The Vida de Santa Oria is the most problematic of Gonzalo de Berceo's works. There is disagreement about its textual integrity, and important elements of its structure are imperfectly understood. The intent of this article is to demonstrate Berceo's use of literary and iconographic material prominent in the thirteenth-century monastic culture of San Millán de la Cogolla to construct a moral and eschatological definition of the contemplative life. The Vida de Santa Oria renders Christian eschatology through an elaborate (...) symbolic structure, circumscribed physically and spiritually by the cloister walls of San Millán, where Berceo, a secular priest, served as notary of one of the abbots. The economy of Berceo's communicative method is no small part of the excellence of his poem; his artistic self-cloistering mirrors the existential condition of his hagiographic subject. It derives from a conscious and complex choice, rather than from any limitation of his intellectual horizons. (shrink)

La hagiografía medieval tenía una importante función didáctica. Estos relatos fueron muy útiles para la Iglesia ya que permitían transmitir valores, modelos de conducta e ideas complejas a los feligreses. En este trabajo de investigación exploraremos tres obras hagiográficas en verso redactadas en distintas zonas de la Península Ibérica durante el siglo XIII, protagonizadas por tres santas que representan modelos diferentes (mártires, religiosas y penitentes). A través de este estudio comparativo hemos podido observar que, más allá de los tópicos asociados (...) a cada modelo de santidad, los valores transmitidos como ejemplo de “buenas cristianas” se repiten en todos ellos como condición necesaria para que la mujer alcanzase la salvación eterna: mantenimiento de la virginidad, castidad, penitencia y purga del pecado. Así, podemos concluir que la hagiografía femenina plenomedieval tuvo un importante papel en la transmisión y asentamiento de las ideas del clero respecto a lo femenino, cargadas de una evidente misoginia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Political Economy of the Libro De AlexandreSimone Pinet (bio)The carefully composed and craftily pronounced stanzas of the thirteenth-century Libro de Alexandre, if mostly a (free) translation of Gautier de Châtillon’s Alexandreis, provide readers with glimpses of northern Iberia in descriptions and comparisons, but especially through curious formulations and eloquent rewritings.1 These incite the reader to reflect upon the emergence of the vernacular regime of literary composition by (...) clerics that developed in the thirteenth century, a corpus known to us as the mester de clerecía. In this corpus, the use of the vernacular, in particular, brings with it an unproblematized sense of transparency of the context in which the works of mester de clerecía were produced, a genre of which the Libro de Alexandre is a key poetic point of origin. Next to an emphasis on a Latinate syntax and recitation techniques that underline the corpus’s clerical production, the irruption of quotidian phrases, vocabulary, figures of medievalization, and especially of Iberization, make these texts a privileged site to study the articulation of the varied phenomena that from economics to the grammatical, from Aristotle to technology, come to revolutionize medieval culture from the twelfth century onward. Of the many peculiar uses of the vernacular in the Libro de Alexandre, references that connote a sense of worthlessness through the repeated structure “not worth an X, ” especially those that express the comparison with minted coinage of little value: dinero, meaja, pepión, or sueldo, as in “not worth a penny,”2 will serve here as a point of entry. These hyperbolic [End Page 44] expressions, common to Romance languages, underline not only the moral and economic ambivalence of terms such as preçio, valor, honor, pagar(se), dar crédito, and so forth, but also the incorporation of a monetary economy within this ambivalence. These types of expressions, moreover, produce a linguistic marker for such ambiguity, as Louis F. Sas noted when he underlined the “affect” which marks, at the level of speech, the reference to abstract terms such as infinity, nothing, and zero in these types of constructions [469, 471].3Sas notes that the vast majority of the occurrences of these phrases in the Libro de Alexandre happen “in combination with the word valer, with its synonyms, or with dar por, that is, in contexts of exchange” [475]. Many years before Sas exhaustively documented these expressions, Alois Richard Nykl had interpreted their presence as related to barter and a supposed clerical contact with local markets, which to some extent could explain their frequent use in the poem, and he especially mentioned the use of fruits and vegetables in these expressions. Nykl also suggested these were “rustic” similes, favored by men of the clergy such as Berceo, Juan Ruiz, and the authors of the Alexandre and the Fernán González, showing, in his opinion, these men’s contact with a certain world in which fruits and vegetables could serve as payment for the church or diezmo, bringing in through this curious interpretation not only a historical economic context but also its [End Page 45] qualification as something “rustic” or at least foreign to the cleric [311].4In 1929, a couple of years after Nykl’s article appeared, George Irving Dale would correct his affirmations, noting that the expressions called “rustic” by Nykl belonged to a well-studied figure called figurative negation. Dale remarked that figurative negation appeared already in the Poema de mio Cid, and he directed the reader to the bibliography offered by Menéndez Pidal in his edition of the Poema under the title of “Refuerzo de la Negación” [Cantar de Mio Cid 1: 376 and glossary]. In his article, Dale wrote in passing that the type of adjectives used with these expressions “increases the insignificance or lack of value” [324]. Later, agreeing with Dale, Sas wrote that the emphasis added to these phrases through the use of adjectives such as vile or rotten did not point to any medieval particular practice beyond that of a peculiar affect, which has been interpreted in terms of “simplicity.” In the next pages I want to suggest some lines of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Political Economy of the Libro De AlexandreSimone Pinet (bio)The carefully composed and craftily pronounced stanzas of the thirteenth-century Libro de Alexandre, if mostly a (free) translation of Gautier de Châtillon’s Alexandreis, provide readers with glimpses of northern Iberia in descriptions and comparisons, but especially through curious formulations and eloquent rewritings.1 These incite the reader to reflect upon the emergence of the vernacular regime of literary composition by (...) clerics that developed in the thirteenth century, a corpus known to us as the mester de clerecía. In this corpus, the use of the vernacular, in particular, brings with it an unproblematized sense of transparency of the context in which the works of mester de clerecía were produced, a genre of which the Libro de Alexandre is a key poetic point of origin. Next to an emphasis on a Latinate syntax and recitation techniques that underline the corpus’s clerical production, the irruption of quotidian phrases, vocabulary, figures of medievalization, and especially of Iberization, make these texts a privileged site to study the articulation of the varied phenomena that from economics to the grammatical, from Aristotle to technology, come to revolutionize medieval culture from the twelfth century onward. Of the many peculiar uses of the vernacular in the Libro de Alexandre, references that connote a sense of worthlessness through the repeated structure “not worth an X, ” especially those that express the comparison with minted coinage of little value: dinero, meaja, pepión, or sueldo, as in “not worth a penny,”2 will serve here as a point of entry. These hyperbolic [End Page 44] expressions, common to Romance languages, underline not only the moral and economic ambivalence of terms such as preçio, valor, honor, pagar(se), dar crédito, and so forth, but also the incorporation of a monetary economy within this ambivalence. These types of expressions, moreover, produce a linguistic marker for such ambiguity, as Louis F. Sas noted when he underlined the “affect” which marks, at the level of speech, the reference to abstract terms such as infinity, nothing, and zero in these types of constructions [469, 471].3Sas notes that the vast majority of the occurrences of these phrases in the Libro de Alexandre happen “in combination with the word valer, with its synonyms, or with dar por, that is, in contexts of exchange” [475]. Many years before Sas exhaustively documented these expressions, Alois Richard Nykl had interpreted their presence as related to barter and a supposed clerical contact with local markets, which to some extent could explain their frequent use in the poem, and he especially mentioned the use of fruits and vegetables in these expressions. Nykl also suggested these were “rustic” similes, favored by men of the clergy such as Berceo, Juan Ruiz, and the authors of the Alexandre and the Fernán González, showing, in his opinion, these men’s contact with a certain world in which fruits and vegetables could serve as payment for the church or diezmo, bringing in through this curious interpretation not only a historical economic context but also its [End Page 45] qualification as something “rustic” or at least foreign to the cleric [311].4In 1929, a couple of years after Nykl’s article appeared, George Irving Dale would correct his affirmations, noting that the expressions called “rustic” by Nykl belonged to a well-studied figure called figurative negation. Dale remarked that figurative negation appeared already in the Poema de mio Cid, and he directed the reader to the bibliography offered by Menéndez Pidal in his edition of the Poema under the title of “Refuerzo de la Negación” [Cantar de Mio Cid 1: 376 and glossary]. In his article, Dale wrote in passing that the type of adjectives used with these expressions “increases the insignificance or lack of value” [324]. Later, agreeing with Dale, Sas wrote that the emphasis added to these phrases through the use of adjectives such as vile or rotten did not point to any medieval particular practice beyond that of a peculiar affect, which has been interpreted in terms of “simplicity.” In the next pages I want to suggest some lines of... (shrink)

O N Concilio de Latrão, realizado em 1215, foi para a Igreja Ocidental o mais importante do período medieval. Seus 70 cânones apresentam uma síntese do projeto de reforma eclesial liderado pelo Papado, em vias de implantação desde meados do século XI, e que visava, dentre outros pontos, a moralização do clero. Contudo, qual foi o impacto destas regulamentações canônicas nas diversas regiões da Cristandade? Como tentativa de resposta parcial a tais questões, optamos por um estudo de caso: o da (...) Igreja Castelana, tão resistente às imposições romanas no século XI. Para o estudo da questão, optamos pela análise da obra literária Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos, de. Gonzalo de Berceo, clérigo secular e primeiro autor culto a escrever em castelhano do qual possuímos notícias históricas. Objetivamos, através do estudo comparativo desta obra literária e os cânones do Concilio de 1215, o impacto e penetração no início do século XIII, em Castela, do projeto de reformulação da moral eclesiástica promovido pelo papado. (shrink)

Se presenta en este trabajo la doctrina de la šafā‘a, esto es, la intercesión escatológica del Profeta por su comunidad, desde la perspectiva de los nuevos vínculos de cohesión social de la sociedad religiosa instaurada por el islam que sustituían a la aṣabiyya tribal, constituyéndose la šafā‘a en el colofón y broche final de esos nuevos vínculos. Tras estudiar dicha doctrina se constata la seguridad de la salvación final que ofrece, elemento valiosísimo de cohesión social, y se destaca la exclusividad (...) de la šafā‘a para solo el musulmán a través de la comparación de La disputa entre los animales y el hombre de los Ijwān al-Ṣafā’ con La disputa de l’ase de Turmeda y a través de la verdadera causa de la muerte de al-Ḥallāŷ según al-Rūmī. Hay, sin embargo, una excepción a esa exclusividad ya que existen musulmanes que quedan excluidos de la šafā‘a. Son estos, los herejes, quienes con la divulgación de sus nuevas doctrinas ponen en peligro la unidad y la cohesión de la comunidad. Se termina sugiriendo el posible calco de esta doctrina islámica en la devoción a la intercesión de la Virgen, pues la devoción mariana que con tanta fuerza irrumpe en el Occidente cristiano a partir del siglo XII, y que aparece reflejado en la Cantigas de Alfonso X el Sabio y en los Milagros de Nuestra Señora de Gonzalo de Berceo, es un fenómeno cuyo origen es todavía discutido. (shrink)