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Typology in Berceo's Milagros : the Judïezno and the Abadesa preñada

1983; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 60; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382832000360015

1469-3550

Helen Boreland,

Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York 1959), 11–76, at p. 53. The essay was first published in German in Neue Dantestudien (Istanbul 1944), 11–71. Recent works on typology in mediaeval Spanish literature include: David W. Foster, ‘Medieval poetic tradition in two Cantigas profanas of Alfonso el Sabio’, RN, VIII (1966–67), 297–304; ‘Figural interpretation and the Auto de los Reyes Magos’, RR, LVIII (1967), 3–11; ‘De Maria Egyptiaca and the medieval figural tradition’, Italica, XLIV (1967), 135–43; Christian Allegory in Early Hispanic Poetry [Studies in Romance Languages, IV] (Lexington 1970); Alan Deyermond, ‘¡Ay Jherusalem!, estrofa 22: traduçtio y tipología’, in Estudios ofrecidos a Emilio Alarcos Llorach, I (Oviedo 1977), 283–90; ‘La estructura tipológica del Sacrificio de la Misa’, Berceo, 94–5 (1978), 97–104. 2. ‘La estructura tipológica’, 99. 3. The Use of the Bible in Representative Works of Medieval Spanish Literature 1250–1300 [Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures, XLVI] (Washington 1962); Gormly (7) relates San Lorenzo 63cd to Matthew 27, 46–7 and Mark 15, 34; likewise Santo Domingo 496c to John 13, 34. She points out (14–15) the dependence of the account of the multiplication of the wine by San Millán (San Millán 244–48) on the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes (John 6,1–13), and the story of the marriage feast at Cana (John 2,1–12). My quotations from the works of Berceo are taken from the following editions: Los milagros de Nuestra Señora, ed. Brian Dutton [Obras completas, II] (London 1971); El duelo de la Virgen, Los himnos, Los loores de Nuestra Señora and Los signos del Juicio Final, ed. Brian Dutton [Obras completas, III] (London 1975); La vida de Santo Domingo de Silos, ed. Brian Dutton [Obras completas, IV] (London 1978); El sacrificio de la Misa, ed. Antonio G. Solalinde (Madrid 1913); El martirio de San Lorenzo, ed. C. Carroll Marden, PMLA, XLV (1930), 501–15. 4. Gormly also provides (17–18) a useful chart of metaphors applied to the Virgin in the Loores and Milagros, citing scriptural references where appropriate. 5. Sister Teresa C. Goode, Gonzalo de Berceo, ‘El sacrificio de la Misa’: a Study of Its Symbolism and of Its Sources (Washington 1933). 6. It is unfortunate that Foster, in a book which is at times enlightening, and at others plain confusing, has tended to blur the definition of allegory and typology to an unnecessary extent, through his choice of title and his initial focus. Despite the fact that he knows Auerbach’s work and cites it at some length, he has clearly overlooked the latter’s observation that in studies dealing with figural conceptions ‘the special nature of the problem does not seem to have been recognized; the figural or typological or phenomenal structure is not sharply distinguished from other allegorical or symbolical forms’ (‘Figura’, 60). Foster nevertheless adopts the two terms Christian figural allegory and figural interpretation to distinguish typology from Hellenistic allegory (Christian Allegory, 12). 7. For an illuminating discussion of the concept, see C. A. Patrides, The Grand Design of God: the Literary Form of the Christian View of History (London 1972), 18. 8. For a timely warning against the danger of over-rating the importance of typology in mediaeval literature see Arnold Williams, ‘Typology and the Cycle Plays: some criteria’, Sp, XLIII (1968), 677–84. 9. Christian Allegory, 125, n. 17; The Use of the Bible, 11; Carmelo Gariano, Análisis estilístico de los ‘Milagros de Nuestra Señora’ de Berceo (Madrid 1965), 63 and 167–69. 10. 201b, 245d, 755a, 779c, 815d and 871d. 11. One of the major difficulties involved in this study lies in establishing exactly when Berceo is echoing a biblical passage. In Gormly’s words: ‘that a fixed terminology for biblical concepts did not exist at the time of Berceo is one clear and striking fact revealed by a study of his vocabulary’ (The Use of the Bible, 21). 12. Wolfgang Seiferth, Synagogue and Church in the Middle Ages: Two Symbols in Art and Literature, trans. Lee Chadeayne and Paul Gottwald (New York 1970), 71, refers to the case of the Trier Jews who, during a pogrom in 1096, rather than allow their children to be baptized, stabbed them to death, while their women jumped to their deaths into the river. In 1190 about one hundred and fifty Jews committed suicide in the castle keep in York, while besieged by a fanatical mob. Similar episodes took place in Strasbourg, Worms and Cologne, in the mid-fourteenth century. 13. ‘The English origins of the “Miracles of the Virgin” ’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, IV (1958), 176–216, at 192. 14. My quotations from Alfonso el Sabio’s Cantigas de Santa Maria are taken from the edition by Walter Mettmann, 4 vols (Coimbra 1959–72). The story of the Jewish boy appears in a much simplified form in Juan Timoneda’s Memoria hispanea, a collection of historical anecdotes included in El sobremesa y alivio de caminantes de Juan Timoneda 1569, 2nd edn, facsimile reproduction (Madrid 1928), fol. iiiv. 15. Abel’s sacrifice along with those of Abraham and Melchizedech is regarded as a type of the Eucharistie sacrifice and this is still enshrined in the Catholic Canon of the Mass. See for example the Sacrificio de la Misa, 195–204. Though it is surely difficult to deny that Alfonso must have intended his public to recognize the significance of the characters’ names, this point has been missed by at least one critic: Valeria Bertolucci, ‘Contributo allo studio della letteratura miracolista’, in Miscellanea di Studi Ispanici 1963 (Pisa 1963), 5–72. Although she refers to the great suggestivity of the biblical names (65), she does not develop this point any further. The Castilian prose version of this cantiga, included in Escorial MS T.1.1., states at the outset that the boy’s parents are named Samuel and Rachel, but does not give the child’s name. The estribillo is paraphrased in Castilian at the end of the story, but there is no reference to the three Jewish boys in the fire. The prose version also mentions the fact that not only was the boy an only child, but his parents had been married for a long time before he was born, thus setting them within the tradition of Abraham and Sarah, Joachim and Anne, and Zacharias and Elizabeth. See James R. Chatham, ‘A paleographic edition of the Alfonsine collection of prose miracles of the Virgin’, in Oelschläger Festschrift [Estudios de Hispanófila, XXXVI] (Chapel Hill 1976), 73–111, at 88–89. 16. Eliezer Oyola, who discusses this miracle story in Los pecados capitales en la literatura medieval española (Barcelona 1979), 85, comments as follows: ‘Los gestos demoníacos del judío y su castigo en el fuego corresponden al último castigo de los diablos. El judío aquí es un tipo del diablo cuyo último castigo es el lago de fuego descrito en Revelación [20, 10].’ 17. Other references include: IV Kings 21,6; IV Kings 23,10; Jeremiah 32,35; Ezechiel 16, 21 ; Ezechiel 20, 26 and 31. 18. ‘The effect of typology on the English mediaeval plays of Abraham and Isaac’, Sp, XXXII (1957), 805–25, at 808 and 817. 19. The three Jewish boys are mentioned in Loores, 92b and 212c. Oyola also draws attention to the similarity between Milagro XVI and the story in the Book of Daniel, 3 (Los pecados capitales, 85, n. 21). 20. Dr David Hook has pointed out that, if Berceo were indeed recalling the episode of the furnace being heated seven times more fiercely than usual, the references to the heat of the fire in 362d and 367b acquire an increased suggestivity. He has also drawn my attention to the apocryphal story of the children hidden in the furnace who are turned into goats (or sometimes pigs) by the young Jesus; see The Apocryphal New Testament, trans. M. R. James (Oxford 1924), 67–68. 21. ‘Notes sur Berceo’, LNL, 172 (mars-avril 1965), 1–13, especially 11–13. Ricard supports his argument with the references in Alfonso el Sabio’s fourth cantiga to the three boys in the fire and Daniel in the lion’s den, but limits his discussion to the field of biblical echo rather than offering a full typological interpretation of Berceo’s Milagro XVI. 22. The Massacre of the Innocents is mentioned in the Duelo, 199, and in the Loores, 36–40, where Rachel is referred to in 38cd. 23. ‘The effect of typology’, 820–23. 24. Compare the use of ecclesiastical terminology in Cristo y los judíos de Toledo (Milagros 429cd), and of course the ‘¡Eya velar!’ sequence in the Duelo, 176–90. Ricard offers a different interpretation of the noun ‘comunicanda’ (Milagros, 373c), believing it to mean ‘impurity’ or ‘contamination’ and thus to refer to the profanation of the Host by the boy who is not a Christian (‘Notes sur Berceo’, 10–11). 25. The fact that in Berceo’s period a parallel was frequently drawn between the monastery and the Garden of Eden increases the likelihood that he would have seen a correspondence between the expulsion of the Abbess and that of Adam and Eve. James Burke, ‘The ideal of perfection: the image of the garden-monastery in Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora’, in Medieval, Renaissance and Folklore Studies in Honor of John Esten Keller, ed. Joseph R. Jones (Newark, Del. 1980), 29–38, comments: ‘It became common in the later Middle Ages to view the monastery as a kind of earthly paradise. For example St. Peter Damian represented the great monastery of Cluny as an eden watered by the four rivers which had poured out of the primeval garden: “Vere claustrum est paradisus”’ (35). 26. Gariano cites 505b as an example of Berceo’s use of conceptual antithesis (Análisis estilístico, 129). Oyola discusses'the line but appears uncertain as to how to interpret it (Los pecados capitales, 86–87). It should be mentioned that Berceo refers to fortune a number of times in the course of this miracle; it is, however, difficult to assess whether such references are purely formulaic or whether they form an intrinsic part of Berceo’s interpretation of the story: ‘Pero la abbadesa cadió una vegada,/…/pisó por su ventura yerva fuert enconada’ (507a and c) ; ‘prisi un buen consejo la bienaventurada’ (516c) ; ‘paróse desarrada luego de la primera,/mas Dios e su ventura abriéronli carrera’ (517cd); ‘Sennor—díssoli ella— ¿por qé me maltraedes?/Non so por aventura tal como vos tenedes’ (550ab). 27. Compare the following references to the biting of the apple: ‘Por el so sancto fructo qe ella concibió,/qe por salud del mundo passión e muert sufrió,/issiemos de la foya qe Adán nos abrió,/quando sobre deviedo del mal muesso mordió’ (Milagros, 622); ‘Aún fiço más cosas la gente descreída:/en el diestro costado dio.l una grant ferida,/manó end sangr’e agua, salud de nuestra vida,/por end Sancta Eglesia del muesso fue guarida’ (Loores, 77). 28. Medieval English Nunneries, c. 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge 1922), 450–56. It is difficult to assess whether the Bishop’s threat to expel the Abbess would in fact have been enforceable. The Primera partida suggests that, in this respect, the fate of Spanish nuns was similar to that of their English counterparts; in the account of the penalties to be applied to men who seduced nuns (título XVIII, ley VI) it is stated: ‘E si la muger se fuesse del Monesterio, non la sacando otri, devenla fazer buscar, luego que lo supiere el Obispo, o el otro Perlado, que oviesse aquel logar en encomienda.E el Judgador de la tierra la deve ayudar a buscar, e traerla, si menester fuere, a aquel logar donde salio’ (Los códigos españoles concordados y anotados, II [1848], 276). However, expulsions may have been known to occur. Peter Linehan, The Spanish Church and the Papacy in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge 1971), 224–29, provides a vivid account of the near anarchy prevailing in the Priory of Sta. María de Zamora in the 1270s, when a group of rebellious nuns provided open house to the local Dominican friars. Bishop Suero Pérez of Zamora claimed that the rebel group eventually absconded. According to the Dominicans’ (albeit biased) version the Bishop expelled forty nuns. 29. For an account of the development of Annunciation paintings and images up to the thirteenth century see Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, I (London 1971), 33–45. The account of the Annunciation in the Apocryphal Book of James (ch. XI) begins as follows: ‘And she took the pitcher and went forth to fill it with water: and lo a voice saying: Hail, thou who art highly favoured; the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And she looked about her upon the right hand and upon the left, to see whence this voice should be: and being filled with trembling she went to her house and set down the pitcher, and took the purple and sat down upon her seat and drew out the thread./And behold an angel of the Lord stood before her saying: Fear not, Mary …’ (The Apocryphal New Testament, 43). 30. With regard to the Abbess's fear, it is interesting to note that the line ‘savié que otro día serié mal porfazada’ occurs immediately before and after the description of her private oratory (513d and 516a). The latter thus becomes, stylistically as well as physically, an island of safety in the surrounding menace. 31. The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols (New York 1967), defines the doctrine of the Virgin Birth as follows: ‘The doctrine that Mary remained a Virgin in giving birth to Jesus involves the preservation of her bodily virginal integrity intact and her exemption from the ordinary pangs of childbirth. Both features are strongly attested in tradition and are presented as miraculous. The element of the preservation was predominant among the Western Fathers. The element of joy and freedom from the pangs of childbirth was more accentuated in the East … Mary ... as the new Eve, blessed among women (Luke 1, 28) in contrast with the malediction of the first Eve, is seen by the Fathers as free from the punishments of Genesis 3, 16, which include the pangs of childbirth. They strongly assert that the birth of Christ, like his conception, was miraculous’ (XIV, 693 and 695). 32. See the Book of James, chs. XIX–XX in The Apocryphal New Testament, 46–47. No mention is made of this story in either the Duelo or the Loores. Oyola also points to a possible typological relationship between the Abbess and the Virgin, but does not develop the idea very far: ‘Acaso quiera Berceo hacer de la abadesa un tipo de la Virgen María. Esta también había sufrido escarnios debido a su preñez milagrosa antes de juntarse con su legítimo esposo José. La única diferencia es que en el caso de la Virgen María no hubo pecado alguno …’ (Los pecados capitales, 89). 33. Diccionario de autoridades, facsimile edition RAE, 3 vols (Madrid 1963); Sebastián de Covarrubias y Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. Martín de Riquer (Barcelona 1943). 34. Los Milagros de Nuestra Señora, 6th edn (Madrid 1964), 130. His explanation is repeated by Daniel Devoto in his modernized edition of the Milagros (Madrid 1976), 169. Dutton gives a similar definition in the glossary to his edition of the Milagros, 251. 35. Quotations from the work of Montesino are taken from the edition of the Cancionero de diversas obras de nuevo trobadas published in the Romancero y cancionero sagrados, ed. Justo de Sancha [BAE, XXXV] (Madrid 1855), 401–66. Accentuation and capitalization have been regularized. 36. Dutton (170) defines consistorio as ‘reunión, asamblea’. Devoto (p. 162) gives the following definition, in which he quotes the Diccionario de la lengua castellana, RAE (Madrid 1947): ‘ “Junta o consejo. Se dice del que tenían los emperadores romanos o del que celebra el papa con los cardenales, pero el nombre se aplica también en algunas partes de España al ayuntamiento o cabildo secular.” Vale aquí por “la reunión”.’ 37. ‘La oración de Doña Jimena (Poema de Mio Cid, vv. 325–67)’, in Temas de ‘La Celestina’ y otros estudios: del ‘Cid’ al ‘Quijote’ (Barcelona 1978), 113–58. See also Joaquín Gimeno Casalduero, ‘Sobre la “oración narrativa” medieval: estructura, origen, supervivencia’, Anales de la Universidad de Murcia, XVI, 1–2 (1957–58), 113–30; repr. in his Estructura y diseño en la literatura castellana medieval (Madrid 1975), 11–29. Although both critics include some of Berceo’s prayers in their discussions, neither refers to the prayer of the Abadesa. 38. In his discussion of the prayers in the Milagros, Gariano comments briefly on the appropriateness of the allusion to Mary of Egypt (Análisis estilístico, 167). 39. On the motifs of the hero of mysterious origins and the bastard hero, see A. D. Deyermond and Margaret Chaplin, ‘Folk-motifs in the medieval Spanish epic’, PQ, LI (1972), 43–44. 40. I am grateful to Professor A. D. Deyermond for his kindness in reading and commenting on a first draft of this paper. This was also read to the Mediaeval Spanish Research Seminar, Westfield College and I should like to thank those present for their helpful suggestions.