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Embodied Authority: The Virgin, Audience, And The Body Of The Devotee In Marian Miracles

2017; Volume: 45; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cor.2017.0002

1947-4261

Elizabeth Spragins,

Medieval and Early Modern Iberia

This article examines a narrative of the battle of al-Qaṣr al-Kabīr (August 4, 1578) given by Miguel Leitão de Andrade, a combatant, in his Miscellânea do Sitio de Nossa Senhora da Luz do Pedrogão Grande (1629). Throughout his narrative, the corporeality of miracles of the Virgin provides Leitão with a model for establishing narrative authority through corporeal indices left on his body by the Marian intervention. I argue that Leitão is deeply invested in questions of testimonial authority and founds his authority in his own body and the wounds it sustained in the battle. I contend that even as his body becomes a text to be read by his audiences, so it also anticipates text: by turning the corporeal account into narrative text, Leitão allows it to fulfill its predetermined function of circulating and attracting new witnesses.