip, and disinformation that could wreak havoc on both Maria Manuela’s reputation and the affairs of state. As the king warned, “os maiores enganos que os Principes recebem, he por fingidas informaçoes com rezoes apparentes” (the greatest deceptions that Princes fall for come from information that seems reasonable).41 The queen and king were both concerned that the princess protect her reputation and honor at all times. Catalina warned her against having a “favorite” among the women of court; instead, she advised her to seek the company of a broad group of honest ladies, so that no one lady would hold any undue influence over her or excite the envy of the others. Further, she insisted that four or five virtuous women should sleep in Maria Manuela’s bedchamber whenever her husband was away, so there could never be any rumor or accusation of infidelity. And with no sense of irony, she admonished her not to do what she herself was doing: “Por vossa mao nao me parece que deveis escrever la a nehua pessoa” (I do not believe you should ever write to anyone in your own hand).42 This is testimony of how important personal writing was, to what extent it empowered the content of a message, and how extremely dangerous it could be.43 39

Marçal Lourenço, “O séquito e a casa,” 179; and Frei Luís de Sousa, Anais de D. João III (Lisbon: Livrari Sa da Costa, 1954), 2:216. 40 Sousa, Anais, 205; See also Ana Isabel Buescu, D. João III (Lisbon: Circulo de Leitores, 2005), 147–60. 41 Costa Lobo, “Infanta D. Maria,” 179. 42 Ibid., 178. 43 For instance, in a letter that Catalina wrote to her brother, Carlos V, she shows how touched she is by the fact that he has handwritten her a letter to congratulate her on the birth of her daughter: “por tan gran merced como fue para my asy en ser de su mano” (for so great a favor that it was for me to have it, thus, from your own hand). See Aude Viaud, Lettres des souverains portugais, à Charles Quint et à l’Imperatrice (1528–1532): Conservées aux archives de Simancas (Lisbon-Paris: Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 1994), 137, doc. 51 (Lisbon, June 4, 1529).

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A fundamental role for a queen was that of intercessor between the king and his subjects; a role that was reflected in the Old Testament example of Esther, who intervened so that her husband, Ahasuerus, could save her people, the Israelites, from persecution; and in the New Testament, with the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven, who intercedes continuously between God, her son, and the believers. Catalina knew that as soon as Maria Manuela set foot in Castile she would be inundated with petitions by her new subjects, great and small, who hoped that she would pass these on to her husband. This position would grant her enormous and immediate power at the court, and would provide the means for creating her own network of patronage and influence. But the queen was concerned because her daughter was little more than a child, completely inexperienced with the treacherous and unforgiving milieu of courtly politics. So she advised her to go slowly: “Nestes primeiros dias me parece, que vos deveis de escuzar com boas palavras de não aceitar des requerimiento de nenhuas pessoas para vosso marido” (In these first days, I think you ought to demur with courteous language, and not to accept a petition for your husband from anyone).44 She had to be cautious in order to avoid committing regrettable mistakes. By the same token, Catalina added, “e assim grandes e a outras pessoas não requerereis nestes dias couza algua” (and likewise in these days do not ask grandees or other people for anything).45 To do so would put Maria Manuela in their debt. Catalina’s recommendations concluded with a request that Maria Manuela be prudent, restrained, and thereby wise in her comments and actions, and that she endeavor to appear honest and just—qualities valued equally for royalty of either gender. These general sentiments are echoed by the king, who asked her to be particularly vigilant over her household, her officers and her ladies at the court, and to build a network of patronage and political allegiance that was at once her own, but which drew heavily on the Empress Isabel’s ladies, some of whom were also of Portuguese origin. João went as far as to specify precise individuals to whom Maria Manuela should turn for advice and instructed her to aid and support the courtiers and officials whom they had chosen to send with her to Castile. They were to be protected, and she was to ensure that the offices and incomes that they had been granted were not sold or otherwise taken from them. One specific alliance João urged her to establish was a friendship between Maria Manuela’s camerara mayor (Head Chamber Lady) and Leonor de Mascareñas, a Portuguese lady who had served in the household of Empress

44 Costa Lobo, “Infanta D. Maria,” 178. 45 Ibid.

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Isabel and been Prince Felipe’s governess.46 Her parents understood well that it would be fundamental to their daughter’s success at the Spanish court to provide her with a set of individuals who would serve her, counsel her, and keep her company, and who could be trusted absolutely not to betray her, or whatever secrets she held of the court in Portugal. Consequently João and Catalina insisted on being able to put together her entourage, a determination that brought them into direct conflict with Carlos V, who also understood the new princess’s power, position, and vulnerabilities and was eager to surround her with dependents whom he trusted.47 This was no trivial matter but would dictate the flow of intelligence between the Portuguese and Spanish courts; by successfully choosing the queen’s entourage, they were engaging in soft espionage. Thus, it represented a significant victory when Maria Manuela’s parents succeeded in appointing the most important members of her household, including Margarita de Mendoza, the widow of Jorge de Mello, as her camarera mayor, Aleixo de Meneses as her mayordomo, and Fray Antonio as her ­confessor—all well-trusted and long-standing members of the Portuguese court.48 To ensure that all of their efforts planting these individuals in their daughter’s service would not go to waste King João clearly specified that Maria Manuela should not allow those offices to be sold off and occupied by other courtiers: Não dareis licença a nenhum vosso que venda seu officio; e, se fosse cazo que algua pessoa, de qualquer calidade que seja, vos pedira tal licença, dirlheeis com boas palavras quanto folgareis de o comprazer, mas que eu vos encommendey, que no consentisseis nenhua tal venda de officio, por asi sentir que assim seria melhor, e que vos me dissestes que assim o comprireis, pelo qual o não podes fazer, e vos despraz muito de não estar em vossa mão poderdelo fazer.49 46

47

48 49

Eduardo Torres Corominas, “La corte literaria de doña Juana de Austria (1554–59),” in Las relaciones discretas, 2:924–25; Anne J. Cruz, “Juana of Austria: Patron of the Arts and Regent of Spain, 1554–1559,” in The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, eds. Anne J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki (Urbana: Univeristy of Illinois Press, 2009), 106; José Martínez Millán, “Familia real y grupos políticos: la princesa Doña Juana de Austria (1535–73),” in La corte de Felipe II, ed. José Martínez Millán (Madrid: Alianza: 1999), 82. Carlos V wanted to nominate Francisco de Borja, duke of Gandia and viceroy of Catalonia, and his Portuguese wife, Leonor de Castro, for the two most important positions of Maria’s court, but João III and Catalina succeeding in blocking the nomination. See Sousa, Anais de D. João III, 2:217–19; Buescu, Catarina de Austria, 272–73; and Mendes Drumond Braga, Um espaço, duas monarquias, 67–68. See a full list of her household members in Costa Lobo, “Infanta D. Maria,” 133, and Mendes Drumond Braga, Um espaço, duas monarquias, 67–68. Costa Lobo, “Infanta D. Maria,” 181.

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(Do not allow [Maria Manuela] any of your [courtiers] to sell their office; and, if anyone, whatever post they occupy, should ask you such a thing, you should tell them with gentle words how much you would like to agree to their request, but that I have obliged you not to consent to sell any of your official positions, because I know that it would be better so, and that you agreed to respect my instructions, and therefore you cannot do anything, and that you are very sorry because it is not in your hands to do such a thing.)

Catalina, Maria Manuela, and Felipe

Catalina’s efforts to fashion her daughter did not end with the little treatise that she wrote. Once Maria Manuela settled in Castile, her mother continued to steer her career through the medium of the courtiers and officials she had sent to Castile. Here, Margarita de Mendoza, the camarera mayor, stands out most clearly. Catalina wrote to Margarita asking for truthful information on her daughter, reflecting the queen’s anxieties and her concerns that Maria Manuela was not fully heeding her parents’ advice. In two of those letters, dated January 3 and May 9, 1543, the queen asked Margarita to tell her what Maria Manuela was doing, how she was feeling, how her relationship with Felipe was, and even what happened in the privacy of her chamber when Prince Felipe visited her.50 If it were not because she fought so hard to have Margarita appointed to this position, she would have never been able to find this out. Margarita served as Catalina’s eyes and ears in the Spanish court. For his part, Carlos V was no different; he too was making secret inquiries regarding Felipe and Maria Manuela and their life together. For instance, in January 1544, he received the worrisome news that “the prince is somewhat distant with the princess, and in Portugal they feel strongly about it.”51 Then, a few months later, Carlos’s secretary, Francisco de los Cobos y Molina, reported that things were going better for the couple and that “they are getting on together very well.”52 Previously, early in Felipe’s marriage, his father had asked him to be moderate in his encounters with his wife, because of the debilitating effects of sex, particularly for someone so young, and he reminded him that it was precisely because of excessive sexual appetite that Prince Juan, the Catholic 50

Both letters have been edited by A.F. Barata, “Cartas de Rainha D. Catharina, 1544,” Archivo Historico Portuguez 1 (1903): docs. 1 and 2, 196–97. 51 Cited by Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 20. 52 Ibid.

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Kings’ heir, had died and, as a consequence, that Carlos had inherited his kingdoms.53 The importance of their role, however, gave tremendous power and influence to those creatures of court who acted as intermediaries or who had access to privileged information. Hence, when Queen Catalina wrote to Margarita, she tread softly, writing to her in Spanish, the language both shared as a native tongue, and balancing a careful familiarity and solicitousness with reminders that she, Catalina, was Margarita’s superior. Thus, while she referred to Margarita as her amyga (friend), she signed the letters in Portuguese as Raynha (the Queen), reminding the camarera mayor that she had been appointed to this powerful position precisely because of Catalina. In the queen’s words, “yo esto muy confiada como es razón y merece la confianza con que os escogí” (I have great trust in you, as ought to be, and you merit the confidence for which I chose you).54 In concrete, Catalina worried that Maria Manuela was flemática (phlegmatic) in character and “tan callada de su naturaleza que desespero” (so restrained by nature that it drives me to despair).55 The 17-year-old princess was moody and did not want to listen or talk to her mother. While these may be traits widely recognized as normal in teenagers today, Catalina could not countenance them, knowing the tremendous importance of Maria Manuela’s success to the fortunes of the dynasty. Thus, Margarita became a surrogate for the queen and could offer advice from a position that embodied both authority and personal distance and, consequently, would more likely be heeded. Catalina also worried that Maria Manuela was letting herself go and was prone to her appetites. The queen described her daughter as “gorda y comedora y llena de sangre” (fat, a big eater, and full of blood).56 Apparently, the princess enjoyed meat a little more than Catalina felt she should, and the queen complained to Margarita: “dicen que come carne quarto vezes al día, esto non deve ser, por quanto mal le aze por quan bien le está ser magra” (they say that she eats meat four times a day, and that must stop, because she looks much better when she is slimmer).57 This view of Maria Manuela is certainly not as flattering as the description Luis Sarmento prepared for the husband-tobe, Felipe, nor as the portrait of her painted by Lucas de Heere, c.1543–1545. 53

Manuel Fernández Álvarez, Corpus documental de Carlos V (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1975), 2: 93. See a digital copy at http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/bib /historia/CarlosV/7_4_instrucciones.shtml. 54 Barata, “Cartas de Rainha,” 196. 55 Ibid., 197. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 196.

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Here she looks agreeable and rather beautiful, if a little severe, and while she was not particularly slim, one would hardly say she was fat. Both courtiers and court painters, however, had their own agendas, and not much stock can be placed on their objectivity. The matter of her beauty was no mere private ­matter, but was a political one; Felipe had to be sufficiently enraptured by Maria Manuela that they would produce offspring—the more the better. Hence the queen’s inquiries to Margarita regarding the couples intimate encounters: Azedme saber después que viene el príncipe a su casa a la noche, asta que se lança, que azen, quién se lança primero, porque asta aora nunca lo e podido saber . . . que nos las puedo saber si no de vos [Margarita de Mendoza], que es lo que o deseo, que me mandéis muchas nuevas.58 (Let me know what they do from the time the prince comes to her house at night, until he embraces her, and who embraces whom first, because I haven’t been able to find this out . . . and you are the only one who can tell me this, and this is what I want—for you to send me much information.) Catalina wanted to be sure that her daughter was cultivating Felipe’s affection and instructed Margarita to ensure that Maria Manuela gave the young prince more mimos (cuddles). Maria Manuela’s single most important task as a royal bride was to provide an heir, and Catalina clearly was anxious to receive good news in this regard, asking Margarita directly about it in both letters. Catalina knew how difficult it could be; by that point in her life, she had borne nine children, and seven of these had passed away. Hence, also, Catalina’s concern with Maria Manuela’s diet and her health. This was not misplaced; at that time the princess was suffering from sarna (scabies), a highly contagious disease that causes skin irritation and discomfort. It not only provoked unattractive rashes on the skin, but also would force a temporary separation of the spouses until her recovery. Thus, through Margarita and her other sources, Catalina monitored Maria Manuela’s medical treatment, offering her own experiences as guide—she too had suffered from the same disease when she first moved to Portugal from Castile. In her opinion, medicine did not always help, because “con meleçinas ni cosas per a ese fin porque por la maior parte mas daña de lo que aprovecha” (medicines and similar things sometimes do you more harm than good). Catalina recommended patience and rest if Maria Manuela was to get 58

Ibid., 197.

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pregnant, as well as, if necessary, blood-letting from her arm (instead of from her foot, as they were doing).59 As it happens, Maria Manuela did recover from sarna, and she did manage to get pregnant. Unfortunately, she died on July 12, 1545, four days after giving birth to a son, Carlos. She was 17.60 In the end, she had spent fewer than two years at the Spanish court and never reigned as queen. For all her parents’ concerns and efforts, she never had the opportunity to fashion herself, even as a queen-to-be. Carlos’s secretary, Cobos y Molina, informed the emperor of this sad event, reporting that his son, Felipe, “felt the loss deeply, which shows that he loved her,” although he added, suggestively, “some took a different view of his outward reactions.”61 However, on the sentimental and personal side, arranged matrimonies were typically a challenge, and Felipe moved on to a second match that was no more successful—his marriage to his cousin, Mary Tudor, who was Queen of England in her own right and also a grandchild of the Catholic kings. As it was, the legacy of his marriage to Maria Manuela was bitter. The son it produced, Carlos, was apparently mentally unstable, and after he launched a revolt against his own father, Felipe was obliged to send him to prison, where he died in 1568 at age 23. It was an episode that was manipulated and exploited by Tudor propagandists in order to undermine Felipe II, and it came to form a pillar of the so-called “Black Legend.” Felipe was painted as a father so cruel and vicious that he killed his own son.62 Conclusions The late Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern period saw a tremendous flowering in popularity across Europe of didactic “conduct” or “courtesy” literature intended for both women and men.63 Good behavior came to 59 Ibid. 60 Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos, A infanta D. Maria de Portugal (1521–77) e as suas damas (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1994), 44. 61 Cited by Kamen, Philip of Spain, 20. 62 See J.N. Hillgarth, The Mirror of Spain, 1500–1700 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 520–27. 63 Juanita Feros Ruys, “Introduction: Approaches to Didactic Literature—Meaning, Intent, Audience, Social Effect,” in What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, ed. J. Feros Ruys (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 5. For an introduction to medieval didactic literature in the Spanish context, see María Haro Cortés, Literatura de castigos en la Edad Media: Libros y colecciones de sentencias (Madrid: Laberinto, 2003).

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be seen as proof of good character, and because of the increasingly ritualized and regulated character of Renaissance courts, aristocrats had to be educated in what constituted good behavior and manners.64 It was because of this that Catalina and João felt compelled to write their own princely “mirrors” for their daughter, Maria Manuela. In this sense, they were not entirely unique; Carlos V had also written letters of conduct and advice—instructions he had prepared for his wife, the empress, during the times she served as regent of Spain, and to his son Felipe, who served in the same capacity in 1539, 1543, and 1548. But he was primarily concerned with the mechanics of administration, and therefore did not always have the same moralizing and idealizing tone as the volumes produced by theologians and courtiers.65 Catalina and João’s texts, brief as they may have been, nevertheless addressed the totality of what it meant to be a successful queen. They did not break with the moral consensus of the period regarding women; they instructed Maria Manuela to be obedient to her husband and to be prudent and honest; however, they tied this not to abstract virtue or the aim of pleasing God but, rather, to the very practical goal of safeguarding her reputation. It was a question of ensuring that their daughter’s behavior reflected the habitus of their age and class.66 In any event, her parents’ letters were supplementary texts; Maria Manuela would have also been schooled in the classics of feminine devotion and virtue, including Vives’s De institutione feminae christianae and the Eiximenis-inspired Carro de las donas, books that continued to be highly regarded and read by the aristocracy. Indeed, as mentioned, the Carro de las donas had been written specifically for her mother by one of her chaplains, a Castilian Franciscan. And in 1544—the same year that Catalina was writing to Margarita inquiring about Maria Manuela—Carlos V’s daughter, Juana, was getting ready to marry Maria Manuela’s brother, João, the heir to the throne of Portugal. One of the gifts she received in anticipation of her new life as queenconsort was a copy of the Carro de las donas.67 And, in any event, when Juana 64

65

66 67

Anna Dronzek, “Gendered Theories of Education in Fifteenth-Century,” in Medieval Conduct, eds. Katheleen Ashley and Robert L.A. Clark (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 137. That said, he did not forget to remind his son of the virtues that a ruler ought to have, such as moderation and justice. In 1543 Carlos V began writing instructions to Felipe that he completed in 1548, adding advice on foreign policy. Fernández Alvarez, Corpus documental de Carlos V, 2:93–103. Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 134. In Juana’s book inventory (1573) the Carro is listed as “Un libro que se intitula Carro de las donas en pliego doradas las ojas con cubiertas de papelón y cuero negro dorado en partes

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arrived in Portugal in 1552, we can be sure that her mother-in-law, Catalina, would have done her best to inculcate her with the virtues and styles of piety it espoused, while at the same time giving her the same advice in person that she had given to Maria Manuela in the course of her letter—an inside perspective. Abbreviations ags bne rah

Archivo General de Simancas Biblioteca Nacional de España Real Academia de la Historia

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de Dios, Ángel Marcos. “Castilian and Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century.” A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. Dronzek, Anna. “Gendered Theories of Education in Fifteenth-Century.” In Medieval Conduct, edited by Katheleen Ashley and Robert L.A. Clark, 135–59. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Earenfight, Theresa. Medieval Queenship. New York: Palgrave, 2013. Eichberger, Dagmar, ed. Women of Distinction: Margaret of York/Margaret of Austria. Louvain: Brepols, 2005. Eiximenis, Francesc. Llibre de les dones. Edited by Franck Naccarato. 2 vols. Barcelona: Curial, 1981. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. New York: Urizen, 1978. Fantazzi, Charles. “Introduction. Prelude to the Other Voice in Vives.” In Juan Luis, The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual, edited and translated by Charles Fantazzi, 1–42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Fernández Álvarez, Manuel, Corpus documental de Carlos V, vol. 2. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1975. Feros Ruys, Juanita “Introduction: Approaches to Didactic Literature—Meaning, Intent, Audience, Social Effect.” In What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, edited by J. Feros Ruys, 1–38. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Julia. “Vives and the Carro de las donas.” Revue Hispanique 81, no. 1 (1933): 530–44. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Haro Cortés, María. Literatura de castigos en la Edad Media: Libros y colecciones de sentencias. Madrid: Laberinto, 2003. Hillgarth, J.N. The Mirror of Spain: 1500–1700. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. de Iogh, Jane. Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands. New York: Norton, 1953. Jordan, Annemarie. A rainha colecionadora: Catarina de Áustria. Lisbon: Circulo de Leitores, 2012. Kamen, Henry. Philip of Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Labrador Arroyo, Félix. “Los servidores de la princesa María Manuela de Portugal.” In La corte de Carlos V, edited by José Martínez Millán, vol. 1, no. 2, 121–26. Madrid: Sociedad estatal para la conmemoración de los centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 2000. Lozano, Jorge Sebastián. “Choices and Consequences: The Construction of Isabel de Portugal’s Image.” In Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, edited by Theresa Earenfight, 145–62. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.

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Marçal Lourenço, Maria Paula. “O séquito e a casa de D. Catarina de Austria: a Familia Real, a India e os grupos de poder.” In D. João III e o império: Actas do congresso internacional comemorativo do seu nascimento, edited by Roberto Carneiro and Artur Teodoro de Matos, 175–84. Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar, 2004. March, José María. Niñez y juventud de Felipe II: Documentos inéditos sobre su educación civil, literaria, religiosa y su iniciación al gobierno (1527–1547). 2 vols. Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 1942. Martínez de Toledo, Alonso. Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho. Edited by Michael Gerli. Madrid: Cátedra, 1998. Martínez Millán, José. “Familia real y grupos políticos: la princesa Doña Juana de Austria (1535–73).” In La corte de Felipe II, edited by José Martínez Millán, 73–105. Madrid: Alianza, 1999. Mazarío Coleto, María del Carmen. Isabel de Portugal: Emperatriz y reina de España. Madrid: Escuela de Historia Moderna, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1951. Monter, William. The Rise of Female Kings in Europe 1300–1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Muñoz Fernández, Ángela. “La cassa delle regine: Uno spazio nella Castiglia del Quattrocento.” Genesis: Rivista della società italiana delle storiche 1–2 (2002): 71–95. de Nebrija, Antonio. Gramática de la lengua castellana. Barcelona: Lingua, 2006. Pires de Lima, Durval. “O casamento da infanta D. Maria, princesa das Astúrias, no contexto da História peninsular no século XVI.” Anais 32 (1989): 117–96. Rethelyi, Orsolya, ed. Mary of Hungary: The Queen and Her Court 1521–31. Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2005. Rodríguez de la Flor, Fernando, and Ester Galindo. Política y fiesta en el Barroco. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1997. Sánchez-Molero Gonzalo, José Luis. La “librería rica” de Felipe II: Estudio histórico y catalogación. San Lorenzo del Escorial: Real Colegio Universitario Escorial-María Cristina: 1998. ———. “Portugal y Castilla a través de los libros.” In Las relaciones discretas entre las monarquías hispana y portuguesa: Las casas de las reinas (siglos XV–XIX), edited by José Martínez Millán and Maria Paula Marçal Lourenço, vol. 3, 1643–84. Madrid: Polifemo: 2009. Silleras-Fernández, Núria. Chariots of Ladies: Francesc Eiximenis, and the Court Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, in press. ———. “Exceso femenino, control masculino: Isabel la Católica y la literatura didáctica.” In Redes femeninas de promoción espiritual en los reinos peninsulares (siglos XIII–XVI), edited by Blanca Garí, 185–202. Rome: Universitat de Barcelona and Viella, 2013.

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———. “Paradoxes humanistes: els escrits de Francesc Eiximenis i de Bernat Metge i la seva recepció a la Baixa Edat Mitjana i el Renaixement.” eHumanista: A Journal of Iberian Studies IVITRA 1 (2012): 154–67. ———. Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship: Maria de Luna. New York: Palgrave, 2008. de Sousa, Frei Luís. Anais de D. João III. Lisbon: Livrari Sa da Costa, 1954. Torres Corominas, Eduardo. “La corte literaria de doña Juana de Austria (1554–59).” In Las relaciones discretas entre las monarquías hispana y portuguesa: Las casas de las reinas (siglos XV–XIX), edited by José Martínez Millán and Maria Paula Marçal Lourenço, 919–72. Madrid: Polifemo, 2009. de la Valgoma y Díaz-Valera, Dalmiro. Norma y ceremonia de las reinas de la casa de Austria. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1958. Van Wyhe, Cordula, ed. Isabel Clara Eugenia: Female Sovereignty in the Court of Madrid and Brussels. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2012. de Vasconcelos, Carolina Michaelis. A infanta D. Maria de Portugal (1521–77) e as suas damas. Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1994. Vázquez Cuesta, Pilar. A lingua e cultura Portuguesa no tempo dos Filipes. Lisbon: Europa-America, 1989. Viaud, Aude. Lettres des souverains portugais à Charles Quint et à l’Imperatrice (1528–1532): Conservées aux archives de Simancas. Lisbon-Paris: Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 1994. Villacorta Baños-García, Antonio. La emperatriz Isabel: Su vida al lado de Carlos V, su mundo, su época. Madrid: Actas, 2009. Viterbo, Sousa. A Livraria real, especialmente no reinado de D. Manuel. Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa, 1901. Vives, Juan Luis. The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual. Edited and translated by Charles Fantazzi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

chapter 9

Forging Renaissance Authorship: Petrarch and Ausiàs March1 Albert Lloret Today Ausiàs March (Valencia 1400–59) is celebrated as a part of the Catalan literary canon; for some critics he even stands as one of the best lyric poets of 15th-century Europe.2 His current reputation is not a recent development. There are numerous traces of March’s fame among his contemporaries in the Crown of Aragon and beyond. Those include the array of Catalan authors that imitated his verses, the number of codices transmitting his works—more than any other medieval Catalan poet—and the praise received from another eminent contemporary Castilian author, the Marquis of Santillana in his Proemio e carta.3 March’s fame began during his lifetime and has endured long after his death, with varying degrees of popularity, well until the present. During the 16th and early 17th centuries, scores of distinguished Spanish and Catalan poets culled from March’s love language and dramatic imagery—from Garcilaso de la Vega and Juan Boscán, to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Gutierre 1 I have presented a previous version of part of this chapter in a panel organized by Laura Delbrugge at the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Western Michigan University, May 10–13, 2012), and another section of it at the 14th Colloquium of the North American Catalan Society (University of Toronto, May 24–26, 2013). I am grateful to Michael Harney and Joan Ramon Resina for their questions and comments. This essay belongs to the research project FFI2011–27844-C03–03, funded by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia in Spain. 2 See Costanzo Di Girolamo, Pagine del Canzoniere (Milan and Trento: Luni, 1998), 9; and José María Micó, “Translating Medieval Catalan Poetry Today: Jordi de Sant Jordi and Ausiàs March,” Catalan Literature and Translation, Special Issue of Translation Review 87 (2013): 18–29. 3 March’s imprint in the 15th-century Trastámara courts is instrumental for modern critics to establish a periodization of Catalan poetry of that time. See Jaume Torró, “Introducció General,” in Sis poetes del regnat d’Alfons el Magnànim, ed. Jaume Torró (Barcelona: Barcino, 2009), 15–33. For a recensio of March’s manuscripts, see Amadeu Pagès, “Introducció,” Les obres d’Auzias March, ed. Amadeu Pagès (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1912), 1:11–54. For Santillana’s reference to March in the Proemio e carta, see Lluís Cabré, “Notas sobre la memoria de Santillana y los poetas de la Corona de Aragón,” in Cancionero Studies in Honour of Ian Macpherson, ed. Alan Deyermond (London: Department of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1998), 25–38. For an account—linked to a debatable thesis, however— of the relevance of courtly values and practices in Trastámara Spain, including poetry, see Roger Boase, The Troubadour Revival (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291003_011

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de Cetina, Fernando de Acuña, Gregorio Silvestre, Pere Serafí, Fernando de Herrera, and Lope de Vega.4 Also during the Early Modern period, March’s poetry was translated three times: twice into Spanish—first by Baltasar de Romaní (1539, repr. in 1553, and again, partially, in 1579), later on by Jorge de Montemayor (1560, repr. in 1562 and 1579)—and on one occasion into Latin by Vicent Mariner (1633).5 From a broad historical perspective, March’s early modern canonical status could seem to simply extend the author’s fame from the previous century in the Trastámara courts. While that is in part the case, for there are signs of continuity in the reception of March’s works during the 16th and 17th centuries, there is also proof that, at that time, his poetry was appreciated, interpreted, and presented in a remarkably distinct way. This different understanding of March’s works is apparent in the earliest printed edition of his poetry, appearing from Juan Navarro’s workshop in Valencia on 1539. The 1539 volume implied more than a mere shift in the material format and scale of the dissemination of March’s poetry; rather, the act of printing Ausiàs March’s works entailed recodifying the meaning of his poetry. Donald McKenzie, in the first of his Panizzi lectures remarked that: Bibliography, simply by its own comprehensive logic, its indiscriminate inclusiveness, testifies to the fact that new readers of course make new texts, and that their new meanings are a function of their new forms. The claim then is no longer for their truth as one might seek to define that by an authorial intention, but for their testimony as defined by their historical use.6 Through the 1500s, new forms of March’s text defined new meanings for his poetry that would in turn also have long-lasting consequences in the interpretation of his works. In particular, in this essay I will explain how the first 4 Amadeu Pagès, Auzias March et ses prédécesseurs (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1912), 393–422; and Eulàlia Duran, “La valoració renaixentista d’Ausiàs March,” in Homenatge a Arthur Terry I: Estudis de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes 35 (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 1997), 93–108. 5 There is also another contemporaneous translation that refashions Baltasar de Romaní’s and Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas, “El Brocense” translation of March’s poem I. See Martí de Riquer, Traducciones castellanas de Ausias March en la edad de oro (Barcelona: Instituto Español de Estudios Mediterráneos, 1946); and Marco Antonio Coronel Ramos, L’Ausiàs March llatí de l’humanista Vicent Mariner (Valencia: Edicions Alfons el Magnànim, Diputació de València, 1997). 6 Donald McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 29.

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edition of March’s poetry was editorially shaped in a form similar to that of Petrarch’s vernacular works and then what this editorial fashioning meant for the meaning of March’s poetry.7

Conflictive Genealogies

Since the late 1400s, the dissemination of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (rvf) has been a widespread model narrative for the articulation of lyric corpora. The reasons for March’s adaptation to this editorial model are unique. March had never written a sonnet or a canzone, but rather Catalan-Occitan octaves and dècimes in the tradition of the troubadours. His works are not much indebted to Petrarch’s either, nor did he supervise or could ever prepare for the printing of his poetry. As we will see, the early modern Petrarchan making or fashioning of March’s poems entirely transformed March’s poetic voice and self. Since the agency of this process is to be found well beyond the author’s actions, this seems a good test case to consider and subsequently offer a critique of what constitutes self-fashioning. An influential concept in the definition of the Renaissance and the modern subject at large, the cases of self-fashioning that Stephen Greenblatt identifies in his classic monograph invariably involve the author’s agency.8 Is that authorial involvement crucial for self-fashioning? Could March’s Petrarchan recasting of his poetic self be regarded as self-fashioning? Before arguing for the editorial Petrarchism of Navarro’s edition and discussing whether it could be considered a case of selffashioning, I will consider the preliminary key question of why a post-troubadour poet who wrote in Catalan in the 15th century was to be edited as if he had composed a Petrarchan sonnet sequence in the 16th. Many of the editions of March’s text in the 1500s included glosses and lists of obscure words providing translations into contemporary Catalan and/or 7 For traces of a 15th-century manuscript Petrarchization of March’s corpus, see Lluís Cabré and Jaume Torró, “‘Perché alcun ordine gli habbia ad esser necessario’: La poesia I d’Ausiàs March i la tradició petrarquista,” Cultura Neolatina 55 (1995): 117–36; and Jaume Torró, “El Cançoner de Saragossa,” in Translatar i transferir: La transmissió dels textos i el saber (1200– 1500), eds. Anna Alberni, Lola Badia, and Lluís Cabré (Santa Coloma de Queralt: Obrador Edèndum, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 2010), 379–424. For a bibliographical study of Navarro’s edition and Carles Amorós’s 1543 text, another Petrarchan editorial project, see Albert Lloret, Printing Ausiàs March: Material Culture and Renaissance Poetics (Madrid: Centro para la Edición de los Clásicos Españoles, 2013). 8 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

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Spanish.9 Juan de Resa’s edition of March’s poetry, coming out of Sebastián Martínez’s press in Valladolid in 1555, even appended a few grammar notes on Old Catalan for the use of native and non-native speakers alike.10 In fact, March’s poems were often considered to have been written not in an older form of Catalan but in Limousin (llemosí, in Catalan, lemosín in Spanish). This term referred to a language that encompassed Old Catalan and Old Occitan.11 All three early modern translators of March’s poetry—Romaní, Montemayor, and Mariner—referred to March’s language as Limousin. So did the editor Juan de Resa and a long list of authors, including Joan Ferrandis d’Heredia, Nicolás Espinosa, Jerónimo Arbolanche, Pedro Argote de Molina, Luis Santángel, Jaime Guiral, and Diego de Saaverda Fajardo.12 Owing to this misconception, March’s works were even, at times, confused with those of a troubadour. Federigo Ubaldini, for one, in 1640 edited Francesco da Barberino’s Documenti d’amori (1309–13). Ubaldini’s edition includes a glossary of the most important words and idioms of the work. In it, March appears among the “Autori Provenzali,” alongside Arnaut Daniel and Bertran de Born, from whom the editor quoted in order to document Barberino’s language.13 If March could be confused with a troubadour, as if he had lived centuries before he actually did, he could also be considered a model for Petrarch’s poetry. There would seem to be a gap between chronological precedence and 9

10

11

12

13

On these vocabularies, see Germà Colón, “Els vocabularis barcelonins d’Ausiàs March al segle XVI,” Miscel·lània Pere Bohigas, III, eds. Josep Gulsoy, et al (Montserrat: Abadia de Montserrat, 1983), 261–90. “Que aunque puse no pequeña diligencia en me informar de los naturales en aquella lengua de lo que yo no supe: no del todo me pudieron satisfazer por estar ya muy desusados aquellos vocablos proençales de que el auctor en su obra vso: porque ya el vso los ha mudado, quem penes arbitrium est, & vis [sic] et norma loquendi, como dice Horatio en la poetica” (While I worked hard with native speakers of that language to find out what I didn’t understand, they could not help me with everything since some of those Provençal words employed by the author are not used much today because constant use has changed them, because quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi, as Horace says in the Poetics). Las obras del poeta mosen Ausias March, ed. Juan de Resa (Valladolid: Sebastián Martínez, 1555), fols. 218v–219r. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. See Germà Colon, “Llemosí i llengua d’oc a la Catalunya medieval,” La llengua catalana en els seus textos (Barcelona: Curial, 1978), 1:39–59; and August Rafanell, Un nom per a la llengua: El concepte del llemosí en la història del català (Vic: Eumo, 1991). See Pagès, Auzias March et ses prédécesseurs, 413–22; and Eulàlia Duran, “Defensa de la pròpia tradició davant d’Itàlia al segle XVI,” in Miscel·lània Joan Fuster III, eds. Antoni Ferrando and Albert G. Hauf (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 1991), 251–56. Francesco Barberino, Documenti d’Amore, ed. Federigo Ubaldino (Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1640), fol. 4v.

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genealogical ascendancy, but the logical transition is seamless. As studied by Santorre Debenedetti in his classical monograph, the Italian Cinquecento kindled an interest in the language and the poetry of the troubadours.14 Pietro Bembo in his Prose della volgar lingua remarked on the Occitan ascendancy over Tuscan lexicon and poetic forms with much admiration. Angelo Colocci, who conceived of Limousin as a conflation of Occitan and Catalan, studied the influence of the Limousin lexicon on Dante and Petrarch. Studies of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry underscored and at times overestimated Petrarch’s debts to the old Occitan lyrics. Mario Ecquicola thought of Petrarch as a disciple of Arnaut Daniel and Folquet de Marselha. Alessandro Vellutello commented at length on Petrarch’s references to the troubadours in his edition of Triumphus amoris IV. In addition to the perception of March’s language and the humanistic study of Occitan and the troubadour’s poetry vis-à-vis Tuscan authors and their tongue, one last element would have helped to pave the way for the editorial Petrarchization of March’s corpus. The imagery and language of both Petrarch and March’s poetry coincide occasionally. While there are few obvious borrowings from Petrarch’s corpus in March’s works, the early modern editors that will be presented below were still able to detect them. Jordi de Sant Jordi (1399– 1424), a Catalan poet from almost the same generation as March, albeit with a smaller corpus of texts, famously imitated Petrarch’s Pace non trovo, e non ho do far guerra in Tots jorns aprench e desaprench ensemps.15 That single intertextual relationship was enough to unleash a long tradition of scholarly commentary attributing Petrarch’s original inspiration to the “Limousin” Sant Jordi.16 Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, a number of authors echoed the 14 15

16

Santorre Debenedetti, Gli studi provenzali in Italia nel Cinquecento (Padova: Antenore, 1995). Pep Valsalobre, “Història d’una superxeria: El cas Jordi de Sant Jordi,” in El (re)descobriment de l’edat moderna: Estudis en homenatge a Eulàlia Duran, eds. Eulàlia Miralles and Josep Solervicens (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, Universitat de Barcelona, 2007), 297–335. Sant Jordi’s language was heavily Occitanized. That was not the case with March and other members of his generation, who were the first to compose poetry in plain Catalan; see Aniello Fratta, “Introducció,” in Jordi de Sant Jordi, Poesies (Barcelona: Barcino, 2005), 38–42; and Martí de Riquer and Lola Badia, Les poesies de Jordi de Sant Jordi, cavaller valencià del segle XV (Valencia: Tres i Quatre, 1984), 302–11. For the language switch in March’s generation, see Jaume Torró, “Cort i literatura de Joan I a Ferran II el Catòlic,” in Literatura medieval (II), ed. Lola Badia, vol. 2 of Història de la literatura catalana, directed by Àlex Broch (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia catalana, Editorial Barcino, Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2014), 261–74.

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controversy of the alleged borrowings of March from Petrarch and those of Petrarch from March.17 Navarro’s Petrarchan edition surely spurred this polemic.

Juan Navarro’s Edition and Baltasar de Romaní’s Translation

On March 10, 1539, Juan Navarro’s printing shop in Valencia completed the editio princeps of Ausiàs March’s poetry. Dedicated to the duke of Calabria, Fernando de Aragon (1488–1550), this volume contains roughly 46 of March’s 128 attributed poems—some of the pieces appear, as we will see, in a fragmentary state. The book also includes a translation into Spanish by one of the duke’s courtiers, Baltasar de Romaní (c.1485–c.1547). Each stanza of March’s poems is followed by its translation; thus the pages of this folio volume feature four stanzas each; two are March’s and two Romaní’s. But the Castilian text was the true raison d’être of the editorial project. The translation is what was actually dedicated to the duke in the prefatory epistle, and so will be the main focus of my analysis.18 Romaní’s text is an ad-verbum rendering of March’s. The poetics of the translator aim to replicate the stanzaic structure, the rhyme pattern, and the meter of the Catalan text.19 By virtue of the phonic, morphological, grammatical, and lexical similarities between two Romance languages such as Spanish and Catalan, aiming to exactly reproduce both the original words and metrics are two goals that to a certain extent hinge on each other. Nonetheless, although the similarities between both languages might have permitted this formally constricted operation, they also set the limits for its success. The form of such literal verse translation simply could not mirror the original to perfection. One of the immediate side effects of this demanding poetics is that the Spanish text becomes anisosyllabic. See, for example, the first stanza of the first poem in the edition (I, 1–8)20: 17 18

See, for instance, Pagès, Auzias March et ses prédécesseurs, 414–15, 419–20. The very frontispiece also presents the book as a translation: “Las obras del famosissimo philosopho y poeta mossen Osias Maro cauallero Valenciano de nacion Catalan traduzidas por don Baltasar de Romani . . .” (The works of the most famous philosopher and poet Mosèn Ausiàs March, Valentian knight of Catalan origin, translated by Baltasar de Romaní). 19 Riquer, Traducciones castellanas de Ausias March, xiii–xvi. 20 Quotations from Navarro’s edition are offered in paleographical transcription. The slash dividing verse hemistiches is the only typographical element that has not been transcribed. When quoting from March’s text as an authorially sanctioned work, I use Bohigas’s edition as published in the Repertorio informatizzato dell’antica letteratura catalana (rialc). Quotations from a critical apparatus reproduce Robert Archer’s.

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Axi com cell quen lo somnys delita E son delit de foll pensament ve Ne pren a mi quel temps passat me te Limaginar que altre be noy habita: Sentint venir laguayt de ma dolor Sabent de cert quen sens mans he de jaure Temps per venir en ningun bem pot caure So ques no res en mi es lo millor.

4 + 6 4 + 6 4 + 6 4 + 6 4 + 6 4 + 6 4 + 6 4 + 6

Bien como aquel quen sueños deuanea Y se deleyta del vano pensamiento Assi me tiene el contemplar contento Quen otro bien mi alma no recrea: Lo por venir siempre me fue peor Y se muy cierto que de dar en sus manos Quanto bien tengo son pensamientos vanos Lo que no es nada en mi es lo mejor.

4 + 7/5 + 7 5 + 7 5 + 7 4 + 7/5 + 7 4 + 7/5 + 7 5 + 7 5 + 7 5 + 721

The Catalan endecasíl·labs with caesura after the fourth syllable naturally resisted being literally and metrically translated into Spanish. Romaní’s labor required a difficult balance between meter and literalness. The translator relied on multiple techniques to maintain this equilibrium—changing the order of the lines, the order of the hemistiches, paraphrasing the original, etc. Among these, vulgarization is one of the most common. In instances when Romaní’s text vulgarizes March’s, it simplifies or debases the original. To maintain the meter and the rhyme, passages containing vulgarized variations elaborate a text that is only very vaguely based on motives from the original verses. Romaní’s vulgarizations often involve the translator’s use of conventional notions of the themes he rewrites. I will offer two examples. In a number of passages, the translation posits death as the sure future of the poetic voice. In poem XIII, for example, March parallels his love afflictions to the suffering of those condemned to hell. In the second half of 21

cat stanza (trans. by Arthur Terry, Ausias March: Selected Poems (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1976)): “Like the man who takes pleasure in dreams and his pleasure comes from foolish thoughts, so it happens to me, for time past occupies my imagination and no other good dwells there. Feeling my suffering to lie in wait, knowing for certain that I must fall into his hands, time future cannot turn out well for me; that past is the best (part) of me.” span stanza (my translation): “Like the man who talks foolishly in dreams, whose pleasure comes from vain thoughts, that is how my imagination delights me, for no other good dwells in my soul. The future always treated me badly and I know for sure that I will end in its hands. All I have is vain thoughts. What comes to nothing is what is best for me.”

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the third stanza (lines 25–28), he asserts that dying actually would not make him content, because he would not be able to see his beloved anymore. Romaní’s text, however, contains a commonplace about a lover’s painful dying of love: E si la mort nom dugues tal ofensa Fer mi absent duna tan plaent vista No li agraexch que de terra no vista Lo meu cos nuu qui de pahor no pensa (And if dying did not entail that I would miss your pleasant sight, I would not thank Death for waiting to dress up with dirt my naked body, which cannot think out of fear.) No temo yo la muerte por quereros Antes querria que cerrasse mis ojos Porque conellos no os diesse mas enojos Sino me fuesse tan gran descanso veros (I am not afraid of dying as a result of my love for you, I would actually prefer that Death closed my eyes so that I would not use them to annoy you anymore; but seeing you is such a pleasure for me.) When Romaní vulgarizes March’s poetic discourse, he also often imbues the poetic voice with somber and fatalistic tones involving the extreme consequences of the lover’s agony. Romaní’s variations also emphasize the lover’s experience as hopelessly unrequited (XXXIII, 1.3): Sens lo desig de cosa desonesta Don ve dolor a tot enamorat Uisch dolorit desijant ser amat (Lacking any dishonest wish in my desires, for those bring grief to lovers, I live in pain, wishing my love was requited.) Sin el desseo de cosa desonesta De donde viene al amador desgrado Amo y no espero ser algun tiempo amado (Lacking any dishonest wish in my desires, for those bring displeasure to lovers, I am in love and have no hopes I may ever be requited.) Note how Romaní follows March’s text word for word in lines 1–2 but fails to do so in line 3. Both half-stanzas start with identical terms, but then March introduces the main clause in his sentence: “I live in pain, wishing my love was

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requited,” which becomes in Romaní’s version: “I am in love and have no hopes I may ever be requited.” These reductions of the original poetry to commonplaces related to an unrequited and fatal love experience corrode the uniqueness of March’s love discourse, resulting in the assimilation of his erotic discourse to other contemporary genres that prominently feature pathos, such as the ficción sentimental or the poesía de cancionero. What is at stake here is the realization that these non-literal renderings enhanced the pathos of March’s love discourse along lines that were popular in other contemporary literary works. In fact, a number of passages from Romaní’s translation adopt a rhetorical configuration that is specifically bound to Cancionero poetry. For example, the annominatio is a rhetorical device consisting of the usage of a lexical root under a variety of phonic changes within a short range of verses. It includes figures based on morphological variation of word endings (poliptoton) or word stems (etymological figure), and also the derivation of a given root (derivatio).22 Such rhetorical devices—which are some of the most distinctive patterns of the highly codified Cancionero poetry—also appear in Romaní’s text. The translator either further developed March’s own words repetitions, or simply introduced annominatii anew (note my emphasis): De fet fuy a sa merce vingut Lenteniment per son conseller pres E mon voler per algutzir lo mes Dant fe cascu que may sera rebut

Y por mejor prender mi libertad Este señor que por mi señor quiero Lentendimiento tomo por consejero Por secutor puso mi voluntad23

Si passions damor dins vos jutjassen Fosseu del seny quantseuol consellada La voluntat de dona enamorada Nos troba frens que aquella refrenassen

Mas si passiones damor hos sojuzgassen Aunque del seso fuessedes consejada La voluntad quen vos es refrenada No hauria frenos que aquella refrenassen24

Aquell dictat als que nous hauran vista Res no valdra car fe noy donaran E los grossers que dins vos no veuran En creure mi llur arma sera trista

Aquellos todos que ver nos merecieron Lo que dire por fe no creheran Ni los grosseros que hos vieron no veran Vuestro valer pues dentro en vos no vieron25

22 23 24 25

Juan Casas Rigall, Agudeza y retórica en la poesía amorosa de cancionero (Santiago de Compostela, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1995), 219–33. X, 33–36. LXXXVII, 45–48. XXIII, 6–8.

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Donchs com sera que yo fuja de mi Culpa nous tinch si so forsat damar

Este me fuerça quanto su fuerça crece Culpa nos tengo forçado fuy de amar26

De perdre pus que lo ymaginar

Mas porque pierdo muriendo el contemplar Y aquel desseo que no espero cumplir Huyo la muerte y querria morir Por ver si muerto hos podre contentar27

Los meus deisgs no poderse complir E sin coue mon darrer jorn finir Seran donats termens a ben amar



Morality and Censorship

While these failures in keeping up with his own translation principles seem to point towards an unavoidable resurfacing of the translator’s literary culture, this edition manifests other instances of the translator’s much more active involvement in the shaping of March’s text and its meaning. Both Romaní’s translation and March’s original text feature edited passages regarding moral and religious matters. If literally understood, some of those verses may appear disrespectful of Catholic beliefs, practices, and institutions, so they were either edited or deleted altogether from the printed original text and do not appear in Romaní’s translation. I will offer two examples that illustrate the ideological profile of these editorial interventions. Per que d’Amor yo mal ja no diria, qu’en ell no es de ben fer lo poder, car fermetat de dona y es mester, e si la ves, per Deu l’adoraria.28 (That’s why I would not criticize Love, for he has no power to do well; constancy on the woman’s part is required and if she ever had it, I would adore him as a god.) Line 40: Gran miraglo seria, Ro (It would be a miracle) per miracle ho tendria, a (I would consider it a miracle) per deu la doraria, FNBDEG2G4Hkbcde (I would adore him as a god)

26 27 28

XXXIV, 23–24. XIII, 29–32. VIII, 37–40.

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In this passage from Poem VIII, March’s poetic voice defames women and complains of their fickleness. In line 40, March hyperbolically asserts that if he ever found constancy in any woman, he would adore Love as a god, implying that Love would have accomplished something impossible, and March would then regard him as almighty. This assertion must have been considered disrespectful to the Christian God and idolatrous. Contrary to the entire manuscript and early printed tradition, both Romaní’s text (Ro) and the edition of March’s original appearing along the translation (a), still in a hyperbolical manner but certainly not an idolatrous way, deem female constancy a miracle. In the following fragment, March’s poetic voice claims to be the only one to blame for his foolish unrequited love. He should not seek forgiveness from anyone but himself, not even the pope. Texts Ro and a do not include this mention of the pope that appears in the rest of the manuscript and in the early printed tradition; alternatively, Navarro’s texts claim that there is no need to ask Love for forgiveness. The rest of the textual tradition allows for a literal and possibly irreverent reading regarding the pope’s spiritual authority. Del pare sant no · m cal haver perdo, car mon peccat es amar follament; deman l’a mi, c’ab mon consentiment he fet d’Amor cativa ma raho. (The pope does not need to forgive me, for my sin is to love like a fool; I should ask for forgiveness to myself, because it has been with my consent that Love has seized my mind.) Line 25: Damor nom cal hauer iames, a (I won’t ever need Love’s [forgiveness]) No cumplira damor hauer perdon, Ro (It is not necessary that Love forgives me) Del pare sant nom cal hauer perdo, FNBDEG2Kbc (I don’t need the Holy Father’s forgiveness) Del pare sant no cal hauer, de (I don’t need the Holy Father’s [forgiveness]) Petrarchism I will now show how similar editorial and non-literal translation practices, coupled with the choice and the organization of the poems, coalesced in the

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editorial shaping of March’s text to create a recognizable Petrarchan sequence made of 46 different poems. To begin with, it is unlikely that the translator was acquainted with just that fraction of March’s corpus. In the prefatory letter to the volume, Romaní acknowledges the existence of additional poems when he asks the duke of Calabria to order those envious of his work to translate the pieces he had not.29 It is hard to ascertain what additional poems of March’s corpus Romaní knew. However, if we consider Romaní’s choice from an ideal pool containing all of March’s poetry, we will notice that such selection agrees with the moralizing editorial policy just pointed out. Romaní distributed the translated poems according to four thematic sections. Through opening epigraphs and running titles, poems were divided into cantica on love, morality, death, and spirituality.30 As Sanvisenti noted, this division of March’s works might be reminiscent of the rvf’s sections in vita and in morte of his beloved Laura.31 After all, Navarro’s edition eliminated all tornades from the poems—those last stanzas containing the variety of senyals March employed to address his compositions to different beloveds: Plena de seny (Full of wisdom), Llir entre cards (Lily among thistles), Mon derrer bé (My last good), Bella amb bon seny (Judicious beauty), and to define his poetic cycles: Oh, foll Amor (Oh, fool Love), Amor, amor (Love, love), Tu, espirit (You, spirit).32 Without tornades, all poems seem to refer to one only love story. March’s poetry in the “morality” section makes only one-fourth of 29

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“Si por este trabajo alguna merced merezco sea que vuestra excelencia a los sabios mande corregir mis faltas y a los embidiosos que traduzgan las otras obras de Osias Marco que aqui faltan” (If I deserve any favor for my work, may it be that Your Excellency urges wise men to correct my mistakes, and those who are envious to translate the other works of Ausiàs March that are missing here). Las obras del famosissimo philosofo y poeta Mossen Osias Marco (Valencia: Juan Navarro, 1539), fol. 1v. [Cantica de amor] I, II, IV, IX, X, XIII, XIV, LXXXVII, XVIII, XLVI, LXXI, VIII, XXIII, XCVIII, XCI, XLV, LXVI, LXXXV, LXXXIX, LXXVII, V, XXII, XV, LXI, XXXIV, XXXIII, XVI, XVII [Cantica moral] CVI, CII, XXVI, C [Cantica de muerte] XCII, XCIV, XCIII, XC, LXXXVIII, LVII, XCVI, XCV, XCVII, CXIV [Cantica spiritual] CVa, CIV, CVb, CXV + CXIII. See Bernardo Sanvisenti, I primi influssi di Dante, del Petrarca, e del Boccaccio sulla letteratura spagnuola (Milan: Hoepli, 1902), 374–75; and also Arturo Farinelli, Italia e Spagna (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1929), 1:41, 1n. See Cabré and Torró, 118; and Cabré, “Algunes imitacions i traduccions d’Ausiàs March al segle XVI,” Quaderns: Revista de traducció 7 (2002): 64, 3n. José Amador de los Ríos also proposed that the four sections of Navarro’s edition may mimic, and simplify, the progression from love to chastity, fame, death, and eternity of the Triumphi. See José Amador de los Ríos, Historia crítica de la literatura española (Madrid: Imprenta de J. Rodríguez, 1861– 65), 6:495. One of March’s few borrowings from the Triumphi in Poem I seems to be translated closely following Petrarch’s text: “Si col malalt que per un plahent mos/Tot son menjar

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the total number of verses in the edition. But Romaní’s moral focus and editorial policy extended through most of the works on love. Those “love poems” Romaní chose to translate place emphasis on March’s spiritual, pure, eternal, and quasi-religious love, which is opposed to the mundane and passionate feelings felt by the body.33 The casuistry of Love’s effects on the lover’s soul and his senses are also part of the edition.34 March’s near-to-death suffering and unrequited feelings are also present, as much as the lover’s constant claims of faithfulness.35 None of the expressions of passionate, bodily, and “dishonest love” that are also relevant in March’s corpus were selected for Navarro’s edition.36 When such love is mentioned, it is characterized as ontologically inferior or undesirable.37 And in the one occasion when the poetic voice confesses to having indulged in such debasing experience, it is only to show regret.38 Furthermore, several of the poems Romaní translated feature a palinodic gaze over the poetic voice’s love story, beginning with the first poem in the collection. March’s Poem I is a lamentation for the absence of his lady. Removed from her, the poetic voice seeks consolation in his memories of better past times, only to realize that those recollections cause him a greater pain when he is faced with the present once again. Romaní’s translation does not convey the absence theme; rather, it abandons literalness to enhance a moralizing perspective and echo the most famous palinodic vernacular poem by 1539: Petrarch’s rvf own first and its “vane speranze e’l van dolore” (vain hopes and vain pains).39 It is worth examining the first stanza (lines 1–8) and underscoring the en dolor se nodreix” (Like the sick man who cannot help indulging in a pleasing bite and then has to eat in pain), 1:31–32 recalls an image from the Trionfi: “come uom ch’è infermo e di tal cosa ingordo/ch’è dolce al gusto, a la salute rea” (Like the man who is ill and yet craves such a thing that tastes sweet but is bad for his health), Triunfus cupidinis 3:107–08; while Romaní translated: “Por vn contrario que su apetito quiere/Hermoso al gusto y a la salud muy feo” (For something his appetite inconveniently wants, it may taste good but is bad for his health). 33 IV-3rd, LXXXVII-8th, XVIII-9th, LXXI-11th, XXIII-13th, XCVIII-14th, XLV-16th, V-21th; XXXIV-25th. Roman numerals refer to March’s poem according to their canonical numbering. Ordinal numbers refer to the position of March’s poems in the edition. 34 II-2nd, IV-3th, IX-4th, X-5th, LXXXVII-8th, XVIII-9th, XLV-16th, XVII-28th. 35 XLVI-10th, LXVI-17th, LXXVII-20th, XXII-22th, XV-23th, LXI-24th, XVII-28th and XLVI-10th, LXXXV-18th, LXXXIX-19th. 36 See XXIV, LXXIV, XCIX, CXVI, CXX, CXXI. 37 See, e.g., IV, XLV, LXXXVII, XVIII. 38 As in the case of CII. 39 See Cabré, “Algunes imitacions,” 69.

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differences from the original when the translation creatively fails to provide a faithful representation: Bien como aquel quen sueños deuanea [Axi com cell qui n lo somnis delita] Y se deleyta del vano pensamiento [foll pensament] Assi me tiene el contemplar contento Quen otro bien mi alma no recrea Lo por venir siempre me fue peor [sentint estar en aguayt ma dolor] Y se muy cierto que de dar en sus manos Quanto bien tengo son pensamientos vanos [Temps de venir en negun be · m pot caure] Lo que no es nada en mi es lo mejor (Like the man who talks nonsense in dreams, whose pleasure comes from vain thoughts, that is how I am; my imagination is content; no other good thing lives in my soul. The future was always worse to me, but I am all well aware that that is where I am headed for; I just own vain thoughts. What is nothing now is what is best for me.) The past tense Romaní employed in line 5 elicits palinodic tones that are missing from March’s first stanza. See also how the theme that opens the poem— the dream as a metaphor of what is vain or inessential—is to be found in the last verse of Petrarch’s rvf I (“che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno” (what pleases the world is a short dream)). Beyond poem I (the 1st in the edition), a similar censorial perspective on past loves appears in several of Romaní’s versions of Poems IV, LXXI, VIII, XCVIII, XCXI (all of them are within the section on love). See, for instance, XCI, lines 1–4: En aquel tiempo de amor me deleyte Que solamente lo presente miraua Y en mi presencia lo por venir no estaua Muy oluidado tenia lo que fue (In those times I enjoyed love, for I only used to care about the present; the future was far ahead, and I had forgotten about the past.) Just as Petrarch’s songbook finished with a prayer to the Virgin, the final compositions in Navarro’s edition are March’s Poem CV—a prayer to God which in Navarro’s edition appears split as if in two different compositions—and another editorially engineered text, made of the first stanza of Poem CXV and the last stanza of CXIII. The effect of this editorial construct is a conclusive

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contritional ending to March’s narrative: “Pues marrepiento conocimiento alcanço/Daquel error que a huyr mesfuerço” (Since I repent, I really get to know that error I strive to avoid).40 The emphasis on a palinodic stance over a foregone love and the spiritual and contritional ending to a narrative were not the only Petrarchan elements of this 1539 book. As mentioned, the editorial division between works on love and works on death also mirrors the Canzoniere. The cruxes of Romaní’s fabrication are found in the section on death, which includes ten poems. The earliest extant manuscripts containing March’s poetry consecutively copied six pieces dedicated to the poet’s deceased beloved (XCII–XCV, XCVII, XCVI). Navarro’s section on death adds to those Poem XC—which refers not to the death of March’s lady but to the lover’s idealized past and his present amorous suffering. It also includes Poem LXXXVIII—on the poetic voice’s having lost his love, that is to say, not being requited anymore—Poem LVII—on sorrow and good dying—and a much reduced and edited version of CXIV—again on March’s losing his beloved’s favor. None of these convey that March’s lady is dead. Navarro printed them as cantica de mort because, in fact, Romaní freely rewrote some of their stanzas in order to make March’s beloved appear dead.41 See these lines from Poems CXIV and LXXXVIII (my emphasis): Mon foll pensar me dispon voler tal Que follament a fet mi amar E yo forsat de aquell apartar Me par ser bo tot quant a tots es mal42 (My foolish mind is making me wish such things! It has made me love foolishly; and since I am forced to be apart from her, I think as good what would be bad for anyone else.) Locos cuydados me hizieron ser tal amando aquella que nunca je olvidado quando por muerte me vi della apartado tuve por bueno lo que a todos es mal (Foolish worries made me such a person as to love her whom I have never forgotten. When I found myself apart from her because of death, I thought it was good what would be considered bad by anyone else.) 40 41 42

CXV, 1–2. Pere Ramírez i Molas, La poesia d’Ausiàs March: Anàlisi textual, cronologia, elements filosòfics (Basilea, Privatdruck der J.R. Geigy A.G, 1970), 127–29. CXIV, 77–80.

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Pus he perdut a vos quimereu vida Per vos amar del mon me contentaua Y de les gents tot grat abanonaua E uos aueu ma sperança scarnida43 ( . . . for I have lost you, and you were my life. I was content with the world because I loved you; I could neglect any social pleasures; and you have scorned any hopes I had.) Desque nos veo me veo sin la vida Despues que hos quise el mu[n]ndo magradaua Todo lo del por vos abandonaua y agora mas que os dallo [sic] del partida (Ever since I stopped seeing you, I see myself lifeless. Once I started loving you, I was enjoying the world, which I abandoned for you, and even more so now, since you have left it.) Another of Romaní’s rewritings affected Poem XCIII. This piece belongs to the original series on March’s deceased lady. In it the poetic voice remembers his lady and finds consolation in those memories, even when he imagines her dead. He finds this surprising but considers that her death was all too recent and it is all God’s will. Romaní’s translation recounts a different story. Romaní’s poetic voice thinks of his beloved and imagines her. His fantasy makes him believe that he is really seeing her and talking to her, and she answers back; but everything is just in his imagination. Yo no puch dir que yo no sia desert De tot delit quant morta limagin De mi mateix mespant quant yo ma fin Pensant sa mort em par que no so cert Tal mudament he vist en temps tan breu Que qui volgui a mi venir no pot Ne sent ne veu nenten sil dich mon vot E tot es be puix es obra de deu. (I cannot say that imagining her dead does not please me at all. I scare myself when I think about her death; it seems to me that this is not right. I have suffered such great changes in such a short time: for she who loved me cannot come back to me, and cannot hear, see, or understand if I tell her my promises. But everything is fine, because it’s all God’s will.) 43

LXXXVIII, 5–8.

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Yo soy aquel de todo bien desierto Quando en vos pienso y muerta hos ymagino De mi mespanto si enello mas me afino Se ques verdad y no paresce cierto Paresce veros hablar y estar con vos Que respondeys con honesto donayre Todo es falso castillo es enel ayre Y todo es bueno pues ques obra de dios (I am he who has nothing. When I think of you and I can imagine that you are dead. I scare myself if I think of it any further. I know that it is true although it may not seem so. It seems to me that I can see you talk, and that I can be with you; and you reply to me with honest gestures. Everything is false like castles in the air. And everything is fine, because it’s God’s will.) Romaní was inspired by a theme of Petrarch’s rvf. In Petrarch’s sonnets CCLXXIX–CCLXXX, the poetic voice is back in Vaucluse and imagines, or wants to think, that his beloved Laura is still alive there: “[Laura] veggio, et odo, et intendo ch’anchor viva/di sí lontano a’ sospir’ miei risponde” (I see Laura, and hear her, and understand that she is still alive, far away but replying to my sighs).44 In the following short poetic sequence, Laura appears in Petrarch’s dreams.45 In conclusion, edition and translation practices reshaped March’s lyrical self in Navarro’s edition and Romaní’s translation. March’s poetic person is refashioned so as to conform to morally correct behavior and language, at times poetically closer to the voice of a Cancionero poet and with significant Petrarchist undertones pervading a poetic sequence loosely mirroring Petrarch’s rvf. This is no longer March’s poetic voice but one materially and hermeneutically shaped by the editor and the translator.

Renaissance Self-fashioning?

Since Romaní’s translation and Navarro’s edition coined two printed texts that modeled March’s poetic voice and many of their discursive features after Petrarch’s fragmented lyric self, would this operation be an example of the selffashioning Stephen Greenblatt theorizes? In his brilliant essay, Greenblatt 44 45

rvf, CCLXXIX, 7. rvf, CCLXXXII–CCLXXXVI.

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tackles six authors of the English Renaissance—More, Tyndale, Wyatt, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare—and argues that, through their life and writings, those men of letters shaped their own self against the boundaries set by contemporaneous institutions—the church, a sacred book, the state, a military order, etc. For the symbolic anthropology that inspired Greenblatt’s critical approach, biography and literature are in a way one and the same thing. Writings and documented experiences are all cultural artifacts, socially codified acts loaded with meanings and values that, as Foucault would have it, exist within the limits of possibility prescribed by the forceful power of institutions.46 Greenblatt’s focus on early modern authors also implied a linguistic turn, for the memory of their lives—no less than their literary works—is linked to the extant written record, be it an autographed letter or a printed book of poetry.47 Greenblatt’s work does not show concern for the failures and aporias inherent to our engagement with linguistic objects but, rather, delves into the semiotic dimensions of linguistic utterances. In other words, Greenblatt’s Renaissance self emerges from an interpretive engagement with performative acts apparent to us only in the poetic and documentary record.48 Following Greenblatt, the fashioning of a Renaissance subject occurs under institutional submission and as a reaction to one “other” that ends up being dialectically incorporated in the fashioned self.49 In this process the power of the institution is channeled by autopoietical activity of the subject. Hence the 46

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“What I found particularly compelling . . . was that Foucault’s argument that the innermost experiences of the individual—the feelings that lurk in the darkness—were not a kind of raw material subsequently worked on by social forces. Rather, they were called into being and shaped by the institution that claimed only to police them.” Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, xiv–xv. “We do not have access to these figures [communities, life situations, structures of power] or their shared culture, but the operative condition of all human understanding—of the speech of our contemporaries as well as of the writings of the dead—is that we have indirect access or at least that we experience our constructions as the lived equivalent of such access.” Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 7. “ . . . the facts of life are less artless than they look, that both particular cultures and the observers of these cultures are inevitably drawn to a metaphorical grasp of reality, that anthropological interpretation must address itself less to the mechanics of customs and institutions than to the interpretive constructions the members of a society apply to their experiences. A literary criticism that has affinities to this practice must be conscious of its own status as interpretation and intent upon understanding literature as a part of the system of signs that constitutes a given culture.” Ibid., 4. “Self-fashioning . . . involves submission to an absolute power or authority situated at least partially outside the self. Self-fashioning is achieved at least partially in relation to something perceived as alien, strange or hostile.” Ibid., 9.

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ambiguity of self-fashioning, as it refers to both the making of a self and one’s making of one’s own self.50 As Greenblatt explains in a preface to the new edition of his book, his attention to the struggle between individual autonomy and institutional determinism owed much to a seminal article by Thomas Greene,51 to Foucault’s seminars during Greenblatt’s formative years, and, I would contend, more than anything else, to Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.52 Burckhardt’s notion of Renaissance, as Christopher Celenza remarked,53 has found no replacement in current scholarship. Well until the end of World War II, discussions on such wide-ranging issues dominated academic conversation. After that, the only far-reaching discussion about periodization and cultural history of that age (at least in the us) was launched by Hans Baron in the late 1950s around the existence of a current of civic humanism, but this debate quickly died out. Before its demise, however, medievalists and Renaissance scholars alike had contested many of the defining features of Burckhardt’s immensely popular vision of the Renaissance, attending to Charlemagne’s renewed interest in classical letters or to what Charles Haskins called the 12th-century Renaissance.54 The concept, if blurred, 50 51

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Jürgen Pieters, Moments of Negotiation: The New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002), 42–43. Thomas Greene, “The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature,” in The Disciplines of Criticism, eds. Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene, and Lowry Nelson, Jr. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 242–64. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemor (London: Penguin 2004). See Hans Baron, “Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance a Century after its Publication,” Renaissance News 13 (1960): 207–22; Hayden White, “Burckhardt: The Ironic Vision,” in Metahistory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 230–64; Ernst H. Gombrich, “The Renaissance—Period or Movement?” in Background to the English Renaissance: Introductory Lectures, ed. J.B. Trapp (London: Gary-Mills, 1974), 9–30; Arnaldo Momigliano, “Introduction to the Kulturgeschichte by Jacob Burckhardt,” in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1977), 295–305; Ernst H. Gombrich, “In Search of Cultural History,” in Ideals and Idols: Essays on Values in History and in Art (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979), 24–59; William Kerrigan and Gordon Braden, The Idea of the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 11–18; and Felix Gilbert, History: Politics or Culture? Reflections on Ranke and Burckhardt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 40–92. Christopher S. Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), xi–xii, xiv, xvii–xviii. Wallace K. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 290–385; Martin. L. McLaughlin, “Humanist Concepts of Renaissance in the Middle Ages in the Tre- and Quattrocento,” Renaissance Studies 2 (1988): 131–42.

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remains indispensable—like that of the Middle Ages—although few still dare to wage it as Petrarch did and Greenblatt in part has continued to do in his The Swerve, that is, as a return to the lights of classical times after the long dark age between that time and the present.55 Many of Burckhardt’s original theoretical tenets that defined the Renaissance have not survived critical scrutiny, and very few of those that did survive remain unaltered. To compose his effective tempera, Burckhardt—father of cultural history, Hegelian malgré lui—culled from his limited readings on the period for a variety of themes: the state as a work of art, the development of the individual, the revival of antiquity, the discovery of the world and of man, etc. In The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, the development of the modern subject was proposed on the basis of elements that are no longer thought of as restrictive to a self-conscious renaissance of the classical arts and letters: autobiographical writing, fame and cult to posterity, ingenuity, and humor. Moreover, Burckhardt believed that the medieval man, unlike the man of the Renaissance, perceived himself as an individual because of his belonging to a estate, race, people, or family—a group, a collective, and so an institution. The coincidence of what defines the medieval individual according to Burckhardt—“Despite its age and its well-documented limitations, one of the best introductions to Renaissance self-fashioning”56—with what precisely Greenblatt regards as a key force in the shaping of the Renaissance man, the immediate ancestor of the modern individual, is contradictory. But the problems in applying such a notion to the 1539 edition of March’s poetry go beyond the concept’s own aporetic existence. Navarro’s volume was crafted by many individuals (translator, typesetters, correctors, printers) in addition to the author. They created an identity for March’s poetic voice that imitated a highly authoritative model (Petrarch), but they could not help incorporating other less personal selves— like those present in the images and language of the very conventional poesía de cancionero. Those agents fabricated such an identity for the author and its poetic voice under misguided assumptions regarding the genealogy of Petrarch’s works. March’s self was indeed fashioned, one may say, under the power of the philological, historical, or genealogical institutions, but neither March’s biography nor his agency played any role in the making of the Navarro edition and its poetic self. The process involved an editorial poiesis, but not an 55

Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011). See John Monfasani’s erudite review, “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt,” Reviews in History, review number 1283, July 2012, http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1283. 56 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 161.

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authorial self-poiesis. And in this case, one may not find either any homology in the ontological value of the archival and the literary text as performative utterances. Only the later indeed holds a performative claim. One might concede that the fashioning of March’s poetic self is undertaken with respect to Petrarch’s, the “other” which would subsume March’s. But again, then we would be further trivializing the notion of self-fashioning, and all instances of imitative poetic writing in the pre-modern period would need to be considered as such—note how Greenblatt’s own analysis of Wyatt does not claim anything like this; rather, it focuses on the performative implications of Wyatt’s imitative discourse.57 March’s early modern reception should, rather, be theorized in its own terms, as the forging of a Renaissance authorship under certain hermeneutical conditions and assumptions, not as another symptom of the doubtful birth of the modern subject. Bibliography Amador de los Ríos, José. Historia crítica de la literatura española. 7 vols. Madrid: Imprenta de J. Rodríguez, 1861–65. Barberino, Francesco. Documenti d’amore. Edited by Federigo Ubaldino. Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1640. Baron, Hans. “Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance a Century After Its Publication.” Renaissance News 13 (1960): 207–22. Boase, Roger. The Troubadour Revival. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. 1860. Translated by S.G.C. Middlemor. London: Penguin, 2004. Cabré, Lluís. “Algunes imitacions i traduccions d’Ausiàs March al segle XVI.” Quaderns: Revista de traducció 7 (2002): 59–82. ———. “Notas sobre la memoria de Santillana y los poetas de la Corona de Aragón.” In Cancionero Studies in Honour of Ian Macpherson, edited by Alan Deyermond, 25–38. London: Department of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1998. Cabré, Lluís, and Jaume Torró. “‘Perché alcun ordine gli habbia ad esser necessario’: La poesia I d’Ausiàs March i la tradició petrarquista.” Cultura Neolatina 55 (1995): 117–36. Casas Rigall, Juan. Agudeza y retórica en la poesía amorosa de cancionero. Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1995.

57

Ibid., 115–56.

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Celenza, Christopher S. The Lost Italian Renaissance. 2004. Repr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Colón, Germà. “Els vocabularis barcelonins d’Ausiàs March al segle XVI.” Miscel·lània Pere Bohigas, III, edited by Josep Gulsoy, et al., 261–90. Montserrat: Abadia de Montserrat, 1983. ———. “Llemosí i llengua d’oc a la Catalunya medieval.” In La llengua catalana en els seus textos, vol. 1, 39–59. Barcelona: Curial, 1978. Coronel Ramos, Marco Antonio. L’Ausiàs March llatí de l’humanista Vicent Mariner. Valencia: Edicions Alfons el Magnànim, Diputació de València, 1997. Debenedetti, Santorre. Gli studi provenzali in Italia nel Cinquecento. 1911. Repr., Padova: Antenore, 1995. Di Girolamo, Costanzo. Pagine del Canzoniere. Milan-Trento: Luni, 1998. Duran, Eulàlia. “Defensa de la pròpia tradició davant d’Itàlia al segle XVI.” In Miscel·lània Joan Fuster III, edited by Antoni Ferrando and Albert G. Hauf, 241–65. Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 1991. ———. “La valoració renaixentista d’Ausiàs March.” In Homenatge a Arthur Terry I: Estudis de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes 35, 93–108. Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 1997. Farinelli, Arturo. Italia e Spagna. 2 vols. Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1929. Ferguson, Wallace K. The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948. Fratta, Aniello. “Introducció.” In Jordi de Sant Jordi, Poesies, 7–47. Barcelona: Barcino, 2005. Gilbert, Felix. History: Politics or Culture? Reflections on Ranke and Burckhardt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Gombrich, Ernst H. “In Search of Cultural History.” 1967. In Ideals and Idols: Essays on Values in History and in Art, 24–59. Oxford: Phaidon, 1979. ———. “The Renaissance—Period or Movement?” Background to the English Renais­ sance: Introductory Lectures, edited by J.B. Trapp, 9–30. London: Gary-Mills, 1974. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. ———. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Greene, Thomas. “The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature.” In The Disciplines of Criticism, edited by Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene, and Lowry Nelson Jr., 242–64. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968. Kerrigan, William, and Gordon Braden. The Idea of the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Lloret, Albert. Printing Ausiàs March: Material Culture and Renaissance Poetics. Madrid: Centro para la Edición de los Clásicos Españoles, 2013.

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March, Ausiàs. Las obras del famosissimo philosofo y poeta mossen Osias Marco cauallero Ualenciano de nacion Catalan traduzidas por don Baltasar de Romani y diuididas en quatro Canticas, es a saber, Cantica de amor, Cantica moral, Cantica de Muerte y Cantica Spiritual. Derigidas al excelentissimo señor el duque de Calabria. Valencia: Juan Navarro, 1539. ———. Las obras del poeta mosen Ausias March. Edited by Juan de Resa. Valladolid: Sebastián Martínez, 1555. ———. Obra completa. Edited by Robert Archer. 2 vols. Barcelona: Barcanova, 1997. ———. Poesies. Edited by Pere Bohigas. 5 vols. Barcelona: Barcino, 1952–59. Rev. eds. Amadeu J. Soberanas and Noemí Espinàs. Barcelona: Barcino, 2000. McKenzie, Donald. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. 1986. Repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. McLaughlin, Martin L. “Humanist Concepts of Renaissance in the Middle Ages in the Tre- and Quattrocento.” Renaissance Studies 2 (1988): 131–42. Micó, José María. “Translating Medieval Catalan Poetry Today: Jordi de Sant Jordi and Ausiàs March.” In Catalan Literature and Translation, edited by Albert Lloret. Special Issue of Translation Review 87 (2013): 18–29. Momigliano, Arnaldo. “Introduction to the Kulturgeschichte by Jacob Burckhardt.” In Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography, 295–305. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1977. Monfasani, John. Review of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt, Reviews in History, review number 1283, July 2012, http://www.history. ac.uk/reviews/review/1283. Pagès, Amadeu. Auzias March et ses prédécesseurs. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1912a. ———. “Introducció.” In Les obres d’Auzias March, edited by Amadeu Pagès, vol. 1, 11– 54. 2 vols. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1912b. Petrarca, Francesco. Canzoniere. Edited by Marco Santagata. Milan: Mondadori, 1996a. ———. Trionfi. Rime estravaganti: Codice degli abbozzi. Edited by Vinicio Pacca and Laura Paolino. Milan: A. Mondadori, 1996b. Pieters, Jürgen. Moments of Negotiation: The New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002. Rafanell, August. Un nom per a la llengua: El concepte del llemosí en la història del català. Vic: Eumo, 1991. Ramírez i Molas, Pere. La poesia d’Ausiàs March: Anàlisi textual, cronologia, elements filosòfics. Basilea, Privatdruck der J.R. Geigy A.G, 1970. Repertorio informatizzato dell’antica letteratura catalana (rialc), directed by Costanzo Di Girolamo. Università di Napoli Federico II. http://www.rialc.unina.it/. de Riquer, Martí. Traducciones castellanas de Ausias March en la edad de oro. Barcelona: Instituto Español de Estudios Mediterráneos, 1946.

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de Riquer, Martí, and Lola Badia. Les poesies de Jordi de Sant Jordi, cavaller valencià del segle XV. Valencia: Tres i Quatre, 1984. Sanvisenti, Bernardo. I primi influssi di Dante, del Petrarca, e del Boccaccio sulla letteratura spagnuola. Milan: Hoepli, 1902. Terry, Arthur. Ausias March: Selected Poems. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976. Torró, Jaume. “Cort i literatura de Joan I a Ferran II el Catòlic.” In Literatura medieval (II), edited by Lola Badia; vol. 2 of Història de la literatura catalana, directed by Àlex Broch, 261–74. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia catalana, Editorial Barcino, Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2014. ———. “El Cançoner de Saragossa.” In Translatar i transferir: La transmissió dels textos i el saber (1200–1500), edited by Anna Alberni, Lola Badia, and Lluís Cabré, 379–424. Santa Coloma de Queralt: Obrador Edèndum, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 2010. ———. “Introducció general.” In Sis poetes del regnat d’Alfons el Magnànim, edited by Jaume Torró, 15–32. Barcelona: Barcino, 2009. Valsalobre, Pep. “Història d’una superxeria: El cas Jordi de Sant Jordi.” In El (re)descobriment de l’edat moderna: Estudis en homenatge a Eulàlia Duran, edited by Eulàlia Miralles and Josep Solervicens, 297–335. Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, Universitat de Barcelona, 2007. White, Hayden. “Burckhardt: The Ironic Vision.” In Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th-Century Europe, 230–64. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.

chapter 10

Conflict or Compromise? Identity and the Cathedral Chapter of Girona in the Fourteenth Century Caroline Smith Identity, as expressed through behavior or the written word, is mutable. It can be shaped by exterior forces or can be formed by the individual. The concept of self-fashioning of identity, at its most basic, expresses the idea that individuals can and do formulate their own program of behavior, enacted to reflect individual and corporate goals and priorities.1 The applicability of this concept has a wide scope, and it can provide a valuable lens through which to view individuals and groups in medieval Iberia, a world in which identity was multifaceted and depended, to varying degrees, on one’s status, family background, profession, confessional identity, and more. While the set of cultural constraints governing behavioral practices and priorities obviously differs depending on time and space, the concept of self-fashioned identity can serve as a valuable framework of analysis in the medieval Iberian context because of the possibility for mobility between different motivations and actions, depending on the context and the individuals involved. Stephen Greenblatt discusses self-fashioned identity as expressed through literary works, but behavior can also be a valuable expression of identity because it similarly reflects priorities, values, and relationships, whether this information is transmitted voluntarily or involuntarily. Identity is both a cause and a product of behavior; self-selected and self-fashioned identity can lead a person to act in a certain way, motivated by the desire to project a certain image. The expression of that identity, then, is displayed to the world in a way that can be intentionally managed by individuals to control the impression given to others. There is, of course, the possibility for disconnect between “real” identity and the image projected by the individual, based on what the individual chooses to express. In that case, the process of self-fashioning allows for an individual to manipulate his or her image through the selection and management of 1 The concept of self-fashioned identity comes from Stephen Greenblatt, as discussed in Renais­ sance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), but this concept can be applied beyond the Renaissance context discussed by Greenblatt because, at its core, the idea is about how people conceive of themselves and how this is reflected in their action, thoughts, and writings. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291003_012

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behavior and values to fit with how he or she wants to be seen by others. Identity, therefore, is not simply static, it is “a pattern of appropriate conduct, coherent, embellished, and well articulated” and “must be enacted and portrayed.”2 A person has agency to form his or her own identity rather than simply acting out what is socially and institutionally prescribed for someone of his or her position and status.3 Because personal identity is derived from the way in which these roles are expressed and not just from the roles themselves, individuals can choose which norms to follow and create their own identity.4 This theoretical framework makes it possible to study the identity of the canons of the cathedral chapter in Girona, who left no personal writings but whose actions are revealed in extensive archival documentation.5 The canons, like all people, had prescribed roles, but they did not simply follow them automatically. They had the ability to accept, reject, or reshape expectations to integrate the role of their ecclesiastical position with their own personal priorities, resulting in an identity that served as a compromise between or combination of ecclesiastical and familial expectations.6 The behavior of cathedral canons was obviously governed by a set of accepted standards, but the privileged position of the 2 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1959), 75. 3 Even when individuals are fulfilling corporate expectations, this does not discount the possibility of personal motivations for corporate behavior. Rituals, or ritualized practices, can represent individual motivation in addition to traditional practice, which is, of course, very important when considering the life and behavior of a corporate religious body like the cathedral chapter of Girona. For discussion of this concept, see Sharon Farmer, “Personal Perceptions, Collective Behavior: Twelfth Century Suffrages for the Dead,” in Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, ed. Richard Trexler (Binghampton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985), 237. 4 Peter Marsh, “Identity: An Ethogenic Perspective,” in Persons in Groups, 21. 5 The Arxiu Diocesà de Girona (hereafter referred to as adg) contains a wealth of documentation in a variety of series of registers, most of which begin around 1290. The registers of episcopal letters, registers of the episcopal notariate, and registers of the foundation and provision of benefices have been most valuable for this paper because of the variety and depth of information they provide about the canons’ activities and relationships. 6 In the secondary literature on cathedral canons, these kinds of questions and issues receive little attention. Most studies focus mainly on the structure and dignities of the chapter, religious duties, administration of the chapter patrimony, and relationships with the bishop. Some hints at the possibility for analysis of canons’ identity can be found in sources that mention canons’ social origins, relationships with their families, or role in the secular world, but there is usually little discussion of the specifics or their wider implications. For such mentions, see Paul Freedman, The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia (New Brunswick, nj: Rutgers University Press, 1983), 40–2; R.I. Burns, “The Organization of a Medieval Cathedral Community: The Chapter of Valencia,” Church History

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canons as part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy made it possible for them to modify such standards, incorporating behaviors perhaps more suited to their secular counterparts. This kind of purposeful self-fashioning could lead to tacitly accepted changes in the acceptability of such behavior because of the powerful position of the cathedral canons in the hierarchy of the diocese. Greenblatt’s model for the discussion and analysis of self-fashioned identity provides additional tools for a consideration of the Girona canons’ identity. He sees mobility, normally social or economic, as a common factor in allowing for the construction of a self-fashioned identity, but, in the case of the Girona canons, this can be seen as flexibility between the secular and ecclesiastical spheres.7 In Greenblatt’s model, mobility is significant because the individual’s identity is not tied to a particular social group or family and is thus a blank slate, but it is the canons’ flexibility between the ideals of their post within the chapter and the ideals of their family lineages which allowed them to fashion their own identity and behavioral model. Another major part of Greenblatt’s model is the idea that self-fashioning occurs at the point between the authority and the alien, wherein the authority is an entity outside the self and the alien is something perceived to be strange, hostile, or opposed to the authority.8 However, for the Girona canons, there was no clear, easily identifiable authority and alien. Rather, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and family lineages served as the two main bodies to which the canons held allegiances, and while they did not present the same model of behavior, they were not always in direct opposition. But, in the same vein as Greenblatt’s authority and alien, they presented two separate ideals and motivations, each of which carried their own relationships and expectations. The Girona canons fashioned their identity in such a way as to validate the priorities and expectations of each without uniformly choosing or favoring one over the other. 31 (1962): 20–1; Mateo Bautista Bautista, Maria Teresa García García, and Maria Isabel Nicolás Crispín, La organización del cabildo catedralicio leonés a comienzos del s. XV (1419–1426) (Leon: Universidad de León, Servicio de Publicaciones, 1990), 315; Everett Crosby, Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 393; Stephen Marritt, “Secular Cathedrals and the Anglo-Norman Aristocracy,” in Cathedrals, Community, and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World, eds. Paul Dalton, Charles Insley, and Louise J. Wilkinson (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011), 157–8; C.N.L. Brooke, “The Composition of the Chapter of St Paul’s, 1086–1163,” Cambridge Historical Journal 11, no. 2 (1951): 121; Hélène Millet, Les cha­ noines du chapitre cathédral de Laon, 1272–1412 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1982), 284, 286; and Soledad Suárez Beltrán, El Cabildo de la Catedral de Oviedo en la Edad Media (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo Servicio de Publicaciones, 1986), 234–5. 7 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 7. 8 Ibid., 9.

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The Girona canons, rather than fully relinquishing all familial ties upon entering the chapter, maintained connections to their families which were uniformly among the military elite or nobility of the diocese, thus establishing their privileged position within both the ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies. Their behavior reflects this hybrid position through the incorporation of behaviors and priorities from each sphere, and the continued acceptance of this behavior reflects a compromise, or combination of priorities, rather than conflict. This resultant identity, and the power it commanded, made it possible for the Girona canons to carry out the kind of behavior that reflected this integration, performing their duties in the cathedral, serving the bishop and diocese, participating in a cathedral confraternity, and founding and endowing chapels, altars, and benefices, as well as freely conducting business for and with relatives and maintaining close connections with family members in life and even in death. In some cases, their privileged status may have helped them escape punishment for conduct clearly prohibited for men of their ecclesiastical status, due in part to their success in changing the acceptability of such behavior because of their power and prominence. The size of the Girona cathedral chapter was fixed at 24 canons, having been increased from 20 during a 1229 visit from Cardinal Sabinense, the papal delegate in Catalonia.9 Within the chapter, there was a fixed hierarchy of dignities, which were (in order of precedence) major archdeacon (also called the archdeacon of Girona or archdeacon of Rabós), major sacristan, precentor, abbot of Sant Feliu (the nearby collegiate church), archdeacon of Besalú, archdeacon of Empordà, and archdeacon of la Selva. The four archdeaconates, which corresponded to the ancient counties of Girona, Besalú, Empúries, and Peralada, were originally at the nomination of the bishop, but the papacy tried to claim rights of nomination as well.10 The archdeacons assisted the bishop in governing the diocese, which consisted of more than 400 parishes, and they retained some rights of presentation for certain benefices in their archdeaconates.11 9 10

11

Jaime Villanueva, Viage Literario a las Iglesias de España, vol. 12 (Madrid: La Real Academia, 1850), 150. Marc Sureda i Jubany, “La Catedral i les seves sepultures: organització, economia, memòria. Una introducció,” in Josep M. Marquès, Inscripcions i Sepultures de la Catedral de Girona (Girona: Diputació de Girona, 2009), 17–18. Two of the archdeaconates were occupied by cardinals in the late 1340s, both of whom surely never lived in Girona (Christian Guilleré, “La peste noire a Gérone (1348),” Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins 27 (1984): 135. Elvis Mallorquí, El Llibre Verd del Bisbe de Girona (1362–1371): El Delme i l’estructura feudal de la diòcesi de Girona al Segle XIV (Girona: Diputació de Girona, 2011), 65; Josep Maria Marquès, “Al marge del dret canònic de Girona durant la Baixa Edat Mitja,” Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins 42 (2001): 694.

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Twelve priests were also associated with the chapter, and although they were firmly denied equal status to the canons, they were very important to the chapter because of their liturgical role.12 The canons dispensed with much of the daily liturgical duties, so the priests devoted themselves to recitation of the Divine Office and to other auxiliary tasks of cathedral worship, including celebration of the Mass.13 From at least 1019, the chapter was endowed with its own goods and patrimony, holdings which were divided into 12 pabordias in the second half of the 12th century. A pabordia was a unit of seigniorial administration designed to produce income for the ordinary necessities and expenses of the chapter, and each pabordia was administered by a canon or priest of the chapter who gave a portion of the pabordia’s income to the chapter but retained some for himself.14 Serving as administrator for a pabordia could, therefore, increase a canon’s income, also contributing to his social prestige and standing within the chapter. Although the canon administrators held direct dominion over the 12

13

14

Joan Molina Figueras, “De genere militari ex utroque parente: La nobleza eclesiástica y los inicios de la catedral Gótica de Gerona,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 37, no. 1 (2007): 744. In the mid-13th century, the priests of the chapter tried to claim equal status with the canons so they could receive the same income, but a sentence from October 29, 1240, declared that the priests were not canons and would not receive the same income. Pope Innocent IV confirmed this in 1249 after the priests of the chapter had appealed to the papacy (Villanueva, Viage Literario, 152). Sureda i Jubany, “La Catedral i les seves sepultures,” 19; Josep Maria Marquès Planaguma, “La Iglesia de Gerona,” in Historia de las diócesis españolas, vol. 2, Iglesias de Barcelona, Terrassa, Sant Feliu de Llobregat y Gerona, ed. Josep Maria Martí Bonet (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2006), 528. Some Girona canons also failed to fulfill the basic requirements of their position, seen in an early 14th-century visit by the archbishop of Tarragona, Guillem de Rocabertí, who found that at least nine canons had not yet been ordained as deacons, which is the ecclesiastical order to which Girona canons needed to advance. He thus issued a constitution requiring them to do so, or else they would lose their voice in the chapter and would have no role in matters pertaining to the chapter. Among the canons identified in this constitution is Pere de Rocabertí, future bishop of Girona and the archbishop’s own brother. Archbishop Guillem also declared that canons who did not attend Mass could lose their canonical portion for three days, and canons who did not attend recitation of the Divine Office would lose anniversary mass payments, suggesting that there were problems with some canons’ lack of attendance at liturgical services These constitutions are transcribed as Document LIX in the appendix of Jaime Villanueva, Viage Literario a las Iglesias de España, vol. 13 (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1850), 337–40. Antoni Lluís Sanz Alguach, “La Formació del Patrimoni de la catedral de Girona,” in Jornades de l’historià de l’Empordà: Homenatge a J. Pella i Forgas (Girona: Patronat Francesc Eiximenis, 1987), 132–3, 137.

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lands of their pabordia, received rents, annuities, and other income in money and in kind, and received homage from peasants, the chapter retained ultimate ownership over this territory to assure adequate management of land and regular collection of income. The overall size of this patrimony indicates that the Girona chapter was one of the major feudal powers in northeastern Catalonia.15 By the 14th century, communal life had not existed for the Girona chapter for quite some time, and the majority of canons lived in their own residences in the areas immediately to the south and east of the cathedral. They lived and acted like lords in the sense that they resided in comfortable houses and freely dispensed of their often-considerable patrimonies, enjoying the opportunity for income and position that would have been difficult for them otherwise as second sons of noble families.16 They won some important concessions from the bishop in 1319, including a guarantee that the most valuable benefices in the diocese would go only to members of the chapter. The bishop was also declared to be unable to judge canons without an additional judge, often chosen from within the chapter. There was also much debate over the bishop’s ability to call a chapter meeting and the proper location for such meetings, showing the chapter’s strong desire for autonomy.17 The canons’ elevated position within the diocesan hierarchy is confirmed by various privileges which set them apart from the rest of the diocesan clerics: they had the right to own personal property, the right to make their testaments and dispense with their goods freely, and they were not obliged to contribute to ecclesiastical works from their personal income, even income from benefices.18 As cathedral canons, religion obviously formed a major part in the lives of members of the chapter. It provided the source of their authority within the city and, ideally, the main focus of their daily life and activities. The most basic religious duties of a cathedral canon were attendance at the daily recitations of 15

16 17 18

Antoni Lluís Sanz Alguach, “La pabordia d’Aro de la Catedral de Girona, 1180–1343,” in Estudi General, 5–6, La formació i expansió del feudalisme català: Acts del col.loqui organit­ zat pel Col.legi Universitari de Girona (8–11 de gener de 1985), ed. Jaume Portella i Comas (Girona: Col.legi Universitari de Girona, 1985–86), 421, 423, 428. Each year, at the general chapter held on the Tuesday after Easter, the canon-pabordes (or their procurators) had to report in and confirm the regular collection of income from his pabordia. For these records, see adg Llibre d’Afers del Capítol de la Seu, vol. 1 (1293–357) and vol. 2 (1358–446). Molina Figueras, “De genere militari ex utroque parente,” 743–4. Marquès, “La iglesia de Gerona,” 529. All benefices with income of more than 150 sous annually were reserved for members of the chapter. Molina Figueras, “De genere militari ex utroque parente,” 743.

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the Divine Office and at Mass, as outlined by the chapter statutes. Canons were required to be present at the Offices and to participate in the readings and responses unless they had a valid reason for being absent from the city and were thus legitimately unable to attend.19 This obligation was firmly upheld, as seen in a 1331 notarial record in which the bishop noted that not all canons and priests of the chapter were attending the Office services and that failure to attend the recitation of the Hours would endanger their souls.20 Canons were also responsible for carrying out additional tasks during weeks assigned to them; the master of songs (magister cantus) assigned weeks to all canons, except for those who had received dispensations to be absent from Girona for an extended amount of time.21 These basic tasks of attendance at and celebration of Divine Office and the Mass formed the main routine of a canon’s life, providing a religious structure to the canons’ daily and weekly activities. The Girona canons also performed other tasks in service of the chapter, bishop, and diocese, emphasizing the ecclesiastical nature of many of their obligations. In addition to their benefices in the chapter, many canons held other minor religious positions in the diocese, including roles at parish churches, benefices at altars in the cathedral, and various chaplaincies, all of which could bring extra income.22 Arnau de Montrodon, a Girona canon and future bishop, held multiple chaplaincies, including one in the chapel of Santa Agatha that required him to maintain the candles in the cathedral lit in honor of the Virgin Mary.23 Canons also remained highly involved with the diocesan and cathedral hierarchy through their rights of presentation to benefices, often at various altars within the cathedral.24 Many of the major dignitaries of the cathedral, including the major sacristan, the four archdeacons, and the abbot of the collegiate church of Sant Feliu, had the right to confer positions for 19 20 21

22

23 24

Arxiu Capitular de la Catedral de Girona (acg), Llibre d’en Caçada, fol. 10r. For instructions about attendance at weekly Mass, see Llibre d’en Caçada, fol. 14r. adg Notularum, G-11, fol. 21v (February 14, 1336). acg Llibre d’en Caçada, fol. 12r. At the annual general chapter, celebrated on the Tuesday after Easter, two priests would be chosen from among the priests of the chapter to take care of the tasks and Offices of the vacant weeks, for which they would receive extra payment (see G-6, fol. 178r–v). For episcopal conferrals of chaplaincies on members of the Girona chapter, see adg Notularum, G-1, fols 43v (November 29, 1296), 44r (December 4, 1296), and 45v (December 14, 1296). In 1330, Bishop Gastó de Montcada assigned the chaplaincies of Toralles and Vilafant to Arnau de Montrodon, on account of his “devotion and affection” [adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-4, fol. 122r (October 9, 1330)]. adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-4, fol. 175r (July 27, 1331). Ibid., fol. 34v (undated, but between June 22 and June 25, 1329).

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priests within the chapter.25 Given the major role priests of the chapter played in celebration of the Divine Office and of the Mass, this right of presenta­ tion represented a task with important religious implications for the chapter. Canons could also serve as administrators of pabordias, a task which required the canon (or his representative) to confirm the accounts of his pabordia each year at the general chapter, affirming that the pabordia was producing an adequate income and that he was administering it responsibly, sharing the profits with the chapter, and doing the necessary service required by this position.26 The work associated with this position could be done by a substitute, but the canon-administrator still ideally remained involved in the duties, given an episcopal plea for the king to not assign any pabordias at his collation to nonresident canons because of the problems this presented.27 The duties of a cathedral canon could also extend to service of the bishop, or of the office of the episcopate in the time of an episcopal vacancy. Canons could serve as “speciales procuratores, actores, et deffensores”28 (special procurators, actors, and defenders) of the bishop in any affairs of the Girona See. They could also function as arbiters in disputes, as in the 1326 conflict between Bishop Pedro de Urrea and the major archdeacon about the collation of certain benefices in the See made by the archdeacon during the episcopal vacancy before Pedro’s appointment as bishop.29 The importance of canons’ roles as arbiters is signaled by the status of the two involved parties, the two highest ecclesiastical authorities in the cathedral, and the implications this decision could have for episcopal and chapter power. Another significant task that fell to members of the chapter was to serve as vicar general during episcopal vacancies, effectively functioning as an episcopal substitute in all diocesan matters. Capitular authorities could also convoke the chapter in the absence of the bishop if given episcopal permission, as when Berenguer de Palau, archdeacon of Empordà, received instructions from Bishop Pedro de Urrea to convoke the Girona chapter while Pedro was temporarily absent from Girona.30 The variety of tasks performed by canons in service of the bishop and diocese demonstrates the central importance of the Church in forming a program of duties for canons within the ecclesiastical framework of the diocese. 25 26 27 28 29 30

acg Llibre d’en Caçada, fols 21r– 22v. adg Notularum, G-4, fol. 15r (April 10, 1323). For the yearly confirmations of pabordia administration, see adg Llibre d’Afers del Capítol de la Seu, vols. 1–2. adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-9, fol. 31v (April 29, 1345). adg Notularum, G-3, fol. 98r (October 24, 1321). Ibid., G-6, fol. 32v (June 16, 1326). adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-2, fol. 63r (April 14, 1326).

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The religious devotion of some Girona canons motivated them to participate in activities beyond those prescribed for men of their ecclesiastical status, as seen through their involvement in a confraternity associated with the cathedral. A number of canons were associated with this confraternity, and one canon was among the two clerics selected in 1325 to administer the confraternity, managing its possessions, contracts, and income.31 As members of the confraternity of Sant Tomás, archdeacon Ramon de Vilarig, abbot of Sant Feliu Hug de Cruïlles, and canon Arnau de Montrodon, together with other clerics, as Confratres confratrie ecclesie sedis Gerunde, per nos et alios confratres confratrie eiusdem, ad honorem et laudem dei patris et filii ac spiritus sancti, necnon beate Marie semper uirginis, Beatissimique Thome apostoli, creamus et instituimus beneficium presbyterale in capella, sub titulo et inuocatione Beati Thome apostoli in sede Gerunde, constructa uel construenda et dedicanda.32 (Confreres of the confraternity of the church of the See in Girona, for us and for the other confreres of this confraternity, for the honor and praise of God the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and also for the honor and praise of Mary, always Virgin, and the Most Blessed Thomas the Apostle, create and institute a presbyterial benefice in the chapel, constructed or to be constructed and dedicated under the title and invocation of Blessed Thomas the Apostle in the see of Girona.) The collation for this benefice fell to the members of the confraternity, and the priest chosen to hold the benefice was to celebrate Mass in the chapter for the souls of the deceased, especially those who had belonged to the confraternity. This position was funded by income and rents purchased and managed by the administrators of the confraternity.33 It is clear that active participation in this confraternity was not required for all members of the Girona chapter; membership and service were voluntary for the canons and chapter dignitaries who desired another outlet for religious expression, showing the importance of personal spiritual devotion to the identity of a number of canons of the Girona chapter. Examples of devotional activities found in diocesan notarial records further reflect the canons’ piety and the significant role religious activity played in their lives. Arnau de Montrodon, canon and future bishop, was noted as 31 32 33

adg Notularum, G-5, fol. 59v (July 9, 1325). adg Dotalies de Beneficis, D-2, fol. 52r (January 12, 1314). adg Dotalies de Beneficis, D-2, fol. 52r–v (January 12, 1314).

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“specialem deuotionem habente que hec pluries in capitulo exposuit”34 (having a special devotion which he has showed many times in chapter) which motivated him to propose that the bishop and chapter also celebrate the feast of Conception on December 8, given that the Girona cathedral is dedicated to the Virgin Mary but did not yet celebrate this feast day. Arnau, as administrator of the pabordia of December, took responsibility for doubling the canonical portion for all those of the chapter who received it on this day and were present at the feast day services, as was customary. The bishop and chapter also approved provisions outlining the lighting and maintenance of a number of lamps and candles within the cathedral dedicated to worship of the Virgin Mary.35 Arnau’s desire to found and endow the celebration of the Conception feast in the cathedral is clearly linked to his personal devotion for the Virgin Mary. Strong personal piety was also expressed by major archdeacon Ramon de Vilarig in 1307 when he declared “accedebit ad ordinem presbyteratus promoueri, quod sola de deuotione”36 (that he will undertake to be promoted to the rank of the priesthood, which is solely based on devotion) but that none of his successors as archdeacons of Girona should be forced to do the same. Bequests in testaments and foundations of chapels, altars, and benefices are another facet of canons’ expression of their religious identity. Many canons left bequests to churches, monasteries, hospitals, and almshouses in Girona and spread their donations among a number of institutions.37 Similarly, canon Bernat de Vilert bequeathed 1000 sous to pay for a silver cask to hold the Host during processions in the cathedral and made other bequests totaling 180 sous for altar ornaments for three chapels within the cathedral. He also founded a benefice for a priest in the chapel of Sant Andreu in the cathedral, funded with 300 sous of annual income.38 Pere de Crexell founded a benefice as well, establishing a presbyterial place in the chapel of Saints Bartolomeu and Nicolau, which he had also been involved in founding and constructing. The beneficed priest was required to perform a conventual anniversary mass for Pere on the date of his death, for the good of Pere’s soul.39 Canon of the chapter and abbot of Sant Feliu Vidal de Blanis also instituted a presbyterial benefice in the cathedral, in the chapel of Sant Martí and Sant Francesc, founded by canon Guillem 34 35 36 37 38 39

adg Notularum, G-7, fol. 36v (April 17, 1330). Ibid., fols 36v–37r (April 17, 1330). Ibid., G-2, fol. 71r (March 8, 1307). For example, see the testaments of canons Pere de Crexell [adg Dotalies de Beneficis, D-1, fo1.1r (1315)] and Bernat de Vilert [adg D-1, fol. 5v (1324)]. adg Dotalies de Beneficis, D-1, fols 5v and 7v (November 21, 1324). adg Dotalies de Beneficis, D-1, fol. 1v (December 13, 1315).

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de Cornellà.40 Given the privilege that the Girona chapter enjoyed that allowed them to make their testaments freely, without any ecclesiastical guidelines or control, the widespread practice of donating to multiple churches and instituting benefices clearly shows the importance of devotion, piety, and ecclesiastical support to the lives and identity of the Girona canons. As members of the cathedral chapter, the Girona canons were clearly members of the ecclesiastical elite, but their status as members of the diocesan aristocracy was a crucial factor in the construction and formation of their identity. The main factor that ensured that the canons of the Girona cathedral were, in fact, members of the secular hierarchy was a privilege granted to the bishop and chapter requiring any potential member of the chapter to be from a noble background on the paternal and maternal sides.41 This precept was confirmed in a privilege granted by Pope Clement VII, which allowed the chapter to refuse admission to anyone “qui ex utroque parente de militari genere procreatus non fuerit”42 (who was not born from military stock from each parent) and forbid anyone to infringe on this concession or to contradict it. In a 1361 letter to the king, the bishop and chapter asserted that this custom dated back to a privilege granted by Charlemagne as the founder and benefactor of the Girona 40 41

42

adg Dotalies de Beneficis, D-2, fol. 85v (July 26, 1344). This requirement is, as far as I know, unique among cathedral chapter entrance requirements. Many other chapters, of course, contained canons from noble and aristocratic families, but I have not read about any other chapters requiring (and verifying) origins from among the military aristocracy. Many other chapters also included canons from among the bourgeoisie or even peasantry. David Lepine, in discussing English canons, notes that it is difficult to establish canons’ social origins but that canons could be from local knightly families and also from non-aristocratic small landholders or from the upper ranks of urban society (A Brotherhood of Canons Serving God: English Secular Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1995), Chap. 3). Kathleen Edwards states that men of all ranks could join English chapters and that it was normal for chapters to include “new men” (The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1967), 34). Regarding the Iberian chapter of Oviedo, Suárez Beltrán has definitively identified the social origins of 59 canons from the 13th and 14th centuries, and 50 per cent were bourgeois, while 8 per cent were from peasant backgrounds (El Cabildo de la Catedral de Oviedo en la Edad Media (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo Servicio de Publicaciones, 1986), 236). In the chapter on Vic, Paul Freedman notes that the upper aristocracy dominated again by the early 13th century, implying that they did not also comprise a totality (or even majority) in that chapter (The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia, Chap. 2). acg Llibre d’en Caçada, fols 170v–171r. This is a 15th-century copy of various statutes and privileges granted to the Girona chapter. The privilege is reiterated in a 1437 document, so this practice continued at least into the mid-15th century.

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cathedral.43 In this letter, the bishop and chapter expressed their desire to block Nicolau Rossell, a cleric from Mallorca, from taking possession of a canonry since neither he nor his predecessors were of military origin. Were he permitted to join the chapter, it would be an irreparable detriment to all.44 The bishop and canons were very careful to ensure that this privilege was followed, as seen in the letters they sent inquiring about the heritage of potential canons. For example, in 1355, the bishop wrote to Francesc Ruffach, a canon of the Barcelona chapter and doctor in laws, enquiring if Fernando Muñoz, assigned a canonry in an exchange authorized by the papal see, was noble on both sides. Ruffach was assigned to collect information from credible witnesses and report back about Muñoz’s origins so the ancient custom was upheld, showing how seriously the bishop and chapter took this admission requirement.45 This strict monitoring of, and investigation into, the backgrounds of men appointed as canons resulted in a chapter uniformly composed of men from knightly and noble lineages, mainly from within Catalonia and the diocese itself. At least 14 different families are known, some of which could trace their origins back to the 10th and 11th centuries (or had legendary origins from among the Merovingian aristocracy).46 Among these families were the Cruïlles, who held lordship over much of the Baix Empordà; the Santapau, from Besalú, who held the lordship of Santapau and Finestres; and the Rocabertí, a noble lineage from the Alt Empordà that held the title of viscount and was equal in prestige to the most noble houses in Catalonia.47 Other families included members who served as ambassadors to royal and papal courts, went on royal 43 44 45

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47

adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-41, fol. 160v (November 2, 1361). adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-41, fols 160v–161r (November 2, 1361). adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-27, fol. 144r (December 26, 1355). A similar letter was sent in 1359 to the bishop of Castres, seeking information about Aimeric de Felenor, a rector of two parish churches in Castres who has agreed to make an exchange with Gallart de Montpezat, a Girona canon. The bishop also asks if Felenor is “sanus mentis et compos membris et corpore” (sound in mind and healthy in limbs and body) [adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-33, fols 44v–45r (July 15, 1359)]. Legend has it that the Rocabertí family is descended from a Merovingian duke named Aubertins d’Austàsia who fled from royal persecution and settled in the Catalan Pyrenees. See Santiago Sobrequés Vidal, Els Barons de Catalunya (Barcelona: Història de Catalunya, Biografies catalanes, 1991), 39. For the Cruïlles family, see Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, vol. 8 (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 1974), 367, 376. For the Santapau family, see Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, vol. 20 (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2001), 286. For the Rocabertí family, see Sobrequés Vidal, Els Barons de Catalunya, 108–12, 206.

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expeditions to Sicily and Minorca, and served as royal councilors to Jaume II, Alfons III, and Pere III.48 The Girona canons were often second or third sons of these families, so they were both sons and brothers to some of the major landand tithe-holders in the diocese, clearly situating them as part of the Catalan military elite. Many Girona canons maintained ties to their families even after joining the chapter, conducting business with or on behalf of relatives, showing the continuing importance of lineage to the canons’ identities. In 1301, two knights recognized to the bishop that they hold part of a tithe purchased “a Gilaberto de Crudiliis, canonico Gerundensis, vendente nomine Jacobi de Crudiliis, fratris sui”49 (from Gilabert de Cruïlles, canon of Girona, selling in the name of Jaume de Cruïlles, his brother). Similarly, in 1346, Bertran de Montrodon, archdeacon of la Selva, together with Bernat de Montrodon, his relative and a fellow canon, bought half the tithe of three villages “nomine nostro et dicti heredis dicte domus de Monte rotundo et pro ipsa domus”50 (in our name and in the name of the said heir of the said house of Montrodon and for that house). In both these cases, canons carried out business transactions for and with their families long after having joined the chapter, showing their continued involvement in familial economic matters. Three years earlier, Bertran had received the estate of Sant Lleir from his uncle, including the house, land, animals, estates, censals, and jurisdictions controlled by the main estate within the diocese of Barcelona.51 This grant proved to be valuable when Bertran sold the fruits of the estate for 500 sous annually, showing that family connections remained valuable and financially beneficial for both canons and their relatives.52 The importance of family and lineage in canons’ personal identities is also reflected in their testaments, wherein they appointed relatives as executors and left possessions to family members, whether they were fellow canons or not. Guillem de Cornellà, a canon of both Girona and Barcelona, left his house to his nephew, Arnau de Cornellà, also a Girona canon.53 Guillem had earlier served as an executor for his brother Bernat, canon and archdeacon of la Selva, 48

49 50 51 52 53

Rafael Tasis, Pere El Cerimoniós i Els Seus Fills (Barcelona: Teide, 1957), 8, 52; D. José Pella y Forgas, Historia del Ampurdán: Estudio de la civilización en las comarcas del noreste de Cataluña (Barcelona: Luis Tasso y Serra, 1883), 445; Molina Figueras, “De genere militari ex utroque parente,” 744. adg Pergamins de la Mitra, 556 (June 28, 1301). adg Notularum, G-18, fol. 154r (August 31, 1346). adg Notularum, G-17, fols 56v–57r (October 5, 1343). adg Notularum, G-18, fol. 149r (August 16, 1346). adg Notularum, G-16, fol. 12v (December 15, 1341).

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and was responsible for dividing his goods in fulfillment of the terms of his will and assigning the responsibility for his anniversary masses.54 Guillem de Vilamarí, canon and abbot of Sant Feliu, left “omnia alia bona mea mobilia et immobilia, iura uniuersa, Raymundo de Vilamarino, fratri meo, militi, in ipsius uniuersalem hereditatem”55 (all my other moveable and immoveable goods, and universal rights, to Ramon de Vilamarí, my brother, knight, as universal heir). As heir, one of the legacies Ramon received was the returns of a chaplaincy valued at ten pounds per year.56 These valuable legacies show the potential for canons to benefit financially from their family connections and maintain their own personal wealth. The ties between canons and their families are also visible in the canons’ foundations of anniversary masses for their parents and other relatives. In 1330, Gilabert de Cruïlles, then canon and sacristan, founded the altar of Sant Pau in the cathedral and created an accompanying benefice whose holder would celebrate Mass for the souls of Gilabert’s father, mother, and relatives. After his death, collation of the benefice would fall to his brother Hug, canon and abbot of Sant Feliu, then Bernat de Cruïlles, also a canon, then to his nephew Berenguer, canon and future bishop, then to anyone else from the Cruïlles family who was a canon or cleric of the chapter.57 He gave 300 sous to the Girona Franciscans to celebrate Mass for his father (who was buried at this convent) and all his relatives, 200 sous to the collegiate church of Sant Feliu for masses for Dalmau Petracissa, his uncle, and 200 sous to the monastery of Sant Daniel in Girona for an anniversary mass for his mother and all other relatives buried there. In the cathedral, he funded presbyterial masses for Cecilia, his sister (who was, before her death, the viscountess of Rocabertí), Alamanda, Cecilia’s daughter, and Geralda, his sister, all of whom were buried in the cathedral.58 The extent to which Gilabert paid tribute to members of his family shows the continuing importance he placed on these relationships, even after death. These connections, and the spiritual health of his relatives, were clearly a priority. Archdeacon Berenguer de Palau also instituted anniversaries for the souls of his parents, specifying that that were to be celebrated at the altar of Sant Salvator, founded by his uncles, who had both been members of the chapter, linking this anniversary to family connections in multiple ways.59 54 adg Dotalies de Beneficis, D-2, fols 168r–169v (September 6, 1330). 55 adg Notularum, G-2, loose folio after fol. 101 (March 28, 1308). 56 Ibid. 57 adg Dotalies, D-3, fols 42v–43r (October 22, 1330). 58 adg Dotalies, D-3, fols 43v–44r (October 22, 1330). 59 adg Dotalies, D-2, fols 108v–109r (July 26, 1337).

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Canons’ burial requests and tomb inscriptions also link them to their birth families. In his testament, Canon Bernat de Cornellà specified that he wanted to be buried in the cloister, with his bones placed in the tomb of his uncle Berenguer de Pau, former precentor of the chapter.60 Inscriptions on the tombs of both Francesc Alió and Pere de Mont contain references to their uncles, who were previous members of the chapter.61 The inscription on the tomb of Galceran de Montcorb is illegible but contains heraldic signs linked to the Montcorb lineage.62 The most striking example, though, is the joint tomb and statue in honor of Berenguer de Palau, archdeacon of Girona, and Ramon de Vilarig, archdeacon of Empúries, who were brothers. The statue is inscribed with a rhyming poem about the fratres uterini (brothers born of the same mother) that details the deeds and devotion of each brother.63 Including references to their relatives or families on tombstones was a permanent way to indicate the long-lasting importance of a canon’s familial identity to his own personal identity. Canons also benefitted from family connections in situations in which relatives, making use of their position in the secular hierarchy, tried to intercede with the bishop or chapter on behalf of their son or nephew. For example, Castellana de Boïl wrote to Bishop Berenguer de Cruïlles regarding the punishment of exile from the diocese imposed on her son Felip, a canon who failed to follow the guidelines of a two-year study dispensation granted by the bishop and chapter. Bishop Berenguer, addressing her as an “honorable, distinguished woman,” responded that “per amor de uos e dels honrats altres fiyls uestres e de son linyatge reuocare l’exiyl de ii ayns al qual consentiment del nostre honrat capitol”64 (out of love for you and for your other honorable sons and for your lineage, [I will] revoke the exile of two years with the consent of our honorable chapter). The bishop also gave Felip permission to take up his studies in canon law again, because doing so would be honorable to God and to the church in Girona and very pleasing to the bishop himself.65 60 61

62 63 64 65

adg Dotalies, D-2, fol. 168v (September 6, 1330). Josep M. Marquès, Inscripcions i Sepultures de la Catedral de Girona (Girona: Diputació de Girona, 2009), 79, 85. Alió’s tomb makes a brief reference to the uncle, while Mont’s mentions the anniversaries he founded in the church and adds that “simile instituit pro uenerabili Dalmacio de Pontonibus, quondam auunculo suo, legem doctore” (he similarly instituted [an anniversary] for the venerable Dalmau de Pontós, his late uncle, doctor in law). Ibid., 100. Ibid., 88–91. adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-21, fol. 192r–v (April 6, 1353). Ibid., fol. 192v (April 6, 1353).

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Prolonged family involvement in chapter business is prominent in the case of Vidal de Vilanova and the pabordia of Castelló. During the decades-long series of disputes concerning Vidal and the pabordia, his brother and father made various appeals to the chapter, attempting to intercede on Vidal’s behalf. In the mid-1320s, when Vidal and another canon both asserted they had the right to hold the pabordia, Vidal’s father, also named Vidal, wrote to the bishop and chapter about this matter.66 The bishop also discussed with another canon the letter he had received from the elder Vidal about his desire to contact the king about this matter.67 The elder Vidal de Vilanova had an extensive career as a royal councilor, majordomo, emissary, and ambassador, serving Jaume II, Alfons III, and Pere III, so his connections could possibly have benefitted his son.68 In the second main phase of conflict associated with the pabordia of Castelló, when Vidal, the canon, was stripped of his possession of the pabordia after not sharing the revenue with the chapter, excommunicated, and accused of various aggressive and violent behaviors, the bishop and chapter were in communication with his brother, Pere de Vilanova, lord of Carlet, near Valencia. The bishop sent him a copy of the proceedings against his brother and later, in response to a letter from Pere, specified that they would not make peace with Vidal without agreement from Pere.69 Bishop Berenguer de Cruïlles also wrote about this matter to his niece, reiterating that he and the chapter would require Pere’s agreement before they make peace with his brother.70 Nine months later, the bishop wrote to Pere again, asking him to send the document that he had submitted to the Roman curia in Vidal’s defense.71 Pere’s attempts to intercede for his brother with the Roman curia and his interest in receiving other documentation about the case show his active interest in helping his brother maintain control of the pabordia and its income. Another example that further demonstrates how familial responsibility influ­ enced a canon’s behavior is the case of Arnau de Soler and the founding of the 66

67 68 69 70 71

Ibid., U-2, fol. 27r–v (February 21, 1326). Serving as paborde, or administrator of the pabor­ dia, could be profitable given that the pabordes could keep ten percent of the pabordia’s income for themselves, and the pabordia of Castelló covered the months of February, March, and April, signaling the large size of the pabordia’s territory (Sureda i Jubany, “La Catedral i les seves sepultures,” 24). Ibid., fols 27v–28r (February 21, 1326). Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, vol. 24 (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 1995), 153–4. adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-27, fol. 158r (January 20, 1356). The letter sending Pere the proceedings against his brother is adg Lletres, U-26, fol. 46r (2August 26, 1355). Ibid., U-27, fol. 158r (January 20, 1356). Ibid., U-30, fol. 30r (October 13, 1356).

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monastery at Vilanera, in Empúries.72 In his testament, Arnau, archdeacon of Besalú, made provisions to found and endow a female monastery and named his sister Fresca as abbess.73 A later notarial record explains that Fresca was to serve as abbess: Quousque Philipa de Solerio, nunc monialis dicti monasterii, filia uenerabilis Blancho de Monte Pauone, perueniret ad etatem quod posset esse abbatissa…et tunc cum ad illam etatem peruenerit sit abbatissa.74 (Until Felipa de Soler, now a nun of the same monastery, daughter of the venerable Blanche de Montpau, should reach the age where she is able to be abbess…and then when she should reach that age, she will be abbess.) The provision for Felipa to become abbess, as well as her patronymic, suggests that she was Arnau’s illegitimate daughter. This idea is further supported by a dispensation granted to Felipa, which acknowledges her illegitimacy, specifying that despite the defect of having been born to a deacon, she was “soluta ut abbatissa esse”75 (released so that she could be abbess). Arnau’s foundation of the monastery and provision for Felipa to be abbess indicate his desire to provide for his daughter, despite the circumstances of her birth. Arnau also intended the monastery to be a place for other women in his family, as seen in a 1360 letter from Bishop Berenguer de Cruïlles to Felipa and the other nuns, in which he recounted Arnau’s instructions that Sera alcuna donzela ho dona del linyatge den Soler, e vuyla esse monja quel dit monestir, sia tengut de grat aquela reebre…en memoria quel dit micer Arnau, fo patron, donador e fundador era, e fo natural de dit holborch den Soler.76 (If there is any young girl or woman from the Soler lineage, and she wants to be a nun of the said monastery, [the monastery] should be held 72

73 74 75 76

Arnau de Soler had previously served as a professor of law at the university (Estudi General) at Lleida. See M. Josepa Arnall i Juan and Josep M. Pons Guri, L’escriptura a les terres Gironines (Girona: Diputació de Girona, 1993), 201. adg Notularum, G-6, fols 183r–184r (April 30, 1328). Ibid., G-15, fol. 129r (August 17, 1341). Ibid., G-35, fo1.130r (May 18, 1359). Deacon was the ecclesiastical rank to which the Girona canons needed to advance. adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-37, fol. 154v (February 18, 1360). The bishop then instructs the nuns to receive Isabel, the daughter of Dalmau de Soler, identified as being from Arnau’s lineage.

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to receive her willingly…in memory of the said Master Arnau, who was patron, donor and founder, and who was born in the said house of Soler.) In the same letter, the bishop also repeated Arnau’s instruction that only daughters of ancient knightly lineages should be received as nuns.77 Not only did Arnau provide a place for his daughter to gain spiritual prestige as the abbess of a monastery but also he created a situation where she could live in the company of other elite women, many of whom belonged to the same Soler lineage. Arnau’s foundation and endowment of this monastery and the instructions for its management shows his integration of familial and ecclesiastical priorities. His ties to the secular aristocracy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy made this foundation both possible and a logical solution for the situation of how to provide for his illegitimate daughter in a socially and spiritually acceptable manner. The idea that “fashioning oneself and being fashioned by cultural institutions—family, religion, and state—were inseparably intertwined” rings true when considering the Girona canons and the integration of ecclesiastical, secular, and familial priorities into an identity which allowed them to enjoy the benefits of their position in both the ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies.78 The canons maintained ties to their families and lineages throughout their lifetime, conducting business for and with relatives in life and giving testamentary bequests and funding anniversary masses in death. The strength and duration of these relationships exposed the canons to the values, priorities, and norms of the Catalan secular aristocracy. The Girona canons integrated these connections and priorities with those of their ecclesiastical position, creating a combination rather than conflict and allowing for an identity that reflects the canons’ two major roles as members of the cathedral chapter and sons of the nobility. Their behavior, then, reflects their own personal program chosen from the options before them. Membership in the chapter does not necessarily stem from personal spiritual devotion, but continued involvement in family matters and business transactions does not have to exclude this possibility. Their participation in 77

Ibid., fol. 154r (February 18, 1360). Two earlier letters also point to this requirement. In a 1336 document, one of the nuns is identified as being the daughter of a knight, and she, acting on behalf of the monastery, agrees to accept as a new nun the daughter of another knight [adg Notularum, G-11, fol. 34v (March 18, 1336)]. A 1337 letter from the bishop to the nuns of Vilanera recommends another daughter of a knight for a vacancy in the monastery, but then later prohibits them from receiving her because of her lack of wealth (adg Registres de Lletres Episcopals, U-10, fol. 177r; U-10, fol. 182v.). 78 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 256.

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each sphere could be genuine, reflecting two sets of impulses that directed their behavior in multiple ways. They were, and could be, both men of the Church and men of the aristocracy, and they acted accordingly. Their success in forming and expressing this hybrid identity thus demonstrates the integration of priorities from and ties to separate spheres, showing their ability to fashion themselves as men whose status and power were drawn from the noble world into which they were born and the ecclesiastical world in which they lived. Bibliography

Archival Sources



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Arxiu Capitular de la Catedral de Girona (acg) ms 66. Llibre d’en Caçada. Arxiu Diocesà de Girona (adg) Dotalies de Beneficis. Llibre d’Afers del Capítol de la Seu. Notularum. Pergamins de la Mitra. Processos Medievals. Registres de Lletres Episcopals.

Arnall i Juan, M. Josepa and Josep M. Pons Guri. L’escriptura a les terres Gironines. Girona: Diputació de Girona, 1993. Bautista Bautista, Mateo, Maria Teresa García García, and Maria Isabel Nicolás Crispín. La organización del cabildo catedralicio leonés a comienzos del s. XV (1419–1426). Leon: Universidad de León, Servicio de Publicaciones, 1990. Brooke, C.N.L. “The Composition of the Chapter of St Paul’s, 1086–1163.” Cambridge Historical Journal 11, no. 2 (1951): 111–32. Burns, R.I. “The Organization of a Medieval Cathedral Community: The Chapter of Valencia.” Church History 31 (1962): 14–23. Crosby, Everett. Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Edwards, Kathleen. The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1967. Farmer, Sharon. “Personal Perceptions, Collective Behavior: Twelfth Century Suffrages for the Dead.” In Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, edited by Richard Trexler, 231–39. Binghampton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985.

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Freedman, Paul. The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia. New Brunswick, nj: Rutgers University Press, 1983. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday, 1959. Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 1974–2001. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Guilleré, Christian. “La peste noire a Gérone (1348).” Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins 27 (1984): 87–161. Lepine, David. A Brotherhood of Canons Serving God: English Secular Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1995. Mallorquí, Elvis. El Llibre Verd del Bisbe de Girona (1362–1371): El Delme i l’estructura feu­ dal de la diòcesi de Girona al Segle XIV. Girona: Diputació de Girona, 2011. Marquès, Josep Maria. “Al marge del dret canònic de Girona durant la Baixa Edat Mitja.” Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins 42 (2001): 691–706. ———. “La Iglesia de Gerona.” In Historia de las diócesis españolas, vol. 2, Iglesias de Barcelona, Terrassa, Sant Feliu de Llobregat y Gerona, edited by Josep Maria Martí Bonet, 463–571. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2006. ———. Inscripcions i Sepultures de la Catedral de Girona. Girona: Diputació de Girona, 2009. Marritt, Stephen. “Secular Cathedrals and the Anglo-Norman Aristocracy.” In Cathedrals, Community, and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World, edited by Paul Dalton, Charles Insley, and Louise J. Wilkinson, 151–67. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011. Marsh, Peter. “Identity: An Ethogenic Perspective.” In Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, edited by Richard Trexler, 17–30. Binghampton, ny: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985. Millet, Hélène. Les chanoines du chapitre cathédral de Laon, 1272–1412. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1982. Molina Figueras, Joan. “De genere militari ex utroque parente. La nobleza eclesiástica y los inicios de la catedral Gótica de Gerona.” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 37, no. 1 (2007): 741–80. Pella y Forgas, D. José. Historia del Ampurdán: Estudio de la civilización en las comarcas del noreste de Cataluña. Barcelona: Luis Tasso y Serra, 1883. ———. “La pabordia d’Aro de la Catedral de Girona, 1180–1343.” In Estudi General, 5–6, La formació i expansió del feudalisme català: Acts del col.loqui organitzat pel Col.legi Universitari de Girona (8–11 de gener de 1985), edited by Jaume Portella i Comas, 419– 36. Girona: Col.legi Universitari de Girona, 1985–1986. Sanz Alguach, Antoni Lluís. “La Formació del Patrimoni de la catedral de Girona.” In Jornades de l’historià de l’Emporda: Homenatge a J. Pella i Forgas, 129–43. Girona: Patronat Francesc Eiximenis, 1987.

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Sobrequés Vidal, Santiago. Els Barons de Catalunya. Barcelona: Història de Catalunya, biografíes catalanes, 1991. Suarez Beltran, Soledad. El Cabildo de la Catedral de Oviedo en la Edad Media. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo Servicio de Publicaciones, 1986. Sureda i Jubany, Marc. “La Catedral i les seves sepultures: organització, economia, memòria: Una introducció.” In Inscripcions i Sepultures de la Catedral de Girona, edited by Josep M. Marquès, 13–48. Girona: Diputació de Girona, 2009. Tasis, Rafael. Pere El Cerimoniós i Els Seus Fills. Barcelona: Teide, 1957. Villanueva, Jaime. Viage Literario a las Iglesias de España. Madrid: La Real Academia, 1850.

chapter 11

Mary Magdalene and Martha: Sor Isabel de Villena’s Self-fashioning through Constructing Her Community Lesley Twomey Much has been said about Isabel de Villena and how she favors Christ’s interaction with women in her Vita Christi.1 I will look afresh at how Sor Isabel treats two of the female saints who meet Christ, Mary Magdalene and Martha of Bethany.2 I also contrast how other writers in the same tradition narrate their stories, not to determine how Isabel de Villena’s work is derivative but, rather, to show how the differences illuminate her authority and purpose as an author. By emphasizing points of divergence, I aim to determine her priorities, as she guides her nuns’ steps towards the heavenly kingdom which awaits them. I will use the stories of Martha and Mary to show how she fashions her sex, trying to discern how she constructs female identity and how she fashions her own self through the pages of the Vita Christi. In the Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene was the stuff of legend. She was a woman of extremes, for she sinned so gravely and was so deeply contrite that she became 1 For studies on Mary Magdalene in Villena’s Vita Christi, see Rosanna Cantavella and Lluïsa Parra, eds., Protagonistes femenines a la Vita Christi: Isabel de Villena, Clàssiques Catalanes 15 (Barcelona: LaSal, 1987), 44–9; Rosanna Cantavella, “Medieval Catalan Mary Magdalene Narratives,” in Saints and their Authors: Studies in Medieval Hagiography in Honor of John K. Walsh, eds. Jane E. Connolly, A.D. Deyermond, and Brian Dutton (Madison, wi: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1990), 27–36; Dominique de Courcelles, “En Mémoire d’elle et en mémoire du sang: la Vita Christi de Sor Isabel de Villena, abbesse des clarisses de Valence au XVe siècle,” Journal de la Renaissance 1 (2000): 111; Albert Guillem Hauf i Valls, “La Vita Christi de Sor Isabel de Villena y la tradición de las Vitae Christi medievales,” in Studia in honorem Prof. M. de Riquer, ed. Dámaso Alonso (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema: 1987), 136–8; Albert Guillem Hauf i Valls, “El mon cultural de Isabel de Villena,” in D’Eiximenis a sor Isabel de Villena: aportació a l’estudi de la nostra cultura medieval, ed. Albert Guillem Hauf i Valls, Biblioteca Sanchis Guarner 19 (Valencia: Institut de Filologia Valenciana/Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat: 1990), 303–21; Albert Guillem Hauf i Valls, La Vita Christi de Sor Isabel de Villena (s. XV) como arte de meditar: Introducción a una lectura contextualizada (Valencia: Biblioteca Valenciana y Generalitat Valenciana, Conselleria de Cultura, Educació i Esport: 2006), 78–80; and Montserrat Piera, “Mary Magdalene’s Iconographical Redemption in Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi and the Speculum Animae,” Catalan Review 20 (2006): 313–28. 2 All references to Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi are from Ramón Miquel y Planas’s edition. All translations, unless otherwise stated are my own.

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the prime example of the penitent sinner pardoned by and beloved of her Lord. She was also the contemplative par excellence.3 Her renowned penitence led her to close relationship with the Lord, enabling her to stand by as a witness to his death, to anoint his body before and after death, and to be present as first witness to his Resurrection.4 She was the preacher whose words and deeds led to the conversion of Provence.5 Legend placed her grave in several different cities.6 Mary Magdalene was enormously popular in Valencia in the late 15th century.7 About Martha of Bethany, less has been written, but legends about her life as a preacher also exist.8 3 See, for example, Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea): Readings on the Saints, ed. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1:374–5. 4 Barbara Baert discusses such elements of Mary Magdalene’s medieval persona in her study of the Wernigerode antependium, which centers on Mary Magdalene’s transition from penance to chosen one. See her article, “The Embroidered Antependium of Wernigerode, Germany: Mary Magdalene and Female Spirituality in the Thirteenth Century,” Konsthistorik Tidskrift 76, no. 3 (2007): 151. On Mary Magdalene’s role as one of the first witnesses to the Resurrection, see my article, “Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary: Women Seeing the Resurrection in Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi and the Vita Christi Tradition,” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 42, no. 1 (Fall 2013): 321–48. For a study of Mary Magdalene’s role in each of the Gospels and in the fragmentary Greek and Coptic Gospels of Mary, see Esther A. De Boer, The Gospel of Mary: Beyond a Gnostic and a Biblical Mary Magdalene (London: Continuum, 2004), and Esther A. De Boer Mary Magdalene: Beyond the Myth (London: scm, 1997). 5 See, for example, on her preaching in Marseilles, Voragine, The Golden Legend, 1:379; and Ubertino (Umbertinus) de Casale or Casali, Arbor Vitae Crucifixae Jesu, ed. Charles T. Davis (Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1993), 269. A precursor of Mary Magdalene, the preacher, is found in the second-century Gospel of Mary, in which Mary Magdalene teaches the disciples. De Boer, The Gospel of Mary, 65–70, 97–99. 6 Bruce Chilton, “Three Graves of Mary Magdalene,” Museum Studies 62 (2010): 86. See also Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 18, for the opening of what was reputed to be her sarcophagus in Provence in 1279. 7 See, for example, two narratives contemporary to Isabel de Villena’s. Jaume Gaçull’s poem about Mary Magdalene about which Joan Fuster writes in his introduction: “Es tracta de una lliçó, o de unes lliçons, ben radicades en la doctrina que s’hi predicava: la conversió-penediment, l’oblacíó generosa, l’actitud contemplativa, la companya fidel en els moments abruptes del drama. Hi ha, encara, l’escena gratificatòria del noli me tangere” (It is a matter of a lesson or lessons well rooted in doctrine being preached there: conversion and penitence; generous giving, attitude of contemplation, faithful presence at key moments of the drama). Joan Fuster, “Jaume Roig i Isabel de Villena,” in Misògins i enamorats, ed. Albert Hauf, Biblioteca Joan Fuster, vol. 6 (Alzira: Bromera, 1995), c, i. There is also the gift of grace in the Noli me tangere scene. See also Joan Roís de Corella’s Istoria de la santa Magdalena: segons els manuscrits i primeres edicions, ed. R. Miquel i Planas (Barcelona: Biblioteca Catalana, 1913), 309–48. 8 Voragine, The Golden Legend, 2:23.

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I have already expressed my belief that Isabel de Villena sets out to construct her community in what can be seen as a central axis of the Vita Christi, and constructing a community, with oneself as its leader, is an obvious example of self-fashioning.9 Yet many of the principal features of self-fashioning10 seem to apply only partially to Isabel de Villena. Self-fashioning implies that its advocate has little hierarchical family tradition. Such a lack applies only in part to Isabel de Villena, and that is because, even though she was a noble with royal blood in her veins, she stands outside the hierarchy to a certain extent because of her illegitimate birth. Another key aspect of self-fashioning is that those engaging in it see a need to submit to absolute power or authority, and that applies to Isabel de Villena insofar as, being a Clarian nun, she accepts the Rule of her Order and the Church hierarchy and also, ultimately, submits to God. Greenblatt holds that writers express self-fashioning through language, and Isabel de Villena’s use of language might open the way to self-fashioning, because many have considered her language so peculiarly feminine.11 Greenblatt holds that self-fashioning means defining oneself in relation to the “other,” and he identifies key types of “aliens” which constitute otherness, such as “heretic, […] witch, […] Anti-Christ.”12 For many years it has been acknowledged that Isabel de Villena constructs her own sex in opposition to the masculine other, for some believe she defines a female identity in the pages of the Vita Christi, and some have contended that she upholds her sex in opposition to the male hierarchical norm.13 Yet even here, she does not overtly self-fashion. Another female writer, Christine de Pizan, with whom Isabel de Villena 9

Lesley K. Twomey, “Sor Isabel de Villena, her Vita Christi and an Example of Gendered Immaculist Writing,” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 32, no. 1 (2003): 89–90, 99–102; The Fabric of Marian Devotion in Sor Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi, Colección Támesis, Série A: Monografías 313 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), 37–41. 10 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980), 9. 11 See, for example, Joan Fuster on her tender style, “Jaume Roig i Isabel de Villena,” 170; on her emotive language, Hauf i Valls, “La Vita Christi de Sor Isabel de Villena,” 106; and Martí de Riquer on her estil de monja, Historia de la literatura catalana, part antiga, 4th ed., 10 vols (Barcelona: Ariel, 1984), 4:340; also cited in Cantavella and Parra, xv. 12 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 9. 13 Fuster, “Jaume Roig i Isabel de Villena,” 90; Rosanna Cantavella, “Isabel de Villena (1430– 1490),” in Una altra mirada: deu dones i el cristianisme, ed. Pere Luis Font (Barcelona: Cruïlla, 2005), 145; Rosanna Cantavella, “Intellectual, Contemplative, Administrator: Isabel de Villena and the Vindication of Women,” in A Companion to Spanish Women’s Studies, eds. Xon de Ros and Geraldine Hazbun, Colección Támesis, Série A: Monografías (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011), 97–107.

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has been compared,14 adopts a more discernible method, for she develops her own literary persona and writes herself into her narrative, nowhere more apparent than in her incursion into the male domain of arms in her Fais d’armes.15 Isabel de Villena does not write herself into the text as a performer in that conscious way that Christine de Pizan does. Christine directly intervenes in her text and speaks “theatrically” to her readers in a way that Isabel de Villena does not. Some of the features of self-fashioning that Greenblatt identifies seem to apply rather less or only minimally to Isabel de Villena than to the self-­ fashioning writers, such as Thomas More, William Tyndale, and William Shakespeare, in respect of whom he has devised the concept. Nor can self-fashioning in Isabel de Villena’s case be a deliberate political act, as it is for some kings, princes, and rulers. Charles V, when he arranges his coronation entry into Bologna, repositions himself as Roman Emperor, Bologna as Imperial Rome, and San Petronio church, Bologna, as St Peter’s, Rome.16 He fashions himself and his public image overtly, in a way that a Clarian nun perhaps cannot or saw no need to imagine. Unlike Charles V, a ruling monarch and public figure, Isabel de Villena lived and wrote outside the public sphere, although her words and acts were appreciated and valued by the Valencians of her day.17 Determining in which ways Isabel de Villena consciously fashioned herself through the pages of her Vita Christi is not, therefore, a straightforward enterprise and does not seem to immediately fit with how Greenblatt devises the concept, yet self-fashioning may, even so, provide a set of tools to contextualize how and why she constructs her community. I will argue that—even in 15thcentury Valencia, not so distant perhaps from 16th-century England—there are always elements of “shaping” in the “formation and expression of identity.”18 It is these elements which this chapter intends to explore.

14 15

Rosanna Cantavella, “Isabel de Villena (1430–1490),” 141–55. Dominique T. Hoche, The Reception of Christine de Pizan’s “Fais d’armes,” in FifteenthCentury England: Chivalric Self-Fashioning (Lewiston, ny: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007), 182. 16 Konrad Eisenbichler, “Charles V in Bologna: The Self-Fashioning of a Man and a City,” Renaissance Studies 13, no. 4 (1999): 439. 17 See, for example, de Riquer, Historia de la literatura catalana, 344: “Sor Isabel fruí d’un cert prestigi entre els escriptors valencians de l’època” (Sister Isabel had a certain prestige among Valencian writers in the period); Hauf i Valls, “El mon cultural,” 321; Hauf i Valls, La Vita Christi de Sor Isabel de Villena (s. XV), 6–8; and Daniel Benito Goerlich, El Real Monasterio de la Santísima Trinidad, Serie Minor: Arquitectura 48 (Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana and Consell Valencià de Cultura, 1998), 67–9. 18 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 1.

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I will begin, however, with the story of Mary of Bethany, who in the Gospel of Luke stayed at the feet of Christ listening to his words.19 Mary’s story emphasizes that she listened intently, oblivious to her sister, Martha, and her call to assist with the household preparations. Despite Martha’s complaint that she was doing all the work, whilst her sister did nothing, Christ upholds Mary’s chosen way of sitting close to him in order to listen to his words, deeming her to have chosen the “better part.” Mary of Bethany’s position at his feet, as she drinks in his words, makes her the epitome of contemplation, whilst Martha symbolizes the active life of busy engagement in the world. This Mary, Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha, began to be identified with Mary of Magdala from the earliest days of Christian tradition and by Isabel de Villena’s day was thoroughly intertwined with her.20 Once Mary of Bethany’s activity passed into and became conflated with the story of Mary Magdalene, Mary Magdalene was the one who became the epitome of the contemplative, because she was thought to have stayed at the feet of Jesus to listen to his words. Contemplation was cemented in the medieval world because of the rise of religious Orders, eremitical and monastic, who lived at a remove from the secular world. The contemplative way of prayer, following St Bernard, had gained importance among Cistercians. Yet it was with the rise of the Mendicant Orders that the story of Martha and Mary, with its emphasis on two ways of life, active and contemplative, took on a whole new meaning. Pope Gregory X used the story of the two sisters as a rebuke to the secular clergy for persistently attacking the Franciscans and Dominicans, who, in his opinion, were Orders living out their vocation in towns and cities between public preaching and private prayer, thereby performing “the roles of Martha and Mary” concurrently.21 It is hardly surprising, given the pope’s intervention, that the Franciscans promoted Mary Magdalene as the apostola apostolorum, fashioning their own role and identity on hers. Because of Mary Magdalene’s special place within the history of the Order, they adopted her as champion of the contemplative way, 19 20

Luke 10:38–42. Jansen discusses the contributions of Hippolytus (170–236), Ephraem the Syrian (306–73), and the definitive conflation of the Marys after Gregory the Great (540–604) and his 33rd homily on Luke 7:36–50 (The Making of the Magdalene, 29–30, 32–5); see also Jane Schaburg and Melanie Johnson Debaufre, Mary Magdalene Understood (New York: Continuum, 2006), 46. Schaburg and Johnson Debaufre clarify that the sermon about the Magdalene was attributed to Hippolytus. For a discussion of Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany nearly contemporary to Villena, see Pedro de Chaves, Libro de la vida y conversión de Santa María Magdalena, ed. Jordi Aladro, Scripta et Documenta 83 (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2009), especially Chap. 5. 21 Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene, 49.

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believing it was one of her primary activities—and, indeed, in the medieval construct of Mary Magdalene it was. Isabel de Villena constructs a Martha who is as keen to listen to the words of the Lord as her sister. After she hears some snatches of his words whilst carrying out her work, she wants to hear more: E passant Marta moltes vegades per aquell loch hon lo Senyor parlava ab Magdalena hoý alguna paraula de aquelles tan dolçes que procehïen de aquella divinal boca, e tota encesa en devoció, desijava-les hoyr totes, e sentir lo que sa germana sentia […].22 (And Martha, passing many times through that place where the Lord was speaking with Magdalene, heard one or two of those sweet words that proceeded from that divine mouth, and, filled with the fire of devotion, longed to hear them all and feel what her sister felt.) This is a busy Martha who wants to become a contemplative rather than a busy Martha who wants some help with getting the meal ready. Isabel de Villena reinforces her new interpretation of the words of Martha when she translates “Domine, non est tibi cure, quam soror mea reliquit” (Lord, is it not of concern to you that my sister is abandoning me) giving a much deeper meaning to her words: Ý vós sabeu que yo desije sentir aqueixes reposades amors e consolacions que ma germana de vostra senyoria sent, mas per la pròpria consolació no vull leixar lo treball e ocupació que per servir la vostra persona tinch.23 (And you know that I long to hear those peaceful words of love and consolation that my sister hears from your Lordship, but, because of that consolation, I do not wish to leave the work and occupation I have to serve your person.) Martha now merely asks for her sister to share her work so that both can take advantage of contemplating on the words of the Lord. Isabel de Villena uses the Martha-Mary scene not to offer a disquisition on the advantages of contemplation, as other authors of Vitae Christi do but, rather, to point how it is right for some to work whilst others choose the path of contemplation.24 She 22 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:112. 23 Ibid. 24 Roís de Corella also develops the words of Martha, but the words he gives her are far from being those of a contemplative manqué. Martha calls on Christ to judge what is right,

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ends with a decisive moment where Martha opts for a career of service in order to enable her sister to dedicate herself to a life of prayer: E d’aquí avant Marta no féu pus qüestió del repòs de sa germana, ans la apartava de totes ànsies perquè ab més repos pogués sentir e posseir les amors e delits del seu amat. E la dita Marta donà s tota, ab multíssima fervor, a les obres de misericòrdia […].25 (And from then on Martha did not question her sister resting, but rather she kept her away from all anxieties, so that with greater rest she might feel and possess the loving and delights of her beloved. And the aforementioned Martha gave herself fully, with the greatest fervor, to works of mercy.) Here Isabel de Villena marks the difference between two sisters who work each at their own task for the benefit of the other. In the lives chosen or accepted by Martha and Mary, she could well be referring to the sisters in her own community and to the different tasks assigned to each. When we examine how other authors of Vitae Christi address the MarthaMary story, there are marked differences, making Isabel de Villena’s aim more apparent. John of Caulibus, another Franciscan, in his Meditaciones Vite Christi [Meditaciones] took the Martha-Mary scene as an opportunity to point out the advantages a contemplative soul would have, and other writers copied his approach.26 For John, the Martha-Mary story had merely been “a convenient

given the amount of work which is needed: “Fatigada la canssada Marta del continu treball, al Rey Jhesus interpellant, invocha per jutge: ‘la magestat tua no ignora, misericordios senyor, la gran fatiga e treball que yo sostinch per lo teu seruey e dels teus manssuets deixebles; que essent hora tarda, la tua reuerent persona no haja pres refecçio alguna, e aquest sol penssament lo meu treball aumenta ¿com donchs no tens ansia que ma germana, als teus peus asseguda, me dexa sola en lo treball del seruir teu?’” (Worn out from the constant work, the weary Martha called on the King, Jesus, as judge. “Your majesty must know, merciful Lord the great weariness and work which I am carrying out to serve you and the gentle disciples. For now it is late and you, reverent sir, have not taken any refreshment, and that sole thought increases my work. How, then, are you not concerned that my sister, Mary, sitting at your feet, leaves me all alone to serve you?”). Joan Roís de Corella, Obres de J. Roiç de Corella: segons els manuscrits i primeres edicions, ed. R. Miquel i Planas (Barcelona: Biblioteca Catalana, 1913), 316. 25 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:114. 26 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones vite Christi olim S. Bonauenturo attributae, ed. Mary Stallings-Taney. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis 153 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 200.

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peg” on which to hang contemplation, quite literally, at the heart of the Meditaciones.27 The Meditaciones consist of 108 chapters. John dedicates Chapters 46–58 to discussing contemplation, and these chapters open directly from the Martha-Mary scene in Chapter 45.28 He identifies three stages of contemplation, two stages which are fitting for the perfect and one more suitable for the imperfect, which he identifies as those followers of Christianity living an earthly life. The first two of which he speaks are contemplation of the majesty of God and of the heavenly court, and the third is contemplation of the humanity of Christ, the starting point for all contemplatives.29 The words Christ addresses to Martha in Isabel de Villena’s version also point to her main objective, that of laying down rules of behavior for a Clarian community. In her version of the ministry of Martha, neither action nor contemplation is elevated above the other: O Marta, Marta, tu ets molt sol∙lícita e ansiosa de les coses actives, e per ço sents de grans torbacions e volries que Maria, ta germana, fos ab tu en les dits treballs; e açò no∙s pot fer car ella ha elegida la millor part, la qual no li serà levada, puix per mi li ès stada confermada. […] Pren-ho ab paciència e sies contenta, car lo meu pare ha partit aquesta heretat a vosaltres dos, e vol que Maria haja la reposada e tu la treballosa.30 (O Martha, Martha, you are very solicitous and anxious about things which are to be done, and, for that reason, you feel great disquiet, and would like your sister, Mary, to stand by you in those tasks; and that cannot be, for she has chosen the better part, which will not be taken from her, for it is confirmed for her by me … Bear it with patience and be content, for my Father has divided the inheritance giving each of you a share and he wishes Mary to have the life of quiet, whilst you have the workaday one.) John of Caulibus narrates the scene of the busy Martha and the contemplative Mary without even putting Martha’s well-known complaining words in her 27

Sarah McNamer, in her “The Origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi,” Speculum 84 (2009): 905–55, sees these chapters as evidence of interpolation by a second less skilful author, probably John of Caulibus. For the purpose of this comparison, whether the Meditaciones was a single text or a text reworked by someone is less important than the knowledge that this was the text best known by medieval readers. 28 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 185–8; Meditations on the Life of Christ, eds. and trans. Francis X. Taney, Anne Miller, and Mary Stallings-Taney (Asheville, nc: Pegasus, 2000), 172–4. 29 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 185; Meditations, 172. 30 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:113.

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mouth.31 He also reports Christ’s response in indirect speech, so that he omits Christ’s repetition of the name “Martha, Martha,” which personalizes his remonstration with her in the Gospel. The only words John reports are “Mariam optimam partem elegisse audiuit” (She heard instead that Mary had chosen the better part),32 and even these are in indirect speech. Although in his title to Chapter 57 John of Caulibus takes pains to spell out that contemplation is the better part—“quod vita contemplativa prefertur activa” (on how the contemplative life is preferred to the active)—he argues there that God desires both.33 Contemplation begins, at the lowest level, with “listening intently to sermons or the words of holy people, introspection, reflective acts of prayer, and lectio divina, meditative reading.”34 Isabel de Villena, however, as seen above, embellishes the personal words Christ addresses to Martha. She goes much further than John of Caulibus towards the ideal of fusing the active and contemplative, because she considers the active life a valid inheritance that has been accorded to some individuals as God’s plan for them. Importantly, she indicates that an active life can and does lead to heaven, even though she too recognizes it is not something to be sought. When Francesc Eiximenis (1330–1409), the Franciscan chaplain to the kings of Aragon, describes the scene at the house in Bethany, he focuses intently on Mary Magdalene as a perfect example of the contemplative life, and he, like John of Caulibus, relates the story in order to provide a disquisition on contemplation.35 However, Eiximenis does include the words spoken by Christ to Martha: E di-li axi: “O Marta, fort ès curiosa e entesa en moltes coses emperò una cosa sola ès necessari a aquella laqual sobre totes les altres deu hom amar 31

McNamer, “The Origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi,” 918–19, refers to noticeable differences between the chapters on Christ’s public ministry in the Meditaciones, such as substituting direct dialogue for indirect, and sees this as evidence that a female author penned the more direct sections of the Meditaciones. 32 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 171; Meditations, 156. 33 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 207. 34 Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene, 117. 35 The disquisition on contemplation is almost de rigueur in the Vita Christi tradition. Nicholas Love, for example, although his Mirror of the Life of Jesus Christi has a different structure than other Vitae Christi, retains John of Caulibus’s disquisition on contemplation after the Martha-Mary episode. Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Reading Text. A Revised Critical Edition, based on mss 6578 and 6686 with Introduction, Glossary, and Notes, ed. Michael G. Sargent. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2004), 120–4.

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e cerchar ço ès nostre senyor Déu, al qual conexer e amar e servir endreça la vida contemplativa. E com aquesta hage elegida Maria per tal jamés no li sera tolta.”36 (And he said the following words to her: “O Martha, you are very curious and knowledgeable in many things but only one thing is necessary and that is that above all else one must love and search for Our Lord, for loving him and serving him directs the contemplative life aright. And, as Mary has chosen that path, for that reason it will not be taken away from her.”) Isabel de Villena’s words differ greatly from those of Eiximenis. He took the opportunity to guide his reader, admonishing him or her in general about the most important thing in life, which is knowing God. Isabel de Villena, in contrast, focuses upon Martha’s feelings and her search for assistance in her struggle to complete the task of running the household. Even though it might appear that focus on feelings is a woman’s domain, Isabel de Villena also presents a Martha who is seeking to listen to Christ. She has Martha call on Christ to allow her sister to help in the household tasks so that “aprés reposarem les dos en la contemplació de la vostra divinal cara e parauales de vida” (Afterwards we will both rest in contemplation of your divine face and words of life).37 This seemingly right desire to have her sister by her side to share the work is denied her. Eiximenis next introduces his discourse on contemplation, which Isabel de Villena excludes from her Vita Christi: Diu açí Beda, contemplació ès ull celestial ab lo qual hom veu e sent Déu e les sues coses a la qual vida negún no prova sino aquells que molt han treballat en vida activa. La qual vida no ès per tots sino per aquells que molt han amada penitència e puritat de cor e humilitat e pasciència e menyspreci del mon.38 (Bede said the following, “Contemplation is the eye of heaven, with which a man sees and senses God and all that is his.” No one attempts such a life except those who have striven a great deal in an active life. This life is not for everyone but rather for those who have greatly loved penitence and purity of heart, humility and patience, despising the world.) Here Eiximenis takes pains to emphasize that contemplation is just for some: “laqual vida no ès per tots” (this life is not for everyone). He considers that it 36 Francesc Eiximenis, Vida de Jesucrist, Biblioteca de Catalunya, ms 460, fol. 100r–100v. 37 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:112. 38 Eiximenis, ms 460, fol. 100v.

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can be attained not only by those who reject the active life but also by those who love penitence, embrace purity of heart, and despise the world. For Eiximenis, then, it is possible to combine being a contemplative with living an active life, such as preaching at court, much as he did. In this he follows the Franciscan approach of imitatio Christi, with its blend of engaging with the public through preaching and retiring to quiet places to pray.39 Eiximenis then separates contemplation from active work and argues that monasteries were endowed precisely so that the monks should not have to work and should be more inclined to prayer. He is writing in general terms about contemplatives who, for him, are in the male rather than the female mold. He is not much interested in the words spoken by Martha. There is another difference in how Isabel de Villena presents the scene. Eiximenis sees the active life as a necessary precursor to that of contemplation, but, in the end, he subordinates its value to the contemplative. Unlike Eiximenis, Isabel emphasizes how Martha’s work is a necessity and must be borne with patience, “pren-ho ab paciència” (bear it with patience), and she urges Martha, and others like her, to be content with her lot: sies contenta (be content). She then acknowledges that the active way will cease at the end of this earthly life. In the same manner as for other Franciscans, particularly John of Caulibus, the Martha-Mary story becomes a reflection on two possible ways of life la treballosa (workaday) and la reposada (life of quiet). She makes clear that there are two routes to heaven: “al qual regne nengú no pot anar sinó per dos vies, ço és activa e contemplativa, de los quals vosaltres sereu exemplars” (To that kingdom none can go except by two paths and of those you are models).40 Isabel de Villena reiterates that the busy Martha will gain equal status with Mary in the 39

Eiximenis continues to expound his thoughts on contemplation in the following folios. He adds that the contemplative life is appropriate for religious men who have left behind an active or workaday life: “Lo segon punt ès que com l’om religiós ès majorment lunyat de tot treball corporal aytant ès pus obligat a contemplar. Rahó ès car aquels qui han instituits los monasteris els han bé dotats. Per tal ho farien que los religiosos que aquí habitarien fossen més lunyats de tot treball corporal e més entesos en oració e en contemplació celestial” (The second point is that as the religious man is generally set apart from all bodily labor and so he has a greater obligation to contemplate. This is because those who instituted monasteries, endowed them well. For that is why they decreed that the monks who were to live there be set apart from any bodily labor and more involved in prayer and heavenly contemplation; ms 460, fol. 101v). 40 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:113. See Hauf i Valls, “La Vita Christi de Sor Isabel de Villena,” 138, where he makes the point that women are consistently praised in this part of the Vita Christi. However, here Isabel de Villena is not lauding women but is showing that neither active nor contemplative should be set above the other.

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life to come, for they are both “duquesses e guiadores del poble meu qui va por lo camí de paradýs” (Duchesses and guides of my people who are on the way to heaven).41 Both Martha and Mary are affirmed in their roles, and this, I suggest, seems to indicate that there were some tensions in the convent between those who undertook only contemplation and those who undertook administrative roles. Here Isabel de Villena is addressing those women who have to take on an active life but who, we imagine, longed for something else, or at least did not want to be thought of as secondary in status to those who dedicated themselves to a life of prayer, and she urges them to be content, like Martha. In her words on active and contemplative, she might have in mind particular nuns in her charge, for example, those who take on the activities required for the efficient administration of the convent, the Marthas who undertake the purchasing, such as the Procurador or the reliable sister sent by the Abbess to guard the torno (revolving door), or perhaps those hardworking souls who work night and day to run the Infirmary, caring for the sick and infirm.42 Many sisters in the Santa Trinitat had to take on the roles of administering the convent, buying the goods and services required, looking after the infirm, controlling the materials to be passed into the convent or the papers and goods to be passed out, and monitoring the exchanges that other nuns had with the world outside. It may be these important nuns whom Isabel de Villena has in mind when she gives a rather more favorable role to Martha than that found in the Gospels or in other Vitae Christi. Perhaps she may also have had in mind important female donors to the convent who, because of their noble status, engaged actively in society. Perhaps to a certain extent Isabel de Villena identifies with Martha, when she dedicates time to meticulously writing up the convent’s purchases and income in the Libro Mayor de Títulos in her own hand.43 Perhaps she also fashions herself as a penitent in the same way that Mary Magdalene does, for she too must retire to her own secret chamber for silent prayer and contemplation. Mary Magdalene retires, in Chapter 98, to contemplate to “la pus secreta cambra” (the most hidden chamber), where she weeps bitterly over her sins.44 Retreat to a “place set apart” will later be part of Thomas More’s vision of Utopia, and Greenblatt has no doubt that More is writing of his own 41 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:113. 42 Reglas y Constituciones Generales de la Órden de las Hermanas Pobres de Santa Clara (Rome: Curia General de la Órden de los Frailes Menores, Oficina pro Monialibus, 1988), 54, 56, 65. 43 Benito Goerlich, El Real Monasterio de la Santísima Trinidad, 63. 44 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:90.

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spiritual practice.45 Here too we must consider that retiring to a secret chamber to pray is Isabel de Villena’s own practice. In this part of the story of Martha and Mary, we catch a glimpse of the woman behind the Vita Christi. Moreover, because self-fashioning is dependent on submission to a higher authority, which Greenblatt identifies as God or even as an institution such as the Church,46 when Mary retires to the secret chamber, Isabel de Villena is acknowledging the authority of the Poor Clare Rule, with its requirements to spend time in silence.47 Either way, she narrates the story of Martha and Mary to construct the community in which she lives. Through her narrative, she gently encourages each sister to be patient with her lot. There are further aspects of the story of Mary Magdalene which reveal insights into Isabel de Villena’s view of her community. Mary Magdalene is the sinner who repents and who converts to being a follower of Christ. For many theologians, Mary’s name was to become synonymous with that of Eve, in that her sins—prostituting her body and engaging in adulterous sex—were thought to represent those of all women. They believed that the female sex had an inherent tendency to sinfulness.48 In Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi, Mary Magdalene sets out to hear Christ preach, and, because she does this, she must have seemed similar to many of the women in Valencia who had gone out into the streets and marketplace to hear the renowned preacher St Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419). Perhaps those stories of St Vincent preaching had been recounted to the readers by their own mothers or grandmothers, for they were well within living memory. St Vincent’s famous preaching events had taken place shortly before Isabel de Villena’s birth. Her chapter on the conversion of Mary Magdalene may draw on stories passed down from mother to daughter or, in her case, from older lady-in-waiting to younger, about such events.49 45 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 45–6. 46 Ibid., 9. 47 Reglas, 25. 48 See, for example, the Church Fathers Tertullian and Jerome, whose impact on thinking about women in the Middle Ages was profound. Robert Archer, Misoginia y defensa de las mujeres: antología de textos medievales, Feminismos 63 (Madrid: Cátedra and Universidad de Valencia, 2001), 73–90. 49 Ludolph of Saxony refers in passing to Mary Magdalene hearing Christ preach: “que jam forte eum predicantem audierat” (who had already heard him preaching). Ludolphus the Carthusian, Vita Christi (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 2006, II [i]), 261. John of Caulibus had previously written about the relationship between Christ’s preaching and Mary Magdalene’s conversion in words similar to Ludolph’s: “que jam forte ipsum in predicacione audierat” (who had already by chance

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Isabel de Villena dedicates a whole chapter to Mary Magdalene hearing Christ preach (Chap. 117), to which there are only brief references in both John of Caulibus’s Meditaciones and Ludolph’s Vita Christi. She narrates how Mary Magdalene sets off to hear Christ in a public preaching event and how her foremost concern is to display her beautiful garments to the crowd gathered to hear him: “perquè fos ben mirada e molt estimada per la gran multitut” (So as to be well regarded and greatly esteemed by the great multitude).50 Attending a missionary preaching event was an opportunity for women to leave the confines of their home to legitimately spend time in the public spaces of the town, and many of them might also have seen it as an opportunity to display their clothes and jewels. Isabel de Villena describes Mary Magdalene as molt heretada (endowed with riches).51 She is far more beautiful and graceful than other woman of her class: “singular en bellea e gràcia sobre totes les dones del stat seu” (singular in beauty and grace beyond all the women of her estate).52 Since she had neither father nor mother and is the oldest of the family of Martha and Lazarus, according to Isabel de Villena, she has no-one to restrain her appetites, which Isabel affirms, and thus she has a propensity to run towards splendid accoutrements, arreus (finery), and novitats (fashionable frippery). This toxic mix of beauty, wealth, and freedom was what led Mary Magdalene astray.53 Isabel de Villena uses them to fashion Mary Magdalene into a woman in the mold of the noblewomen and bourgeoisie of her day.54 She does this in

heard him in his preaching). John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 111; Meditations, 99. The chapter about Mary Magdalene opens the section “dones i la vida activa de Jesús” in Jesús i les dones: antologia de la Vita Christi, ed. Marta Pessarrodona, Tast de Clàssics 4 (Barcelona: Barcino, 2012). 50 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:88. See also the misogynist writings of Jaume Roig, Espill o llibre de les dones, ed. Marina Gustà, Els Millors Obres de la Literatura Catalana 3 (Barcelona). Roig describes how a wife dresses in her finery to go to church. The Arcipreste de Talavera similarly describes a woman going to church dressed in her finest clothes and jewels. Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho, ed. Joaquín González Muela (Madrid: Castalia, 1970). For women’s clothing and jewelry as a misogynist topos, see Cantavella, Els cards i el llir una lectura de l’‘Espill’ de Jaume Roig, Assaig 11 (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1992), 74, 148. 51 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:87. 52 Ibid. 53 Isabel de Villena may follow Ubertino da Casale in combining these items, although sermons of the period also, as Jansen indicates, combined these same three characteristics. The Making of the Magdalene, 154. 54 Riquer has already written about how Isabel de Villena makes Mary Magdalene into woman of her day: “La escriptora ha presentat la Magdalena completament actualizada com una gran senyora del su temps, amb els curiosos trets de fer-la divulgadora de modes

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order to make Mary Magdalene into a woman just like her nuns, a woman who left her vain things behind and changed her life completely. Contrition is, of course, a very important aspect of Mary Magdalene’s character for all the writers of Vitae Christi. When Ronald E. Surtz comments on the scene where Mary Magdalene goes to hear Christ preaching to the crowd in Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi, he rightly asserts that, when Mary Magdalene places her hands before her face and begins to weep, with her fan shielding her eyes, she seems “a model of contrition rather than an archetypal sinner.”55 I would also add that in this scene again, Isabel de Villena fashions Mary Magdalene on the behavior of a noblewoman who went, armed with her fan, in the heat of Valencia, to hear an itinerant preacher. Mary Magdalene is also a great lover of festivities, according to Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi. She holds court in the strado (reception room) in her home, on which no expense is spared. Again Isabel de Villena sets this out to demonstrate the lifestyle that many high-ranking noblewomen or wives or daughters of the rich merchant class must have led. Preachers often also decried the threat to the fabric of society of excessive pursuit of pleasures,56 and it seems to be this threat that Isabel de Villena considers the most damaging when she writes that “totes les dones jovens” (all the young ladies) are drawn into the web of festivities. It is the life that many of the wealthy women who entered the Santa Trinitat would recognize. Mary Magdalene’s obsession with festivities damages her reputation because it leads to scandal-mongering in the town, for, as Isabel de Villena remarks: E com en tals coses la fama de les dones no pot perseverar sancera, encara que les obres no sien males, les tals demostracions donen sospita de mal, e licència als mals parlars de jutjar e condemnar la vida de tals persones, qui més pensen en contentar la voluntat desordenada que no en conservar la fama.57

(inventora de trajos) de portar-la al sermó a cavall, acompanyada de servents, i orgullosament occupant un dels millors lochs prop del tron des d’on predica Jesús” (The author has presented a completely up-to-date Magdalene, like a great lady of her day, with the curious touches of making her a leader of fashion [inventor of outfits], of taking her on horseback to the sermon, accompanied by her servants, and proudly taking up one of the best spots close to the throne from where Jesus was preaching). Villena, Vita Christi, 4:332. 55 Ronald E. Surtz, “Iberian Holy Women,” in Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition, c.1100–1500, eds. Alastair Minnis and Rosalynn Voaden (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 518. 56 Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene, 161. 57 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:87–88.

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(And, as in such matters, the reputation of ladies cannot be maintained on its own, even if the things done are not bad, such outward display gives rise to suspicion that they are and license to those who speak ill of others to judge and condemn the lives of such persons who think more of satisfying their disproportionate desires than of preserving their reputation.) Here Isabel de Villena shows how the “other,” the scandal-monger and gossip, fashions women’s identity. She shows her awareness of how reputation has the power to fashion women, whether conventual or lay. No doubt the awareness she demonstrates in turn fashioned the reputation of her convent. Isabel de Villena has chosen here not to emphasize Mary Magdalene’s outright sinfulness, even though she does refer to how the townsfolk call her la dona peccadora (the sinful woman)58; instead she emphasized her foolish disregard for rumor and the way it can be damaging to a woman’s reputation.59 This is unusual, given how contemporary liturgy for the feast of Mary Magdalene places such emphasis on her sinfulness. At the office of Mary Magdalene in a breviary dating from the mid-15th century from Naples, which belonged to the royal family, the opening antiphons at vespers hail her as “Maria, soror Lazari, qui tota crimina commisit” (Mary, sister of Lazarus, who committed every kind of sin).60 The Gospel reading in another liturgy for the feast of Mary Magdalene begins “in diebus illi mulier que erat in civitate peccatrix” (in those days, a woman, who was a sinner in the town).61 It anchors Mary Magdalene firmly in her place as a female sinner, highlighting her reputation in the town.

58 Ibid. 59 Roís de Corella also emphasizes Mary Magdalene’s vanity rather than her outright sinfulness, because he calls her pomposa (310). Joan Fuster comments on how Roís de Corella goes further than Isabel de Villena in exonerating Mary Magdalene from sin: “Corella va més enllà que sor Villena en la exculpació de la dama de Magdalo: ni tan sols usa el mot ‘peccat’. Per a ell, Magdalena era—havia estat—‘una rica pomposa senyora’” (309). Corella goes further than Sister Villena in exonerating the Magdalene. He does not even use the word sin. For Corella, Magdalene was—had been—a rich, ostentatious lady (c, vii). He mentions the dinners, festivities, and dances—“convits, danses e festes”—as well as the music with its harmonies and the perfumes which she habitually uses, which are exceptional in their blend (“ben entonada música, ab perfumes de singular mixtures”; c, viii). 60 Biblioteca de la Universidad de Valencia, ms 890, fol. 342r. 61 Ibid., ms 371, fol. 137r.

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Yet Isabel de Villena does not associate the adulterous woman condemned by the High Priests with Mary Magdalene at all, despite pressure from the liturgy of her day which does so. When she disassociates Mary Magdalene from the woman taken in adultery, however, Isabel de Villena is not an exception to the Vita Christi tradition.62 Although Mary Magdalene had been depicted as a penitent prostitute after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215),63 the Vita Christi tradition does not conflate her with the penitent adulterous woman. This is despite the strong desire to name the various women who hear Christ or become his disciples in the Vita Christi tradition. Often the woman crying out in the crowd becomes Martha’s servant: “dicitur sancta Marcella ancilla beatae Marthae esse” (It is said it was St Marcella, the maidservant of blessed Martha),64 and, while Isabel de Villena does not name the maidservant, she, like Ludolph, associates the woman with the Bethany household: “e una devotíssima dona, criada de la virtuosa Marta” (an extremely devout woman, servant of virtuous Martha).65 The woman cured of her hemorrhage is named as Martha in some Vitae Christi, and also in Roís de Corella’s Istoria de la Magdalena.66 Isabel de Villena, however, despite being aware of these 62

Although John of Caulibus places the scene of the woman taken in adultery between two scenes where Mary Magdalene takes center stage, he does not associate her with Mary Magdalene. He sets the scene of the adulterous woman between the resurrection of Lazarus, where Mary Magdalene is one of the family members and one of the witnesses, and the cursing of the fig tree. The next chapter is where the Jews conspire against Jesus, which is then followed by the second anointing, where Mary Magdalene again takes center stage. Eiximenis names the woman only fembra, even though he mentions her visit to the house of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary just before the stoning (ms 460, fols 161r–163v). The woman is accused shortly before the resurrection of Lazarus (fol. 168r) and Magdalene washing Christ’s feet (fol. 168v). 63 See Piera, “Mary Magdalene’s Iconographical Redemption,” 318. 64 Ludolphus the Carthusian, II [i], 328. 65 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:115. Ubertino da Casale neither names the woman nor associates her with Martha, 270. 66 Roís de Corella, Obres de J. Roiç de Corella, 332. John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 109–10; Meditations, 97; Eiximenis mentions the cure of the hemorrhaging woman in passing as he begins his chapter on the ministry of Martha and Mary. Because Jesus had cured Martha, according to Eiximenis, he often called at her home on his way to and from Jerusalem (Biblioteca de Catalunya, ms 460, fol. 100r). See also Voragine, The Golden Legend, 1:376 for the same tradition. Isabel de Villena’s Valencian contemporary Gaçull mentions Martha by name and the cure of her secret sickness: “Per vos guari Jhesus vostra germana/ del mal secret pel qual vivia trista” (Because of you, Jesus cured your sister from the sickness which made her life a misery). Jaume Gaçull, La vida de Santa Magdalena en cobbles, ed. Joan Fuster (Valencia: Joan Jofre: 1505; facsimile edition, Valencia: Tres i

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authoritative sources, chooses not to name the woman who touched Christ’s garment in the hope of a cure.67 Whilst Isabel de Villena does not make Mary Magdalene an adulterous woman, she does associate her with what were thought the typical bases for female sinfulness in her day. Women’s vanity had been denounced by St Paul, who wrote that women should not adorn themselves “with braided hair, or gold, or jewelry, or expensive clothes,”68 and many preachers,69 including Isabel de Villena’s fellow countryman St Vincent Ferrer, focused their opprobrium on Mary Magdalene’s hair, contrasting its luxuriance and adornment with how she used it later to wipe the feet of Christ. Isabel de Villena underscores Mary Magdalene’s penance by contrasting it with her vain love of her own hair.70 Just after she wipes Christ’s feet with her hair, Christ comments how much she adored it: qui molt estimava.71 Where and how writers position the anointing of Jesus varies considerably in the Vita Christi tradition, and most of them include two versions of the scene.72 Isabel de Villena describes Mary Magdalene’s purpose in coming to Simon the Leper’s house to anoint his feet as an expression of her desire for

Quatre: 1973), h, ii; Roís de Corella does the same in his Istoria de la santa Magdalena: “Has guarit a mi germana Marta de la malaltia que, sino sol tu, Deu omnipotent, guarir la podia” (You cured my sister, Martha of the sickness from which only you, omnipotent God could cure her). Roís de Corella, 332. This tradition originated in Eusebius’s The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, trans. G.A. Williamson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990). 67 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:88. 68 1 Tim. 2:9, cited in Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene, 155. 69 Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene, 157. 70 Piera discusses Mary Magdalene’s penance and associates it with her sensuality. “Mary Magdalene’s Iconographical Redemption,” 322. 71 Many antiphons and short scriptures for the feast day of Mary Magdalene emphasize her anointing of Christ, such as the antiphon which immediately precedes the first reading at Vespers for the feast of Mary Magdalene in ms 890, a Dominican breviary. The antiphon centers on the alabaster jar of nard which Mary spilled over the feet of Christ and wiped with her hair: “irrigabat igitur pedes Jesu fracto quoque alabaustro fragrabat domus omnis capillorum officio detergebat” (Biblioteca de la Universidad de Valencia, ms 890, fol. 343v). The miniature which accompanies the office depicts Mary Magdalene with her iconic jar of perfume (fol. 343r). Her golden hair flows onto her shoulders, and she wears a red and gold cloak with blue silk lining. Her dress is of cloth-of-gold. 72 Two of the synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of St John recount the story of the woman who anoints Christ during his public ministry (Luke 7:36–50; Matt. 26:6–13; John 12:1–8). St John is the only writer who names Mary, sister of Lazarus, as the anointer. She anoints his feet during his public ministry, with the incident occurring just after the resurrection

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mercy. Isabel de Villena chooses to emphasize the positive reason: “Com Magdalena vingué a demanar misericòrdia al Senyor, lançant-se als peus de sa Magestat” (How Magdalene came to ask for mercy from the Lord, throwing herself at the feet of his Majesty).73 Isabel de Villena’s chapter title has something in common with that of Eiximenis, because of its emphasis on mercy: “com rasabe Magdalena la misericòrdia” (How Magdalene receives mercy).74 However, her Mary Magdalene takes an active role—demanding—rather than a passive one—receiving. Isabel de Villena’s running order is not dissimilar to John of Caulibus’s. Her first anointing is just after the raising of the widow’s son and the double miracle, when Christ cures a daughter, whom she calls the prince’s daughter, and the woman with a hemorrhage.75 John of Caulibus gives the title De conversione Magdalene (On the conversion of the Magdalene) (Chap. 28) to his first scene where Mary Magdalene anoints Christ, and he places it immediately after the raising of the widow’s son (Chap. 26) and the raising of the Centurion’s daughter, which occurs simultaneously with the cure of the woman with a hemorrhage (Chap. 27). John’s version emphasizes a parallel between Christ’s physical cure of Martha and the conversion of Mary Magdalene, for it precedes it. Physical cure thus leads into spiritual cure.76 For John, because Martha later represents the active life of service, she also here represents the physical body, whilst Mary represents the contemplative life and the soul. Isabel de Villena decides to contrast something else. She parallels Christ preaching in the Temple, where the High Priests and elders scorn his words and his preaching to the crowds, together with the conversion and positive response of Mary Magdalene to what he says. It enables her to point to women’s superiority and greater responsiveness to Christ’s words.



of Lazarus. In Luke’s version it is a notorious woman who comes in with the perfume (Luke 7:37). He mentions some of the female followers of Jesus, including Mary of Magdala, a woman from whom seven demons had been cast out, just a few verses later at the start of Chapter 8. St Matthew writes a different version of the same incident, which he gives different emphasis by placing it just before Christ entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. There are a few other differences, such as the woman anointing Christ’s head rather than his feet. St Matthew links the woman’s act of anointing Christ’s body with that of preparing him for his imminent Passion. 73 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:94. 74 Eiximenis, ms 460, fol. 82v. 75 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:79–84. As noted above, John had named the woman whom Christ cures Martha. Isabel does not. 76 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 1997: 110–15; Meditations, 97–8.

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Ludolph of Saxony titles his first version of the scene when Mary Magdalene anoints Jesus’s feet De poenitentia Mariae Magdalenae (On the penitence of Mary Magdalene).77 Mary, because she is a penitent sinner, demonstrates her change of heart by anointing Christ’s feet, which Ludolph sees as an act of selfabnegation. Ludolph places his first anointing, which is of Christ’s feet, before the Martha-Mary scene (Chap. 61).78 It therefore comes immediately before Christ’s exchange with the Samaritan woman at the well (Chap. 62).79 The woman crying out from the crowd follows slightly later (Chap. 72).80 Ludolph’s order differs from that of Isabel de Villena. In Sor Isabel’s version, the first anointing follows immediately after Mary Magdalene’s conversion, when she hears Christ preaching, and after she had gone back to a secret room at home to weep for her sins. The very next action she takes is to throw herself at the feet of Christ in the house of Simon the Leper to plead for mercy (Chap. 119).81 That event immediately precedes the story of the woman who cried out from the crowd (Chap. 123),82 who, in Isabel de Villena’s version of events, is the servant of Martha. It is only then that Christ exchanges words with the woman of Samaria (Chap. 124)83 and with the woman of Cana (Chap. 125).84 It precedes the woman taken in adultery (Chap. 128),85 whom Isabel de Villena does not name. The second anointing generally follows the resurrection of Lazarus in Vitae Christi. Isabel de Villena, like most others, places the raising of Lazarus (Chap. 130)86 just before the second anointing (Chap. 133).87 77 Ludolphus the Carthusian, III [i], 261. 78 Ludolphus the Carthusian, II [i], 264. 79 Ibid., 269. 80 Ibid., 328. 81 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:94–102. 82 Ibid., 2:114–18. 83 Ibid., 2:118–25. 84 Ibid., 2:126–31. 85 Ibid., 2:138–44. 86 Ibid., 2:150–8. 87 Ibid., 2:168–72. John of Caulibus has Christ raise Lazarus (Chap. 66), immediately followed by his cursing of the fig tree and then how he engages with the woman taken in adultery. John places this group of scenes immediately before the Lord’s flight to Ephraim because the Jews had objected to his works, most particularly to his raising of Lazarus. Christ then returns (Chap. 70) to Bethany where Mary Magdalene anoints his feet in the house of Simon the Leper (235). The scene is set, as in Matthew’s Gospel, just before Christ enters Jerusalem on an ass (Chap. 71). Just after Mary Magdalene has anointed his feet, Christ predicts his coming death (Chap. 72), and the final events of the Passion story begin with the Last Supper coming just after (Chap. 73). John of Caulibus, thus, places the

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When Sor Isabel writes her version of Mary Magdalene anointing Christ, she develops some elements particular to her Vita Christi. She does not write that Mary had to creep in, eyes down, or that she dare not approach from the front, like Ludolph does. Rather she gives the impression that here is a strong woman, able to defy the eyes of Simon, which are on her as she enters, and his condemnatory words: “Què vol esta dona en casa mia” (what does this woman want in my house).88 Isabel de Villena sees in Mary Magdalene a woman filled with the love of her Savior, “enflammant-se tota en amor” (with her whole body and soul burning with love).89 The deep love mentioned in John of Caulibus’s later anointing scene in the Meditaciones makes a central motif for her version of the dinner in the house of Simon the Leper, and she recaps it in the words of Psalm 42: “Axí com lo cervo desija les fonts de la aygua, axí la mia ànima desijava aquesta vista de vós, qui sou Senyor ý Déu meu” (As the hart thirsts for the springs of water, so my soul was thirsting for sight of you, who are my Lord and my God).90 In John of Caulibus’s first anointing, Mary Magdalene had entered the house of Simon with downcast mien and with her eyes fixed on the ground as he seeks to emphasize her contrite behavior: Facieque inclinata ac oculis in terram dimissis, ante conuiuas transiens, non quieuit, donec perueniet ad Dominum ac dilectum suum. Et tunc illico ad pedes eius prostrate, uisceroso dolore pariter et rubore repleta de peccatis suis, procumbens uultu super ipsos pedes, cum confidencia quadam quia iam intra se eum et super omnia diligebat, cepit fortiter fletibus et singultibus abundare et tacita intra se dicere: “Domine mi firmiter credo atque confiteor uos Deum et Dominum meum.”91

second scene in which Mary Magdalene anoints Christ’s feet immediately before his entry into Jerusalem, at the start of Holy Week, and at the point just before his imminent death, although in his title he chooses to emphasize the agency of Mary Magdalene in anointing rather than Christ’s coming death: “quomodo Dominus Iesus rediit Bethanium vbi Magdalena vnxit pedes eivs vngvento” (On how the Lord Jesus came back to Bethany where Magdalene anointed his feet with unguent). Meditations, 221–2, John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 235. Ludolph sets his second anointing just after the resurrection of Lazarus (Chap. 17). Ludolphus the Carthusian, III, [ii], 459. Having established the resurrection context, Ludolph leads with Mary anointing Christ’s head (Chap. 25), which takes places just six days before Christ’s passion, on Palm Sunday. Ludolphus the Carthusian, III [ii], 481. 88 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:95. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 111.

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(With face downcast and her eyes on the floor, she crossed in front of the guests, and was not at peace until she reached the Lord, her beloved. And then falling to the floor at his feet, with deepest sorrow and with full shame for her sins, leaning her face on his feet, with some confidence for now in her innermost being she loved him above all things, her sobs and tears began to flow and quietly in her innermost being she said, Lord I firmly believe and confess you my Lord and God.) Ludolph of Saxony, in his version, describes how Mary Magdalene entered the house with her eyes downcast and with her head bowed and how she throws herself at the feet of Christ. He adds an additional element, and that is that she approaches from behind, retro, “quia ante eum ponere non audebat” (for she dare not put herself in front of him). He takes many details of his anointing scene from John of Caulibus’s: Et cum mulier ad locum pervenisset, facie inclinata, et occulis in terram demissis, ante convivas transiens, non quievit donec ad Jesum perveniret; quia se ante eum ponere non audebat, prae peccatorum suorum verecundia, et procumbens vultu super pedes ipsos, cum quadam confidentia, quam jam intensa, et super omnia eum diligebat, et in ejus amore ardebat […].92 (And when the woman came to the place, with her head bowed and her eyes down, walking through before the guests, she did not rest until she came up to Jesus; for she did not dare place herself before him, because of shame over her sins, and bending over his feet, with a certain confidence, now intense, and she loved him above everything, and burned with love for him.) Eiximenis, in his Vida de Jesucrist, incorporates Ludolph of Saxony’s idea that Mary Magdalene approached Christ from behind, although he does not mention that she dare do nothing else: Más vench-li detràs e ab subirana reuerència e feruor gita-li sobre lo cap la dita aygua preçiosa e aytanost gita-s als seus peus los quals continuament besaua ab subirana devoció plorant sobre ells poderosament e vehent les sues lagremes caent sobre los sants peus del saluador polsosos per son anar e faent lot. Per tal aquell lot ella mundaua ab los sues cabells que hauia fort grans e bells.93 92 93

Ludolphus the Carthusian, III [i], 261. Francesc Eiximenis, Vida de Jesucrist, Biblioteca de Catalunya, ms 460, fol. 83r.

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(But she came behind him and with great reverence and fervor poured on his head the precious liquid and at the same time threw herself at his feet, which she continually kissed with great devotion, weeping over them bitterly and seeing her tears fall on the holy feet of the Savior dusty from walking, and making them dirty. For which reason, she cleaned them with her hair which was very long and beautiful.) In Isabel de Villena’s second version of the pouring of perfume, which she places immediately before Christ enters Jerusalem, she again emphasizes Mary Magdalene’s love and care for the Lord’s person. She anoints him because she sees that he is fatigued. This second anointing, just before the Passion, is one of service to the Lord for Isabel de Villena. She does not mention the length or beauty of Mary’s hair, as other writers in the tradition do, nor that the vanity of her hair needs turning into a useful attribute. Mary takes a pound of precious unguent in an alabaster jar and pours it over Christ’s head and feet: Vengué ab una capça de alabaust en què havia quantitat de una liura de liquor preciosa; e, ubrint la dita capça, escampà lo engüent sobre lo cap e peus del seu amat senyor e mestre, e ab los seus cabells torcà aquells cansats peus, desijant donar refrigeri e descanç a qui tan carament amava.94 (She came with an alabaster jar in which there was a pound of precious liquid; and opening the jar, she tipped the unguent on the head and feet of her beloved Lord and Master, and with her hair wiped those tired feet, longing to give refreshment and rest to the one she so dearly loved.) The focus in earlier Vitae Christi had been rather different. John of Caulibus aims to contrast the earlier anointing which Mary did ex contricione (from contrition) with this one, where she anoints him ex devocione (out of devotion).95 John writes of how Mary wipes Christ’s feet with her hair, adding that it was because she had no other precious object with which to wipe his feet: “ideo autem capillis quia secum habebat aliquid non preciosus quo eos tergeret” (with her hair for she did not have anything precious with her to wipe them).96 When she uses her hair in this way it takes on a useful purpose, superseding its vain purpose: “et eciam quia ea quibus ad uanitatem usa fuerat ad utilitatem 94 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:168. 95 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 236; Meditations, 221. 96 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 112.

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convertere intendebat” (And also because she thought to convert something which was for vanity to usefulness).97 Eiximenis refers specifically to the beauty and length of Mary Magdalene’s hair with which she wipes the Lord’s feet: “ella mundaua ab los sues cabells que hauia fort grans e bells” (she wiped them with her hair which was long and beautiful).98 He does not emphasize that by her action she converted her hair from something vain and useless into a useful attribute in the way that John of Caulibus had. Another important scene in Vitae Christi in which Martha and Mary feature is the raising of their brother. Isabel de Villena sets the scene more fully than the other writers. She opens the scene by mentioning the high-ranking people who had called on Mary Magdalene to commiserate on the loss of her brother: “molta gent d’estat és aquí per consolar les senyores ses germanes” (many people of rank are here to console the ladies, his sisters).99 Martha leaves Mary Magdalene in the estrado (reception room), entertaining the people come to pay their respects, when she goes out to find Christ. Ludolph of Saxony makes the briefest of reference to the mourners: “Judaei ergo Jerosolymitae et alii qui in domo erant” (the Jews of Jerusalem and others who were in the house).100 She makes the scenes of mourning more Valencian in style. By adding the detail of the reception room, she provides Martha with a plausible reason for leaving Mary behind and going out to meet Christ. Ludolph also provided a reason, albeit a different one, for the departure of Martha before Mary Magdalene, and that was that Mary was lost in contemplation. In John’s Gospel (11:4) it had been “the sisters,” acting together, who called Christ to come to their sick brother. In all the Vitae Christi, Martha and Mary go out to meet him separately. In John of Caulibus’s version, Martha “exiuit ei obviam et procedit ad pedes” (Martha went out to meet him and fell at his feet) and then Mary: “Ipsa tamen ut sciuit festina surrexit et uenit ad eum, et procidens similia verba Martha dixit” (as soon as she received the news she rose in a hurry and went to him and falling at his feet, greeted him in much the same way as Martha).101 Ludolph of Saxony also duplicates the action of the sisters, with first Martha, then Mary going to meet Jesus. Ludolph adds that Mary arose from her contemplation, an idea not present in St John’s Gospel or in the Meditaciones: “Maria vero ut audivit surgit a quiete contemplationis, cito per 97 Ibid. 98 Eiximinis, ms 460, fol. 83r. 99 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:150. 100 Ludolphus the Carthusian, III [ii], 458. 101 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 229; Meditations, 209.

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desiderium cordis, et venit ex magna devotione ad eum extra castellum, in locum ubi Martha eum occurrerat” (Mary, verily, when she heard, arose swiftly through the longing of her heart, and went with great devotion to him outside the town to the place where Martha had met him).102 Ludolph of Saxony refers briefly to Martha’s speaking with Christ about the Resurrection, while Isabel de Villena delivers a full dialogue. She has Christ begin: “O Marta, lexau lo plor e alegrau-vos” (O Martha, leave your sorrow and be of good cheer).103 In Isabel de Villena’s version, Martha, a woman, must first seek permission from Christ, yet she takes the initiative for what should be done: “Marta demanà licència al Senyor per anar a cridar la sua germana Maria” (Martha asked her Lord to allow her to go and call her sister Mary).104 Isabel de Villena includes the request because that fits best with what the nuns in her charge would have done. It enables her to recreate a Martha in the mold of a Clarian nun. Other writers of Vitae Christi do not show Martha taking any initiative. In both John of Caulibus and Ludolph’s versions, Christ asked Martha to call her sister: “Postea mittit eam pro Mariam: hanc Domine singulariter diligebat” (Then he sent her for Mary; she was the one the Lord especially loved.105 Martha then calls her sister to come to him: “Abiit et vocavit Mariam sororem suam silentio dicens: Magister adest et vocat te” (She went and called Mary, her sister, in silence saying, “The Master has come and is calling for you”).106 In her Vita Christi, Isabel de Villena is remaking the life of Christ to her own perception, and it is a life of Christ, as has been said many times before, surrounded by womenfolk, but this is a life of Christ that permits glimpses into the convent world which spawned it. Unlike monarchs who fashioned their public acts so that their subjects could read them, Isabel de Villena lived and wrote outside the public sphere, although her words and acts were appreciated and valued there. Yet, in a similar way to Charles V and his orchestrated coronation procession, she is deliberately working with perceptions of reality. For example, she intends to remake Mary Magdalene into a Valencian noblewoman, like those in her charge, a woman who hears a preacher, repents, retires to a secret chamber (a convent cell), and who pours out her love at Christ’s feet. Mary Magdalene is not a prostitute but, rather, a wealthy woman, holding court at home. As is well known, Isabel de Villena presents Mary Magdalene not as one who has necessarily done evil deeds but, rather, as someone who has not 102 Ludolphus the Carthusian, III [ii], 458. 103 Villena, Vita Christi, 2:150. 104 Ibid. 105 John of Caulibus, Meditaciones, 229; Meditations, 209. 106 Ludolphus the Carthusian, III [ii], 458.

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focused on the right things up to then and who gave opportunity for gossip about her behavior until she dedicated her life to Christ and submitted to the authority above all authorities. Through this story, Isabel de Villena reveals that good reputation is to be valued, and she sets out to claim it as something of value for herself and for the convent in her charge. She fashions herself in opposition to those who fail to make reputation valuable in their lives. In the Martha-Mary Magdalene section of the Vita Christi, we can also glimpse the female self adjusting to different circumstances and different settings. When monasteries (and convents) were first instituted, study “was a form of prayer and devotion, as were manual labor and the chanting of the psalter.”107 By the late 15th century, certain sisters dedicated themselves to manual labor while others, sisters in the choir, had all the privileges afforded by study and contemplation. For Isabel de Villena, reinstating the active life as an equivalent and valid means of devotion to God, therefore, becomes an important task. Behind the words of Christ to Martha and behind Martha’s decision to let her sister undertake her life of contemplation untroubled by manual labor, Isabel de Villena asserts the status quo in her convent and soothes the complaints of those who would like a more shared approach to convent labor. After all, they too, like her, are duqueses, and their lives will equally lead them heavenward. Through the comments made by Sor Isabel on the stories of Martha and Mary, some glimpses of the woman behind the pen can be glimpsed. She is a woman who recognizes that reputation can make or break an abbess or a convent, and her discourse on reputation shows us how important she believed it to be. She constructs her reputation not only through the way she runs the convent but also through her writing, in an age when written words were considered too dangerous a tool to place in the hands of women.108 She is a woman for whom work and contemplation are equally important in her own life, for, as she asserts, both lead her to heaven. She is also a woman for whom retiring to a secret chamber to pray is part of her being. As a young woman she entered the convent, retiring from the world to give her life to God. The way she depicts Mary Magdalene retiring from public life as a useful way to reflect on events gives a strong indication that Isabel de Villena also found strength in doing this. 107 Dallas G. Denery, Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology, and Religious Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 20. 108 Lesley Smith, “Scriba, Femina: Medieval depictions of Women Writing,” in Women and the Book: Assessing Visual Evidence, eds. Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor (London: British Library, 1996), 35.

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Piera, Montserrat. “Mary Magdalene’s Iconographical Redemption in Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi and the Speculum Animae.” Catalan Review 20 (2006): 313–28. Reglas y Constituciones Generales de la Órden de las Hermanas Pobres de Santa Clara. Rome: Curia General de la Órden de los Frailes Menores, Oficina pro Monialibus, 1988. Ricci, Carla. Mary Magdalene and Many Others: Women who Follow Jesus. Tunbridge Wells: Burns and Oates, 1994. de Riquer, Martí. Historia de la literatura catalana, part antiga. 4th ed. 10 vols. Barcelona: Ariel, 1984. Roig, Jaume. Espill o llibre de les dones. Edited by Marina Gustà. Els Millors Obres de la Literatura Catalana 3. Barcelona: Edicions 62 i la Caixa. Roís de Corella, Joan. Obres de Joan Roiç de Corella: segons els manuscrits i primeres edicions. Edited by R. Miquel i Planas. Barcelona: Biblioteca Catalana, 1913. Schaburg, Jane, and Melanie Johnson Debaufre. Mary Magdalene Understood. New York: Continuum, 2006. Smith, Lesley. “Scriba, Femina: Medieval depictions of Women Writing.” In Women and the Book: Assessing Visual Evidence. Edited by Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor, 21–44. London: British Library, 1996. Surtz, Ronald E. “Iberian Holy Women.” In Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition, c.1100–1500. Edited by Alastair Minnis and Rosalynn Voaden, 499–525. Brepols Essays in European Culture 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Twomey, Lesley. The Fabric of Marian Devotion in Sor Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi. Colección Támesis, Série A: Monografías 313. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013a. ———. “Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary: Women Seeing the Resurrection in Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi and the Vita Christi Tradition.” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 42, no. 1 (Fall 2013b): 321–48. ———. “Sor Isabel de Villena, her Vita Christi, and an Example of Gendered Immaculist Writing.” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 32, no. 1 (2003): 89–103. Umbertinus, de Casali. Arbor Vitae Crucifixae Jesu. Edited by Charles T. Davis. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1993. Valencia, Biblioteca de la Universidad de Valencia, ms 890, Breviario dominicano. Valencia, Biblioteca de la Universidad de Valencia, ms 371, Vesperal. Villena, Sor Isabel de. Vita Christi, compost per Isabel de Villena, abadessa de la Trinitat de Valencia, ara novament publicat segons l’edició de l’any 1497. Edited by Ramón Miquel y Planas. 2nd ed. 3 vols. Biblioteca Catalana. Barcelona: Casa Miquel-Rius, 1916. Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea): Readings on the Saints. Translated by William Granger Ryan. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

chapter 12

Debunking the “Self” in Self-fashioning: Communal Fashioning in the Cartagena Clan Montserrat Piera “Siats de natura d’anguila en quant farets” bernat metge Lo somni (1399)

The creation of a distinctive and unique personality through a process of selffashioning has often been perceived as a very intimate, self-serving, and personal strategy employed by an individual to insert oneself in a given social body, to adapt to the prevailing cultural patterns forced upon one by its cultural milieu.1 But how does one conceptualize a self-fashioning2 that is achieved communally, not individually? 1 The most visible proponent of the idea of “self-fashioning” is Stephen Greenblatt in Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), where he posits that the Early Modern period witnessed the appearance of a new “selfconsciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process” (156). This influential book virtually initiated the critical movement called New Historicism, in spite of the fact that Greenblatt himself does not quite accept this categorization of his work and prefers to use “cultural poetics.” Many of his formulations, however, are heavily indebted to Marxist critical theories and to cultural materialism and, particularly, to the work of British critic Raymond Williams. For an excellent analysis of similarities of and contradictions between New Historicism and cultural materialism, see Scott Wilson, Cultural Materialism: Theory and Practice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). Furthermore, since the publication of his book, Greenblatt’s postulates have often been superseded or nuanced by various critics, particularly Lee Patterson and Judith Butler. 2 My use of Greenblatt’s term should not be taken as an indication of my tacit acceptance of it or its critical underpinnings. As a matter of fact, although I thoroughly enjoy Greenblatt’s book, as a medievalist I have many objections to his formulations. The New Historicists’ insistence on the total lack of “subjectivity” in early modern subjects deepens, as much as Jacob Burckhardt’s previous essentialism had done, the divide between medieval and early modern subjects and assumes a lack of perfection in the former. Terms such as “subjectivity” and “modernity” are fraught with ideological traps, and I believe it is very telling to observe that we readily followed Michel Foucault’s admonition to stop applying anachronistic words such as “homosexuality” and “feminism” in the pre-modern era but insist on continuing the use of “subjectivity” and “modernity” as positive indications of a “mature” or “civilized” society. My position is, thus, that it is utterly irrelevant to ascertain who was more or less “modern.” In the study at hand, the members of the Cartagena clan were certainly not concerned about © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291003_014

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My study seeks to explore the concept of a communal or familial trend of fashioning as manifested in the exploits, writings, and various contributions of the members of the Cartagena clan, one of the most influential families in 15th-century Castile. From the patriarch and rabbi Solomon HaLevi (c.1351– 1435), who converted to Christianity and fashioned himself into a bishop called Pablo de Santa María in 1390, to his brother, the chronicler Alvar García de Santa María (c.1370–1460), to his son Alonso de Cartagena (1384–1456), writer of the polemic pamphlet Altercatio praeminentia sedium, presented during the Council of Basel (1435–39), which states the pre-eminence of the kings of Castile over the kings of England, to their granddaughter and niece Teresa de Cartagena, writer of the first theological treatise that defends the right of women to write, all members of the clan strove to fabricate a communal family identity which aimed at exalting and politically promoting the entire familial clan. Their conscious and very successful efforts at crafting such strong and authoritative joint identity served not only to protect their clan from religious and political persecution but also to shape or “fashion” public and religious opinion among their contemporaries. Through an overview of some traits of their most emblematic texts, we can investigate this communal or familial identity where religious strife and polemic, gender, power, and class so fruitfully intersect.3

Pablo de Santa María

The Cartagena clan is one of the most intriguing families in 15th-century Castile, and their vital and professional trajectory is nothing short of astonishing. The patriarch and founder of the clan, Pablo de Santa María (c.1351–1435), even merited a remarkable and lengthy laudatory passage in Fernán Pérez de Guzmán’s (1376–1460) mostly royal and aristocratic biographies of notable

modernity but were undoubtedly very attuned to the need to “self-fashion” an identity that would protect each one of them and their family and that would enable them to prosper and lead a good life in the treacherous and muddied waters of a violent and tumultuous 15thcentury Castile. 3 Due to space and time limitations, my scrutiny of these texts will not be comprehensive. My aim here is to highlight some of the most relevant aspects of these authors in connection to the discussion at hand, the concept of self-fashioning. I study in more detail Alonso de Cartagena and Alvar de Santa María elsewhere, and I have also devoted an entire chapter of my forthcoming monograph to Teresa de Cartagena’s treatises.

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contemporaries, the Generaciones y semblanzas.4 Pérez de Guzman had close ties to the Cartagena clan: he dedicated several poems to the chronicler Alvar García de Santa María, who, in turn, had given Pérez de Guzmán a manuscript of his chronicle. In addition, he considered Alonso de Cartagena his muchadmired teacher and mentor to the extent that, upon the bishop’s death, Pérez de Guzmán declared: “Aquel Séneca espiró, a quien yo era Luçilo” (That Seneca passed away, to whom I was Luçilo [Seneca’s pupil]).5 Pablo de Santa María’s semblanza is one of the most detailed in the biographical compilation and, curiously, the most apologetic of them all. The passage begins with a biographical sketch of the former rabbi: Don Pablo, obispo de Burgos, fue un grant sabio e valiente onbre en çiençia. Fue natural de Burgos e fue ebreo, de grant linaje de aquella naçión. Fue convertido por la graçia de Dios e por conoçimiento que ovo de la verdat, que fue grant letrado en amas las leyes. Antes de su conversión era grande filósofo e teólogo, e desque fue convertido, continuando el estudio, estando en la corte del papa en Aviñon fue avido por gran pedricador. Fue primero arçidiano de Treviño e después obispo de Cartagena; a la fin, obispo de Burgos, e después chançiller mayor de Castilla. Ovo muy grande lugar con el rey don Enrrique el terçero e fue muy açebto a él, e sin dubda 4 A great deal has been written about the various members of the Cartagena family, but they generally have been studied separately. Although I will not be able to do justice here to all, I will refer to the most salient: Luciano Serrano, Los conversos Don Pablo de Santa María y Don Alonso de Cartagena (Madrid: C. Bermejo, 1942); Francisco Cantera Burgos, Alvar García de Santa María y su familia de conversos: Historia de la judería de Burgos y de sus conversos más egregios (Miranda de Ebro: Fundación Cultural “Profesor Cantera Burgos,” 2007); Robert B. Tate, Ensayos sobre la historiografía peninsular del siglo XV (Madrid: Gredos, 1970); Luis Fernández Gallardo, Alonso de Cartagena (1385–1456): Una biografía política en la Castilla del siglo XV (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2002), and La obra literaria de Alonso de Cartagena (1385–1456): Ensayo de historia cultural (Saarbrücken: Editorial Académica Española, 2012); and Juan Carlos Conde, La creación de un discurso historiográfico en el Cuatrocientos castellano: las “Siete edades del mundo” de Pablo de Santa María (estudio y edición crítica) (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1999). 5 Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Tratado de viçios e virtudes, chaps 1, 20. An inventory of Fernán Pérez de Guzmán’s library in his castle of Batres shows two of Alonso de Cartagena’s works: Seneca’s De vita beata and Genealogía de los Reyes de España (Generaciones y semblanzas de Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, ed. R.B. Tate (London: Tamesis, 1965), 99–100). Francisco López Estrada has also recognized Alonso de Cartagena’s crucial imprint on Fernán Pérez de Guzmán’s literary style; see “La retórica en las Generaciones y semblanzas de Fernán Pérez de Guzmán,” Revista de Filología Española 30 (1946): 339–49.

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era muy grande razón que de todo rey o prínçipe discreto fuese amado, ca era ombre de grant consejo e de grant discriçión e de grant secreto, que son virtudes e graçias que fazen al onbre digno de la privança de qualquier discreto rey. Quando el dicho rey murió dexólo por uno de sus testamentarios, e después ovo grand lugar con el papa Benedito xiii…. Fizo algunas escrituras muy provechosas de nuestra fe, de las quales fue una las “Adiçiones sobre Niculao de Lira,” e un tratado “De çena Domini,” e otro “De la generaçión de Jhesu Christo,” e un grant volumen que se llama “Escrutinio de las escrituras” en el qual por fuertes e bivas razones prueva ser venido el Mexía e aquél ser Dios e omne.”6 (Don Pablo, bishop of Burgos, was a very wise man and a valiant man of science. He was born in Burgos and was a Jew, from a great lineage of that nation. He converted because of the grace of God and of the knowledge of the truth that he achieved, since he was very learned in law. Before his conversion, he already was a great philosopher and theologian, and afterwards, he continued his studies, went to the Papal court of Avignon, and was considered a great preacher. He first became archdeacon of Treviño, then bishop of Cartagena and, eventually, bishop of Burgos and Chancellor of Castile. He had an important post in King Enrique III’s inner circle of advisors and he was very close and loyal to him. Undoubtedly, it was only right for every king and prince to love him, because Don Pablo was a man of great counsel, and very discrete and circumspect, and these virtues make men deserving of being privados of any sensible king. When the said king died he left Pablo de Santa María as his will’s executor and afterwards Don Pablo became very close to Pope Benedict XIII… He composed several texts very judicious and useful to the Christian faith, namely, Adiciones sobre Niculao de Lira, De cena Domine, and another one, De la generación de Jesuchristo and, eventually, a big volume called Escrutinio de las Escrituras in which, with very reasonable assertions, Pablo argues that the Messiah has indeed arrived and that he is both man and god.) The description of Pablo’s attributes as a learned man and trusted advisor to the king and the pope, in spite of his Jewish ancestry, is juxtaposed to the portrayal of another, not so wise royal privado, Álvaro de Luna, whose deleterious biography

6 Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones y semblanzas, ed. José Antonio Barrio (Madrid: Cátedra, 1998), 141–2. All references to Generaciones y semblanzas in the present essay will be from this edition.

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closes Fernán Pérez de Guzmán’s collection. Furthermore, the passage also underscores the importance of Pablo’s writings and summarizes its greatest accomplishment, to prove to all “ser venido el Mexía” (that the Messiah has come). Pérez de Guzmán’s profile of Pablo de Santa María continues for a few more pages, but now it becomes an intriguing disquisition about the pressing issue of whether or not converts can be true Christians.7 As a reaction “contra las opiniones de algunos que, sin distinction e difirençia, absoluta e sueltamente, condenan e afean en grande estremo esta naçión de los christianos nuevos” (against the opinions of some who, without distinction, absolutely and freely, condemn in excess this nation of the new Christians),8 Pérez de Guzmán sets out to vindicate Pablo de Santa María and other conversos as “true” believers.9 E, ansí, a mi ver, en todas aquestas cosas son de dexar los estremos e tener modos e límites en los juizios; o, si algunos saben que non guardan la ley, acúsenlos ante los perlados en manera que la pena sea a ellos castigo e a otros enxemplo. Mas condenar a todos e non acusar a ninguno más pareçe voluntad de dizir mal que zelo de correpçión.10 (And thus, in my view, in all these things it is wise to leave aside extremes and to limit judgments; or, if someone knows of some who do not follow the law, by all means denounce them to the prelates so that they can be punished and also serve as example to others. But to condemn them all for no reason without accusing anyone in particular seems to just be gossip and malice and not diligence.) He does concede that it is to be expected that all those who were born and raised within a given religious tradition may not be as “fieles e católicos

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The author’s remarkable exploration of the issue oddly echoes the ever-lasting and unresolved debate about the authenticity of converso beliefs. The debate in its contemporary rendering has pitted Yitzhak Baer and Heim Beinart to Benzion Netanyahu. For Baer and Beinart, conversos only converted to escape persecution and death and clandestinely continued Judaizing practices while, in contrast, for Netanyahu they were sincere Christians and thus doubly oppressed by their racist Christian neighbors. Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones, 143. This is also Cantera Burgos’s take on the issue. In his monumental studies, he very adamantly defends the Cartagenas’ orthodoxy; in fact, his insistence on demonstrating the genuineness of Pablo’s conversion not only belies his own biases but also fails to take into account the import of the life-threatening and economic pressures suffered by the Jewish population and their effect on the latter’s subsequent choices. Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones, 147.

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christianos” (faithful and Catholic Christians) as those who were born in the Christian faith. Notwithstanding, in his experience many converts are devout and perform many acts of charity, including Pablo de Santa María and his son, Alonso de Cartagena, whose writings were “de gran utilidad a nuestra fe” (of great utility to our faith).11 Pérez de Guzmán, thus, very meticulously creates or fashions a portrait of Pablo de Santa María which seeks to neutralize those criticisms leveled at the rabbi-turned-bishop and alluded to by Pérez de Guzmán in the following passage: E si algunos dizen que ellos fazen estas obras por temor de los reyes e de los perlados, o por ser mas graçiosos en los ojos de los prinçipes e perlados e valer mas con ellos, respóndoles que por pecados non es oy tanto el rigor e zelo de la ley nin de la fe, porque con este temor nin con esta esperança lo devan fazer.12 (And if some claim that they undertake these works because of their fear of the kings and prelates or in order to be in the good graces of princes and prelates and to be pleasing to them, I reply that nowadays the rigor and zeal of the law nor the faith is not so great that it requires them to act in such a manner out of fear.) This often-quoted remark patently establishes that there were some who believed that Pablo de Santa María was an opportunist and that his conversion was motivated by his ambition and a desire for gain and social advancement.13 Nevertheless, Fernán Pérez de Guzmán’s exoneration of Pablo de Santa María will be the most enduring, in part because it coincided very precisely with the image or persona that Pablo de Santa María himself wanted to project, that of a very learned and devout Christian, a trustworthy and loyal servant of the monarchy, and an indispensable member of society whose opinion should be heard and valued.14

11 Ibid., 145. 12 Ibid. 13 Francisco Cantera Burgos not only firmly believes Pérez de Guzmán’s appraisal of Pablo de Santa María but also states about his brother Alvar García de Santa María that “su ingreso en el catolicismo fue sincerísimo y sin celajes ni titubeos” (his entrance in the Catholic faith was very sincere, without subterfuge nor hesitation) while chastising Américo Castro for espousing the opposite view. Francisco Cantera Burgos, Alvar García de Santa María y su familia de conversos: Historia de la judería de Burgos y de sus conversos más egregios (Miranda de Ebro: Fundación Cultural “Profesor Cantera Burgos,” 2007), 63–4. 14 I am cognizant of the fact that this statement presumes a certain degree of agency in Pablo de Santa María which opposes the radical narrowing of the possibilities of human agency

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Not surprisingly, however, we also find references to Pablo de Santa María in Jewish sources, and his semblanza15 (resemblance) there is not as positive. Profiat Duran, for example, in “Al Tehi ke-Avoteikha” (“Be not like your Fathers”), the letter written as a reaction to David Bonet Bonjorn’s conversion to Christianity, condemns Pablo de Santa María for influencing Bonet Bonjorn.16 Subsequent Jewish writers (Hayyim ibn Musa, Isaac Abravanel, and Abraham Zacuto) also expressed their contempt for their former coreligionist’s betrayal.17 After all, Pablo de Santa María is one of the most notorious converts from Judaism to Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula.18 The rabbi’s suspicious and swift conversion, right before the pogroms of 1391, coupled with his estrangement from friends and family, particularly his own wife (who refused to convert along with him), and his meteoric rise to lucrative and prominent religious as well as political posts, deeply offended an already distraught and beleaguered Jewish community that thenceforth would equate



propounded by Stephen Greenblatt in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). My position is epistemologically closer to Louis Althusser’s process of subjectification, which allows for a certain degree of agency. Montrose summarizes the process of subjectification thus in The Purpose of Playing: “on the one hand, it shapes individuals as loci of consciousness and initiators of action, endowing them with subjectivity and with the capacity for agency; and, on the other hand, it positions, motivates, and constrains them within—it subjects them to—social networks and cultural codes, forces of necessity and contingency, that ultimately exceed their comprehension or control.” Louis Adrian Montrose, The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 16. 15 A semblanza is a biographical portrait, a physical and moral description of a person accompanied by a brief biography. 16 Ryan Szpiech, “Scrutinizing History: Polemic and Exegesis in Pablo de Santa María’s Siete edades del mundo,” Medieval Encounters 16 (2010): 129, 67n. 17 Jacqueline Genot-Bismuth, “L’argument de l’histoire dans la tradition espagnole de polémique judéo-chrétienne d’Isidore de Seville à Isaac Abravanel et Abraham Zacuto,” in From Iberia to Diaspora: Studies in Sephardic History and Culture, eds. Yedida K. Stillman and Norman A. Stillman (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 197–213. 18 As Juan Carlos Conde asserts: “Nadie discutirá que Pablo de Santa María fue uno de los personajes más importantes de la Castilla de su tiempo, y su biografia…una de las más llamativas del medievo castellano” (No one will dispute that Pablo de Santa María was one of the most salient personages of the Castile of his times and his biography, one of the most striking). La creación de un discurso historiográfico en el Cuatrocientos castellano: las “Siete edades del mundo” de Pablo de Santa María (estudio y edición crítica) (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca: 1999), 9.

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the former rabbi to a duplicitous traitor.19 In Christian circles, in contrast, this conversion was heralded as a great victory over Jewish contumacy, which explains the willingness of the Christian establishment to honor Pablo de Santa María and grant him favors.20 Although scholars do not agree as to whether Solomon Halevi converted before 1391 or after the pogrom, it seems plausible to argue that he must have converted before the violent riots of 1391. It is clear in his writings and personal letters (especially in his correspondence with Halorki, later baptized as Jerónimo de Santa Fe) not only that he was becoming philosophically disaffected from his faith but also that he was highly attuned to political trends and events; most likely he had perceived indications that the mounting tensions might unleash severe acts of violence towards the Jews. His conversion thus was momentous, because the wave of anti-Jewish violence of 1391 was unparalleled, with tens of thousands killed and many more converted out of utter terror.21 19

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This assessment of the figure of Pablo de Santa María among the Jewish public prevails in contemporary times. While attending a lecture by Yosi Israeli on the writings of Pablo de Santa María at a synagogue in the Philadelphia area (as part of the Herbert Katz /Penn Lectures on Judaic Studies in 2010), I witnessed the spontaneous, collective, and unanimous reaction of the primarily Jewish, non-academic audience in learning of Santa María’s conversion; it was a mix of astonishment, disbelief, and contempt. For detailed accounts of reactions from Jewish contemporaries of Pablo de Santa María, see Cantera Burgos, Alvar García de Santa María, 309–20; and Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961). The account of his life and conversion was a subject of interest to Christian audiences for some time, as proven by the fact that several documents almost describe it in hagiographical terms. In addition to a highly laudatory note about him in his son’s Anacephalosis, there are other extant vitae Pauli Burgensis: Biblioteca Nacional ms 18996 and Tractatus de conversione Pauli episcopi Burdigalensis (cod. 485, Helmstedt 450) in the Herzog August Bibliothek of Wolfenbüttel. The most striking and ironic of Pablo de Santa María’s biographies, nonetheless, is the one found in one of the memoriales (Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, mss 18666–45) used to apply for admittance to the military orders. At the end of the 16th century, a descendant, Pedro Osorio de Velasco, petitioned that Pablo de Santa María’s descendants were allowed to be admitted to military orders, but limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) had to be demonstrated. Ironically, in 1606, the petition was granted to Osorio de Velasco on the grounds that “múltiples virtudes cristianas…adornaron a Santa María y a sus descendientes, pese a la progenie hebraica del patriarca” (many Christian virtues…are possessed by Santa María and his descendents, in spite of the Hebrew origin of the patriarch). (Conde, La creación, 9). For information about the massacres of 1391, see Jaume Riera i Sans, “Els avalots del 1391 a Girona,” Jornades d’Historia dels jueus a Catalunya (Girona: Ajuntament de Girona, 1987); and

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By this single event, his conversion, Pablo de Santa María positions his family into a sort of liminal space, as defined by the anthropologist Victor Turner in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure.22 Turner’s concept of “liminality” draws from Arnold Van Gennep’s triadic model of the “Rite of Passage” but also, even if as a corrective, on Mary Douglas’s notion of “ritual uncleanness.” Van Gennep claimed “that all rites of passage or ‘transition’ are marked by three phases: separation, margin (or limen, signifying ‘threshold’ in Latin) and aggregation.”23 Pablo de Santa María’s experience of conversion is certainly equivalent to Van Gennep’s first stage of separation, that of the moment of disengagement from one’s society or community (i.e. the Jewish community), with its concomitant and symbolic loss of identity, and, logically, this process would automatically place Pablo de Santa María into a liminal space and render him identity-less. If we consider as well, as David Nirenberg has pointed out, the fact that the proliferation of converts after 1391 created a crisis of identification since the boundaries between Jew and Christian were now blurred,24 it is easy to surmise how problematic Pablo de Santa María’s position or social space was. Thus, Turner’s focus on the liminal phase is especially relevant to my discussion, since it coincides with the position of the new convert, Pablo de Santa María. The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae (“threshold people”) are necessarily ambiguous, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space. Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial.25 No doubt Santa María felt at some point (as all conversos did) “neither here nor there” in the cultural space of late medieval Castile. In order to overcome this initial sense of not belonging, conversos “often remained in the same homes

Emilio Mitre Fernández, Los judíos de Castilla en tiempos de Enrique III: el pogrom de 1391 (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1994). For a summary of the frequent and varied instances of attacks against the Jews, see Julio Valdeón Baruque, Cristianos, judíos y musulmanes (Barcelona: Crítica, 2007), 92–134. 22 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Aldine, 1969). 23 Ibid., 359. 24 David Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain,” Past and Present 174 (2002): 6, 10–11. 25 Turner, The Ritual Process, 359.

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and neighborhoods (that is, in Jewish and Muslim quarters) that they had occupied before their conversion.”26 In the early stages of the process of mass conversions after the 1391 riots, “the converts were asked whether they wished to remain in their old homes or move to Christian neighborhoods; the majority opted to stay,”27 and it was customary for them to become members of converso confraternities. So, how is it possible that Pablo de Santa María was able to successfully navigate and exit this liminal space as quickly as he did? How did he manage to achieve the “aggregate” state, to assimilate so swiftly and smoothly within a different community? The answer lies precisely in the concept of communitas as defined by Turner. According to him, a state of liminality will eventually trigger the emergence of communitas, a relatively structure-less society, based on relations of equality and solidarity and resistant to the normative social structure28: “communitas emerges where social structure is not.”29 Thus, to ensure that they will be accepted within Christian society, Pablo de Santa María will construct this communitas out of his own family. He will set the stage for a communal religious and intellectual task that will place each member of the clan in tactical positions where they can most effectively influence opinion and wield power: the bishopric of Burgos and the Chancellery of Castile for himself and his son, Alonso, and other equally important and lucrative religious offices for his other son, Gonzalo, as well as the official post of historical chronicler for his brother, Alvar García de Santa María, and the design to have their granddaughter and niece appointed as abbess of the richest and most powerful monastery of the realm, Las Huelgas of Burgos. The entire family’s efforts will ensure that they proceed in the right direction to make possible this well-planned tactic. My use of the term “tactic” here is deliberate. I wish to draw a distinction between “strategy” and “tactic” following the perceptive formulations of Michel de Certeau’s concepts in The Practice of Everyday Life. Certeau contends that “strategy” is connected to structures of institutional power which regulate production and behavior. Tactics, in contrast, are used by individuals to act or react in the environments defined or 26 27

Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion,” 14. In his article “Mass Conversion,” 14, 29n, Nirenberg is referring to José María Quadrado’s study, “La judería de la ciudad de Mallorca en 1391,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia ix (1886): 294–312. 28 It should be noted, nonetheless, that Turner contends that “liminality” and communitas are usually temporary and structurally defined and limited, thus dialectically serve not to destroy but to reaffirm the existing social order. 29 Turner, The Ritual Process, 371.

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created by said strategies. In addition, “a tactic is an art of the weak,”30 often used by those who are oppressed so that by definition tactics are selfprotective and opportunistic. Pablo de Santa María thus would be a good example of Certeau’s metaphor of the ordinary pedestrian who improvises his/ her own path, his/her own “rhetoric,” as he puts it, sometimes following the street grid, sometimes, even inadvertently, going off the grid, making tactical choices as he/she goes. The Cartagena clan’s ambitions are certainly well documented, and their acknowledgement here is not meant as a condemnation and in no way detracts from their remarkable intellectual achievements. But even Pablo de Santa María himself had some moral misgivings about the seemingly unstoppable elevation and enrichment of his family, as expressed in some of his correspondence with his friend Halorki.31 That being said, the clan’s trajectory does not differ much from the patterns of social climbing followed by all other important families of 15th-century Castile, particularly among the new families that replaced the old magnates and rose to prominence as a consequence of the Trastamaran usurpation of power. What is distinctly different, however, about the Cartagena clan is that they managed to prevail where many others, including their friends, had fallen. For example, it is interesting to note that in 1415

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Michel de Certeau’s concepts are formulated in The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 37, which, although written in reference to a contemporary period can, to some extent, equally and fruitfully illuminate pre-modern experiences. Certeau’s distinction offers a counterpoint to both Foucault and Greenblatt’s notion that discourse is always tied to institutions and social practices and that, consequently, “unfettered subjectivity” does not exist (Greenblatt, Renaissance SelfFashioning, 256). While I would agree that bodies of power influence the roles we perform in society, it is important to acknowledge that human self-awareness is a historical constant and not circumscribed to the Renaissance. In every period in history, humans have made tactical choices, and to think that the act of resisting institutional strategies is only found in certain periods is a product of modern hubris. To further complicate matters, it is worth noting that Stephen Greenblatt’s ideas about the non-existence of “unfettered subjectivity” have been revised and nuanced by several medieval scholars, in particular, those who are studying issues related to affective modes of expression and emotions; for a cogent analysis of these issues, see Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); and Caroline Bynum Walker, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Francisco Cantera Burgos, Alvar García de Santa María y su familia de conversos: Historia de la judería de Burgos y de sus conversos más egregios (Miranda de Ebro: Fundación Cultural “Profesor Cantera Burgos” 2007), 311.

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the new Aragonese king, Fernando I (de Antequera), turned to Pablo de Santa María, requesting his services to judge the case of his friend, the now antipope Benedict XIII (Pedro de Luna) and to decide whether or not he should resign the papacy.32 Also remarkable is that when the powerful Condestable Álvaro de Luna was finally arrested and beheaded, he happened to be sojourning at Pedro de Cartagena’s house (Pablo’s son and Alonso’s brother). Were they servile, unscrupulous, and opportunistic turncoats or just very savvy diplomats? No matter what answer we prefer, the fact remains that the members of the clan inserted themselves within the innermost recesses of the Castilian social and religious hierarchy and were very capable of skillfully swimming the waters of an uncertain political landscape and socially performing whatever role was necessary to marshal everyone’s trust and to guarantee their survival, as in Bernat Metge’s dictum “to be of the nature of an eel” cited at the beginning of this article. To accomplish the aforementioned formidable task, Pablo de Santa María will engage in a twofold strategy. On one hand, Pablo de Santa María, contrary to what it appears from accounts such as Cantera Burgos, even in his liminal position he never totally severed his ties with his former culture and religion. On the contrary, the bishop would partake of a certain degree of “interstitiality” (I borrow the term from Nirenberg), that is, a continuous contact (financial, cultural, etc.) between converts and their former co-religionists. Consequently, his writings are highly informed by his previous Jewish experience. In all his works (in Hebrew, Latin, and Castilian), “he made explicit use of his first-hand knowledge of Judaism in his later anti-Jewish polemics, and frequently invoked Jewish authorities and cited Talmudic and other early rabbinic texts to support his own arguments”33; he then made use of this knowledge to defend and protect his liminal communitas by availing himself of exegetical and polemical strategies. This is not to say that I support a genealogical reading of Pablo de Santa María to demonstrate his Jewish “character.”34 On the contrary, his use of these strategies serves to cement his place in a liminal space neither Jewish nor Old Christian. The bishop of Burgos keenly 32 33 34

Lewis Joseph Hutton, “Introduction,” in “Arboleda de los enfermos” y “Admiraçión Operum Dey” by Teresa de Cartagena (Madrid: Imprenta Aguirre, 1967), 14. Ryan Szpiech, “Scrutinizing History,” 99. For an excellent discussion of the dangers of essentializing a converso voice, see Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, “Inflecting the Converso Voice: A Commentary on Recent Theories,” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 25, no. 1 (1996): 6–18, as well as other contributions in that critical cluster. See also the cautionary views of David Nirenberg in all of his illuminating studies.

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realizes that the changing social and religious landscape of 15th-century Castile will require the creation of a different culture. His communitas is, in accordance with Turner, the ultimate vision of that culture. The other part of the twofold strategy alluded to previously is the fashioning of a discourse which hyperbolically emphasizes the superiority and legitimacy of the Castilian monarchy and its legendary origins at the same time that it underscores the Cartagena clan’s legitimacy. Thus, the writings of the members of the clan evince a debt to a proud intellectual heritage that refuses to be ostracized, as well as an urgency to tackle very current concerns in order to respond to contemporary challenges35 that can endanger their survival and impede their transition from a liminal space to the aggregate space or assimilation stage. That Pablo de Santa María was successful in devising and implementing such a strategy is undeniable. How else could a rabbi become one of the most powerful bishops of the land, tutor to the Crown Prince Juan II, as well as executor of King Enrique III’s will, Chancellor of Castile and León, and adviser to the Pope Benedict XIII in a mere decade except by influencing public opinion and policy through his writings? Pablo de Santa María’s Siete edades del mundo provides us with a good example of this persuasive impact. This long poem is a sycophantic panegyric of Juan II (1405–54), whom Pablo de Santa María had tutored and who was reigning king at the time of writing. Just a cursory analysis of the tone and progression of the genealogical description of the Trastámara dynasty gives us clues as to Pablo de Santa María’s design and blatant, self-serving allegiance. Folios 80r–v, 81r–v, 82r–v, and 83r relay the brief accomplishments of each subsequent monarch: Alfonso XI, Pedro I, Enrique II, Juan I, Enrique III, and Juan II. In each case the stanza begins with a descriptive, impersonal comment such as the following: “Aquel don Fernando que ovo Ganado/ La fuerte villa que dizen Gibraltar/ Es el que luego començo a Reynar”36 or “Del buen don Alfonso que luego reynara/ Tras este muy breue mente se dira.”37 At the same time, the passage that refers to the reigning king, Juan II, whom Pablo de Santa María obviously wants to flatter, is quite different from the rest, both in tone and content.

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As Ryan Szpiech has cogently demonstrated, the Siete edades del mundo “can also be seen, like his [Pablo de Santa María] Latin works, as constructed in response to concrete issues arising from the debate between converted Jews and their former co-religionists.” Szpiech, “Scrutinizing History,” 99. Stanza 331. Stanza 332.

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Ylustre linaje de reyes pasados Es este por todas las gentes del mundo De donde deçiende don Juan el Segundo A quien mucho somos todos obligados Que como fuemos del tributo librados Por Nuestro Señor en el su aduenimiento Así somos deste por su nasçimiento Despues en Castilla todos libertados.38 (Illustrious lineage of past kings This one is, among all the peoples of the world From where Juan the Second descends To whom we are all very indebted Since the same way we were delivered from tribulations By the Lord on his coming Equally by him after his birth In Castile we are all liberated.) The birth of Juan II was indeed widely celebrated and perceived as a very good omen for a prosperous and peaceful future. Juan II was the son of Enrique III and Catalina of Lancaster (John of Gaunt’s daughter and Pedro el Cruel’s granddaughter).39 His birth signaled the reconciliation of the Trastamaran and the Petrista branches of the family. Pablo de Santa María clearly describes Juan II in messianic tones.40 Consequently, a political interpretation of the Siete edades del mundo symbolizes41 the erasing of a territorial threat to the Castilian crown by the Lancastrians, who had been, and rightly so, pressing their claim to the throne for quite some time.

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Stanza 338. Pablo de Santa María, as a matter of fact, took part in marriage negotiations between these two; he was one of the 60 personalities that acted as “hostage” and travelled to England. They were allowed to return home after the promised 600,000 francs were paid to the bride’s parents, the dukes of Lancaster (Crónica de Juan I de López de Ayala, año 1388, Chap. 3, 120b–121a). Details were arranged during the negotiation of the Treaty of Bayona, whose documents were studied by John Palmer and Brian Powell, The Treaty of Bayonne 1388 (Exeter: Exeter Hispanic Texts, 1988). Royal messianism appears often in the Iberia Peninsula during the 15th century; the topic has been explored extensively by José Manuel Nieto Soria, Fundamentos ideológicos del poder real en Castilla (siglos XIII–XVI) (Madrid: Eudema, 1988), 71–7. This political interpretation has been advanced by Deyermond, Conde, and Fernández Gallardo.

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Y deste muy noble que aqui memoramos Por quien las açiones de herençia usurpadas En toda Castilla fueron cobradas Naçio este rey en quien nos acatamos42 Del qual avn que nunca otra cosa digamos Sino de su gran magnanimidad En vno con su grande liberalidad Abasta muy bien para que concluyamos.43 (And from this very noble person that we are commemorating here Thanks to whom all those inherited things that had been usurped Have been returned to Castile This king to whom we owe allegiance was born About whom even if we never said anything more we would have to praise his great generosity and magnificence This is sufficient to conclude.) But this text need not be only interpreted as political propaganda in favor of King Juan II of Castile. If read in polemical terms and taking into account Pablo de Santa María’s ideas in his Latin works Scrutinium Scripturarum (1432–34) and the Additiones (1429–31),44 a biblical commentary based on Nicholas of Lyra’s (1270–1340) Postillae, Juan also …represented a change for Jews from the policies of Juan’s mother, Catalina de Lancaster, whom many Jews associated with the strict legislation of 1412. The death of Fernando de Antequera in 1416, when Juan was still a minor, gave more control of the crown to Catalina and left Castilian Jews increasingly powerless and isolated. It is possible that Pablo aimed

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The Barcelona incunabulum of 1516 (Rosenbach) ends here: “en quien nos acatamos” and finishes with the following: “Fin/Aqui concluyendo hinco la rodilla/Besando la tierra como natural/Delante su gran poderio real/De aqueste alto Rey de Leon y Castilla/Laus deo” (The end/Here as I conclude I kneel/Kissing the earth as a natural/ in front of his great royal power of this King of Leon and Castile/ Praise the Lord). Stanza 338. Both works were extremely influential and were widely disseminated and read in manuscript as well as print form (Szpiech, “Scrutinizing History,” 102). The same can be said of the Siete edades del mundo, of which we have 17 extant manuscripts (Carlos Alvar and J.M. Lucía Megías, Dicccionario filológico de la literatura medieval española (Madrid: Castalia, 2002), 858.

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to capitalize on Jewish fear of Catalina by presenting Juan—who had yet to develop a reputation among his Jewish subjects—as “savior” of all.45 Szpiech’s perceptive reading of Las siete edades del mundo illuminates two key aspects that have perplexed previous scholars, namely, the casting of the king as a Messiah figure and the unusual division of history into seven ages.46 Both Fernández Gallardo and Szpiech interpret Pablo’s use of the seven ages instead of the conventional six described by Augustine as a deliberate polemical tool: “By placing Juan, a worldly messiah-king, in the seventh rather than the sixth age, Pablo adapted the common trope of describing royalty in divine and even messianic terms and reformulated it in the familiar terms of anti-Jewish polemic.”47 The Siete edades also emphasizes a defensive stance that Pablo must exhibit to counteract the many criticisms he received from his former co-religionists for his apostasy. This is so because, in spite of the fact that he had abandoned the Jewish faith, Pablo de Santa María very obstinately highlights a claim to authority based on his genealogical ties with the tribe of Levi (which, by the way, will be an argument brandished by his son also): “nobis ex Levitico sanguine descendentibus aliquantulum demonstratum fuisse.”48 The interest in genealogical language in Siete edades has a double purpose: to legitimize the king’s claim to the throne as well as to legitimize the Cartagenas’ claim to pre-eminence. Nirenberg argues that interest in genealogy “amongst Spaniards and Sephardim…is the outcome of a specific historical process of conflict in which lineage became a newly meaningful way of thinking about religious identity amongst Christians and Jews alike.”49 The violence and the forced mass conversions from 1391 to 1415 provoked a destabilization of traditional categories of religious identity, and, in the wake of such confusion, Jews, Christians, and conversos “created new forms of communal identity by engaging in a dynamic and dialogic process of rereading their own traditions and those of their rivals, and that over the course of the 15th century this process elevated genealogy to a primary form of communal memory,”50 which in turn gave rise to new forms of historical consciousness and historical writing.

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Szpiech, “Scrutinizing History,” 137. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 136. J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina (Paris, 1841–55), 133: 35–6. Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion,” 6. Nirenberg, “Mass Conversion,” 7.

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Las Siete edades del mundo thus aimed at inaugurating a new era in Castilian history. Pablo de Santa María wished to firmly establish his allegiance to the monarchy, which appeared to offer the best prospect of protection from religious violence, and also to convince his former co-religionists that conversion and submission to this new Messiah was now the only available option for the survival of the Jews. In some ways Pablo de Santa María had been more farsighted than many of his contemporaries and certainly exhibited a clear awareness of the Jews’ precarious situation in Castile. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the condition of Jews in the Christian West deteriorated. Admittedly, they still retained their place in society, they were neither marginalized nor considered foreigners, but disturbing signs were multiplying. There was a surge (or resurgence) of accusations against them, and, for the first time, accusations of ritual murder were made… These accusations often unleashed violence, but their more lasting effect was to isolate the Jews, to create in the popular psyche a feeling of estrangement from them which finally resulted in viewing them as linked to the devil.51 Furthermore, the Jews were driven from England in 1290, and then in 1306 King Philip le Bel expelled (for the second time) the Jews from France. Therefore, the threat of an expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula became a very distinct possibility for Jews in the 14th century. Pablo de Santa María’s tactic, thus, was to support the official Trastamaran strategy of sacralization of the monarchy, and his writings provided a discursive frame to enhance this process. Through the discursive contributions of some jurists and artists, Western man succeeded in constructing the imaginary yet effective space of an institution [the monarchy] in which each person could exist both collectively and individually. The generalized establishment of the State and the idea of the public good made people forget the novelty of this process, which gave a structure to populations hitherto at the mercy of the disintegration of feudalism and of divided and contradictory loyalties.52 51 52

Gilbert Dahan, The Christian Polemic against the Jews in the Middle Ages, trans. Jody Gladding (Notre Dame, in: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 7–8. Alain Boureau, “How Christian was the Sacralization of Monarchy in Western Europe (Twelfth-Fifteenth Centuries)?” in Mystifying the Monarch: Studies on Discourse, Power, and History, eds. Jeroen Deploige and Gita Deneckere (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 27.

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The appeal of such a theory of sovereignty for conversos is evident.53 As we will now see, Pablo de Santa María’s son, Alonso de Cartagena, would also become a proponent of this thesis.

Alonso de Cartagena

From early on, Alonso de Cartagena’s entire trajectory was aimed at advancement. He completed his studies on “Derecho Civil, via sólita de acceso a la jerarquía eclesiástica, la Administración, la promoción política”54 (Civil Law, the usual entry into the ecclesiastical hierarchy, administration, political advancement) in Salamanca in 1410. Only five years later he became Dean of the most important religious post in Spain, Santiago de Compostela, in 1415 and Dean of Segovia shortly after; in 1417 he was named “nuncio y colector apostólico”55 (nuncio and apostolic collector). He was an advisor to the Infante don Juan de Aragon, and from there he was promoted to the two most important institutions of the Trastamaran Castilian monarchy: the Audiencia (he became oidor in 1415) and the Consejo Real (Royal Council) in 1421. It was also this year when Alonso was chosen as one of the king’s representatives in a delicate diplomatic mission to Portugal. Tan prominente posición en la vida política y eclesiástica castellanas se fundamentaba en una sólida formación universitaria y en los vínculos familiares: el ascendiente de su padre, el converso Pablo de santa María, en la corte y en la iglesia, y la destacada posición de su hermano Gonzalo en la jerarquía eclesiástica.56 (Such a prominent position in the political and ecclesiastical arena in Castile was founded on a solid academic formation and on the family ties: the influential position of his father, the convert Pablo de Santa 53

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In the later part of the 15th century, the conversos’ support of the monarchy will be even more noticeable, in particular during the reign of Isabella of Castile, as Barbara Weissberger (Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003)) and others have postulated. Luis Fernández Gallardo, Alonso de Cartagena (1385–1456): Una biografía política en la Castilla del siglo XV (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2002), 57–83, 85–108. Luis Fernández Gallardo, La obra literaria de Alonso de Cartagena (1385–1456) (Saarbrücken: Editorial Académica Española, 2012), 9. Fernández Gallardo, La obra literaria, 9.

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María, in the royal court and within the church, and the outstanding position of his brother Gonzalo in the Church hierarchy.) Alonso de Cartagena became one of the most prominent letrados57 of the Iberian 15th century, prolific writer of political, theological, and chivalric treatises, famed translator of Cicero and Seneca, and one of the alleged harbingers of the humanistic movement in Castile.58 Alonso de Cartagena will continue his father’s strategy of encumbering the reigning king and his dynasty, particularly by using two sets of arguments and recasting them anew. One of them is the resurrection of the idea of a Gothic origin of the Castilian monarchy, and the other is the emphasis on the antiquity and legitimacy of Judaism as a precursor to Christianity. Cartagena expounds the first of these two ideas mainly in two of his works: Altercatio praeminentia sedium (Proposición contra los ingleses in his own translation to Castilian of the Latin original) and Anacephaleosis. Juan Maravall claims that it is only after Alonso de Cartagena’s Anacephaleosis that the Gothic origins (tesis gótica) of the Spanish monarchy began to figure prominently in Castilian historiography.59 Robert B. Tate argues that the Anacephaleosis (c.1435) is a foundational text, “one of the first explicit testimonies of the 57

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See Luis X. Morera’s “An Inherent Rivalry between Letrados and Caballeros? Alonso de Cartagena, the Knightly Estate, and a Historical Problem,” Mediterranean Studies 16 (2007): 67–93, for a persuasive discussion of Alonso de Cartagena’s relationship with the nobility. Morera rejects the idea that there was a rivalry between the class of noblemen, or caballeros, and the class of letrados, as has been postulated by Luis Suárez Fernández in his influential Nobleza y monarquía (Valladolid: University of Valladolid Press, 1975) and in Helen Nader’s The Mendoza Family in the Spanish Renaissance, 1350–1550 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979). For an assessment of his numerous writings as well as information on the debate regarding his adherence or lack thereof to humanistic ideas, see, among others, Ottavio Di Camillo, El humanismo castellano del siglo XV (Valencia: Fernando Torres, 1976); María Morrás RuizFalcó, “Alonso de Cartagena: Edición y estudio de sus traducciones de Cicerón (Alonso de Cartagena: An Edition and Study of His Translations of Cicero)” (Ph.D. diss., Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, 1992); Jeremy N.H. Lawrance, Un tratado de Alonso de Cartagena sobre la educación y los estudios literarios (Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 1979), and “Alfonso de Cartagena y los conversos,” in Actas/Proceedings del Primer Congreso Anglo/Hispano de Literatura, eds. Alan Deyermond and Ralph Penny (Madrid: Castalia 1993); and Fernández Gallardo, Alonso de Cartagena and La obra literaria. Juan Maravall, El concepto de España, 1954, cited in R.B. Tate Ensayos de historiografía, 397. See also Patricia Grieve, The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 72–3.

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Castilian awareness of its own past and the unique/particular role that it claims for itself during the late Middle Ages.”60 Nevertheless, Alonso de Cartagena is not the first one to do this. His father, Pablo de Santa María, also had included the Visigoths very conspicuously in his own historiographical project. Deyermond affirms that Pablo de Santa María designs a historiography according to which “la Castilla Trastámara es […] sucesora de las monarquías judía y romana, pero su relación con la goda es distinta y más íntima: no sólo es sucesora, sino también heredera legítima”61 (the Trastamaran Castile is […] successor to the Jewish and Roman monarchies, but its relationship with the Gothic [monarchy] is ­different and more intimate: it is not only a successor but also a legitimate heir). The document Altercatio praeminentia sedium or Proposicion contra los ingleses62 was composed by Cartagena as a response to a very concrete and circumstantial situation: the slight suffered by the Castilian delegation in regards to protocol at the Council of Basel (1435–39), and it was there that the Castilian diplomat publicly read his pamphlet. Pragmatically, it seemed a very minor matter, but it was laden with symbolic implications, since the English were precisely the ones who were claiming that the reigning Castilian dynasty was illegitimate and had been actively trying to obtain the Castilian crown. Alonso de Cartagena begins the text with an exordium in which the author claims to write not for his own fame but to exalt the Castilian monarchy: “dezir lo he non para ganar Gloria non devisa ni para menguar en cusa alguna onor alguno mas solo quanto sera necesario a demostrar la pre(h)eminencia de la Corona et real de castilla” (I do not affirm this to gain glory or favors nor to diminish anyone’s worth but only insofar as it is necessary to demonstrate the pre-eminence of the Crown and court of Castile).63 60 Tate, Ensayos, 56. 61 Alan Deyermond, “Historia universal e ideología nacional en Pablo de Santa María,” in Homenaje a Álvaro Galmés de Fuentes II (Oviedo: Universidad; Madrid: Gredos, 1985), 313–24, esp. 321. 62 I am citing from the Castilian translation that Cartagena himself made of the Latin document presented at the Council of Basel. His pamphlet was so successful that he was asked by Juan de Silva to translate it to the vernacular and make it more widely available to readers. The manuscript I am using for my transcription is Cod. Hisp. 18 (43 ff.), currently housed at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, Germany. 63 Fol. 1v. Another manuscript of this document, in El Escorial (ms h-II-22), is particularly interesting since it contains, in addition to the “Proposición,” a great number of the writings associated with the Cartagena clan: Pablo de Santa María, Las siete edades del mundo, Suma de las corónicas de España; Alonso de Cartagena, Proposicion, Apología sobre el salmo, Declaración sobre san Juan Crisóstomo; Iñigo López de Mendoza/Alfonso de Cartagena, Cuestión sobre el acto de la caballería; and Fernán Pérez de Guzman, Coplas por la muerte de Alonso de Cartagena.

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In order to justify his claims, the author refers to the Bible, to Aristotle’s Etica, and to Seneca and Boethius. He employs the following arguments, organized in order of importance, to ascertain superior virtues in men and, by extension, in the Castilian king: nobleza de linage (nobility of lineage), antiguedad de tienpo (antiquity), alteza de dignidad (degree of dignity), and last in importance, memoria de beneficios rrecebidos (evidence of favors obtained). Without being overly aggressive Alonso de Cartagena goes on to decry the fact that no one has ever defied the seating protocol other than the English: “no ay quien contradiga al asentamiento debido a los enbaxadores del muy catholico principe el rrey de Castilla mi senor sinon los enbaxadores del muy esclarecido principe rrey de Inglaterra” (no one has ever opposed the seating or position due to the ambassadors of the very catholic prince, the king, my lord except the ambassadors of my illustrious prince, the king of England). Consequently, in order to demonstrate to the English that the Castilian king has pre-eminence, the author will make an expositio of all the reasons why that is the case and, in particular, will adduce the unbroken link between Hercules, the Visigothic kings, and the current Castilian monarch. Furthermore, Alonso de Cartagena very diplomatically maintains that his purpose is not to diminish the honor and glory of the king of England, “Que es un magni(fi)co rrey e uno de los grandes Principes del mundo e muy junto y cercano en debdo de sangre al muy esclarescido rrey mi senor”64 (Who is a magnificent king and one of the Great Princes of the world and very close in blood to the very illustrious king, my lord). In fact, in presenting his genealogy of the kings of Castile, he will allude also to the fact that the Castilian dynasty is related by ties of kinship to both the royal houses of England (“ce es nieto de Don Juan duque de alencastre que fue fijo del postrim[ero] rrey de Inglaterra que ovo nonbre edue[a]rte segun que todos saben / who is the grandson of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who was the son of the last king of England, called Edward, as everyone knows”) as well as that of France through no less than the saint king (“E asi el rrey mi señor deçiende de Sant Luis rrey de Françia y esta en el seteno grado del derechamente por la linea deçendiente / And thus the king my lord descends from Saint Louis, king of France and he is in the seventh place in the succession of the said king”).65 In addition to Cartagena’s appeal to the gothic thesis and his establishment of a precedent for the use of this particular type of genealogy in historiographical discourse for centuries to come, another remarkable element contained in

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Fol. 3v. Fol. 4r.

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this speech is his depiction of true nobility. According to him, there are three type of “nobility”: nobleza theologal (theological nobility), nobleza natural (natural nobility), and nobleza çeuil (comunmente llamada “fidalguia”) (civil nobility). Undoubtedly informed by the ideas of Seneca, whom he translated so often, in particular his concept of the moral man, Cartagena defines nobleza natural thus: “Nobleza natural consiste en la virtud moral e segun esta quanto alguno mas virtuoso de moral virtud es, tanto es mas noble” (Natural nobility consists of a moral virtue and in accordance to it the more virtuous one is, the more noble one becomes). This concept, which parallels that of De vera nobilitate encountered in Burgundian circles at the time, underscores Cartagena’s belief (clearly expressed also in the Defensorium Unitatis Christianae in regards to conversos) that nobility rests not on purity of lineage or birth but on innate attributes. Surprisingly, however, this idea clearly challenges and contradicts his earlier task of emphasizing the fact that the king of Castile has preeminence precisely because of the first factor, nobility of lineage. As for the second of Alonso de Cartagena’s aforementioned arguments, in his work Defensorium Unitatis Christianae he will thwart attacks on the newness of the conversos’ faith by reaffirming the antiquity of Judaism. Cartagena contends that it is not the Jews that arrive to a new religion when they convert but the opposite; the Jews are, in fact, the ones who already know the religion they are entering with conversion. So the label “New Christians” is not accurate: “quae Origenis verba sic ad litteram posui ut diligenter lector attendat quod non quasi ad inauditam legem et de novo recenter oblatam ex israelitico populo descendentes accedunt, sed ad implementum legis scriptae eiusque plenisimam perfectionem” (I have thus placed the words of Origen in the letter so that the reader learns well that the descendants of the Israelite people do not submit to an unheard and “just-put-before-(them)-from-the beginninglaw,” but to a performing of written law and its fullest completion).66 Cartagena thus insists on the equality of conversos and old Christians through baptism (basing his ideas on Church doctrine and Saint Augustine). He is, in fact, fashioning a new identity for Christians, marking or “staining” them with the label of New Christians and thus effecting a reversal of identity definitions. The Defensorium Unitatis Christianae responds, like the Altercatio, to particular events, and it is not the product of a deliberate design to create a grand narrative about the subject. It was composed as a direct consequence of the events of 1449 in Toledo, so it is fitting that I discuss them here at some length. 66

Chap. 6.

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On January 19, 1449, the de facto ruler of Castile, Álvaro de Luna, enacts a new tax to be exacted from the citizens of Toledo; the enormous amount would be collected by Jews. The city, which considers Álvaro de Luna to be a protector of the Jews, vehemently protests against the measure. On January 26 an uprising begins, and on the next day the mob burns the house of a Jewish merchant, Alonso Cota, a friend of Luna. The city and its mayor, Pero Sarmiento (who also held the office of repostero mayor of the king), declare themselves rebellious subjects and demand from the king the removal of Álvaro de Luna as well as the ousting of all conversos from public posts around the city.67 Then on June 5, 1449, Pero Sarmiento publicly reads a Sentencia-Estatuto against conversos. Even before this document had been made public, Fernán Díaz de Toledo, who held the post of Relator, had composed a pro-converso document known as “Instrucción del Relator” that criticized Marquillos (nickname for Marcos García de Mora), another Toledan citizen who had written an incendiary pamphlet against converts. Finally, Alonso de Cartagena writes his Defensorium Unitatis Christianae opposing Sarmiento and Marquillos and siding in favor of the New Christians. According to the Sentencia-Estatuo, King Alfonso had proclaimed a privilege against converts: “ordeno y mando que ningun confesso de linaje de los judios no pudiese haber ni tener ningun oficio ni beneficio en la dicha cibdad de Toledo, ni en su tierra, termino y jurisdicion por ser sospechosos en la fe de nuestro Señor e Redemptor Jesuchristo” (ordered and commanded that no convert of Jewish lineage be allowed to have any position or benefits in the said city of Toledo, nor in its environs or jurisdiction for they are suspects in the faith of our Lord and Savior Jesus).68 The rebels in Toledo used this document to bolster their claims, but Díaz de Toledo, the Relator, and Alonso de Cartagena were equally able to muster documents that persuasively defended the opposite position. Thus, when Fernán Díaz de Toledo sends some documents related to the case to Lope de Barrientos, bishop of Cuenca, he can include a papal bull, copies of some titles from the Partidas, two briefs from the pope himself directed to Prince Enrique and his father, King Juan I, which confirmed the privileges of 67 GuillermoVerdín-Díaz, Alonso de Cartagena y el “Defensorium Unitatis Christianae”: Introducción histórica, traducción y notas (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1992), 15–17. 68 Eloy Benito Ruano and F. de Caso Fernández, Colección documental sobre la catedral de Oviedo (Gijón Flores: Monumenta Historica Asturiensia, 1983), 192. See also Benito Ruano, “La ‘Sentencia-Estatuto’ de Pero Sarmiento contra los conversos toledanos,” Revista de la Universidad de Madrid 6 (1957): 277–306, and “El memorial contra los conversos del Bachiller Marcos García de Mora (“Marquillos de Marambroz”),” Sefarad 17 (1957): 314–51.

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the Jews and restated the decrees passed during the Council of Basel (where Alonso de Cartagena also defended conversos by insisting on the fact that they are not different from Christians), and, lastly, customary documents about Church doctrine which stated that converts deserved to be admitted within the body of the Church. Finally, Díaz de Toledo adds a very telling comment that reflects how common conversos were in ecclesiastical hierarchy: “Si no fuera asi, no habria habido jerarquia eclesiástica conversa como la hubo y la hay desde San Lino, sucesor de San Pedro hasta los actuales prelados de Espanna y de todas partes”69 (And if that had not been the case, there would not have been a converso Church hierarchy as there indeed existed and still exists since the times of Saint Linus, successor of Saint Peter, until now with the current prelates of Spain and everywhere). Both the Relator and Cartagena emphasize in their documents the fact that conversos and Christians are the same and that conversos have been an integral part of the fabric of the Church since its very beginning. They reject Sarmiento’s portrayal of conversos as inimical to Christians. In his study of Alonso de Cartagena and Francisco de Vitoria, Bruce Rosenstock summarizes thus the political theology which informs Alonso de Cartagena’s Defensorium Unitatis Christianae: Both Cartagena and Vitoria reject the identification of any human group (Jew or Indian) as the embodiment of the Antichrist, the politicotheological “Enemy” par excellence. In taking this position they inaugurate a tradition of political theology that refuses the demonization of the Other in the name of a messianically charged national politics. This refusal is, in the case of the converso theologians, Cartagena and Vitoria, made in the name of the ideal unity of all humankind within the “mystical body” of Christ, an ideal achievement of divine caritas that cannot, by its very nature, be accomplished by a “holy war” and that therefore can only be corrupted when temporal power seeks to impose it by force of arms.70 69

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Guillermo Verdín-Díaz, Alonso de Cartagena, 33. See also Albert A. Sicroff, Los estatutos de limpieza de sangre: Controversias entre los siglos XV y XVII (Madrid: Taurus, 1985), for further discussion of the frequent converso affiliation found among prominent aristocratic families, such as the Manriques, the Mendozas, and even the Enríquez, related to the Trastamaran ruling dynasty. Bruce Rosenstock, “Against the Pagans: Alonso de Cartagena, Francisco de Vitoria, and Converso Political Theology,” in Marginal Voices: Studies in Converso Literature in Medieval and Golden Age Spain, eds. Amy Aronson-Friedman and Gregory Kaplan (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 119.

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As we have seen in the father, the uncle, and the son/nephew, there is a clear and unswerving intention to praise and support the monarchy. The most obvious reason seems to be to protect the ascendancy of the conversos, as attested by the various strategies we have seen to underscore the equality, ethically and morally speaking, between Old Christians and conversos. But it is not the only one. The other reason is to justify the legitimacy of the Trastamaran dynasty, which was no small concern at the time. In fact, it is crucial to an understanding of the political upheavals of 15th-century Castile. Not even one century had passed since the murder of an anointed king, Pedro I (called el Cruel), by his illegitimate half-brother, Enrique. All of Enrique’s descendants would forever be stained by that crime, much in the way converts were continuously reminded of their supposed impurity. Because Enrique was an illegitimate son of the previous king and, especially, because he not only had circumvented the conventional rules of primogeniture but also was guilty of fratricide, the Trastamaran faction had an urgent need to publicly proclaim its own legitimacy. They had to fashion “some justification for Enrique’s position and to rationalize Pedro’s demise.”71 In several ways, through biblical exegesis, erudite reading of history, chronicle writing, translation of classics, and involvement in public affairs, the Cartagena clan found ways to accomplish that and helped the Trastamaras to construct the edifice of their propaganda.72 It is ironic that the conversos from the Cartagena clan found themselves in the position of extolling the kings of a dynasty that undermined and eventually eliminated a king (Pedro I) by accusing him, among other things, of consorting too much with Jews.73 As Froissart said about Enrique of Trastámara, “he had the popular approval of those who shared with him an unsympathetic attitude towards Jews and who blamed Pedro for the advancements made by this group under his rule.”74 Pablo de Santa María, Alvar García de Santa María, 71

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Louise Mirrer-Singer, The Language of Evaluation: A Sociolinguistic Approach to the Story of Pedro el Cruel in Ballad and Chronicle (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986), 40. These skills that the Cartagenas bring to this task and which are so informed by their Jewish heritage may be considered, following Bourdieu, as their embodied cultural capital, that is, the knowledge or capital acquired consciously as well as inherited, which is acquired through interaction with one’s family and cultural socialization. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John Richardson (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 241–58. History repeats itself. Enrique IV, son of Juan II, was also accused of loving the Jews too much and was eventually characterized as a sodomite and effeminate. Jean Froissart, Les chroniques de Sire Jean Froissart, ed. J.A.C. Buchon (Paris: F. Wattelier, 1867), 1:503, Chap. 198. Cited in Mirrer-Singer, The Language of Evaluation, 40.

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and Alonso de Cartagena were well aware of the irony, but they accepted this role because, while they were writing all these works commissioned by their patrons to fabricate a revisionist history of the Trastámara dynasty, the Cartagenas were not only detachedly or disinterestedly describing, representing, or reflecting the historical context but, instead, were actively participating in it. They were able to put in writing their ideas in regards to what they envisioned could be a better society; they were in a position to persuade, to influence, and to be heard. What the various kingly eulogies crafted by the Cartagena writers latently achieve is to specularly position the converso subject in the realm to be on par with the king. That is, the same way Alonso de Cartagena uses genealogy to argue the king of Castile’s pre-eminence over the English in Basel, he is also expressing that Jews have pre-eminence and that they are not to be marginalized; they are here to stay.

Teresa de Cartagena

The last member of the clan I will discuss is Teresa de Cartagena (born between 1420 and 1435). She was the daughter of Pedro de Cartagena75 and María de Sarabia.76 Pablo de Santa María, Alvar García de Santa María, and Alonso de Cartagena were, thus, her grandfather, great-uncle, and uncle, respectively. Teresa’s biographical information is sparse and mostly gleaned from comments found in her writings: she was afflicted with deafness, although not until 1455–56 (much later than previously thought), she professed as a nun, “was in constant poor health, and spent much of her time alone, reading and meditating. She wrote two works: Arboleda de los enfermos, a treatise on the spiritual benefits of affliction and patience, and Admiracion operum Dey, a defense of her writing.” Unlike other nuns who wrote, however, “there is no reference in Teresa’s works to her convent sisters nor to convent life.”77 Until quite recently

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Pedro de Cartagena had six more legitimate children: Alonso de Cartagena (d. 1467), Alvaro de Cartagena (d. 1471), Juana, and María Sarabia from his marriage to Teresa’s mother, and Lope de Rojas (1444–77) and Elvira de Rojas from his marriage to Mencía de Rojas. He also had three illegitimate sons: Pablo de Cartagena, Gonzalo Pérez de Cartagena, and Pedro de Cartagena. Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, “Teresa de Cartagena (1425?–?),” in Castilian Writers 1200– 1400, eds. Frank A. Domínguez and George D. Greenia (Detroit: Gale, 2004), 122. Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, The Writings of Teresa de Cartagena (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1997), 8–9.

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we did not even know to which religious order Teresa belonged. The copyist of her works, Pero López del Trigo, omitted the name of Teresa’s order. Nonetheless, Serrano Sanz, Burgos Cantera, and Lewis Hutton conjectured that she belonged to the Franciscan Order. Some new documentation proves that Teresa had entered the Franciscan Order at the monastery of Santa Clara outside the walls of Burgos but that in 1449 she transferred to the Cistercian Order and entered the Cistercian monastery of Santa María la Real de las Huelgas in Burgos. These aforementioned documents are two petitions to the pope submitted by Alonso de Cartagena, bishop of Burgos, on behalf of his niece, Teresa Gómez de Cartagena. The first petition seeks papal dispensation for her transfer from the Franciscan to the Cistercian Order. The second one, dated May 2 of the same year, 1449,78 requests that, upon reaching the age of 25, she be eligible for office in the new monastery.79 These letters underscore the family’s interest in ensuring that Teresa be eligible for high office in the prestigious convent of Las Huelgas, possibly even abbess.80 Her deafness later precluded that possibility, but maybe we can interpret Teresa’s emphasis on what Deborah Ellis has named “her central metaphor of a well-ordered house”81 as a “re-enactment” of her ambition of ruling such a house as abbess. She uses the term perlada (prelada or abbess) to refer to paciencia in her writing. Thus, constant reiteration of images depicting the narrator as an individual shut out from the world illustrate not only the frustration experienced because of the physical limitations her deafness imposes on her but also her disappointment at having to renounce any possible promotion within the convent’s hierarchy.

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As noted by Yonsoo Kim, this is the same year as the rebellion in Toledo. Between Desire and Passion: Teresa de Cartagena (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez and Yonsoo Kim, “Historicizing Teresa: Reflections on New Documents regarding Sor Teresa de Cartagena,” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2004): 121–50. The royal monastery of Las Huelgas was the official burial place of the kings and queens of Castile and, consequently, was one of the monasteries most favored by Castilian aristocrats. The office of abbess of Las Huelgas in Burgos was quite unique in terms of its reach and influence. The abbess (often a member of the royal family or the aristocracy) held absolute spiritual and juridical power not only among the nuns of the convent but also in all of the surrounding counties. She was not only a religious person but also a landlord and a judge. She held immense power and administered a great deal of money and vast property holdings. See José María Escrivà de Balaguer, La abadesa de las Huelgas (Madrid: Rialp, 1994), 43–4. Deborah Ellis, “Unifying Imagery in the Works of Teresa de Cartagena: Home and the Dispossessed,” Journal of Hispanic Philology 17, no. 1 (1992): 44.

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Teresa’s change of monastery equally illustrates her interest in scholarly pursuits, another familial trait. Mary Elizabeth Frieden notes that By the middle of the fifteenth century many Franciscan communities were experiencing the effects of a reform movement which turned them away from intellectual endeavors. The convent of Santa Clara in Burgos was among those that underwent reform, so the Cistercian environment at Las Huelgas would surely have been more suitable to Teresa’s intellect.82 She also remarks that Las Huelgas, a monastery for royalty and nobility, would have possessed an important library and that “Teresa’s family most certainly wielded enough influence to facilitate her entrance into this community and would have seen it as a suitable place for a member of the Cartagena family.”83 These latter findings allow us to put to rest several assumptions about Teresa de Cartagena’s work. First, we realize that Teresa must have been in her youth as inquieta (restless) and ambitious as the rest of her family. We may speculate that the idea to transfer to a Cistercian monastery might have come not from Alonso de Cartagena alone but also from Teresa herself, which indicates that she knew what she wanted and would not be deterred by any obstacles; keep in mind that leaving the Franciscan Order was considered apostasy in the Middle Ages, and even though the regulations about transfers eased somewhat by the 15th century, “Teresa’s transfer is sufficiently extraordinary to require papal dispensation,” as Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez remarks.84 Likewise, the granting of such dispensations equally points to the fact that the Cartagenas were able to wield great power and influence. Webster, in discussing cases of apostasy, offers a description which applies well to Teresa’s case: “In other cases, the possession of an influential family or evidence of exceptional ability were distinct advantages, and those who were fortunate enough to enjoy them benefited in numerous ways.”85 Second, the personality of Teresa as evinced by these documents does not coincide in the least with the voice of the weak female represented in her texts, and this fact should alert us to the danger of placing too much emphasis 82 83 84 85

Mary Elizabeth Frieden, “Epistolarity in the Works of Teresa de Cartagena and Leonor López de Córdoba” (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001), 52. Ibid., 40–1. Seidenspinner-Núñez and Kim, “Historicizing Teresa,” 127. Jill Webster, Els menorets: The Franciscans in the Realms of Aragon from Saint Francis to the Black Death (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1993), 173.

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on the autobiographical validity of Teresa’s treatises.86 To be sure, her personality must have been transformed by the onset of deafness, and she does refer to the fact that the illness traumatized her until she was able to turn her suffering into a positive and desirable state that enabled her to close her ears, physically and figuratively, to sin and unhappiness. But we still need to be aware that Teresa de Cartagena, the writer, is very different from Teresa, the narrator and sinner who populates her pages, and that the inclusion of her personal experiences in the text does not serve the purpose of narrating her real life. In fact, her text, in the words of Seidenspinner-Núñez, “is marked by an erasure of the circumstantial…she never names herself, never explicitly reveals her profession as a nun, never divulges details of her family, never provides any personal details, and any self-references are presented either obliquely or figuratively.”87 Such strategy does, in fact, magnify her exemplarity, and she becomes a universal symbol of suffering humanity, or doliente. That, however, is her mask or persona in her writing. In her daily interactions, I am convinced that she must have fashioned herself very much in accordance with the rest of her family, actively engaging in her community, protecting her family’s interests, ensuring that their opinions and actions were heard, heeded, and respected. And most likely she kept in touch with her family, especially her uncle, the bishop of Burgos. In fact, her work even reflects the intellectual influence of Alonso de Cartagena. Gómez Redondo contends that Teresa’s treatises are indebted to Alonso de Cartagena’s Oracional, especially its emphasis on prayer as a way of  self-discovery.88 Nicholas Round has also 86

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The issue of the autobiographical nature of Teresa’s voice has been amply debated, and, most of the time, critics agree that the texts portray the real Teresa and not a fictional Teresa. Thus, on several occasions the narrator’s words have been taken at face value: “It appears that she did not find compassion in her family, because she speaks of the impatience of a mother and father with a sickly child, most obviously herself, whom they would not want in their home [Arboleda 59].” Joan F. Cammarata, “Teresa de Cartagena: Writing from a Silent Space in a Silent World,” Monographic Review/Revista Monográfica 16 (2000): 39. Such interpretations are risky, however, and we cannot always assume that Teresa, the narrator, is speaking autobiographically. On the contrary, she is fashioning a fictional persona who may or may not share traits with the real Teresa. Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, “‘But I Suffer Not a Woman to Teach’: Two Women Writers in Late Medieval Spain,” in Hers Ancient and Modern: Women’s Writing in Spain and Brazil, eds. Catherine Davies and Jane Whetnall (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1997), 12. Fernando Gómez Redondo, Historia de la prosa medieval castellana: vol. 3: Los orígenes del humanismo, el marco cultural de Enrique III y Juan II (Madrid: Editorial Cátedra, 2002), 3017.

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suggested that the Libro de los enxemplos de Seneca (an abridged version of Alonso de Cartagena’s Amonestamientos e doctrinas) was an adaptation prepared particularly by Alonso de Cartagena for his deaf niece.89 In addition to her contact with her family, Teresa de Cartagena also engages in a dialectical exchange with her readers. As a matter of fact, her second treatise is a response to the disparaging readers of the first treatise, who were amazed that a woman had been capable of writing as well as Teresa de Cartagena did. These criticisms from the readers will provoke a very patent discursive shift from the first treatise, Arboleda de los enfermos, to the second one, Admiracion operum Dey.90 This shift from the first to the second treatise illustrates a trend that Barbara Newman believes occurs in visionary writing all over Europe. Newman distinguishes two types of visions, cultivated and scripted. During the earlier part of the Middle Ages, cultivated visions were the norm. During that period, “the visionary subculture par excellence was the monastery, where constant immersion in Scripture, exegesis, hagiography, and contemplative writings trained the monk or nun to accept the possibility, or even likelihood, of visions and to esteem them highly.”91 This type of visionary practice required an intensive training that laypeople did not have. Thus, when the laity began to infiltrate the visionary realm from the 12th century onwards, their visions began to have a more formulaic character because, in many cases, they were following a script, that is, they were patterned after the manuals that clerical writers produced to help readers visualize the life of Christ and thus enhance their visionary capabilities. By the 15th century, popular manuals such as the Meditations on the Life of Christ and Vita Christi texts circulated so widely that even illiterate lay folks might gain access to the realm of visionary experience and make spiritual claims that, two centuries earlier, would have only been acceptable within the walls of a monastery. This proliferation of visionary texts and experiences led to massive confusion. The end result was that the Church opted to accept only visions that were not cultivated (that is, had not been perfected or literarily manipulated by the writer) and did not stem from the visionary’s imagination. Authentic visions and revelations could only originate in simple, uneducated minds92 and were 89 Nicholas Round, “‘Perdóneme Séneca’: The Translational Practices of Alonso de Cartagena,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 75 (1998): 25. 90 I undertake a much more thorough analysis of these two texts in the chapter of my forthcoming monograph. Here I am merely summarizing my findings. 91 Barbara Newman, “What Did it Mean to Say ‘I Saw’?: The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80, no. 1 (2005): 14. 92 In De probatione spirituum (1415), Jean Gerson supplied a list of persons whose visions should be held automatically suspect: the mentally ill, people under the sway of strong

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infused in those minds by the grace of God. Teresa’s writings will experience the same progression from a cultivated intellectual exercise to an infused visualization of God. Let us turn now to the reader’s reaction to Teresa’s Arboleda de los enfermos. If the prudentes varones or male readers had such a hard time believing that Teresa de Cartagena wrote the Arboleda, it is precisely because they identified the discursive strategies and the examples in the text as typically male. Does this mean that by then they were already able to distinguish between a male discourse and a female discourse? Yes, undoubtedly, because the only texts women were allowed to write were visionary texts, which had entirely different characteristics. Religious women did not express themselves the way Teresa does in the Arboleda, and when they do, they become suspect: “every teaching of women, especially that expressed in solemn word or writing, is to be held suspect, unless it has been diligently examined.”93 Marguerite Porete is a telling example of such dangers for women arrogating themselves the role of theologians. She was executed for heresy in 1310 not because of her visionary writing but because her book could be read as an attack on the traditional mediating role of the clergy. John Baconthorpe identified her offence as “having published a book against the clergy.”94 In the end, Teresa’s Admiracion is, in fact, a return to the “expected” female discourse, a regression to the boundaries of accepted female discourse imposed by male readers and not so much an example of a “feminist text.” Her first treatise, in contrast, might be considered a “feminist text.” The Arboleda, written out of her own volition, was the clear product of a gifted intellect, a learned theologian, an educated and daring woman who did not see herself as “feeble” as a writer. The Admiracion, instead, written as a reaction to negative criticism, has to protect the “authenticity” of Arboleda by denying Teresa’s abilities, and to do so Teresa resorts to the strategies used by visionaries. The Admiracion is meant “to set a seal of approved piety” on Teresa’s exceptional (or unusual) treatise, the Arboleda. Not just to justify her right to write; she is defending the orthodoxy, the accurateness of the Arboleda. When Teresa felt her work was unappreciated, she had to refashion herself and had to turn to the tactic of insisting on “a pure supernaturalism, which, if 93

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passions, and recent converts, especially adolescents and women, whose ardor is excessive, unbridled, and therefore suspect. Jean Gerson, cited in Jennifer Summit’s “Women and Authorship,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, eds. Caroline Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 97. Summit, “Women and Authorship,” 97.

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given credence, has the dual benefit of safeguarding both the absolute validity of the text and the myth of female incapacity.”95 To protect her text, Teresa undermined herself even though, as feminist critics, we continue to uncritically extol her spirited and certainly subversive defense of women. I would postulate that, in fact, she is not defending women as much as she is defending her text, its perfection and usefulness as a consolation treatise. Thus, the Admiracion is not an example of assertive female writing but, instead, an example of Teresa’s self-effacement or what Jennifer Summit refers to as an “author by negation.”96 Faced with the challenge of expressing divine messages, the visionary writer establishes her authority on the basis of her selfeffacement, in order to show that her writing issues not from her individual consciousness but from a heavenly source. Visionary women could only expect to be taken seriously if they could prove that the authority that they were claiming was legitimate; a direct vision from God was the best validation for female authority,97 especially when the restrictions against women teaching increased between the 12th and the 14th centuries.98 My contention is that Admiracion, often analyzed as a text which defies patriarchy and whose aim is to defend the rights of women to write, does, in fact, resort to visionary style to emphasize the “infused grace” of the writer in contrast to her intellectual gift and stylistic skills. In the Admiracion Teresa is, in truth, submitting to the prohibition of women to write by inserting her text within the context of visionary literature, which was the only venue for women writers tolerated by the status quo. Her adherence to the language of visionary texts is a protective tactic. In the Admiracion she shifts the emphasis of Arboleda from consolatory treatise to the quasi-mystical vision of a union with God in order to make her work fit more neatly within the accepted boundaries of textual composition. In Arboleda Teresa “minimizes the gendering of her own story by emphasizing its figurative spiritual dimension.”99 In Admiracion, instead, by adopting the discourse of visionary women she underscores her “femininity,” she “genders” her text. Thus, as her relatives before her, Teresa de Cartagena knows how to “be of the nature of an eel” and transform or fashion herself and her writing to adapt to her surrounding environment. 95 96 97 98 99

Newman, “What Did it Mean,” 40. Summit, “Women and Authorship,” 95. Grace Jantzen, Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 169. Caroline Bynum Walker, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Los Angeles: University of California Los Angeles Press, 1984), 250. Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, “‘But I Suffer Not,” 13.

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Scholars have stressed the singular importance of family. Natalie ZemonDavis argued that in sixteenth century France family and lineage provided the context for the creation of the individual. Everywhere the family was conceived as a unit from which one took identity and passed it on to the next generation. Individuals understood their successes and failures in terms of the family. They sought fame not only for its own sake but to bring honor to the clan.100 This applies well to the Cartagena family; each of the members of the clan engaged in various activities that were aimed at securing the communal wellbeing of the group. Individualistic gestures of self-expression were always rooted and fashioned within a family or group framework because, as Anthony Molho lucidly indicates in speaking of Florentine society in the 15th and 16th centuries: “family tradition, family expectations, family patrimonies provided a moral compass which guided individual actions.”101 Ultimately, in their respective writing tasks, which can be seen as emblematic of their communal fashioning, each of the members of the Cartagena clan were in fact reacting to very specific personal and political circumstances: one (Pablo) trying to mask the contradictions of a swift conversion, another (Alvar) vying for political favor as a chronicler, the third trying to protect his former co-religionists/kin conversos (his work in Basel and defenses of the conversos), while educating both conversos and Christians by means of his translation/scholarly work that can be seen as an extension of his political work, and, finally, Teresa, defending her own right to write and be heard. Their work responded to a communal or familial ambitious destiny, but, ironically, it was not aimed at being universal, because it only made sense in relation to the specificity of their personal and social circumstances. Because they were assailed in different ways by perilous historical upheavals and by the hostile attitudes of their surrounding community, the Cartagena family devised their very own communitas, a liminal space from where they were able to contest some of the most intractable beliefs in Christian society as well as conform and integrate into it. By availing themselves of their embodied cultural capital they strove to persuade their contemporaries that it was possible to lead more moral lives and that their society 100 William Caferro, Contesting the Renaissance (New Jersey: Wiley and Sons, 2011), 43. 101 Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1994). In fact, in his study Molho sets out to entirely reject the notion of individuality, and, by extension, he discredits Burckhardtian notions of Renaissance “individualism” as well as the New Historicist concept of a radical separation between medieval and Renaissance modes of fashioning.

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Index Admiracion operum Dey (Teresa de Cartagena) 352, 356 Aeneid 118 Alfons III, the Liberal (of Aragon) 26 Alfons IV, the Benign (of Aragon) 21, 26,  28–31, 40 Alfonso VI (of Castile) 22 Alfonso VII (of Castile) 25 Alfonso XI (of Castile) 21, 23–25, 30, 40, 339 Alighieri, Dante 9, 116, 119–32, 134–37,140,  257, 264, 276 Castilian manuscripts 121–22, 126 Catalan manuscripts 131 See also Divina comedia Alighieri, Pietro 128 Altercatio praeminentia sedium (Alonso de Cartagena) 13, 328, 345–46, 348 Amadís de Gaula 144, 146, 148–54, 156–58,  160–61 Amonestamientos e doctrinas 356 Anacephaleosis (Alonso de Cartagena) 345 Anne (of France) 46, 52, 73 See also Lessons for My Daughter Aragon 6–9, 21, 25–26, 28–32, 34–40, 46–57,  61–66, 71–73, 91n, 93n, 98,118, 130–31, 133, 168, 170, 174, 232, 253, 258, 306, 338, 344 Arboleda de los enfermeros (Teresa de Cartagena) 13, 338n, 352, 355–58 Arcipreste de Talavera (o Corbacho) (Alfonso Martínez de Toledo) 10, 153–55, 170,178–80, 184, 186, 193, 195, 196n, 239n, 311n Barcelona 36, 55, 59, 62, 81n, 98, 288–89, 341 Bernardo, Saint 203 Boccaccio, Giovanni 120, 124, 129–30,132,  136–37, 153, 170, 176–77, 180, 208, 264 See also Corbaccio; De mulieribus claris/ De claris mulieribus de Cabrera, Bernat 47 Calisto 192–94 Cancioneros 132, 139, 236n, 261 Canzoniere (Dante Alighieri) 124, 129–30

Canzoniere (Francesco Petrarca) 267 Capellanus, Andreas 153, 175–76 Cárcel de amor (Diego de San Pedro) 170,  177, 183, 193 Carlos V (Carlos I of Spain) 11, 226–27, 232,  237–40, 242–44, 247 Carro de las donas 233–34, 247 de Cartagena, Alonso 13, 328–29, 332, 336,  344–56 See also Altercatio praeminentia sedium; Anacephaleosis; Defensorium Unitatis Christianae Cartagena family 11, 13, 327–60 de Cartagena, Teresa 13, 328, 338, 352–58 See also Admiracion operum Dey; Arboleda de los enfermeros Catherine (of Aragon, Queen of England) 232 Castile 6–7, 9–11, 21–25, 47, 50n, 56, 100,  116–22, 126, 129–32, 136, 139, 159, 167–71, 173, 175, 177, 181, 183, 186–87, 192, 204–5, 231–32, 236–38, 241, 243, 245, 328, 330, 335–36, 339–41, 343–48, 351–53 Catalan 6, 8, 12, 26, 27n, 34–35, 39n, 79–81,  83, 95–96, 109, 111n, 117, 121, 130–31, 183, 233–34, 253–59, 288n, 289, 294 Catalina (of Lancaster) 340–42 Catalina (of Portugal) 11, 226–31, 233–45,  247–48, 249–51 Celestina 192, 194–98 Celestina (La) 10, 192–200 See also Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea Charles V (of France) 69 Charles VI (of France) 47, 49–50, 52, 66–69 Charles VII (of France) 62n, 68, 70–71, 72n Charles VIII (of France) 46n Christ 12, 86–88, 103–09, 221, 298, 302–23,  330, 337, 350, 356, 358 Washing the feet of 302, 304n, 314n, 315–22 Christianity 8, 13, 80, 82, 87–91, 96, 104,  108, 112, 203, 212, 220, 263, 305, 328, 331–33, 345 Cima, Pere 91–93 Clement VII (Pope) 287

368 Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca (Anselm Turmeda) 8–9, 13, 79–80, 82, 84, 86n, 89–103, 107–10, 112 Cobos y Molina, Francisco de 243 Comedieta de Ponça (Marqués de Santillana) 117n, 121 Communitas 13, 336, 338–39, 359 Conversos 10, 81,186–90, 204, 222, 329n,  331–32, 335–37, 342, 344, 348–51, 359 Identity of 186–90, 335, 348–52 “Converso voice” 187–88, 338n Corbaccio (Giovanni Boccaccio) 170, 177 Corbacho See Arcipreste de Talavera (o Corbacho) de Córdoba, Martín 232 See also Jardín de nobles doncellas Coronation ceremonies 6, 8, 18–40, 50–51,  301, 322 Courtly love 10, 159, 168, 170–72, 180–81, 184,  194–95 Crónica de Juan II 13 Crónica del Rey Alfonso Onceno 21n, 23 Cultural materialism 327 Curial e Güelfa 144, 151–52, 160–61 De civilitate morum puerilium 233 Defensa de virtuosas mugeres (Diego de Valera) 170, 176n Defunsión de don Enrique de Villena (Marqués de Santillana) 135 Defensorium Unitatis Christianae (Alonso de Cartagena) 348–50 De institutione feminae christianae (Joan Lluís Vives) 231–33, 247 De mulieribus claris/ De claris mulieribus (Giovanni Boccaccio) 170, 177, 208 Díaz de Toledo, Fernán 349–50 Disputa de l'Ase (Anselm de Turmeda) 93–96, 112 Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri) 122–23,  126–30, 136 Eiximenis, Francesc 13, 72–74, 76, 78, 228,  231n, 233–35, 247, 306–8, 314n, 316, 319, 321 See also Vida de Jesucrist Elionor (of Sicily) 8, 46–49, 64 Elizabeth I (of England) 168 d’Empúries, Joana 50

index Enrique II (of Castile) 339 Enrique III (of Castile) 330, 335, 339–40, 355 Enrique IV (of Castile) 205, 351n Enríquez, Enrique 189, 350n Fama 50–53, 57, 59, 61, 66–68, 70, 155,  158, 312 Febrer, Andreu 121, 130 Felipe (of Habsburg) 227 Felipe II (of Spain) 11, 14, 226–29, 239,  242–48 Fernando I (de Antequera) 118, 338, 341 Fernando II (of Aragon) 50n, 177, 182, 186,  188–89, 191, 205, 232, 258 Ferrer, Saint Vincent 310, 315 de Flores, Juan 10, 167, 170, 183 See also Grisel y Mirabella de Fortià, Sibil.la 8, 46, 48–54, 57–58, 64,  66, 72 Franciscan Order 80, 85, 90, 94–95, 234,  353–54 García de Santa María, Alvar 328–29, 332,  334, 336–37, 351–52, 357 Gender debate 10, 167–78, 179–95, 197–99,  201, 211, 263 Generaciones y Semblanzas (Fernán Pérez de Guzmán) 329–31 Girona 12, 47, 56–58, 61n, 277–95, 334n Cathedral chapter of 279–95 Canons of 279–81, 283, 285, 287–89, 294 Greenblatt, Stephen 1–2, 4–5, 7, 9–12, 19–20,  46n, 83, 87, 91,100, 107, 112, 138–40, 145–46, 167–73, 180–82, 184–88, 190, 196, 198, 236–37, 255, 269–73, 277, 279, 294, 300–1, 309–10, 327, 333, 337 Gregory X (Pope) 25, 302 Grisel y Mirabella (Juan de Flores) 170, 183 de Guzmán, Nuño 133 Historia Silense 21–22 Historia Wamba 22 Huesca Pontifica 26 Identity 1–8, 10–13, 19–21, 37–40, 47–48,  53–54, 60, 62, 64, 70, 79–84, 87–88, 93, 96, 100, 107, 112, 140, 145, 147–48, 152, 167–68, 172n, 178, 181–82, 184–90, 193–95, 197, 213, 218n, 220, 237, 272, 277–94, 298, 300–1, 327

index Authorial 1, 6, 172, 178, 198, 272, 352–60 Christian 82, 84,100,102–3, 277–94, 298 Converso 108–10, 186–90 Creation of 1–2, 5–7, 11, 83, 87, 112, 300–1,327n Female 300, 313, 352–60 Male 167–68, 172n, 178 Muslim 80–88, 96–97, 111–12 Post-conversion 84, 87–89, 103, 112 Pre-conversion 107, 109–10, 113 Private 181, 291 Religious 6, 8, 80–88, 96–97, 102–3, 111–12, 277–94, 342 See also Self Iliad 117–18 Infierno de los enamorados (Marqués de Santillana) 121 Innocent III (Pope) 25–26 Inquisition (Spanish) 1, 187, 190–91 Isabeau (of Bavaria) 8, 47, 49–52, 64–72,  75–76, 78 Isabel I (of Castile) 10, 50n, 168–70, 177,  182–83, 186, 188–89, 191, 193, 203–7, 222, 230, 232, 234, 238, 344n Isabel (of Portugal, Empress) 226–28,  237–38, 241–42 Isidore (of Seville) 120n,135, 137, 140 Islam 8, 80–82, 84, 87–88, 90, 93, 96n, 97,  100–4, 107–12 Jardín de nobles doncellas (Martín de Córdoba) 232 Jaume I, the Conqueror (of Aragon) 25,  98–99 See also Llibre dels fets Jaume II, the Fair (of Aragon) 26 Jesus See Christ Jews 81n, 108, 178, 187n, 314n, 317n, 321, 330,  333–336, 338, 339n, 341–43, 345–46, 348–52 Joan I (of Aragon) 46–50, 53–63, 257n Joan of Arc 70–72 João III 11, 226–28, 232, 235, 237, 239–42, 247 João Manuel (of Portugal) 226 John of Caulibus 13, 304–6, 308, 310–11, 314n,  316–22 See also Meditations on the Life of Christ Juan I (of Castile) 339, 349

369 Juan II (of Castile) 9, 13, 116–18, 121, 139, 170,  186, 339–41, 351n, 355 Juana I (of Castile) 227n, 247 Kings and kingship 8, 18n, 20n, 38–39 Knights 9, 27–29, 90, 139, 144, 146–52, 155,  158–62, 168, 172n, 174n, 177, 289–90, 294 Laberinto de Fortuna (El) (Marqués de Santillana) 118 Lazarus 213, 311, 313–18 Lessons for My Daughter (Anne of France) 46, 73 Libro del Caballero Zifar 144, 151–52, 160–61 Libro de los enxemplos de Seneca 356 Libro primero del espejo de la princesa christiana (Francisco de Monzón) 234 Limousin 256–57 Llibre del rei en Pere (Pere IV of Aragon) 28n, 30, 33 Llibre dels fets (Jaume the Conqueror) 25 López de Luna, Pedro 28–29, 31, 33n López de Mendoza, Íñigo See Marqués de Santillana Louis XI (of France) 46n, 62n Ludolph of Saxony 13, 310–11, 314, 317–19,  321–22 See also Vita christi de Luna, Álvaro 10, 167, 169–73, 330, 338, 349 See also Virtuosas e claras mugeres de Luna, María 8, 11, 46–48, 51, 62–64, 68, 72 Magdalene, Mary 12, 298–99, 302–07,  309–19, 321–22 Mallorca 8, 47, 71, 79–80, 82, 84–85, 89–92,  94–95, 98, 99n, 102–4, 109, 112, 288 Manuel I (of Portugal) 237 March, Ausiàs 253–59, 261, 263–65, 267, 269,  271, 273–76 Poetry 12, 254–56, 258, 264–65, 267, 272 Maria Manuela (of Portugal) 11, 226–30,  232–47 Maria (of Aragon) 168, 170, 174 María Pacheco (Countess of Benavente) 11, 202–4, 206, 208, 210,  212, 215, 218–22 Mariner, Vincent 254 Martha of Bethany 12–13, 224, 298–99,  302–11, 314–17, 321–23, 325

370 Martí, Nicolau 86, 92–93 Martí I (of Aragon) 46, 48–51, 54, 63–64,  98–99 Martínez de Toledo, Alfonso 10, 153, 167,  170, 178–82,193n,195, 239n See also Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho Mary I (of England) 232, 246 Mary (of Bethany) 302 See also Mary Magdalene Mary (of Hungary) 227n Mata (of Armagnac) 47 Meditations on the Life of Christ (John of Caulibus) 304–6, 311, 314, 316, 318,  320–22, 356 Melibea 193–94, 196 Misogyny 153–54, 177–78, 180, 184, 193 de Montalvo, Rodríguez 146, 151, 152n,  154,156–58, 161 See also Triunfo de las donas de Montcada, Ot 28 de Montemayor, Jorge 254 de Monzón (Monçón) Francisco 234–35 See also Libro primero del espejo de la princesa christiana More, Thomas 181–86, 190, 192, 301, 309 Muntaner, Ramon 26, 27n, 31 Muslims 80–88, 96–97, 99, 100–1,110–12, 303,  336, 345 Navarro, Juan 12, 254–55, 258, 263–67,  269, 272 de Nebrija, Antonio 230–31 New Historicism 2, 20–21,185, 327n Novels, chivalric 10, 144–64 Masculinity in 144–64 Women in 53–55, 158–63 Nuns 13, 49, 50n, 234, 293–94, 298, 309,312,  322, 352 Ordinacions de Cort 32, 35–37 Ovid 137, 176 Paraclete 86–87 Pedro I (of Castile) 339, 351 Pere II, the Catholic (of Aragon) 25 Pere III, the Great (of Aragon) 25–26, 28n,  30, 33–34, 91, 289, 292 Pere IV, the Ceremonious (of Aragon) 21, 28,  30, 40, 46–54, 56–60, 63 See also Llibre del rei en Pere

index de Perellós, Constança 52–53, 57–61 Pérez de Guzmán, Fernán 182, 328–32,  346n See also Generaciones y semblanzas Petrarca, Francesco (Petrarch) 2, 120,  124, 129, 132, 136–37, 171n, 207, 208n, 253–73 See also Canzoniere (Petrarch) de Pizan, Christine 46n, 48, 67–69, 235n,  300–1 Portugal 7, 11, 23, 206, 226–27, 229, 231,  237–38, 242–43, 245, 247–48, 344 Prohemio e Carta (Marqués de Santillana) 134–38, 141, 171 del Pulgar, Fernando 10, 167, 177n, 188–92 Queens and queenship 11, 20n, 25, 35, 37,  49–57, 60–65, 67–72, 90, 93, 96, 98, 102, 154, 163, 168–70, 174–77, 184, 191–92, 204, 226–27, 231–32, 234–47, 353n Reyes Católicos 50n, 177, 189–90, 204, 206 de Rocabertí, Pere 281n, 288 Rodríguez del Padrón, Juan 170, 174n, 175n,  178n, 181–82, 183n See also Triunfo de las donas de Romaní, Baltasar 254, 256, 258–69 de Rojas, Fernando 10, 167, 170, 193n, 194n,  196–98 See also Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea Romances 9–10, 144, 146, 148–50, 152–55,  159–63 Sancho II (of Castile) 21–22 de San Pedro, Diego 10, 167, 170, 177, 183 See also Cárcel de amor de Santa María, Pablo 13, 328–44, 346,  351–52 See also Siete edades del mundo Santillana, Marques de (Íñigo López de Mendoza) 6, 9, 116–41, 171, 188, 253 Book collecting habits of 119, 126,132 Library 117–19, 121, 123, 125–27, 129, 131–33, 135–37, 139–41 Literary reputation 9, 116 See also Comedieta de Ponça; Defunsión de don Enrique de Villena; Infierno de los enamorados; Prohemio e Carta de Sant Jordi, Jordi 253n, 257 de Sarabia, María 352

371

index Self 2–4, 10–11, 13, 20, 82–83, 147, 167–69, 173,  180–82, 184–88, 190, 195–96, 212–13, 218, 220–21, 270–71, 278–79 Authentic 182, 184, 197 Authorial 172, 198 Poetic 255, 272–73 Self-cancellation 10, 181, 186, 188–90, 198 Self-coronation 21–26, 28–35, 38–40 Self-fashioning 1–13, 18–21, 38, 46–73, 112,  116, 138, 140–41, 167–75, 177, 179–89, 191, 193, 197–99, 202–5, 217–21, 228–48, 255, 270–71, 279, 300–1, 327–28 Advice for 6, 11, 46, 48, 61, 86, 176, 190, 202–22, 228–48 Communal 277–95, 298–323, 327–60 Literary 11, 16, 20–21, 144–64, 167–98, 253–73 Of women 46–73, 298–323 See also Identity Sempronio 193–95 Sergas de Esplandián (Las) 152, 154 Shakespeare, William 2, 71n, 270, 301 Siete Edades del Mundo (Las) (Pablo de Santa María) 13, 339–40, 342–43 Spenser, William 2, 168, 270 Suzanne (of Bourbon) 46

de Valera, Mosén Diego 10, 167, 170, 174–78,  181–82, 184, 186, 188–89, 192 See also Defensa de virtuosas mugeres Vida de Jesucrist (Francesc Eiximenis) 307, 319 de Vilagarut, Carroça 59–61 de Villena, Enrique 118, 121, 123, 127, 135,  171n de Villena, (Sor) Isabel 12, 298–323 As role model for other nuns 293–94, 298, 309, 312, 322 Self-fashioning of 12, 298–99, 301, 303, 305, 307, 309, 311, 313, 315, 317, 319 See also Vita Christi Violant (of Bar) 8, 46, 48, 53–64, 68, 72 Virgil 118, 135–37, 193 Virgin Mary 103–5, 107–9, 179, 221, 241, 283,  285–86 Virtuosas e claras mugeres (Álvaro de Luna) 170, 172 Visconti, Valentine 50 Vita Christi (Isabel de Villena) 12,  298–301,303–12, 314–18, 320–23 Vita christi (Ludolph of Saxony) 13, 310n, 311,  314, 317, 321–22 de Vitoria, Francisco 350 Vives, Joan Lluís 231–35, 247

de Talavera, Hernando 11, 202–22 Letter to María Pacheco 11, 202–3, 206–9, 211–20, 221n, 222 Model of self-fashioning 217–22 Tirant lo blanc 144, 151–52, 155, 160–62 Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea 170, 192 See also Celestina (La) de Trastámara, Enrique 349–51 Triunfo de las donas (Juan Rodríguez del Padrón) 170, 175n, 183n Tuḥfa (Anselm de Turmeda) 81–82,  85–88, 93, 95–96, 99, 106–7, 111n, 112 Turmeda, Anselm 6, 8–9, 79, 80–113, 115 Biography 84–85 Conversion 82, 87–89 Life 79, 85–86, 88 Post-conversion identity 84, 110 See also Cobles de la Divisió del Regne de Mallorca; Disputa de l'Ase; Tuhfa Tyndale, William 2, 186, 270, 301

Wisdom literature 11, 202, 217 Women 10, 49, 158–60, 162–63, 167, 169–84,  192–93, 195–98, 211, 213, 215–16, 233–35, 238–40, 249–50, 308–11, 323–24, 326, 357–58 As authors 13, 357–58, 365 Attacks on and defenses of; See gender debate In chivalric narratives 153–55, 158–63 Noblewomen 206, 215–16, 221, 230 Religious 213 Royal 8, 46–73, 226–48 Visionary 357–58 Wyatt, Thomas 2, 168, 173, 181–82, 270, 273

Valencia 36, 47, 52–53, 71, 130–31, 227n, 232,  253–54, 258, 278n, 292, 299, 301, 310,312, 321–22

Zaragoza 25–29, 34, 36 Zifar See Libro del Caballero Zifar

Yolande (of Aragon) 8, 46–48, 62n, 63–66,  68, 70–73