Suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages: Literary Representation of Self- Aggression and Transgression

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Literary Representation of Self-Aggression and Transgression

A dissertation presented

Luis F. López González

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the subject of

Spanish

Harvard University

Cambridge, Massachusetts

May, 2017

Dissertation Advisor: Luis M. Girón Negrón Luis F. López González

Suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages:

Literary Representation of Self-Aggression and Transgression

Abstract

Suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages: Literary Representation of Self-Aggression and Transgression studies the artistic representation of suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this dissertation analyzes the way in which medieval Spanish people perceived and reacted to suicide and suicidal drives (namely, despair). Influenced by Plato’s philosophy, Saint Augustine helped shape the belief system and doctrines of the Church regarding self-murder, which condemned suicide on the grounds of the fifth commandment (non occides). Like the Church, the State also adopted a condemnatory legislation against those who had chosen death. Life was, above all, God’s gift, and only God can end people’s lives. Despite the Church and the State’s condemnation, suicide was not a monolithic phenomenon, inherently criminal or sinful. When suicide interacted with other social or cultural constructs that people bestowed a higher value than life, they perceived self-murder in a different light. When a person killed him or herself to protect their chastity, their faith, or their “country,” he or she was seen as a hero or as a martyr. Social and political positions also conditioned the way people judged suicide. If a noble person killed him or herself, he or she was unlikely to be punished for the act. Instead, noble suicides were further ennobled for their “courageous” self-affirmation. As I argue, literary representations attest to these attitudes and responses surrounding self-destruction. Writers and poets represent suicide as a complex phenomenon, intertwining established norms and contemporaneous cultural constructs to heighten the dramatic tension of their poetic representations.

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Luis F. López González

Dissertation Committee Luis M. Girón Negrón Mary M. Gaylord Virginie Greene

Table of Contents Introduction ...... 1 Plato and Aristotle’s Doctrines of Suicide: A Crime Against God and the Polis ...... 10 Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas ...... 20 Stoicism and Suicide ...... 33 A Brief Overview of Ideas and Attitudes Regarding Suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages .. 42 Divine Judgment and the Dialectics of Suicide: The Miracle of the Pilgrim to Santiago . 55 The Pilgrim’s Suicide and its Double-Bind Etiology ...... 59 Stoic Suicide in Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de Amor ...... 93 Suicide as Freedom: Leriano’s Stoic Discourse ...... 100 Inedia: Leriano’s Stoic Suicide ...... 123 Society and Suicide in Fernando de Rojas’s La Celestina ...... 144 The Structure of Society and the Limits of Personal Desire ...... 150 Social Structure as Catalyst for Melibea’s Suicide ...... 169 The Christianization of Suicide in Joan Roís de Corella’s Història de Leànder i Hero ... 184 Hero’s Suicide and Christian Morality ...... 188 Concluding Remarks ...... 215 Works Cited ...... 222

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Introduction

Suicide has been a subject of reflection, debate and contention from antiquity to modern times. The act of self-murder possesses the unique quality of containing within itself both the felon and the victim. The Early English common law used the legal term “Felo de se” to classify suicides. “Felo de se” encompasses the paradoxical duality in the act of self- murder: He who willfully ends his life commits a crime against himself. The idea of a person being simultaneously a victim and a perpetrator was as puzzling for ancient philosophers as it has been for medieval and Renaissance thinkers. In Antiquity, David

Daube points out, the emphasis of suicide was placed on the act of dying rather than on the act of killing (393). During the Classical period, the emphasis began to shift to the act of killing so that a suicide was above all a felon and not a victim. When a man killed himself, the religious and political institutions judged and condemned the culpability of the person’s act, most often overlooking the victimhood of the suicide. By castigating the culprit of the “crime,” they punished both the felon and the victim. This riddling aspect inherent in self-murder renders the phenomenon of suicide both paradoxical and perplexing. Unlike murder, where there is a well-defined felon and a victim, suicide blurs

(or erases) the line that divides guilt and victimhood.

Suicide, as John E. Keller and Grant Cash note, is both a sin and a crime. Since the notion of committing a crime against the self was dubious and unpersuasive, both

Plato and Aristotle had to grapple with the questions: Against whom is the suicide committing the crime? Given that self-murder was neither condemned by civil nor by religious laws in antiquity, what laws were suicides transgressing that deserved the

! 1! ! ! rejection and condemnation of the social body and religious institutions? Can a man be unjust to himself? These were some of the most pressing questions that Plato and

Aristotle had to elucidate in order to support their cases against suicide.

As Georges Minois points out, medieval people did not perceive suicide as a monolithic phenomenon, inherently sinful or criminal.1 Rather, it had many shades and nuances that determined the criminality or sinfulness (or lack thereof). This is particularly highlighted in the Spanish Middle Ages due to a unique set of social and cultural values that conditioned the way in which people perceived and judged suicide. In a social structure and a patriarchal system that valued personal honor, chastity and religious devotion more than life itself, self-destructive behaviors were judged and condemned in light of other motives. When suicide interacted with any of these sociocultural values, both judgment and punishment were lenient or nonexistent. In theory, both the Church and the State condemned unwarranted suicides. There is, however, a wide gap between theory and application. Civil as well as ecclesiastic legislations were relatively strict regarding suicide. Church and State, as we will see in this brief introduction, had a well- defined set of codes and yardsticks to judge and punish suicides regardless of social class or political affiliation. Medieval officials, largely appointed by and from the nobility, did not blindly apply the laws. Fernando de Rojas, a trained jurist in his own right, perceptively makes Celestina chide Melibea for her “hasty” judgment on her: “No seas la telaraña, que no muestra su fuerça sino contra los flacos animales” (169). Celestina’s cunning words precisely capture the corruption of the judicial system in which Fernando

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Minois asserts: “Thus the medieval vision of suicide, far from being a monolithic condemnation of suicide, offers various nuances. The personality and social origin of the suicide and his or her motives mattered more than the act itself” (19).

! 2! ! ! de Rojas lived, but it also offers an analogy for the application of the law in cases of self- inflicted deaths, which only punish the meek and defenseless.

Lillian von der Walde Moheno points out that in the Spanish Middle Ages, many writers praised those who killed themselves for love’s sake as well as the “virtuoso suicida” (Amor 201). The “virtuoso suicida” is a broad category that encompasses all those who are perceived to have died for noble causes, and dying for love was perceived to be appropriate when undertaken by the upper classes. María Eugenia Lacarra points out that Dido, who kills herself after Aeneas abandons her, was highly regarded in the

Middle Ages, so if Melibea’s death had been associated with Dido’s suicide, it would have saved her from ignominy since “la autoinmolación por amor puede provocar admiración” (“El erotismo” 144). Like other motives, suicide for love was contingent upon the socioeconomic standing of the perpetrator. Love suicides from noble families are represented and perceived as virtuous and honorable, but love suicides from the low social strata are judged as possessed by demonic powers and primal instincts. Whereas higher ideals lead aristocratic love suicides to end their lives, moral corruption and wickedness lead humble suicides to kill themselves. This is mainly a symptom of the underlying idea that (courtly) love was an aristocratic ideal. In literature, noble suicides are further ennobled by their courageous decision to favor death over an abject existence, but poor self-murderers are perceived and treated as cowardly and possessed by demonic forces. Hence the authorities condemned poor suicides to be buried outside of consecrated grounds and promised eternal damnation.

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Ariel Guiance notes the direct correlation between social perception and law application, on the one hand, and sociopolitical hierarchy of the perpetrator, on the other.2

Self-murderers could be seen as virtuous so long as the motives fell within the confines of that which society bestowed a higher value than life. Honor was a commonly cited example of a cultural construct that people deemed to hold a value higher than life. And fifteenth-century literature offers innumerable cases of both men and women who prefer to die to losing their honor. Rojas, San Pedro and Roís de Corella make their protagonists repeat this idea ad nauseam. Suicide could be interpreted as a sociocultural and religious construct that was policed and arbitrated by those in power. The aristocrat María Coronel, for example, who killed herself in order not to allow her sexual desire stain her marital integrity, as Juan de Mena and San Pedro underscore,3 was seen as national icon. She is poeticized and revered as an exemplary woman for safeguarding her husband’s and her

“casta” dignitas. The same judgment applies to those who choose death to defend their country or their Catholic faith.

In his pedagogical book, Libro infinido, which was composed to indoctrinate his eldest son and heir Don Fernando, after defending the immortality of the soul, Don Juan

Manuel assures (and encourages) his son that they have to willingly sacrifice their lives to defend their faith: “Et ruego yo a Dios que en esta crencia et en este consejo que vos yo dó que tomemos muerte yo et vós et quantos binieren del nuestro linage fasta la fin del mundo” (122). When Don Juan Manuel says “que tomemos muerte,” he does not literally !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 See Guiance (Los discursos 378): “Esto último nos llevaría a señalar, por tanto, que todo suicidio… depende directamente, entre otras cosas, de la jerarquía de quien lo comete.” 3 See Mena’s Laberinto de Fortuna, copla LXXIX: “Poco más baxo vi otras enteras,/ la muy casta dueña de manos crueles,/ digna corona de los Coroneles,/ que quiso con huego vencer sus hogueras” (Núñez de Toledo 402). Like Mena and after praising a host of classical suicides, including Lucretia and Portia, Diego de San Pedro extols María Coronel’s suicide: Doña María Cornel [sic], en quien se començó el linaje de los Corneles, porque su castidad fuese loada y su bondad no escurecida, quiso matarse con fuego, haviendo menos miedo a la muerte que a la culpa” (170).

! 4! ! ! mean that they should kill themselves on the altar of their Catholic faith. But he does encourage his son to be willing to die defending the integrity of their religion. His exhortation, however, does not exclude self-murder. “Que tomemos muerte” can be interpreted as both a call to defend their faith through war and to take their own lives if need be. What is important to Juan Manuel is not life but the survival of the Christian institution and their faith.

Just as it does in contemporary times, dying for the country represented the ultimate sacrifice a human being could make. This ideal, which Émile Durkheim called altruistic suicide, became so ingrained in the medieval consciousness that those who killed themselves to safeguard the kingdom were seen as national heroes, and the Roman

Stoic Cato of Utica embodied the sacrifice of the citizen willing to offer his life for the sake of freedom. Poets and moralists from Antiquity and the Middle Ages represent Cato as the symbol of self-sacrifice and libertas. Instead of placing him in the Seventh Circle of Inferno with the rest of suicides, Dante bestows upon Cato the honorary post of gatekeeper of Purgatory, and despite Saint Augustine’s qualms about Cato’s motives for ending his life, the Roman Stoic epitomizes the positive values of placing the Res Publica before the self. Despite Petrarch’s harsh criticism of Cicero and Seneca for extoling

Cato’s suicide in his De remediis, Dante’s eschatological decision is not an anomaly but a rational choice: “It is evident that in Dante’s mind the suicide of Cato, to escape tyranny, was, anagogically interpreted, an example of spiritual freedom” (Grandgent 84). Charles

H. Grandgent proposes that Dante could have originally thought about making the prophet Elijah occupy this symbolic post, but instead have opted to replace him with Cato out of respect and admiration for the Stoic suicide (84). Dante’s choice also highlights the

! 5! ! ! importance medieval people conferred upon the integrity of the established institutions.

Save for a few unfaltering moralists, medieval Spanish thinkers praised Cato’s suicide as the embodiment of courage and virtue. The fifteenth-century moralist Alfonso Martínez de Toledo places Cato’s self-immolation at the same level as saints and virgins,4 an extraordinary praise, given Martínez de Toledo’s stern morality. In Spanish medieval literature, Cato is exalted as the warrior who prefers libertas to his own life, an idea that

Seneca and Cicero advanced wholeheartedly. Leriano’s suicide aspires to imitate Cato’s death, just as Cámar, the Muslim convert, does in the fifteenth-century anonymous chivalric novel Curial e Güelfa. Unlike Leriano’s ulterior motives and intent, Cámar explicitly aligns her death with Cato’s Stoic suicide. The anonymous author of the thirteenth-century Libro de Alexandre underscores those values of self-immolation to circumvent being captured by the enemy,5 and the author of the epic narrative Poema de

Fernán González reiterates that the eponymous hero would kill himself before allowing the enemy to capture him.6 Minois notes that in one occasion Joan of Arc threw herself down from the tower because “she would have preferred to die rather than fall into the hands of the English, her enemies” (12).7 These are the very values that Cato embodied and transmitted to posterity. When defending the State, or protecting personal and/or

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 “E tanto son contemplativos e en el amor de Dios encendidos por iluminación del espíritu Santo que…, con amor de Dios mucha paciencia todos males sufrirían…como fueron los Apóstoles, los discipulos, los mártires, confesores, vírgenes e continents, como fueron Job e Tobías e Catón e otros enfinidos pasados e aun oy vivientes” (269). 5 When Dario finds out that he had been betrayed, he confesses to God, and he promises that before he is captured, he will kill himself: “Quando que de la muerte non puedo escapar/ quiérome yo mismo con mi mano matar/ de mano de vil omne non devo yo finar/ ‘rey mató a Dario’, dirán en el cantar” (1709). 6 When Fernán González rallies his soldier before the battle at Hacinas, Fernán exhorts them to fight until death, rather than risking or being captured. For his part, he says, “nin preso nin cativo non me dexare ser,/ maguer ellos a vida me quisieren prender,/ matar me he yo ante que sea en su poder./ Todo aquel que de vos del canpo se saliere/ o con miedo de muerte a presion se les diere,/ quede por alevoso sit al fecho fiziere,/ con judas en infierno yaga quando moriere,” (pg. 127). 7 Minois also quotes Guibert de Nogent’s story about the Christians who drowned themselves rather than be taken captives by the Turks (11).

! 6! ! ! collective libertas, suicide is never associated with demonic influence or theological despair. Instead, society turns suicides into iconic heroes. Daube calls attention to Razis’s suicide in Maccabees 14:41, noting that Razis was praised because he preferred “to die nobly… rather than fall into the hands of his enemies” (396).8

As critics of suicidology point out, before and during the Middle Ages, the word

“suicide” did not exist. Gautier de Saint-Victor coins the Latin term “suicidium” in his

Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae (ca. 1180), but the neologism never gains linguistic currency. Jean-Claude Schmitt notes: “Le Moyen Age n'employait pas un mot, mais des périphrases diverses.” Instead, “le maître-mot du suicide médiéval était ‘désespoir’” (4).

“Despair,” which Saint Thomas Aquinas refers to as “the sin against the Holy Spirit,”9 becomes the de facto signifier to denote both suicide and suicidal moods.10 During the

Middle Ages, suicide was above all an ailment of the soul. When a common man took his life, the assumption was that it was demonically induced. Since the devil could only sway a person’s freewill provided that he was already a sinner, self-murder served as the confirmation of the sinfulness of the suicide. In essence, suicide merely exteriorized and exposed the person’s guilt, showcasing the inner life like an inside-out glove. Hence suicides were perceived as desperatos, which pointed to their loss of hope in God’s

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 As Yael Shemesh notes, unlike Christian and Muslim negative views on suicide, Jewish culture viewed sympathetically when undertaken in extreme cases, including personal liberty—as Razis’s case—, forced conversions and other instances (157). Besides Judas and Razis, Shemesh lists six other suicides in the Bible: Abimelech son of Gideon, Samson, Saul, Saul’s squire, Ahithophel and Zimri. 9 In his disquisition on the sin against the Holy Spirit, Saint Thomas Aquinas notes: “And similarly, if malice pleases someone because of contempt regarding hope in, or fear of, God, this belongs to the nature of special sins, namely, despair and presumption, which are species of sins against the Holy Spirit” (De malo 320). In the sixteenth century, Sebastián Covarrubias defines the term “desesperarse” as a sin against the Holy Spirit. Covarrubias defines “desesperarse” as “matarse de qualquiera manera por despecho, pecado contra el Espíritu Santo” (López Ríos 312). 10 By “suicidal moods,” I refer to the psychological state of mind that leads to suicide. In medieval Spanish, “estar desesperado,” as Sempronio describes Calisto (231-33), means to be in a suicidal state of mind due to the loss of hope of attaining a given objective. For a thorough analysis of “despair” see Schmitt’s “Suicide” and Murray Suicide Vol. II, 369-396.

! 7! ! ! mercy. Both Judas and Cain became the paradigmatic embodiments of despair. The ninth-century Asturian theologian monk, Beatus of Liébana compares the “desperato” to the terminally ill since his “sin” of despair renders him malus et perditus.11 Saint Isidore of Seville posits the etymology of the word as “deest... pes” because he who despairs does not have the ability to walk forward.12 Alfonso el Sabio’s cantiga 26—in which

Satan cons a pilgrim into castrating and decapitating himself—offers an insightful example of how Satan uses his cunning discourse to lead people to despair and, subsequently, to suicide.

The purpose of this study is to expound the causes and the attitudes of medieval

Spanish people regarding suicide through poetic texts as well as other literary and artistic representations. Unlike historic events, which often lack psychological processes and empirical specificity, literary works nearly always allow readers to understand the internal processes that lead people to end their lives. At the same time, authorial tone and character responses to acts of self-murder offer a unique opportunity to interpret attitudes and opinions informed by the authors’ belief system and worldview. Since this study goes beyond historical events, it is about suicide as much as it is about attitudes and responses to self-murder. From the interpretative viewpoint, characters’ responses to suicide are as relevant as the act itself. But in order to understand people’s attitudes and responses, we must comprehend what the medieval man believed and how these axiological registers came to be an integral part of their consciousness. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Beatus of Liébana, In Apocalypsin B. Joannis Apostoli Commentaria, "Prologus Libri Secundi", "De desperato": "Desperatus vulgo vocatur malus ac perditus, nec iam ullius prosperae spei. Dicitur autem per similitudinem aegrorum, quia effeti et sinne spe deponontur. Consuetudo autem erat apud veteres, ut desperati ante ianuas suas collocarentur, et vel extremum spiritum redderent terrae, vel ut possent a transeuntibus forte curari, qui aliquando simili laboraverunt morbo." 12 Etymologiae, Book VIII, Part 2, "De religione et fide," paragraph 5: "Spes vocata quod sit pes progrediendi, quasi 'est pes'. Vnde et e contrario desperatio. Deest enim ibi pes, nullaque progrediendi facultas est; quia dum quisque peccatum amat, futuram gloriam non sperat."

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In the remainder of this introduction, I will try to flesh out the philosophical doctrines that helped shape the ideas and attitudes of medieval thinkers and laymen regarding suicide. In order to do that, I will offer a brief synopsis of the Platonic and

Aristotelian tenets that influenced the institutionalization and theologization of suicide in the Middle Ages. Some of these ideas and attitudes remain extant in our own time. We, then, will analyze the way in which Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas adopted and recast Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethical doctrines, and how their suicide principles became an inherent part of the Christian orthodoxy. The Platonic anti-suicide precept offered Saint Augustine an pertinent guideline to devise a tropological exegesis of the

Fifth Commandment (non occides)—see below—, but it also offered a loophole through which Saint Augustine was able to justify Samson’s and the virgin martyrs’ willful deaths when facing the violence and rapacity of the Visigothic soldiers after the Sack of Rome in 410. Socrates’ equanimous self-execution by voluntarily drinking the hemlock, as articulated in Plato’s Phaedo, offered Stoic thinkers, such as Cato, Seneca or Epictetus, the perfect canvas to conceptualize their own doctrines on self-murder. Hence we will briefly discuss some of the Stoic ideas that exerted most influence on Spanish medieval thinkers and poets, paying particular attention to Seneca’s fixation on suicidal exhortations. Lastly, we will offer a brief account of the way in which Spanish medieval thinkers, theologians and writers articulated and redeployed these ideas in their own poetic works.

! 9! ! Plato and Aristotle’s Doctrines of Suicide: A Crime Against God and the Polis

From his earlier writings (Phaedo) to his latest ones (The Laws), Plato shows a keen interest in suicide and suicidological discourses. Phaedo—translated into Spanish in the mid-fifteenth century by the converso Pero Díaz de Toledo, based on Leonardo Bruni’s rendition into Latin (Round Libro llamado 7)—is the work in which Plato discussed suicide at greater length. Rather than formulating a systematic censure against self- murder, Phaedo’s main objective is to offer a critical inquiry regarding the immortality of the soul in light of Socrates’ impending execution. Suicide, however, becomes a preponderant subject after Cebes of Thebes—a friend of Socrates who accompanies him until his self-execution—presses Socrates to reconcile his seemingly contradictory statements regarding men’s alleged desire and even eagerness to die, and the prohibition to end one’s own life. Cebes perceives that Socrates is sending mixed or even contradictory injunctions regarding willful death. On the one hand, Socrates asks Cebes to exhort Avenus to follow the philosopher into death, which is a clear exhortation for

Avenus to commit suicide: “Por aventura Evandro non es philósopho?” (Libro 235). With this rhetorical question Socrates seems to imply that “at least some men, namely the wise or wisest… are willing to, perhaps even eager, to die” (Miles 244). But on the other hand,

Socrates follows the Orphic-Pythagorean argument that men are not allowed to take their own lives because men’s lives are the gods’ property: “Mas bien me paresce, o Çebes, que se puede dezir verdaderamente que los dioses tienen cuidado de nos, e nos devemos ser contados en cuenta de sus cosas” (Libro 236). Since human lives belong to the gods, men cannot dispose of them freely. How, Cebes asks Socrates, can it be possible that you defend the sanctity of life, on the one hand, and suggest the Avenus should willfully ! follow you into death, on the other? Cebes presses his mentor to reconcile these seemingly antithetical notions: “O Sócrates, ¿cómo tú dizes que a ninguno está lícito de se violar [kill himself], e que quiera seguir e irse en pos del philósopho que muere?”

(Libro 235). Socrates will spend the remaining of the dialogue answering this question, advancing the thesis that his two statements are not contradictory but only tangentially related. Only after Cebes places Socrates in this predicament, does suicide become an axial subject in Socrates’ dissertation regarding the immortality of the soul.

Socrates adduces the Pythagorean metaphor of men as soldiers and property of the gods: “Los honbres en tanto que biven son puestos en guarda, e que a ninguno conviene desatar su cuerpo” (Libro 236). Díaz de Toledo does not quite convey the original meaning, which expresses that men are like soldiers who are not allowed to desert their post until the gods order their retreat. Francisco de Vitoria, who evokes most of the known theories rejecting suicide, invokes Socrates’ idea that men belong to God more than to themselves: “Man is not in this way the master of his own body or of his own life

(non est… dominus aut corporis aut vitae propriae). For God alone is the master of life and death (solus Deus dominus vitae et mortis)” (93). Socrates, as David Novak points out, treats the body as the effect of divine causality (28). Hence only the gods could decide when the soul has to be severed from the body. Men are not their own masters to decide on matters regarding life or death. Rather, the gods are the masters of mankind in an analogous way that lords own their slaves. In his anti-suicide philosophical treatises,

Kant uses Socrates’ metaphor of God as proprietor of man to shore up his thesis: “Human beings are sentinels on earth…. God is our owner, we are His property” (Donnelly 13).

This analogy undercuts (or at least underplays) the idea of free will. Aquinas

! 11! ! ! acknowledges this breach in human agency and free will, but he contends that “liberum arbitrium” should not be used to justify suicide. At least in self-murder, liberum arbitrium is overridden by divine authority (“potestati divinae” 34). Nevertheless, neither

Plato nor Socrates is as concerned about defending the idea of free will as they are about advancing the sanctity of life and the unlawfulness of unwarranted suicide.

If a slave—Socrates here conceives humans as mere pragmatic objects—kills himself, it would cause an economic loss to his owner. The slave owner, Socrates asserts, would be angry with his slave for having killed himself, and if the owner could punish the slave for his untimely death, he would. Medieval civil and ecclesiastic canons of law did, indeed, prescribe a severe punishment for those who attempted suicide and survived.13 Minois notes that the Council of Arles (452) condemns the self-murder of all famuli (slaves and domestic servants) because “the servant who kills himself robs his master and owner; his suicide is an act of revolt, and he himself is ‘filled with diabolical fury’” (29-30). Just like slaveholders, the gods lose their “capital” if men kill themselves, and they punish them if they commit suicide. José Eustasio Rivera’s twentieth-century masterpiece, La vorágine, offers the perfect example of this odd dynamic between a slave who threatens to end his life and the uncanny response of the slave’s owner. The slave,

Arturo Cova, cannot dispose of his own life because the owner, Doña Zoraida, has given monetary goods in exchange for her slave’s services.14 For the gods, as for Doña Zoraida,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 13 In fols. 309-324 of the eleventh-century Latin Penitential manuscript that also contains the Glosas Silenses, immediately following the explanation of evident (uisibiliter) demonic-induced suicide, where victims ought to be allowed to be buried in Christian cemeteries: "Uexatus [focato fueret, gloss] a demonio uisibiliter est et in hunc interitum incurrerit licet ut ceteris [conos altros, gloss] fidelibus perficere [ke li fican, gloss] sepultura eius," the author explains that those who castrate themselves should do penitence for three years: "qui de membro suo truncaberit, III annis peniteat” (232). 14 When Arturo Cova, the intradiegetic author and main narrator of Rivera’s Vorágine, is captivated and sold to the greedy Doña Zoraida, a slave owner who exploits people for the extraction of rubber (goma) from the trees in the Amazons, which is the backdrop of the scene, both Cova and Zoraida are sailing on a

! 12! ! ! killing oneself amounts to fleeing from the master. In attempting to undermine Plato’s argument, John Donne ingeniously flips the argument around, asserting that “the servant runs not from his master, but to him” (111), but this slaves-fleeing-from-masters metaphor only applies to those who commit suicide unwarrantedly. When the gods send the “signal” to the righteous philosophers, they are not fleeing from but going to the gods.

Socrates upholds that humans must hold their post until either they die of natural causes or until the gods send a signal to endorse their departure, which Socrates avows is his case. Up until the “signal” is given, men have the moral duty to preserve their lives, like a good soldier would uphold his post until the general commands retreat.

Socrates, then, goes on to teach about the philosophers’ separation of the soul from the body and the departure of the soul toward the gods. He argues that philosophers prepare their entire lives for death by looking after their souls. To prepare for a timely departure, the soul has to be mindful of the world of higher realities (Ground, Libro 4). In a sentence that became a philosophical trope in the Middle Ages, Socrates tells Cebes:

“¿Qué otra cosa faze el honbre, desde que sale el sol fasta que se pone, sinon passar desta vida a la otra?” (Libro 236). Cicero echoes this idea in his Disputationes Tusculanae:

“The whole life of a philosopher is… a meditation of death,” a statement that Michel de

Montaigne rejected (Wilson 168). Seneca repeatedly conveys this Socratic dictum that men died slowly everyday: “Cotidie morimur” (Blüher 180). A true philosopher, Socrates tells Cebes, is not afraid to end his life because his entire life is dedicated to meditating

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! river in the Amazons. Despairing of recovering his son, Cova threatens Zoraida with jumping into the water: “Madona, no me trate así…porque soy capaz, en cualquier instante, de soltar el timón del bongo y lanzarme al agua!” (280). After his threat, they have an argument regarding the rights of a person over the other’s life. Zoraida, then, responds to the threat: “¡Ay, arrojarte al agua! ¡arrojarte al agua! ¿Será posible? ¿Y mis dos mil soles? ¿Mis dos mil soles? ¿Quién me paga mis dos mil soles?” “¿Ya no tengo derecho ni de morir?” “Eso sería un fraude” (280). Clearly, what is at stake here is not Cova’s life but the owner’s two thousand soles.

! 13! ! ! on and preparing for death. Under this premise, if Avenus claims to be a true philosopher, he could follow Socrates to death unimpeded by moral or religious constraints. The

Platonic Socrates posits philosophers as coexisting in a dual mode of existence. On the one hand, they inhabit this world, but their metaphysical inquiry and keen awareness of the “world beyond the world” allows them to live in a closer proximity to the supraterrestrial. Philosophers forgo worldly and bodily pleasures, embracing rational abstinence and self-control so that they are already as if dead to the world, as the fifteenth-century sapiential dictum cogently expresses it: “Qui preçia su alma despreçia el siglo” (Round Libro 50).

Socrates contends, however, that only the philosopher who has devoted his entire life to subduing his bodily passions and to contemplating divine wisdom has the moral

“right” to end his own life. In Socrates’ discourse, suicide is forbidden because humans have an inherent obligation to remain at their post until: “Por aventura por aquesta causa non paresce cosa fuera de razón que ninguno se deva de matar con sus manos, ante que

Dios le ponga alguna necessidad para ello, segund que vemos que faze a mí en el tiempo presente” (Libro 237). God has to send an unequivocal sign (as in Socrates’s case) or an explicit command (as in Samson’s case), before men may kill themselves.15 Socrates uses this loophole to justify his wilful death, and Saint Augustine exploits it to explicate both

Samson and the Christian martyrs’ voluntary deaths. Suicide hence is always unlawful, except when God unequivocally authorizes it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15 Cf. Cicero's De re publica, "Somnium Scipionis", where he adopts Socrates' dialectical discourse to prohibit suicide. Scipio's father, Paulus, warns him not to attempt suicide to reach that divine place described by Africanus until God releases him from the corporal prison. Macrobius’ Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, particularly his exposition on suicide.

! 14! ! !

Plato returns to discuss suicide in his attempt to legislate for an ideal State in his

Laws. In this later dialogue, Plato defends the unlawfulness of self-murder, although he argues that a person could end his life provided that he suffers from intolerable misfortune or dishonour. Plato is also more receptive to the idea of a lawful suicide if an individual is overwhelmed by passions,16 a position later rejected by Stoicism. After proposing that those who commit acts of fratricide, matricide or infanticide must be killed and cast out of the boundaries of the city, like beasts, Plato proposes that those who kill themselves unwarrantedly have to be buried outside the city without the prescribed rites and without bodily purification:

But for those thus destroyed the tombs shall be, first, in an isolated position with not even one adjacent, and, secondly, they shall be buried in those borders of the twelve districts which are barren and nameless, without note, and with neither headstone nor name to indicate the tombs (267).

The idea of burying suicides “in those borders of the twelve districts” may have given

Christian legislators the inspiration to bury suicides outside of consecrated grounds. In

Alfonso X’s Cantiga XXIV, a petty thief, who is a staunch devout of Mary, dies in an isolated place, while he is going out and about. When he is found, perhaps because they think that he has committed suicide, he is interred outside of consecrated grounds. After

Mary commands the clerics to move his body into sacred grounds, he is exhumed and buried in a Christian cemetery. Plato proposes that suicides be buried outside the city walls, the locus of animality and savagery, because suicide amounts to recanting their humanity. In Christian theology, sepultura canina is a term used to describe those who

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 16 Plato, Laws 265, 267: “Now he that slays the person who is, as men say, nearest and dearest of all,—what penalty should he suffer? I mean the man that slays himself,—violently robbing himself of his Fate-given share of life, when this is not legally ordered by the State, and when he is not compelled to it by the occurrence of some intolerable misfortune, nor by falling into some disgrace that is beyond or endurance,— but merely inflicting upon himself this iniquitous penalty owing to sloth and unmanly cowardice” (265, 267).

! 15! ! ! are buried outside of consecrated ground. Kant believes that those who have died willingly treated themselves like irrational animals. Therefore, they should be treated and buried as such.17

Like Plato, his disciple Aristotle also opposes suicide. Aristotle, however, condemns self-murder on social and political grounds. Aristotle polemicizes about suicide in both his Eudemian and his Nicomachean Ethics. It is in the latter that he developes his anti-suicide theory in greater depth. His Nicomachean Ethics, which has been glossed and commented on by the Spanish theologian Pedro de Osma in the mid- fifteenth century, contains Aristotle’s most forceful rejection of suicide. The Stagirite purports that he who kills himself hurts the Res Publica. Aristotle, then, perceives suicide as a public, rather than a private, matter. Suicide is a public transgression because it pertains to the realm of the Polis. In Book III, Aristotle asserts that extreme pain, poverty or unrequited love are not valid excuses to suicide, since eschewing the travails of life is a sign of cowardice rather than a sign of courage. The idea that suicide is an act of cowardice became widely echoed through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The

Valencian friar, Antoni Canals, underlines Aníbal’s cowardice for killing himself: “E aperexia que més vençien les sues estúcies e angins que la sua vigor, com en la sua fin haja usat de tanta flaquea; car matar si matex, [de] flaquea process de cor, lo qual no ha virtut per sostenir lo mal, per lo qual squivar se mata” (Butiñá 168). Despite Canals’s adulation of Seneca’s ethical doctrines (Blüher 129), he is, as Roís de Corella would become, a fierce critic of suicide, even of suicide that occurred before the establishment

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Kant says that suicides should be treated like animals because they treated themselves as such: “If he commits suicide, he treats his value as that of a beast. He who so behaves, who has no respect for human nature and makes a thing of himself, becomes for everyone an Object of free will. We are free to treat him as a beast, and to use him for our sport as we do a horse or a dog” (31).

! 16! ! ! of Christendom. Canals’s reference, nevertheless, is an explicit allusion to Aristotle’s

Ethics. Alluding to Hercules’s self-immolation, for instance, Hegel avers that not even heroes should be allowed to kill themselves. For Hegel, an individual is merely an individual subordinated to the greater social fabric, so if the state demands his life, “he must yield it up” (23).

As member of the communal polis, Aristotle believes that a person has to look out for the greater good before his private interests, an opinion that the fifteenth-century

Valencian poet, Ausiàs March, would echo in his poem XXX.18 Rojas makes Celestina emphasize human interrelations and their obligations to the greater social body: “Pues como todos seamos humanos, nascidos para morir, y sea cierto que no se puede dezir nascido el que para sí solo nasció” (Rojas 164). As Erna Ruth Berndt notes, in Celestina, as in the case of the medieval social system, men live in interdependence where each individual plays an important role in the social and political configuration of the

Celestinesque microcosm (104). Thus because, as Celestina points out, men are not born in a vacuum, personal woes or despair do not justify the loss it causes to the Polis when a person ends his own life.

In Book V, however, his anti-suicide rhetoric strengthens. Aristotle pronounces a categorical statement: “For instance, the law does not command any man to kill himself, and what the law does not command it forbids” (Murray Suicide 126).19 Since the Law neither prohibits it nor condones it, Aristotle argues that suicide is illegal because the

Law does not explicitly authorize it. But Aristotle’s premise becomes the subject of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 March says: “Guanya virtut qui son cors a mort dóna/ per un gran bé o de molts benifet” (232). 19 For this quote, I use Murray’s cite for two reasons. First, as Murray notes, the edition he uses was the most widely used in the Middle Ages, and second, it conveys the message in a clearer manner than the Oxford Edition I am currently using.

! 17! ! ! scrutiny by the Stagirite’s commentators and detractors. Saint Thomas Aquinas, for example, notes Aristotle’s discursive fallacy (“there are many acts that are neither commanded nor forbidden by the law but are left to man’s will, for example, buying or not buying a particular thing” Novak 64). Suicidal discourses are fraught with inherent contradictions that Aristotle downplays in his oversimplifying statement. After all, the individual performs the crime upon his own body, and a person can be a burden as much as he can be an asset to the Res Publica. In a reference to—and rejecting—Aristotle’s anti-suicide thesis, the eighteenth-century Italian jurist Cesar Beccaria, for example, argues that an individual who is exiled damages the State more, given that the exiled person could take part of his wealth with him and the suicide could not.20

Since a person cannot be unjust to himself, Aristotle has to determine to whom the suicide is unjust. The philosopher, then, rhetorically asks: “But unjustly to whom? Or is it to the city—not himself?” (175). With this rhetorical question, Aristotle decenters men as the direct victims of self-harmful acts, positing the State as the real victim of human loss. As Osma points out in his commentary to this passage: “Est dubium cui faciat injuriam” (448), but he agrees with Aristotle’s assessment: “ostendit [Aristotle] quod sibi non faciat injuriam; secondo, quod faciat civitati, ibi: Itaque…, ubi id per signum confirmare videtur” (448). Osma, however, is not interested in contesting

Aristotle’s ambiguous and undeveloped argument, which claims that an individual’s suicide hurts the social body as a whole, a condition that Aquinas would attempt to flesh out in his own interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine (Novak 63-4). Like Aquinas, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 “He who kills himself does a less injury to society than he who quits his country for ever; for the other leaves his property behind him, but this carries with him at least a part of his substance. Besides, as the strength of society consists in the number of citizens, he who quits one nation to reside in another, becomes a double loss. This then is the question: whether it be advantageous to society that its members should enjoy the unlimited privilege of migration? ” (133)

! 18! ! !

Averroes overlooks Aristotle’s vague reasoning that what the law does not permit is unlawful, and he explains that suicide is actually unjust because the law explicitly prohibits it (Butterworth 122). Averroes affirms that the law prohibits suicide, but his assertion represents a reflection of the sociopolitical reality he lives in and not the one he is commenting upon. Since the individual cannot be unjust against himself—much like a man cannot commit adultery with his own wife or steal from his own property—, the self-murderer is unjust against the Polis. Aristotle posits that the State has the right to decide upon the individual’s life, thus positioning human life within the matrix of a communal system. Whereas Plato, influenced by Orphic-Pythagorean doctrine, places more emphasis on the agency of the gods and religion, Aristotle posits the Polis as the authorized institution to pass judgment over individuals’ lives.

! 19! ! Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas

As Murray points out, Saint Augustine discusses suicide in many of his theological works because self-inflicted deaths have been rampant during his milieu. In Augustine’s time, there was a craze among Donatists who believed that an expedient self-inflicted death in

God’s name turned them into martyrs, propelling them to the bliss of Heaven, an analogous ideology that leads Santa Teresa de Ávila to think about traveling to Muslim territory in order to be martyred.21 Augustine, however, develops his anti-suicide theories in his exposition Against Gaudentius and, most important, in his De civitate Dei. The De civitate Dei become a tropological treatise in which the Saint of Hippo fleshes out the discursive edifice for a systematic refutation of suicide. Before Saint Augustine, the saints Jerome and Ambrose had argued that the Sacred Scriptures condemned suicide, but neither of them offered a trenchant argument based on biblical hermeneutics. Jerome proposes that people may not kill themselves during persecutions, but maidens could willfully end their lives when chastity was at stake: “Castitas periclitatur” (Murray

Suicide 100). Saint Ambrose, who played an important role in the conversion and in shaping the ideas of the young Augustine while he lived in Milan, had condemned suicide on theological grounds in his De virginibus (ca. 377), but unlike his pupil, he does

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Santa Teresa recounts the story of her youth when she and her brother Lorenzo—who is roughly her own age—make plans to travel into martyrdom: “Concertábamos irnos a tierra de moros, pidiendo por amor de Dios para que allá nos descabezasen, y paréceme que nos daba el Señor ánimo en tan tierna edad” (120). It is revealing that Santa Teresa interprets her suicidal drives, which seem to come from what contemporary scholar call “aesthetic mimeticism”—because both Santa Teresa and her brother are mimicking the characters who are represented in the hagiographical stories she is reading; let us recall that in the sixteenth century, there was no more “tierra de moros” in Spain—as deriving from divine inspiration, a clear echo of Saint Augustine’s doctrines. ! not offer exegetic evidence to buttress his assertion.22 Jerome and Ambrose do not take the necessary measures to develop a discursive and compelling argument to support their stand. Augustine, on the other hand, does not leave anything to chance, so he finds convincing evidence in the Bible and in Platonic doctrines to persuade his readers that the

Word of God has condemned self-murder.

Unlike his relentless condemnation of other types of suicides, Augustine neither condemns nor condones the Christian virgins’ self-inflicted deaths. Augustine explains their deaths away referring his reader to the Socratic sign, suggesting that God has commanded their deaths. The value allotted to chastity has shifted through time, and it has become a defining trait in female identities. In medieval Iberia, a woman’s worth was intricately woven with the integrity of her hymen—despite Augustine’s forceful argument that women’s virtue lied in intention rather than in the physicality of rapes, as we will see later. Poets and theologians alike overtly praise suicides who kill themselves for chastity’s sake. In his Triunfo de las donas, Rodríguez del Padrón extols maidens for their voluntary death to save their chastity.23 As mentioned above, Juan de Mena and

Diego de San Pedro lavishly praise Doña María Coronel for killing herself in order to extinguish her sexual desire while her husband was at war. In a gloss commenting

Mena’s admiration for María Coronel, Hernán Núñez de Toledo (ca. 1455-1533) asserts that her self-mutilation to avoid sexual defilement is “cosa por cierto hazañosa y digna de perpetua memoria” (402). Fray Antonio Daza extols a lady who cast herself into the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 22 Addressing his sister Marcelina, Saint Ambrose asserted: “Iam ad finem orationis uela pandenti bene suggeris, soror sancta, quid super eorum meritis aestimandum sit qui se praecipitauere ex alto uel in fluuium demerserunt, ne persecutorum inciderent manus, cum scriptura diuina uim sibi Christianum prohibeat inferre. Et quidem de uirginibus in necessitate custodiae constitutis enodem habemus adsertionem, cum martyrii extet exemplum” (De virginibus, Book III, Chap. VII, 32). 23 Rodríguez del Padrón: “¿Et qual mayor fortaleza que rescibir moluntariosa muerte, segund rescibieron e resciben de cada dia donas infinitas por non perder el honor, nin ofender la casta virtud?” (99).

! 21! ! !

Duero river for the sake of preserving her chastity, claiming that the maiden has died a saintly death because women like her “tuvieron especial revelación o inspiración de Dios para ello.” 24 It is difficult to know how Daza comes to that conclusion, but he is clearly echoing Augustine’s Platonic doctrine to justify the lady’s untimely death. Juan de Ávila also exalts those virgins who are willing to die as martyrs in order to preserve their virginity,25 and the fifteenth-century poet Fernando de la Torre stages Medusa’s suicide as means of saving her virginity: “Mas la fligida donzella en tanto que ellos quistioneavan pensó de buscar la muerte en defenssión de su virginidad,” a self-murder that the narrator deems worthy of “eterna memoria” (172). Since there is no empirical evidence for asserting that God command their deaths, justifying maidens’ suicides is problematic for Augustine as well as for posterior thinkers.

Saint Augustine defends his anti-suicide thesis based on a tropological exegesis of the Fifth Commandment (non occides), but as Rousseau points out, the Saint of Hippo derives his suicidological arguments from Plato’s Phaedo, which he alludes to when pointing out Cleombrotus’ decision to end his life after reading Phaedo. Augustine overtly refers to Plato’s Phaedo when he alludes to Callimachus’ epigram. In his

Prologue to the fifteenth-century translation of Plato’s Phaedo, Díaz de Toledo repeats a well-known story recounting how Cato has severed his veins after reading Plato’s Phaedo

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 “Según la narración, una noche en que el santo caminaba junto al Duero, vio el cadaver de una mjer flotando sobre las aguas de dicho río. De inmediato, Pedro ‘la fue a recibir al rio y sacandola del agua la dio sepultura eclesiastica…. La causa del suicidio radicaba en que esta mugger, contra la opinion del mundo, no avia desesperado: fue…porque hubo tal contricion después de averse echado en el rio, que la perdono Dios aquel pecado. Pero se dice que por defender su castidad esta mugger se echo en el rio, donde murio santamente… porque de ley comun y ordinaria nunca es licito a ninguno matarse… y si algunas santas mugeres se cortaron sus miembros o se mataron por defender su virginidad , tuvieron especial revelación o inspiración de Dios para ello” (Guiance, Los discursos 375). 25 Ávila: “Y amareis tanto la limpieza de la virginidad, que de buena gana perdais la vida por ella, como lo hicieron muchas virgenes Santas, que por no dexarlo de ser passaron martyrio, y con grandeza de corazón” 78).

! 22! ! ! twice (225). Augustine refers to and uses Plato’s anti-suicide ideas, but he turns to the

Bible to attempt to make it palatable for mainstream Christians. Platonic or Socratic discourses were not going to sway his Christian readership because it lacks the immediacy and familiarity that the Bible had for early Christians. But Augustine finds the first hurdle in the Bible’s lack of explicit condemnation. As critics note, the Bible did not openly condemn suicide (Bayet 210 and Shemesh 157). A. Álvarez calls attention to the neutrality of judgment with which the Early Fathers referred to suicide during the first centuries of Christianity. Some of them, including Tertullian and Origen, refer to Jesus’s redemptive death as a suicide (69). Some fifteenth-century Spanish poets echo this very idea, as the Cancionero poets Gómez Manrique and Juan de Mozuela suggest in a poetic exchange.26 Donne embraces and defends the thesis of Jesus’s suicide, adducing particular verses in the Sacred Scriptures (John 10:15 and 10:18). In his analysis of

Donne’s Biathanatos, Borges considers Donne’s blasphemous thesis lacking in depth and rigor: “El capítulo que directamente habla de Cristo no es efusivo” (Otras inquisiciones

145), but Borges fails to notice that Donne’s exegesis had been put forth many centuries before in order to exalt Christ’s selflessness.

Saint Augustine begins his long dissertation on suicide in book one of his City of

God, wherein he compares suicide to homicide. Since it is illegal to kill another, it must

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 26 Gómez Manrique asks a provocative question to his poetic interlocutor: Dezid me, si no pecara el segundo que peco, si el que nos redimio enla virgen encarnara; e si su crudo morir que fuese fue neçesario para nuestro redemir, o si murió voluntario (222) To this seemingly heretical question, Mozuela responds that Jesus’s death was voluntary: “Pero tal muerte sofrir,/ esto fue por el contrario,/ qu’ el la quiso reçebir/ con dolor estra ordinario” (223).

! 23! ! ! follow that killing oneself is also unlawful. Augustine, then, repeats a statement regarding

Judas’s suicide that would become repeated ad nauseam during the Middle Ages: far from attenuating the treason of selling Christ, his despairing death only adds a more detestable crime to his betrayal.27 In the Middle Ages, the act of suicide came to be referred to as “the sin of Judas.” As King Sancho IV tells his son, warning him not to despair in God’s mercy: “E por este pecado [despair] se perdió Judas Escariote que traxo

[betrayed] a Ihesu Christo, que dizen los santos por él que mayor sanna e mayor pesar houo Dios Nuestro Sennor contra él por que desesperó [suicided] que por que le traxo”

(85). Just after this reference to Judas, the king alludes to the punishment of eternal damnation for suicides (“Non es esfuerço matarse el omne con sus manos en la qual cosa pierda el alma e el cuerpo para siempre jamás” 266).

For Saint Augustine, Judas is a criminal who deserves some form of punishment for betraying Jesus, but Judas is not a magistrate to judge his own crime: only God can judge his treasonous act. By killing himself, Judas kills a criminal, but that act only adds another crime to his previous crime. His suicide merely confirms his sinfulness and his criminality, and it denies God the opportunity to show his boundless mercy upon him.28

For God, no crime or sin is so great that He cannot forgive, and Guirart’s case—in

Alfonso X’s cantiga 26, as we will see in chapter one—serves as testament to God’s boundless mercy. But even if Judas had been an innocent man, killing himself will instantly turn him into a criminal because, by killing himself, he kills an innocent man.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 See, for example, Dickenson and Boyden: “As elsewhere in Europe, Spanish sermon collections contain abundant exemplar in which despair and suicide are denounced as comprising the final perfidy of Judas Iscariot” (109). 28 Saint Augustine returns to the irreversibleness of suicide, which ends with any possibility of remission: “¿No es preferible cometer un pecado que pueda repararse mediante el arrepentimiento que un crimen tal que no deje lugar para una saludable pentiencia?” (PAGE 131).

! 24! ! !

This is the rhetorical genius of Augustine that makes his anti-suicide dissertation so compelling and irrefutable.

Unlike Jerome, Augustine argues that suicide is unlawful even in the face of rape.

For Augustine, chastity is not a physical virtue. Rather, it is a mental state, directly related to the soul. If a lady does not consent to her rape, she remains both guiltless and chaste. Contrarily, if she consents to her defilement—even if the physical rape does not take place—, she is both impure and sinful. The body loses its sanctity the very moment the person consents to the idea of unchastity and/or rape. The female body, argues the

Saint, is often on the receiving end of violent wounds. Even doctors do things upon the female body that are gruesome to see “quae horret aspectus” (80). Rape, then, is not a straightforward act that justifies self-murder because sexual abuse is not defined by the physical penetration of a woman. It is the sinful desire that has the burden of the culpability. Saint Augustine’s opinion is attested in the thirteenth-century poem Libro de

Apolonio in which King Antiocho rapes his daughter. The victim of incest decides to die by inedia (starvation), but her nursemaid (“ama”) convinces her not to kill herself by assuring her that she is blameless: “Fíçol’ creyer que non era culpada” (8d, p. 74). The victim is innocent precisely because she does not consent to her rape: “Pero sin grado lo houo ella de consentir” (7c, p. 74).

As long as ladies do not consent to the crime, they remain guitless. Whether a woman could end her life if she felt her physical integrity compromised became a point of contention between later theologians, one that Peter Abelard still has to grapple with in the twelfth century (Murray vol. II 202). Augustine, however, is doggedly opposed to suicide for the sake of preventing sexual assault, and he invokes Lucretia’s rape as the

! 25! ! ! apposite example of unconsented assault, whose willful death has compromised her innocence. For the Saint of Hippo, Lucretia either commits a sin or a double sin, but in no way can she be innocent after her self-inflicted death.

Applying a rationale similar to that which he has used for Judas, Augustine argues that if Lucretia does not consent to her rape, then she kills an innocent person by killing herself. In Sermon 313 E, Augustine underscores the power of repentance and penitence as means of cleansing the soul, asserting that both Judas and Lucretia could have repented and imposed a penance on themselves instead of killing themselves. But if she consented to her defilement, then she kills a guilty person: “There were two and only one committed adultery” (85). Lucretia’s guilt is exacerbated by the fact that she likely kills a blameless Lucretia. The fifteenth-century Valencian poet, Bernat Metge, who adduces

Augustine’s arguments to condemn suicide, recasts Augustine’s arguments to rebuke

Lucretia’s suicide for punishing her body to atone for someone else’s guilt. Lucretia’s self-murder “pus meravellador és que loador, però, e esquivador és en nosaltres christians

ço que féu; car, punint lo peccat estrany en lo seu cors, matà aquell” (161). Whether she kills an innocent or a guilty Lucretia, Augustine concludes, she is unworthy of the widespread praises that she has enjoyed and would continue to enjoy throughout the

Middle Ages. Augustine also undermines the Senecan notion that Cato was the sum of all virtues for his suicide, an argument that the fifteenth-century Dominican fray Antoni

Canals would echo: Cato is “indesrahonablement loat, en la sua mort, per Sècecha”

(Butiñá 164). Like Lucretia, Cato was held in high repute by classical thinkers, by

Church Fathers (see Grandgent 86), and these lauding opinions were generally unanimous in medieval Spain.

! 26! ! !

Augustine expends great efforts defending the Fifth Commandment (non occides) as a general prohibition of murder. The divine injunction leaves the predicate wide open for interpretation and even interpolation. Non occides may also include animals and plants, but Augustine dismisses this idea immediately. According to the Saint of Hippo, non occides encompasses both others and the self: “Non occides, nec alterum ergo nec te.

Neque enim qui se occidit aliud quam hominem occidet” (City of God 94). To this effect,

Augustine excludes the express cases of state-ordained executions, war or God- commanded murders, such as Abraham’s aborted infanticide in Mount Moriah (City of

God 95). And it is the God-commanded murders that induce him to invoke Socrates’s loophole to justify the willful deaths of Samson and of virgin Christian martyrs. This

Socratic loophole became well known in the Middle Ages, and Duns Scotus uses the

Socratic sign to inculpate unwarranted suicides in the fourteenth century: “No one can be a homicide of himself without a special command from God” (Minois 32). Antoni

Canals, who has a strong opinion against suicide, justifies Sampson’s suicide only because God inspires him: “E si Sampsó, com se matà, no·u hagués fet per inspiració divinal, hom lo jutyara per flac” (Butiñá 168). Augustine, then, adduces this Socratic

“inspiració divinal” as a heuristic tool to exculpate suicides who kill themselves for a good cause, a Platonic doctrine that nearly four centuries later the apologist of martyrdom, Saint Eulogius of Córdoba, appropriates.29

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29 Saint Eulogius of Córdoba defends his anti-suicide stance by alluding to Saint Augustine’s view: “En consecuencia, santísimas hermanas, ¿por qué no temeríais mataros a vosotras mismas y convertiros en parricidas de vuestras almas? Pues no hace otra cosa sino matar a un hombre quien se mata a sí mismo, y como imputable de crímenes de más grave culpa se juzga al ejecutor de almas que al de cuerpos, puesto que la carne destruida se alza un día por sus méritos, para reinar con su alma en la gloria, mientras que el alma muerta por sus vicios arrastra a la vez consigo a la carne a la Gehenna” (184).

! 27! ! !

After acknowledging the complexity of the martyrs’ voluntary deaths, Augustine recognizes the difficulty in emitting an absolute judgment regarding their paradoxical condition of self-murderers, on the one hand, and of being celebrated as martyrs, on the other: “With regard to these women I dare not give any rash judgment” (City of God

111). Thus far, Augustine has been arguing that suicide is not justifiable under any condition, and yet these martyrs have killed themselves in order not to be sexually defiled. Being both a rhetorician and a keen thinker, Augustine must have Plato’s Phaedo near by when he is pondering about this riddling paradox. He, then, asks a tentative rhetorical question: “What if the women acted as they did, not by human misconception, but by divine command, and they did not go astray in their act, but were obedient?”

(111). This rhetorical genius and persuasive power represent an “inspiració divinal” in its own right. With a fine stroke of his pen, he is reconciling a complex idea that is inherently contradictory, as Cebes has pointed out to Socrates in Phaedo. Augustine is neither condemning nor absolving the martyrs’ willful deaths. Since he has no empirical evidence, he is merely offering a possible explanation for their decision to end their lives.

The Saint of Hippo brings to mind Samson’s case to offer an example of cases of Deus ex machina: “Compare the case of Samson, where it would be sin to hold any other view”

(City of God 111). Like Plato, he invokes the metaphor of the soldier who must kill if his superior commands it. If a superior orders a soldier to kill and the subordinate does not obey, the soldier could be severely punished for insubordination. Like the soldier, man is obligated to carry out God’s command if He demands it. Otherwise, he can be punished for contempt to his superior:

Accordingly, the deed that is punished, if he does it without orders, is the same as that for which he will be punished, if he does not do it when ordered.

! 28! ! !

Well, if this is so when a general gives an order, how much more is it so when the Creator gives the order! Let anyone, therefore, who is told that he has no right to kill himself, do the deed if he is so ordered by him whose orders must not be slighted. There is just one proviso: he must be sure that his divine command is not made precarious by any doubt (tantummodo videat utrum divina iussio nullo nutet incerto) (111, 113).

When God commands that a man should die, he must yield his life because it belongs to only God. In his Coplas, Manrique echoes this Augustinian proposition: “Que querer hombre vivir,/ cuando Dios quiere que muera,/ es locura” (66), which could also be expressed as “querer hombre vivir cuando Dios quiere que muera, es un pecado mortal,” for more than madness, as Augustine notes, disobeying God is considered insubordination to the divine will and punishable with eternal damnation. Saint Thomas

Aquinas reiterates Saint Augustine’s opinion that the Word of God has to be obeyed in order not to be punished.30

The last sentence of Augustine’s discourse becomes the crucial matrix of Alfonso

X’s recast of the “roméu que ýa a Santiago.” In the pilgrim’s particular case, it is a direct order from a demon that is usurping the identity of a divine being. Like the Platonic

Socrates, Augustine is a staunch opponent of suicide, save for when God himself gives an express command to kill oneself. The Saint of Hippo warns that the person must be sure that the order is both authentic and unequivocal, i.e., that it is not caused by demonic inspiration like that in Alfonso X’s cantiga 26. For Augustine—and for the medieval theological thinker—, the devil can induce men to despair and to commit suicide, and

Alfonso X’s recast of the pilgrim’s suicide confers upon Satan’s temptation a preponderant role in the pilgrim’s decision to castrate and decapitate himself.

It is unclear if Augustine wants to condone future suicides or if he merely uses the

Socratic loophole to justify those who have already killed themselves to avoid rape and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 30 Saint Thomas Aquinas quotes Romans 13, 2: “Decit enim Apostolus ad Rom., Qui ordinationi Dei resistit, ipsi sibi damnationem acquirit” (Summa 64, I).

! 29! ! ! captivity. Whatever his intention, Augustine’s forceful explanation paves the way for other Christian apologists to justify other martyrs’ self-inflicting deaths. These (past and future) martyrdoms became central to the devotional fabric of the Christian faith, and

Augustine’s powerful anti-suicide thesis became mainstream in the religious orthodoxy of the Middle Ages.

Augustine’s influence on Saint Thomas Aquinas is preponderant in the latter’s dissertation on suicide. Aquinas borrows the condemnation of self-murder on the grounds of the Fifth Commandment, and, echoing Augustine, he argues against chaste women’s self-inflicted death in the face of impending rape because “non sunt facienda mala ut veniant bona” (34). Both Augustine and Aquinas refer to Saint Paul’s assertion (Rom.

3:8) that a person should not commit a sin to achieve a good end. However, Aristotle’s influence upon Aquinas’s theological disquisition is as discernible as Plato’s is on

Augustine. Aquinas condemns self-murder for three main reasons, all of which are anchored in the human experience: 1) The person’s relationship with himself (“contra naturalem legem, et contra charitatem existens” 32), 2) the person’s obligation to the

Polis (Aristotle), and 3) the person’s subordination to God (Plato-Augustine). First, suicide undermines man’s natural drive for self-preservation and charity, for men (and animals) possess an inherent desire to survive. To kill oneself is sinful because “it stultifies the law of nature and charity” (33). Second, he refers to Aristotle’s Ethics to indicate that suicide is a crime against the Polis (Communitas): “Unde in hoc quod seipsum interficit, injuriam communitati facit” (32). Third, Aquinas returns to the Orphic-

Pythagorean idea that life was a gift of God. Hence killing oneself represents a breach of

God’s sovereignty over man. Aquinas echoes Socrates’ words from Phaedo:

! 30! ! !

Therefore a person who takes his own life sins against God, just as he who kills another’s slave injures the slave’s master, or just as he who usurps judgement in a matter outside his authority also commits a sin. And God alone has authority to decide about life and death, as he declares in Deuteronomy, I kill and I make alive (33).

The slave-master analogy is also used by Plato to draw a connection between man and its relation to God. Since the second is a recasting of the Aristotelian doctrine and the third of the Platonic-Pythagorean tradition, the first reason (anti-Nature) became the blueprint of the Thomistic epistemology regarding suicide.

The principle of natural inclination for self-preservation is novel in the context of suicide, but the idea that human nature tends toward existence has been marshaled by other thinkers from Boethius, Saint Augustine to the author of the Pseudo-Aristotelian

The Book of the Apple (ca. 10th CE).31 And sundry medieval and Renaissance thinkers, including John Calvino, Diderot, Tissot and Madame Estaël, echo this Thomistic anti- suicide idea. In his short fragment discussing suicide in the Ethics, Aristotle argues that it is “contrary to what reason prescribes” (175) to be unjust against oneself, but he neither used the word “nature” nor suicide to enhance his argument. Donne, however, dedicates a great part of his Biathanatos to reject Aquinas’ theory of suicide as a crime against nature, pointing out the lack of a precise meaning of the word “nature” and its application to moral discourses. In his commentary on Dante’s suicides of Inferno, Leo Spitzer notes the preponderance this idea has in Dante’s conceptualization of the punishment leveled against suicides. According to Spitzer, the metamorphosis of the suicides into trees represents Dante’s application of the law of the contrapasso because, like hybrid creations, suicide is “outside of the natural plan of God” (“Speech and Language” 85). !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 Pseudo-Aristotle, The Book of the Apple: “if ye abstain in this world from lusts, but are attached to this world in your heart, your abstinence is not perfect. Now the root of attachment to the world lies in love of self-preservation. Hence everyone who abstains from its lusts but desires to remain in the world has caught the branch and neglected the root; whereas he is perfect and has reached the goal who has both root and branch" (233, emphasis added).

! 31! ! !

Dante’s God is punishing the “anti-natural” sin of suicide because the “God-willed connection between body and soul has been broken” (“Speech and Language” 85).

Donne further contradicts Aquinas’s natural-law argument, advancing the hypothesis of the angelus sepultus, which posits that man “labors to be discharged of his earthly sepulcher, his body” (64) because man possesses a “natural desire for dying.” In the beginning of his Confessions, Augustine captures man’s desire to return to God:

“Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te” (Book I, I) because, as Mary M.

Gaylord notes in Pleberio’s threnody at the dénouement of Celestina, Pleberio

“allegorizes human life as pilgrimage” (“Fair of the World” 4). Man lives in a constant struggle, Stoic philosophers advance, to escape from the prison of the body and return home to reunite with the gods (Droge 37). This idea that men live in exile from the true homeland, which is heaven, was commonplace in the Spanish Middle Ages, as Manrique underscores in his Coplas por la muerte de su padre.32 Aquinas, then, rejects suicide and suicidal drives using an eclectic range of philosophical discourses that ran from Platonic to Aristotelian and Stoic schools of thought. Along with Platonic doctrines, Stoicism plays an important role in keeping suicidological epistemology in medieval scholasticism because Stoicism challenges pre-established notions that life and death were prerogatives of God.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 32 See also the dictum, which was attributed to Socrates but that it came from the pseudo-Platonic Axiochus: “Este mundo es pasaje para el otro mundo” (Round 53).

! 32! ! Stoicism and Suicide33

Stoicism was the most influential of the four Greek schools of thought—i.e., Cynicism,

Cyrenaicism, Epicureanism and Stoicism—during the Middle Ages. This is due in great part because “elements of Stoic ethics lodged so deeply in medieval teaching as generally to pass for Christian” (Murray 129). Contrary to Epicureanism and Cynicism, the Stoic doctrine does not, as a school of thought, deny the immortality of the soul. Some Stoic philosophers, as Saint Isidore of Seville pointed out in derogatory terms (“Philosophos gentium” Etymologiarum VIII: 6, 1), such as Seneca, do not overtly and unequivocally defends, like Plato, the immortality of the soul. Instead, Seneca, who makes suicide the bedrock of his moral doctrines, leaves the door wide open for anyone who desires to quit life over physical or psychoaffective discomfort. For Seneca, the quality of life is more important than the duration of it. Just before he contradicts Socrates’ injunction that the soldier must hold his post until god commands it, Seneca tells Lucilium that man should ponder about the quality of life, not its duration: “Cogitat semper qualia vita, non quanta sit” (Ep. LXX, 5).

Despite the vast influence Stoic ethics cast in medieval consciousness and worldview, medieval scholars and poets felt compelled to disavow its lax views and overt exhortation to suicide (see Saint Isidore, Saint Victor, Peter Abelard, Cartagena,

Quevedo). Due to his apocryphal epistolary exchange with Saint Paul and to his birth in

Spain, Seneca became a revered philosopher in the medieval Spanish philosophical and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Since this introduction does not pretend to be a holistic study on Stoic doctrines on suicide, I will not offer an exhaustive history of the complexity of suicide from its conception. Rather, this abbreviated introduction seeks to offer some views of the Stoic philosophers who were better known and most influential in medieval Iberian thought. Because of the concomitances with Leriano’s suicide, however, I will offer further details of Zeno’s life and his method of suicide in chapter two of this study. ! cultural landscape, whose mere name became synonymous with wisdom.34 Seneca makes suicide one of the cornerstones of his doctrinal appeal, an appeal that medieval thinkers were quick to disavow and denounce. As Fothergill-Payne points out, Cartagena feels the moral obligation to voice his disapproval every time Seneca praises self-murder or suicides (29). Cartagena wrote multiple glosses to contradict Seneca’s view on suicide, even when the praise to suicide was not explicit. When Seneca quotes Dido’s words:

“viví y acabé el curso que me dio la fortuna” (106), Cartagena feels compelled to express his concern: “E esta palabra dicen que dijo Dido, reina de Cartago al tiempo de su muerte. E aunque Séneca parece aquí loar a Diodoro porque se mató, esta conclusión no es de tener, según se dijo sobre el capítulo postrimero del libro primero De la providencia” (106).

Most Stoic philosophers were reluctant to exhort suicide openly for a banality, and none of the major Stoic philosophers were adamantly opposed to ending life if the travails of life have become too burdensome. There is a persistent tension in the discourse of Stoics. On the one hand, they all at some point—including Seneca, though to a lesser extent—,35 overtly discourage suicide, but each and every one always leave a door open in case of misfortune or extreme grief. Cicero, who has traits of Platonism and Stoicism,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 34 In his Siete Partidas, Alfonso X confers Seneca the epithet of “sabio,” a moniker, incidentally, conferred upon the king himself (Blüher 79, 102). 35 See, for example, Seneca’s letter 5, section 4, to Lucilio, in which the Stoic philosopher tells his recipient that torturing the body is contra natura: “Our motto, as you know, is ‘Live according to Nature’; but it is quite contrary to nature to torture the body (torquere corpus suum)” (Epistles, Vol. I 23, emphasis added). Even more remarkable is letter 104 in which Seneca calls an “effeminate” (delicatus) and advises men to live for the sake of their loved ones: “Sometimes, even in spite of weighty reasons, the breath of life must be called back and kept at our very lips even at the price of great suffering, for the sake of those whom we hold dear; because the good man should not live as long as it pleases him, but as long as he ought. He who does not value his wife, or his friend, highly enough to linger longer in life—he who obstinately persists in dying—is a voluptuary…. It gives proof of a great heart to return to life for the sake of others; and noble men have often done this” (Epistles, Vol. III 191 and 193). Juan Manuel Díaz Torres reminds us that Seneca himself “called back” his life for the sake of his father, Seneca the Elder, when “se consumía por la fluxion, llegando a una delgadez extrema” (671).

! 34! ! ! recasts the Platonic anti-suicide doctrine in his De Republica. In Scipio’s Dream, Cicero echoes Socrates in claiming that a person can lawfully commit suicide only when the gods send a signal because an untimely departure is be anathema: “Ante tempus mori miserum esse” (Cicero 59). Otherwise, men are supposed to guard their post in life until

God severe the soul from the body. In his Tusculanae, however, Cicero reiterates that men should not kill themselves, unless terrible pain renders life unbearable. Cicero compares life to a Greek banquet. Either you participate and enjoy it fully, or leave: “Let each man either drink or leave, for each person either enjoy the pleasure of drinking equally with others, or he should depart early, in order that he, a sober man, not fall in amongst the violent behavior of the drunkards” (Hill 51). These contradictory injunctions are a blueprint of Stoic views on suicide.

Like Cicero, Epictetus discourages people from self-murder. He even invokes

Socrates’ argument from Phaedo that men are obliged to hold their posts in life until the gods send the signal: “I… will not desert the post, so long as it is given me to occupy it”

(34).36 But at the same time, if it is a rational (eulogōs) suicide, men could overlook god’s mastery over their lives and kill themselves. As Paul Tillich points out, Stoics endorse suicide for those who have conquered life, not for those conquered by life (12), and this also is evident in Seneca’s letter 4.4 in which he exhorts to end one’s life, provided that the decision is made rationally. Epictetus invokes several metaphors to indicate that the door for an untimely departure is always open. Suicide can be a reasonable exit (eulogos exagōgē). He gnomically refers to the house filled with smoke: If you cannot stand the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 36 See another example his Discourses. Epictetus says that if someone comes to him complaining about the pain and the sorrow of enduring life, he will respond: “Men, wait upon god. Whenever he gives the sign and frees you from this service, then you are free to return to him. But for now be content to remain in the place where he has stationed you…. Stay, do not depart on unreasonable grounds” (20).

! 35! ! ! smoke inside a house, you leave (“Is there smoke in the house? If there isn’t too much, I will stay. If it is excessive, I leave. For one should remember and hold fast to this, that the door is open” 48), a metaphor that Marcus Aurelius, who commended suicide provided that it was undertaken in accordance with nature, also repeated: “The house is smoky, and

I quit it” (35). Musonius Rufus proposes that a man has to live and die according to nature and also warns that since man is destined to die, he has to choose a virtuous death while he has the option: “Choose to die well while you can; wait too long and it may become impossible to do so” (85). There is an inherent tension between personal wellbeing and societal or political responsibility—a tension that we will see both in

Laureola and in Melibea’s lives in chapters 2 and 3 respectively. Marcus Aurelius sees a direct path to death when a man can no longer live in accordance with nature, signaling toward the eulogos exagoge. For the Stoic emperor, life is like a dramatic play wherein the person is Oedipus himself (46). If you do not like the outcome, the door is open. Life is also like a child’s game:

The chief thing to remember is that the door is open. Don’t be more timid than little children, but just as they say, whenever a thing does not please them, “I will play no longer,” so do you, when things seem to you of such a kind, say, “I will no longer play,” and be rid of it. And if you stay, don’t complain (46).

Marcus Aurelius’ main message is to be assertive and have control over your own life and death. Whether you decide to live or die, you should use reason as a guiding principle. In Juan del Encina’s Égloga de Plácida y Vitoriano, Suplicio tries to dissuade the lovesick Vitoriano from killing himself by begging him to use his reason (razón) because he is acting subdued by his passions: “Da lugar a la razón,/ que estás agora con passión” (336). Suplicio uses the Stoic dichotomy razón-passión to makes his friend

! 36! ! ! understand that this un-Stoic (and unchristian) death will bring about both infamy and the damnation of his soul (336-37).

Epictetus shares many similarities with (borrows from) Plato and Cicero, but he leaves a wider loophole for suicide than his predecessors. In his analysis of Donne’s

Biathanatos, Borges notes that Epictetus has vindicated “con acopio de páginas el suicidio” (Otras inquisiciones 143), but unlike Seneca’s unapologetic pro-death doctrines, Epictetus displays a more circumspect doctrine. Despite Epictetus receptive attitude toward rational suicide, Spanish medieval authors had a different view of him. In the thirteenth century, an anonymous poet wrote a dialogue between Epictetus (Péticus) and the Emperor Adrianus, Diálogo de Epíteto y el emperador Adriano. In this moral dialogue, the emperor asks Péticus twice which is the sin that God would never forgive.

The first time, Péticus responds that God would never forgive despair, and the second time suicide becomes the sin that God does not forgive: “‘¿Cuál pecado non perdona

Dios?’ Péticus responde: ‘Aquel que se desafía de la merced de Dios [i.e., despair] et aquel que mata así mesmo’” (52). Péticus uses despair and suicide as fungible sins. The ideas and attitudes between the Stoic Epictetus and the “Christian” Péticus are antithetical. The “Christian” Péticus in the Diálogo de Epíteto y el emperador Adriano seems to dovetail the doctrinal position on despair (the sin against the Holy Spirit). The former prefers to hold the post until god sends the signal, but he always leaves the door open if life becomes too onerous. The latter is a staunch anti-suicide moralist, whose views on suicide not only mirror those of Augustine but are more hermetic since he does not concede the loophole of God’s signal.

! 37! ! !

Plotinus, who is influenced by both Platonism and Stoicism (Igal 333), discourages suicide because an untimely severance of the soul from the body will cause the soul to be impure (“No te quitarás la vida, para que no salga el alma; porque saldrá llevándose algo a fin de salir efectivamente” (Igal 335). When he is pressed about the permissibility for aged and physically impaired people, Plotinus reluctantly grants that extreme circumstances “qualify” for an exemption for self-murder. But he warns that the divinity has decreed a time to die for each individual, and unless it is a “fuerza mayor,” it is unbecoming and a bad omen “cuando se adelanta” (Igal 336). Analyzing Marcus

Aurelius’ life and works, McLynn notes that Stoics approve of suicide in five circumstances: 1) If the country or friends requires you to kill yourself, 2) If tyrants force you to act dishonorably, 3) affliction by incurable diseases, 4) Extreme poverty, and 5) If you lose your sanity (McLynn 249). And above all Stoic philosophers, Seneca became the champion of advancing the uprightness of a rational suicide. Seneca lowered the bar to the extent that a man could kill himself even if he was bored is life. But, as I noted above, he also said that dying without a worthy cause was cowardly and effeminate, and he refuses to end his life when he is emaciated and sick, arguing that he loves his family too much to cause them such a grief.

Since Seneca’s take on suicide is widely explored (Blüher, Fothergill-Payne,

Eleuterio Elorduy), I will offer a brief overview of the most important thoughts regarding suicide that are relevant to our present inquiry. In some of his treatises and moral epistles,

Seneca tepidly opposes voluntary death, but his philosophy is overwhelmingly suicidocentric and pro-suicide. Critics unanimously regard his letter LXX to Lucilium as an apologia pro suicide, where he declares: “The wise man will live as long as he ought,

! 38! ! ! not as long as he can” (Donnelly 35). Letters 77 and 78 also contain a substantive discussion on suicide. But his treatise De Ira contains the most compelling argument endorsing suicide for a wide range of motives. In De Ira, which was translated and well- known through the Middle Ages, Seneca underscores that life can be curtailed whenever life becomes unpleasant or psychologically taxing. His formulaic injunction of suicide- freedom—a clear reference to Cato’s suicide for the sake of freedom—to assert that suicide will free men from worldly and bodily travails represents the core of his suicidological discourse. His widely known passage in De Ira III, 15, 4, which I will analyze carefully in chapter two, is a systematic defense of his idea that a prompt suicide will bring about freedom.37 The Stoic philosopher repeats the same idea in his De

Providentia, as Cartagena translates it: “Paradmientes ahora y veréis cuán breve y ligero camino es para venir a la libertad [i.e. death]” (233). The dovetailing of suicide and freedom runs counter to all theological doctrines since far from teaching that self-murder brings about spiritual freedom, the Church staunchly defends that suicide, as Péticus notes, brought about eternal damnation. At least since Saint Augustine’s interpolation of the Fifth Commandment, early Christian thinkers considered suicide a mortal sin, one that was punished with eternal damnation.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 Cf. Letter LXX, 14 and LXX, 16 “Invenies etiam professos sapientiam qui vim afferendam vitae suae negent et nefas iudicent ipsum interemptorem sui fieri: exspectandum esse exitum quem natura decrevit. Hoc qui dicit non videt se libertatis viam cludere: nihil melius aeterna lex fecit quam quod unum introitum nobis ad vitam dedit, exitus multos.” And also: “scalpello aperitur ad illam magnam libertatem via et puncto securitas constat.” Then in letter XII, 10, where Seneca says that there is no need for us to live in necessity because we do not need to live: “patent unique ad libertatem viae multae, breves faciles.” Then in letter LXXVII, 15, he suggests that it is better to kill oneself than to be a slave: “tam prope libertas est: et servit aliquis?” And in Consolatio ad Marciam, he says that it is not shameful to be a slave because when slaves get tired of life, they can achieve freedom with death: “Non est molestum seruire ubi, si dominii pertaesum est, licet uno gradu ad libertatem transire. Caram te, uita, beneficio mortis habeo.” See also Letters XIII, 14, and XXVI, 10.

! 39! ! !

In his Stoic treatise, in which he exalts the uprightness and integrity of Seneca,

Quevedo feels compelled to refute and reject Seneca’s assertion that an untimely death leads to spiritual libertad. Despite avowing his affinity with Stoicism and his utter admiration for his fellow “Spaniard,” Quevedo purports to contradict this line of thought

“no sin dolor.”38 Because this suicide-freedom idea was so blatantly anti-Christian, neither reputable thinkers nor mainstream poets ever represent it in literary texts. As

Droge and Tabor note, only a few decades after Seneca, the Roman Jewish scholar

Josephus, whose views on suicide are otherwise ambivalent and often contradictory, repeatedly uses the suicide-freedom Stoic formula, borrowed from the Cordovan philosopher: “Voluntary death brings freedom” (90). Hence, combined with the idea of suicide, libertas is fraught with Stoic ideas. Diego de San Pedro is the first major Spanish author to use it in a literary setting to showcase Leriano’s Stoic ideas and ideals. This is an innovative but dangerous endeavor, given the ubiquity of the Inquisition, which expurgated Cárcel in 1544 (Corfis, “Introduction” 15). Besides San Pedro’s overt allusion to the Senecan formula suicide-freedom, only one other fifteenth-century writer used it in a literary work, and it was an anonymous work. The author of the fifteenth- century Catalan chivalric novel Curial e Güelfa, the Muslim convert Cámar openly refers to Seneca’s suicide-freedom injunction,39 and even well after the Middle Ages, no other

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 “Ni el ser Séneca cordobés, ni el ser tales los escritos de Séneca, han podido acallarme para que en esta parte no diga, que con ellas antes se mostró Timon que Séneca, tanto que cuanto mejor hablado. Timon digo, el que por enemigo de género humano condenaron, aquél que rogaba y persuadió à los hombres à que se ahorcasen de un árbol, que tenía dedicado à este fruto. ¿Cómo, ¡oh grande Séneca! no conociste que es cobardía necia dejarse vencer del miedo de los trabajos, que es locura matarse por no morir…. Y es de advertir que no porque Séneca tenga opinion de que es lícito darse la muerte, es opinion estoica, no lo es sino de un estoico” (Obras 417). 39 The anonymous author of Curial e Güelfa deploys a whole range of stoic doctrines. However, the most important of his ideas is the combination of suicide and freedom, which is unheard of in Spanish Medieval Literature. It is rather illuminating that the Stoic doctrine be uttered by a Muslim girl. After refusing the King of Túnez’s request to be his wife, the Young Càmar, lovesick for the eponymous hero, deploys

! 40! ! ! creative writer openly used this line of thought. The idea that death leads to freedom was a trope throughout the Middle Ages, but to say that suicide leads to the freedom of the soul is tantamount to heresy.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seneca’s doctrine. She tells her mother, Fátima: “Virtut és fortalesa del meu cor, e Cató, honor de tots los romans, me mostrà en Útica lo camí de la libertat; e per aquell caminaré, e a tal maestre tal dexebla” (Butiñá 166). Fàtima questions the notion that Cato achieved his goal: “¿Y libertad piensas que sea la muerte? Cárcel oscura y tenebrosa puedes llamarla, y exilio sin esperanza de retorno” (423). Fàtima is voicing the Christian doctrine against suicide.

! 41! ! A Brief Overview of Ideas and Attitudes Regarding Suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages

Like most of the Christian Western world, the Iberian Peninsula embraced the statutes legislated to condemn suicide. Saint Augustine’s dissertation against self-murder became the benchmark to judge suicides and suicide attempts. From the council of Braga (561) to the councils of Toledo (693), religious authorities introduced canonical laws to prevent suicide. The prohibitions adopted by early councils were first directed toward those who attempted suicide, rather than to those who had killed themselves. The Church adopted

Saint Augustine’s exegesis to the Fifth Commandment. Hence those who sought to end their lives were both agents and subjects of the devil. Burials outside of consecrated grounds were also implemented after the early councils. From the council of Orleans

(533), religious leaders began adopting the Platonic idea as articulated in his Laws, which posited that suicides should be buried outside of the confines of the city and without the prescribed rites. Both of these ideas—condemnation of suicide grounded on religious beliefs and burial outside of consecrated grounds—became the cornerstones of the

Church’s struggle against suicide and suicidal attempts. Early Iberian thinkers adduced these theological canons to defend the sanctity of life and the crime against self-murder.

Alfonso X’ Siete Partidas offers the reader some insight to his attitude toward suicide and suicidological thought. Compared with other laws from other Western kingdoms during the thirteenth century, Alfonso X’s legislation is lenient toward suicides, in a way that it is not far off from Platonic or Stoic views on suicide. This attitude can be traceable in Alfonso X’s creative works, where he nearly always shows compassion and commiseration toward self-murders, as we will see in chapter one of this ! study. The Setena Partida, Título I, Ley XXIV represents an example of the laxity with which he treated self-murderers and their grieving families. Ley XXIV prescribes pecuniary punishments only to suicides that have been convicted of a crime before their deaths:

Desesperado seyendo algund ome en su vida por yerro que ouiesse fecho, de manera, que se matasse el mesmo despues que fuesse acusado. En tal caso como este dezimos, que (si el que se mató por miedo de la pena, que esperaua recebir por aquel yerro que fizo, o por verguença que ouo, porque fue fallado en el mal fecho de que lo acusaron), si el yerro era atal que si le fuesse prouado, deue morir porende, e perder sus bienes, e seyendo ya el pleyto començado por demanda, e por respuesta se mató, entonce deuen tomar todo lo suyo para el Rey (305).

Unlike other regal legislations that sought economic profit from others’ misfortunes,

Alfonso’s legislation does not seek to divest suicides’ families from their pecuniary goods. Instead, only proven felons that kill themselves out of fear for a crime committed are divested. Even King Enrique III (1379-1406) criminalizes suicide, and his legislation stipulates that suicides forfeit their property to the Crown (Dickenson and Boyden 108-

109). King Enrique III is condemning the act itself. Contrarily, Alfonso X is not condemning the act of suicide. He is punishing the crime that leads the person to kill himself. He would only execute the confiscation of goods if the crime that the felon commits merited a death penalty in the first place. If the cause of suicide is not to avoid a crime, the heirs of the suicide ought to inherit the suicide’s wealth: “Mas si el yerro fuese tal, que por razón d’él non deuiesse prender muerte, maguer se matasse, non le deuen tomar sus bienes; ante deuen fincar a sus herederos” (305, emphasis added). In order to escheat, the criminal process has to be in process before the individual took his/her life.

The English laws of the same period are more implacable and unscrupulous.40 Law XXIV

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 40 Murray offers many examples of English customs and severity. For example, in his first volume of his two monographs, he declares: “Rich suicides aroused its interest not just because the Crown wanted to get its hands on property by maximizing the number of suicides. Property was what much of the law was

! 43! ! ! of the Primera Partida does not adopt Aristotle’s (or Aquinas’) view that a suicide hurts the State by depriving it of a productive citizen. It rather resembles Stoic and Neo-

Platonic views. Law XXIV states that under certain conditions a person could lawfully end his own life.

Alfonso concludes his Law XXIV with an unequivocal laxity regarding non- criminal suicides. The State should not sanction those who suffered from mental illnesses, pain, physical sickness or any other travails. If the suicide is not a prosecuted criminal, the State declares itself incompetent to exert any punishment against the victim:

“Esso mesmo deue ser guardado, si alguno se matasse por locura, o por dolor, o por cuyta de enfermedad, o por otro grand pesar que ouiesse” (306). Let us remember that Alfonso

X’ Partidas are vastly influenced by the Roman Law, and Murray notes that in the

Roman Law “the Stoic vocabulary is unmistakable” (Suicide Vol. II 162). These

Alfonsine loopholes lean more toward Stoic and Platonic ideas than toward the rigidity of the ecclesiastic canons. The Stoics underscore similar exits (exire) if life becomes too burdensome and unbearable. Plato condemns suicides in his Laws unless the self- murderer suffers from misfortunes and dishonor. But the Wise King is not oblivious to ecclesiastical restrictions against suicides. The Primera Partida, Título XIII, Law IX commands—without explicitly mentioning suicides—that those who die in “pecado mortal sabidamente” be buried outside of consecrated grounds, and Law X expands the list to those who die in “torneos, lidiando; ni a los robadores, nin matadors” (280).

Alfonso X, then, knows and understands the stance of the Church, but he distances his civil laws from religious doctrines. These laws, however, also apply to suicides, as

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! about; any dispute about a lot of it called for adjudication, and this, in a suicide case, meant an investigation of sanity conducted locally” (167).

! 44! ! ! expressed in the eleventh-century manuscript that contains glosses on the margins explaining the Latin text, also known as Glosas Silenses. The Penitential prescribes

“extra ecclesiastice sepeliatur” (42) to those who kill themselves, and in the sixteenth century, Covarrubias reiterates this custom: “No se les da a los tales sepultura” (López

Ríos 317). This law was extant and applied during the Middle Ages, but only to those who did not have the power or the means to defend themselves. In his misogynist Spill,

Jaume Roig tells the story of a prevaricating woman who ends her life by hanging herself, and he tells us that she has been buried outside of consecrated grounds (75). Such accounts, along with the disposal of the suicide’s body into a river in a barrel, as Schmitt

(11-12) and Murray (Suicide Vol. II 492) tell us, are nearly absent from powerful and wealthy suicides.41

Besides his legislation, Alfonso X also wrote (or endorsed) creative writings in which he shows a rather lenient attitude toward suicides. In his General Estoria, Alfonso narrates Dido’s suicide without a condemnation of her act. And in contrast to Roís de

Corella, the Wise King also refers to the story of Hero and Leander, a brief recast based on Lucan’s Pharsalia, and he narrates Hero’s jumping into the sea without casting a negative judgment upon her.42 The same can be argued for his Cantigas, where he

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 There is, of course, the case of the Ballad Romance del entierro de Fernandarias, which recounts the story of a princess who commits suicide by jumping from a cliff, and her father throws her body into a sac and then casts her into the sea. The princess’ punishment, as Gómez Moreno points out, is the consequence of the king’s wrath, rather than a punishment for her suicide. Juan de Flores also describes an allegorical burial for Fiometa after she commits suicide out of lovesickness in Grimalte y Gradisa. Flores, however, never says that it was due to her suicide. There are also many suicides—like Crisóstomo in Cervantes’ Quijote—in pastoral narratives being buried in isolated places, but the narrator rarely expresses that it is due to their untimely and illicit deaths. On burials outside of consecrated ground, see again Berceo, Milagro 3 which I mentioned above. 42 For the entire story about Dido’s suicide, see Solalinde (121-142). We will see his attitudes regarding Hero’s suicide in chapter four.

! 45! ! ! narrates the lives of three suicides,43 and, although he acknowledges the sinfulness of both suicide and despair (cf. Cantiga 369, where he tells the story of the woman who wants to die because she will not be able to pay a debt, and her daughter warns her: “Que vos[sa] alma entrasse en parayso, ca nunca y entrou quen sse matasse” 85-6),44 none of his suicidal characters are punished in any way. Instead, Virgin Mary (with the complicity of the poet) redeems all three, bringing them back to life in order for them to atone for their sins.

During the Spanish Middle Ages, the laws, attitudes and ideas regarding suicide were dynamic and diverse. There was a whole gamut of attitudes that ranged from extreme opposition (Roís de Corella) to extreme laxity (Diego de San Pedro). During the fifteenth century, there was a tendency from poets and writers to extol both Lucretia and

Cato’s suicides. But even within this undue admiration for those who preferred death over dishonor, there was an overwhelming trend of disavowing suicidal discourses on the grounds of Christian belief. From Juan Ruiz to Santillana and poets of the Renaissance, the trend underscores the ways in which Saint Augustine’s condemnation became ingrained in the consciousness of Christians. Although Whinnom (“Introducción” 38) and

Waley (“Introducción” XXXVII) believe that fifteenth-century Spaniards did not take the

Church’s condemnation seriously, there is overwhelming evidence that religious scruples over self-murder helped prevent myriad suicides. Moral treatises and courtly love !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 43 Besides Cantiga 26 and 369, Alfonso X also deals with suicide in Cantigas 2 and 84. Cantiga 2 recounts the story of a woman who fornicated with her uncle, and she attempts suicide by swallowing spiders. Although she does not die, her very suicide attempt would turn her into a desesperada who committed the sin of the Holy Spirit. Cantiga 84 narrates the story of a devout knight who went every night to pray to the virgin. When his wife confronts him, he tells her that he loves another woman more than he loves his own wife. Not knowing that his husband refers to the virgin, she stabs herself with a knife. After the knight prays to the virgin to help him, Virgin Mary resuscitates the despairing woman. For a brief analysis of these two Cantigas, see Dickenson and Boyden (108). 44 See also his Partida VII, Título XXVII, where he unambiguously condemns suicide and despair: “desesperanza es pecado que Dios nunca perdona á los que en ella caen.”

! 46! ! ! literature are fraught with despairing lovers who consider suicide and then disregard it for fear of eschatological consequences.

When Santillana, whose poetry is peppered with allusions to suicide and who claims to have valued the Epístolas de Séneca second only to the Bible (Fothergill-Payne

13), describes the virtue of “Fortaleza,” his third word of the segment is “libertad.” A reader who is versed in Seneca’s moral writings and of Cato’s story would recognize therein an allusion to the Roman Stoic, Cato. Even Fernando del Pulgar, in his

Augustinian criticism on Cato’s suicide, associates the word “libertad” with Cato’s

“cowardly” suicide.45 After describing Cato’s death as a “glorïoso morir,” Santillana seems to feel the compulsion to remind his readers the Church’s condemnation of suicide:

¡O quánto bien murió Catón, si permitiesse nuestra ley e consintiese tal razón! (Poesías 407-408).

Glossing these verses, Santillana expounds the underlying motives for Cato’s suicide, and he narrates his death in a casual tone, which calls into question his previous statement in the verses where he stresses the Church’s condemnation.46 Santillana doubles down on

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 Del Pulgar clearly read St. Augustine’s De civitate Dei. They share the same idea. Before I quote del Pulgar, I want to clarify that his negative view on Cato’s suicide is a rare anomaly in the literature of his time, even in theological treatises. Del Pulgar says: “Loan los istoriadores romanos por varón de grand ánimo a Catón, porque se mató no podiendo con paciencia sofrir la vitoria de Çesar de la que él se fizo. Porque repugnando la natura & al común deseo de los omes fizo en su persona lo que todos aborrescen fazer en la agena. E adornan su muerte, diciendo que murió por aver libertad… Así que como aya grande razón para loar su vida, no veo que la aya para loar su muerte, porque anticiparse ninguno a desatar aquell conjuntíssimo & naural atamiento que el ánima tiene con el cuerpo, temiendo que otro le desate, cosa es más para aborrecer que para loar. No se mata el marinero en la fortuna antes que le mate la fortuna, ni el cercado se da la muerte por mido de la servidumbre del cercado. A todos sostiene la esperança que no pudo sostener a Catón” (Vivanco, emphasis is hers 93). Del Pulgar’s allusion to the “atamiento que el ánima tiene con el cuerpo,” has Stoic overtones; it particularly resonates with Plotinus’ philosophy, in which he argues that the suicides detach the soul from the body by force, and they ought to be punished. 46 Santillana says that once in Utica, Cato was worried (resçelando) that Cesar would capture him, so “con su mesma espada se fizo tal llaga que murió” (Poesías 408).

! 47! ! !

Cato’s praises in his Bías contra Fortuna in which he also extols a host of male and female characters (Poesías 497-499).

In a fifteenth-poem by Diego de Burgos influenced by Dante Commedia and

Mena’s Laberinto, in which the poet seeks to extol the life and lament the death of the

Marquis of Santillana, Burgos repeats the same formula of praising the heroic suicide of

Filocrates (aka. Cheros) for killing himself rather than obeying his master Mark Antony’s request to kill him. But in the same verse, Burgos laments not being able to follow

Filocrates’s example due to the Church’s dogmatic prohibition:

¡O buen Filocrates, ó Eros, quán raro, quán noble es oy visto el vuestro morir! Si se permitiera poderos seguir, ¡quán dulçe á mis males me fuera reparo (213).47

In the very next verse, he accepts Aquinas’ hypothesis at face value that suicide runs counter to nature, so he complains about Nature’s Law (“blasmando la orden y ley de natura”). Just two stanzas later, Burgos refers to Augustine’s condemnation on religious grounds: “Y si por el çielo la muerte [voluntaria] se vieda” (213). These ideas conceived by Plato and Aristotle and advanced by Augustine and Aquinas are deeply rooted in the consciousness of the medieval man, and Santillana is linked to these philosophical doctrines because his poetic writings are engaged in a permanent dialogue with Stoic and

Platonic discourses.

Santillana, as Blüher points out, had a fascination with Seneca and Senecan moral philosophy. In some ways, Seneca helps to shape Santillana’s philosophical worldview, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 47 This linguistic formula became a literary motif in fifteenth-century Spain. After narrating several stories in which ladies kill themselves, Fernando de la Torre laments: “Todas aquestas muertes, sy la ley nuestra lo premitiese e gloria les diese, conosçida cosa es que su exienplo e doctrina bivir devría, segund la dignidad de sus exerçiçios que por la constançia e firmeza cometieron, non recusando sus trabajosas muertes resçebir, las quales dan gloriaa, non de sonbra mas verdadera del acto de lealtad” (175, emphasis added).

! 48! ! ! exposing him to divergent doctrinal tenets beyond those of the dominant religion. The

Marquis mirrors Seneca’s lax views regarding Stoic suicides and attitudes on suicidal rhetoric. Admiring and accepting other doctrinal views does not mean an abandonment of

Santillana’s own Christian doctrines and faith. Like other poets and thinkers, Santillana often advances Stoic doctrines to show the superiority of Christian beliefs, and suicide serves as a suitable paradigm because he juxtaposes both worldviews as means of exalting the sanctity of life and to overtly reject unwarranted suicide. This modus operandi became a topos in fifteenth-century Spain. There is a tension between philosophical ideologies that praise suicide as the highest expression of self-assertion and courage, on the one hand, and as a sinful and criminal act, on the other.

Pero Díaz de Toledo’ Razonamiento en la muerte del Marqués de Santillana, which is a moral treatise that seeks to extol the life and deeds of Íñigo López de

Mendoza, attempts to expound the moral-eschatological views on suicide. Díaz de

Toledo, who also translated Plato’s Phaedo and dedicated it to the Marquis of Santillana, places suicide and the immortality of the soul in the center of his epistemological inquiry.

Razonamiento exhibits an eclectic blend of Platonic, Augustinian, Thomistic and

Senecan-Stoic doctrines weaved into a unified discourse to defend the sinfulness and criminality of self-murder. The dialogue takes place between a Doctor and the Marqués de Santillana on the latter’s deathbed. In trying to explicate the benefits of a rational suicide—a pressing concern the real Santillana exhibits during his poetic and philosophical inquiries as a direct influence from Seneca’s doctrines on the Stoic notion of death (Blüher 194)—, the fictional Marqués invokes Socrates’s argument from Phaedo and Seneca’s views on suicide to shore up his thesis that suicide is not intrinsically

! 49! ! ! criminal or sinful. Díaz de Toledo regards Platonism and Stoicism as philosophical doctrines compatible with Christian theological values.48 And to enhance his argument,

Díaz de Toledo makes his fictional Marqués adduce Samson’s and the Christian martyrs’ willful deaths to show that suicide could be a blessed death. The Marqués’s view conjures up many of the doctrinal views that permitted rational suicides, as well as Saint

Augustine’s loophole to justify the Christians’ voluntary deaths. The function of this pro- suicide thesis is to set the foundation for a systematic defense against suicide by, ironically, using the dialectical antithesis from the same philosophical and theological sources, namely, Plato, Saint Augustine and Seneca.

The Doctor, then, has the task of refuting the Marqués’s pro-suicide discourse through dialectical means. The Doctor systematically rejects every single point raised by the Stoic Marqués, using most of the known arguments against suicide of his (Díaz de

Toledo’s) milieu. He refers to Aquinas’s anti-nature argument. Men should not commit suicide because “por razón natural que les deuiera retraer dello” (264). Saint Augustine’s interpretation of the Fifth Commandment follows: “Porque la feé lo proive e vieda”

(264). The Pythagorean-Platonic trope of God as master and men as God’s creatures:

“Dios tiene cuidado de nos, é con razon los ombres deven ser contados por unas de las principales cosas criadas de que Dios tiene cuidado” (265). Then he offers Socrates’ analogy of the slave who kills himself and makes the gods lose his chattel. Then he echoes Socrates’s and Augustine’s loophole: Men should not kill themselves “antes que

Dios le ponga alguna necesidat para ello” (265). This argument comes verbatim from his !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 48 In his prologue to his translation of Phaedo, Díaz de Toledo asserts that Plato spearheaded the doctrine of Stoicism, and then, he claims that Stoicism confirms the Christian views regarding the immortality of the soul: “De aquesta opinión [i.e., the immortality of the soul] fueron todos los philósophos que se llamaron stoicos. La qual opinión es grand confirmación de nuestra santa fe, e confussión de los malcreyentes” (223).

! 50! ! ! translation of Plato’s Phaedo (“antes que Dios le ponga alguna necessidad para ello”

237). Perhaps thinking of Aristotle’s injunction in his Ethics that the law does not consent suicide and that that which the law does not consent condemns, the Doctor says that neither the Old nor the New Testament “permita nin consienta que ninguno se mate”

(265). Toledo (and the Doctor) conveniently ignore that neither the Old nor the New

Testament overtly condemns self-murder. Instead, the Doctor quotes Augustine’s interpretation of the Fifth Commandment: “Ca el mandamiento de Dios que dixo: Non matarás, se entiende é deue entender: Non matarás á tí, nin á otro” (265). After this argument, the Doctor appropriates all of the arguments defended by Augustine in his De civitate Dei. The Doctor, then, serves as a mouthpiece to express most orthodox arguments regarding the unlawfulness of suicide. This form of argument by interlacing an heterogeneity of doctrines is common in anti-suicide treatises. Domingo de Soto moves from Platonic to Augustinian and from Aristotelian to Thomistic views to express his anti-suicide argument (Soto 221-23).

Given the admiration he felt toward his uncle, the Marquis of Santillana, Gómez

Manrique expresses similar attitudes and ideas regarding self-murder. His poetry is peppered with unambiguous praises toward suicide and self-murdered personalities. His gloss to stanzas 16-17 of an untitled consolatoria, for instance, ends with a vague note pertaining Anibal’s suicide. At the end of the gloss, Gómez Manrique comments:

Quando todo esto le falleçió, falleçiéndole el poder e más la esperança de se vengar, él mesmo, con la mano suya de tantas batallas vençedora, beuió vna copa de ponçoña e así murió escapándolo Fortuna de tantos peligros en el menor de los quales morir onrrado pudiera. Por tanto, nunca la fin onrrada plañir se deue (438).49 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49 This part of the gloss refers back to the last four lines of stanza XVII: Mas esta Fortuna que tales subidas dexó pocas vezes estar en vn ser, le truxo a tal tienpo que por más non ver dio fin a su vida con yeruas beuidas (436).

! 51! ! !

Far from censuring Anibal’s suicide, Gómez Marinque makes a value judgment regarding his death, referring to it as “honrrada,” which reflects his positive views on suicide. In the coplas he wrote in response to the Catalan misogynist Pero Torrellas, Gómez Manrique praises the maidens who have killed themselves to defend their honor: “Mas no puedo conoçer,/ saluo que tan buenas sean,/ que, por virtud mantener,/ muchas leý padeçer/ muerte; ¡que gloria posean!” (195). If these ladies have died to keep chastity, Gómez

Manrique asserts, they deserve to be (or even possess “posean”) in Heaven. But perhaps the most salient feature of Gómez Manrique’s attitude toward suicide is his lack of originality. He follows his uncle, the Marquis of Santillana, faithfully, both in suicidological opinion and in poetic expression. He exhibits the same tension, in that he extols self-murder as a principle and those who have suicided for a higher ideal, but, like

Santillana, he also feels compelled to remind his reader about the Church’s prohibition:

¡O yda voluntariosa!, ¡o llorosa despedida!, ¡o fuerça de amor forçosa!, ¡o pena tanto penosa!, ¡poned ya fin a tal vida! Vida tan desesperada commo yo biuo syn vos no deue ser deseada, mas con mis manos tirada, si lo permitiese Dios (170).

The poet’s psycho-spiritual tension is evident to the reader, and both the exclamation points and the anaphoric repetition underscore the vibrant force of his passion. Without his beloved, life is burdensome and painful, and he desires to end it. But his desire to kill himself is hampered by God’s prohibition. The last two verses have led Francisco Vidal

González to timidly refute Whinnom’s hypothesis that the fifteenth-century Spaniard did not take suicide seriously despite the Church’s prohibition (Gómez Manrique 170). Like

! 52! ! !

Santillana, Gómez Manrique feels a profound admiration for those who prefer a timely suicide to a miserable life, perhaps because their own religious values deter them from becoming “noble” suicides themselves.

These are, grosso modo, the dominant ideas and attitudes of suicide during the

Spanish Middle Ages. The Platonic ideas were institutionalized—via Saint Augustine— by the Church’s teachings, including the burial outside of consecrated grounds, as prescribed by the preacher of the Penitential which contain the Glosas Silenses (“extra ecclesiastice sepeliatur” 42), which was effective in Spain until the nineteenth century, as

José Jiménez Lozano showed in his study about the inhumation of criminals and suicides in unconsecrated corralillos or “cementerios civiles.” During the Middle Ages, it was common knowledge that those who committed suicide had to be buried on unconsecrated grounds or—though less frequently—remained unburied, as Juan de Urrea points out in his Penitencia de amor.50 Aristotle’s hypothesis that the suicide hurt the Polis gave rise to the penalization of self-murder by confiscating their goods and by legislating civil laws to prevent suicide and suicidal drives. Many kingdoms took advantage of these regal edicts to confiscate the suicide’s properties, profiting (often arbitrarily) from other people’s misfortunes. In thirteenth-century Spain, as shown in Alfonso X’s legislations and poetic texts, the laws were less stern. This leniency lent itself for misapplications of the law, so that wealthy and powerful families were seldom punished for “wrongful” suicides. Stoic ideas, on the other hand, did not have a major impact on the collective consciousness of the medieval man because it was overridden by the Platonic-Augustinian condemnation of suicide on religious grounds. Throughout the Western world, there were efforts from !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 50 Urrea makes two allusions to the punishment in his sentimental romance. First he makes his protagonist say: “Y el mayor daño que yo hallo es esto, es que mi dolencia estará syn remedio, y mi persona sin sepultura” (5). Then he reiterates: “Y el cuerpo no est’a enterrado/ por morir desesperado” (14).

! 53! ! ! thinkers to undermine Seneca’s exhortation to suicide. From Gautier de Saint-Victor to

Cartagena and Quevedo, theologians forged an open war against Seneca’s ideas that a man could exit life when he pleased and that suicide opened the doors to an ataraxic libertas. Seneca’s attitudes toward suicide, however, were faintly and in a veiled way echoed first by San Pedro’s Leriano and by the fifteenth-century writer of Curial e

Güelfa, and it was not until the Renaissance with the advent of the philosophical and

Stoic mindset of Michel de Montaigne that Seneca’s doctrines found an open ear in mainstream European intellectual circles.

! 54! ! Divine Judgment and the Dialectics of Suicide: The Miracle of the Pilgrim to Santiago

Suicide represents a minimal but important subject in Alfonso X el Sabio’s thirteenth- century Cantigas de Santa María. Out of the 427 cantigas that comprise Alfonso X’s

Marian collection, only two recount stories of successful suicides. Cantiga 84 narrates the story of woman who stabs herself after her husband facetiously tells her that he loves another lady more than he loves his own wife. The reader knows that the other lady he is referring to is Virgin Mary, but his wife does not. Unaware that her husband refers to

Mary, the jealous wife rushes to the kitchen to grab a knife and plunges it into her chest, as Alexander Murray points out, à la Lucretia. She dies immediately, but thanks to her husband’s mariolatry, Mary restores her life. After she is resurrected, both she and her husband decide to renounce the secular world and end their lives serving God in a cloister. The Wise King narrates the second suicide in cantiga 26, which is the main focus of this chapter. Suicide attempts and suicidal threats, however, are preponderant throughout the Cantigas. There are multiple miracles that involve characters who either attempt suicide or threaten to kill themselves. Among this group, we can count cantigas

16, 122, 125, 201, 281 and 369. Alfonso X’s representation of suicide in his Cantigas reflects his personal outlook regarding voluntary death. Throughout his legislation, his historical and his literary works, Alfonso X exhibits an unwavering respect for human rights and human dignity to the extent that his laxity regarding suicide was remarkably ahead of his time. Compared to other legislations of his time, Alfonso X looks after his subjects’ psychopathological wellbeing before looking to enrich himself by confiscating ! the goods of suicides. And it is likely that his lenient attitude draws him to cantigas 26 and 84, in which earlier recasts of these miracles display a leniency toward the suicides.

Let us recall that Alfonso’s Setena Partida only prescribes confiscation of goods for those who killed themselves after they have been indicted for a crime that merited the suicide’s loss of wealth. Without an indictment in process, the Crown could not claim any pecuniary escheat. In his Primera Partida, moreover, Alfonso X exempts those who kill themselves “por locura, o por dolor, o por cuyta de enfermedad, o por otro grand pesar que ouiesse.” In other words, we could argue that under the Alfonsine legislation, neither the deceived woman in cantiga 84 nor the suicide pilgrim of cantiga 26 would be indicted or condemned. The pilgrim (or his family) could argue that after the castration, he is in too much pain or that he is mentally unstable or any of the loopholes that the

Primera Partida offers. It is difficult to pinpoint at a particular event in Alfonso X’s life to explain his empathy toward suicide, and it falls out of the scope of this study. It may be worth noting, as Solalinde points out, that Alfonso X battled through illnesses that brought him to the verge of death. He lived in constant political struggle with his noblemen, and after his son and heir, Sancho, betrayed him, he suffered from depression, which accompanied him to his death in 1284. However, this was well after his effervescent period of literary activity. The only conclusion we can draw is that none of his written works demonize or criminalize those who have a legitimate reason to end their lives, and the pilgrim of cantiga 26 stands as an apposite example of Alfonso X’s leniency and empathy toward suicides.

Cantiga 26, as the vast majority of songs in the Cantigas, aims at showing Mary’s unending mercy even though the sinner has transgressed both the civil and the theological

! 56! ! ! laws. The plot of the miracle is rather straightforward, and its caption synthetizes the plot well: “Esta é cómo Santa María juigóu a alma do roméu que ýa a Santiago, que sse matóu na carreira por engano do diabo, que tornass’ ao corpo e fezesse pêedença.”51 A pilgrim, whose name the poet conceals to his reader is about to undertake his yearly visit to Saint

James’ shrine in Compostela. Instead of confessing his sins, as the customs prescribe,52 the pilgrim sleeps with his lover the night before he departs, thus committing the sin of lust with an immoral woman. Along with a group of companions, the pilgrim—whom

Berceo calls Guirart in miracle 8 of his Milagros; from now on, I will refer to the pilgrim as Guirart—sets off to Saint James’ shrine. Shortly after his departure, the devil appears to him disguised as Saint James while the rest of his comrades sleep. The disguised devil reminds him of his sin of lust, and he asserts that because of his wicked act, he (namely,

Saint James) is displeased. His sexual transgression has damned his soul. In order to redeem his soul, the devil-apostle states, Guirart must perform two actions. He has to cut off the penis, with which he has sinned, and then he has to slit his throat. Believing that the devil is Saint James, Guirart obeys his double command. He proceeds to castrate and to decapitate himself. As soon as he dies, a group of devils rush to take his soul. When they are passing by a chapel of Saint Peter, the Apostle James confronts them and asks them to hand over the pilgrim’s soul to him. The devils refuse to obey Santiago’s

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 51 All quotes of cantiga 26 come from Walter Mettmann’s Cantigas de Santa María edition. The pagination in Mettmann’s edition is between 123-6. From now on, I will only refer to the number of the verses and not to the page. 52 During the Middle Ages, pilgrimage was conceived as a movement toward the divine, and any contact with the sacred ought to be both with a clean spirit and with a clean conscience. If the journey is not done properly, i.e., confessing, repenting, penitence, giving alms, etc.—as the author of Veneranda dies asks rhetorically “Quid prodest...iter peregrinationis homini arripere, nisi ierit legitime?” (Codex Calistinus 157)—, it is a non-transcendental trip, as the devil tells the pilgrim in Jacobus de Voragine’s version of this miracle. Contrarily, peregrinating without confession only makes pilgrims vulnerable to diabolic temptations. Hence Haito, bishop of Basel, in the early ninth century, instructed those who whished to peregrinate that if they wish “to go to the shrines of the blessed apostles by reason of prayer [they] shall confess [their] sins at home and thus set out” (Webb 31).

! 57! ! ! injunction, adducing that Guirart’s soul is lawfully theirs given that he has been a consummate sinner. Since they cannot settle the dispute, Saint James suggests that they take the case to the Virgin Mary. During the trial, each part defends its arguments. The devils marshal that the pilgrim is a suicide and a sinner, and Saint James adduces that

Satan has deceived the pilgrim by usurping his identity. After a short deliberation, Mary decides that the sinning pilgrim should return to the world to repent and atone for his sins. Mary restores his life, but not his penis. Instead, Guirart ends up without a phallus and only a urethral orifice through which he can urinate, and the cantiga ends with a chorus lauding Mary’s mercy and wisdom.

! 58! ! The Pilgrim’s Suicide and its Double-Bind Etiology

When the devil approaches Guirart to tempt him to kill himself, he makes him believe that he is the Apostle Saint James. Satan, moreover, persuades him that his soul is condemned and beyond divine mercy, unless he is willing to sacrifice his worldly life.

Guirart, as any informed man living in the Middle Ages, is aware that suicide is a crime and a mortal sin, but he might also have known that celestial beings can override canonical laws against suicide, and Samson and the Christian martyrs stand as testament to this divine prerogative. Since Satan is represented in medieval accounts as a cunning and knowledgeable character, we can assume that Satan knows the ins and outs of suicidal discourse and the possible weak points that he could use to his advantage. The devil, then, begins to weave a trap to place the pilgrim in what Gregory Bateson calls

“double bind.” Satan presents Guirart with the following syllogistic situation: you have sinned. Your sin has placed your soul in Satan’s hands. You only have the following options. Either you renounce this world or the next. If you wish to save your soul, you ought to kill yourself. If you want to save your life, you must renounce Heaven.

Whatever decision the pilgrim makes, he has to forgo a life. The devil cunningly places

Guirart in a double bind.

Although Bateson’s theory of double bind has been criticized and challenged, it still offers literary critics hermeneutic tools to analyze psychological processes that take place when people feel that they have been “put on the spot.” Bateson’s double-bind principle still helps us understand key aspects of the complexity of human behavior and psychology. Although Bateson’s heuristic methodology is drawn from his analysis of schizophrenia, he forewarns that a “non-schizophrenic” person caught in a double bind ! can behave and respond to certain situations similarly to how a schizophrenic would react

(201).53 In his theory of le désir mimétique, René Girard validates Bateson’s theory when explaining the internal mechanism of desire and its natural tendency toward a double- bind paradigm if left to its own inclination. For Girard, desire has a built-in apparatus for double bindedness since there is always the contradictory double imperative: Imitate my desire, and don’t imitate me (Violence 147-148). Double bind, as Bateson notes, is not constrained to the discipline of schizophrenia. Rather, it is a situational phenomenon that can surface when a person is confronted with an emotional or psychological impasse.

Bateson describes “double bind” with a series of injunctions. The most relevant for the purpose of our interdisciplinary implementation is what he calls “a primary negative injunction,” which contains the following contradictory imperatives: (a) “Do not do so and so, or I will punish you.” Or (b) “if you do not do so and so, I will punish you” (208).

The object of the injunctions is enfolded within a hermetic paradigm, which only allows him “to act” or “not to act.” Regardless of his decision, he will receive correctional punishment, which could range from withdrawal of love to hate or the anger from the subject of the injunction. This hypothesis is better exemplified with the Zen master’s conundrum.

Bateson recounts the story of how in Zen Buddhism, the Zen master attempts to bring enlightenment to his pupils by holding a stick over the pupil’s head and threatening fiercely: “If you say this stick is real, I will strike you with it. If you say this stick is not real, I will strike you with it. If you don’t say anything, I will strike you with it” (208).

Regardless of the pupil’s action, the master will hit him. The schizophrenic, Bateson

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 53 Bateson later adds: "When a person is caught in a double bind situation, he will respond defensively in a manner similar to the schizophrenic" (209).

! 60! ! ! asserts, often finds himself in the situation of the Zen master’s pupil. Whereas the Zen pupil could take the stick away from the Zen master, the schizophrenic does not have the choice of not caring about his relationship with his “mother.” This contradictory double imperative is also attested in medieval literature, mostly in religious accounts as a means of underscoring God’s mercy. In Hrotsvit of Gandersheim’s drama The conversion of general Gallicanus, the emperor Constantine the Great finds himself in a double-bind situation that threatens to upend his kingdom’s political system. His own dependence on others has taken him to the extreme that no matter what decision he takes he will suffer the loss of either his worldly kingdom or the kingdom of Heaven.

When Constantine asks his general Gallicanus to subjugate the Scythians, the general reminds Constantine of his services to the empire over the years and demands compensation. Knowing that Gallicanus safeguards the wellbeing of the empire,

Constantine grants anything his general desires. Constantine commits the folly of granting the boon before knowing what the favor would be. Emboldened by the emperor’s submissive acquiescence, Gallicanus asks for Constantia, Constantine’s daughter, in marriage. At the behest of her father, Constantia has taken a vow of chastity in order to serve God. Like her father, Constantia is inadvertently placed in a double bind because whatever course of action she chooses, she will be hurt. She would either anger

God or her father. She decides to disavow her father’s decision, asserting that she would rather die than break her sacred vow. After hearing his daughter’s resolution, Constantine himself knows he is caught in a double bind. The aging emperor recognizes it when he declares:

But now I am sorely pressed because if I allow you to persevere in your vow which is what I should do as your father,

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then I will suffer great harm in public affairs. If, however, God forbid, I force you to wed, I will have to undergo eternal punishment (12).

On the one hand, if Constantia violates her religious vow, it would mean eternal damnation for both father and daughter since the vow spiritually binds both Constantia and Constantine. On the other hand, if he favors the salvation of their souls, he may ruin his kingship, and not taking any action at all will amount to taking the “option” of ignoring his general’s request, which may force him to lose his empire. As with the Zen pupil, a double bind places the emperor under a system of punitive imperatives. At the end, his critical impasse is resolved through his daughter’s shrewdness and divine intervention.

Bateson underscores two essential components in double-bind situations. First, there has to be two or more persons: i.e., the object and subject of the double bind. He identifies the subject of the double bind as the “mother” of the victim or “some combination of mother, father, and/or siblings,” but then Bateson isolates the mother as the coercive force. The mother of the schizophrenic, therefore, emits the conflicting injunctions that make the victim withdraw from the social world and be unable to discriminate between metacommunicative statements (208). For Constantine, the double bind is the binary of either losing his kingdom or his soul. In the romeu’s case, however,

God (or the Church) takes on the mother’s role. The Church adopts Saint Augustine’s suicidological dogma that states: you may not kill yourself, but it leaves a loophole to excuse those who kill themselves on God’s behest. If God commands you to kill yourself,

Augustine asserts, it is treasonous and sinful not to obey. The predicament of the romeu, then, stands as follows: a devil, which is usurping the physical complexion of a divine being (Saint James), commands Guirart to kill himself. Because the pilgrim is endowed

! 62! ! ! with the divine gift of free will, he has the “choice” of acting upon the command or not.

Regardless of what decision he takes, he will be punished. If he commits suicide, he may be condemned for violating the Fifth Commandment that Saint Augustine interpolated as:

“Non occides: nec alterum ergo, nec te.” This injunction also includes the punishment of forfeiting his life. If he disobeys “Saint James,” Guirart will likely be punished for not following the direct command of a divine being, as Saint Augustine noted.54

When the devil-apostle approaches Guirart, he identifies himself as Saint James.

Despite traveling every year to Santiago’s shrine, the pilgrim cannot discern between the physical appearance of the two because the devil has come to embody Saint James. The usurpation is not only physical. It is also ontological and behavioral. The devil looks, speaks and behaves like Saint James, which prevents the romeu from suspecting deceit.

The pilgrim’s naked eye, which is symbolically clouded by his sin of lust, cannot discern the difference between the saint and the demon. The artists of the miniatures capture

Satan’s personification with masterful skill:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 54 As we pointed out in the Introduction, when defending the suicides of Samson and the Christian virgins, Saint Augustine averred that when God commanded a person to kill himself, if he/she did not obey, he/she could be charged with contempt of authority.

! 63! ! !

In a dramatic scene peppered by a dynamic body language and the attentive gaze of the witnesses,55 the miniaturists depict an ongoing conversation between the devil and the pilgrim. Dressed in holy garb, holding what seems like a sacred text in his left hand and raising the index of his right hand toward Heaven in a teaching demeanor, Satan strives to utter his “divine” message to a well-dressed pilgrim, while his companions unblinkingly observe the conversation. Satan looks at Guirart straight into his eyes, representing himself as a sincere interlocutor. While the tempter’s façade shows the perfect

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 55 The representation is not completely faithful to the text. The conversation between the devil and the pilgrim takes place without witnesses at the nighttime, while everybody else sleeps.

! 64! ! ! physiognomy of a celestial being, the back—hidden from the pilgrim’s visual field, save for the tips of his black horns—hides the “real” physical and spiritual identity of the devil. Guirart is holding a pilgrim’s staff in his right hand, which, as Haito, Bishop of

Basel (ca. 763-836) notes, is supposed to protect pilgrims from “fantasmata diabolica.”56

In Guirart’s case the staff does not protect the pilgrim from demonic apparitions, which attests to the pilgrim’s sinfulness. The artists represent the hidden part as black, which is symbol of the demon’s perversity and his inner spiritual life. The black figure foils the whiteness and purity of the façade that presumably resembles Saint James.

Satan’s appropriation of Saint James’ identity constitutes a fundamental element in Alfonso X’s narrative, which serves the purpose of making the reader identify with the deceived pilgrim. The poet describes the devil’s complexion as “mais branco que un armŷo” (31), which radically contrasts with the typological representation of devils as teratological beings that are blacker than tar. As Chorpenning notes in his interpretation of San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor, “the demonic world is one of night and darkness” (346).

According to Daniel Gregorio, the representation of demons as black figures dates back to the beginning of Christianity.57 In Theophilus’ miracle (cantiga 3), for example,

Alfonso X depicts Satan’s color as “ao demo mais ca pez (tar)/ negro do fog’ infernal,”

(47-8) because appearance is an externalization of moral and spiritual qualities. Cantiga

74 underlines this element with the example of the painter whom the devil wants to kill because he painted the devil as black and ugly and Mary as white and beautiful (“Esto !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 56 For the importance of the pilgrim’s staff and for the impending demonic danger, see Márquez Villanueva: “Contra asechanzas del enemigo de las almas” (Santiago 91). And Victor Turner and Edith Turner: “Since the supernatural realm may contain beings other than God and the saints, the Church is mindful that apparitions and visions may be counterfeited by inimical supernatural agents like the devil” (173). 57 Gregorio says that “la representación del demonio como hombre negro existía ya desde casi el inicio del cristianismo, pero no podemos pasar por alto esa asociación tácita entre el hombre malo y la bestia salvaje” (290). Cf. Francisco Corti (2006-7).

! 65! ! ! que ch’ eu faço con mucha razón,/ ca tú sempre mal fazes, e do ben non/ te queres per nulla ren entrameter” 16-18). On the other hand, as García Cuadrado notes, the artists of the miniatures “reproducen siempre vírgenes de rostros claros” (354), which is meant to symbolize their moral integrity and spiritual purity. The poet makes use of rhetorical devices in order to convey his ideas more accurately in cantiga 26. His syntactical deployment of comparative discourse serves the function of fixing a seemingly objective image (i.e., pez, carbón, or armiño) in the mind of the reader. When the imagery of the object is fixed in the mind of the reader, the poet obliterates the images by painting a more extreme image that exceeds in form and degree that which served as premise for his comparison. Hence the devil, whose factual color is blacker than tar, presents himself to the pilgrim with a complexion that is traditionally assigned to celestial beings, i.e., whiter than ermine. The dichotomy white-black underscores the duality good vs. evil, a set of dualities that the devil momentarily embodies to beguile the pilgrim. When a white devil appears in a thaumaturgical landscape, claiming to be a saint, Guirart cannot—and as

Augustine and Aquinas warn should not—disobey his commands.

When Saint Augustine condemns the Donatists’ libido moriendi in Sermon 313E, he underlines Jesus’s spiritual strength to repel Satan’s suicidal temptation. Saint

Augustine quotes biblical sources, where the tempter commands Jesus to kill himself:

“Praecipita te, inquit, et si filius dei es, angeli te suscipiunt: quid times?” Unlike the undiscerning Donatists who may have ceded to the demon’s suggestions, Christ uses biblical discourse to reject Satan’s temptation: “Redi retro, Satanas, scriptum est enim: non temptabis dominum deum tuum” (Obras completas, “Sermones” 574). Augustine posits Christ as the victor of Satan and his lures. Contrarily those who fall under the

! 66! ! ! devil’s purview, such as Judas, the Donatists (or Guirart), are vulnerable to temptations mainly because of past sins and weakened morality.58 But there are two fundamental reasons this is so. First, Saint Augustine himself does not condemn suicide categorically.

He leaves a loophole that permits suicides to claim divine command. Second, unlike

Jesus, who knows He is dealing with Satan’s deceit, neither the Donatists nor Guirart know they are being tempted by the devil. Rather, like Samson or Abraham who trust their actions derive from God’s command, Donatists and Guirart believe the tempter is a heavenly agent.

Because the devil’s personification is both physical and ontological, Guirart finds himself in a difficult predicament. Certainly he knows that suicide comprises multiple crimes—homicide, despair, divine disobedience—, and, as Saint Augustine and Schiller assert, since sin and death are simultaneous, it leaves no space for repentance or penitence.59 In Guaferius’s recast of this miracle, ca. 1180, which is the first recorded version of this miracle (see Murray, Suicide Vol. I, 277-286, for a thorough analysis of the miracle’s oral and written tradition), when the devil suggests suicide to Guirart, the pilgrim boldly articulates Saint Augustine’s anti-suicide doctrine: “Hoc [Suicide] fidei... esse repugnans", which Murray translates as “this act [suicide]/ impugns our faith”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 58 Saint Augustine states in Sermon 313E: “Diabolus ergo, qui persuasit haereticis separationem, Donatistis praecipitationem, ipse persuasit Iudae et traditionem et desperationem et laqueum. Tu ergo, Donatista, qui te vis occidere, qui vitas traditoris laqueum, quare non vitas diaboli praecipitium? Diabolus persuasit Iudae, ut sibi collum ligaret; ipse est qui suggessit domino, ut se praecipitaret. Ergo diabolum in utroque vitate: sicut in laqueo diabolum vitatis, ita praecipitio diabolo consentire non debetis. Suggerens quippe diabolus praecipitium quid audivit a domino? Redi retro, satanas (Mt 4,10). O Donatista, hoc dic diabolo, quando tibi suggerit praecipitium; qui etiam vos implevit, ut praecipitati colamini. Revera enim, fratres, et ipsi se praecipitant, et a suis perversis populis praecipitantur.” 59 De civitate Dei, Book 1, cap. XXV : “Nonne satius est flagitium committere, quod poenitendo sanetur, quam tale facinus ubi locus salubris poenitentiae non relinquitur?” Cf. Friedrich Schiller's Love and Intrigue, London, 1903, pg. 398, when Miller is trying to dissuade his daughter Louise from killing herself for love, Miller warns her: “Suicide is the most horrible of sins, my child. 'Tis the only one that can never be repented, since death arrives at the moment the crime is committed.”

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(Suicide Vol. I 282). Gauferius portrays the psychological tension that the apostle-devil creates in the pilgrim with his contradictory injunctions. In the elaboration of this poem in Liber Sancti Jacobi, Guirart exhibits the same awareness of the sinfulness of suicide.

Reacting to Satan’s temptation, the pilgrim retorts that if he follows his command, he will turn into a “homicida de sí mismo, lo cual he oído muchas veces que es condenable ante

Dios” (Guiance, Los discursos 365). Suicide is punishable in the eyes of God but also in the eyes of the people. Hence Guirart, just as any devout and informed Christian of

Alfonso X’s time, seems to know that the Church forbids suicide, so he must also know of the Augustinian tenet which teaches that God could command suicide and that His command ought to be obeyed. Certainly Satan knows this too, and he also knows that

Guirart is trapped within the net that Saint Augustine dialectically weaved through his intricate doctrines of salvation. Therefore, the devil approaches the pilgrim with full assurance that what he is about to demand has theological justification:

Semellança fillou de Santiago e disse: “macar m' eu de ti despago, a salvaçon eu cha trago do que fust' errar, por que non cáias no lago d'iferno, sen dultar” (34-39).

The tempter addresses him with a discourse of antithetical polarities. While he overtly asserts that he is angry with the pilgrim for his sin of lust, he affirms that he brings redemption. The salvation he offers presupposes damnation, and this “salvaçon” represents the antithesis of damnation, in which Guirart had fallen, victim of yet another demonic suggestion: lust. Before even advising the penitence he has to perform in order to save his soul, the devil implants a terrifying fear in the pilgrim’s psyche. Guirart cannot deny the charges. He is aware of his sin(s). The apostle-devil puts him “on the

! 68! ! ! spot,” and as Bateson affirms, when a person feels “on the spot” and is placed in a double bind, “an individual will take a metaphorical statement literally when he is in a situation where he must respond, where he is faced with contradictory messages, and when he is unable to comment on the contradictions” (209). After being openly confronted, the pilgrim responds in a similar manner a schizophrenic would. By showing knowledge of a private and intimate moment, the devil shows that he is an otherworldly being, and this revelation serves as proof to the pilgrim that he stands before a “divinity” whose words convey God’s will. And God’s will is that he has to sacrifice his life on the altar of salvation.

The demon-apostle has laid a web from which Guirart cannot escape. On the one hand, Guirart is in the presence of the “divine,” and on the other hand, he knows his accuser is right about his sins. He has transgressed the human and divine laws that censure sex out of wedlock. Since he is psychologically and spiritually vulnerable, Satan can now beguile him with his double command:

Mas ante farás esto que te digo, se sabor ás de seer meu amigo: talla o que trages tigo que te foi deytar en poder do êemigo, e vai-te degolar (41-46).

The astute devil plays with multiple dualities: he tempts him to commit a double sin, castration and suicide. He lures the pilgrim into cutting off both his genitalia and his head. The tempter goes out of his way to ensure that Guirart commits both sins. The order of his command suggests that Satan wants Guirart to fulfill his double sin by self- castrating first, which would not take his life right away, and decapitation afterwards, which will both kill him and damn him simultaneously. The victim could have died from

! 69! ! ! either of the two severances. Without proper hygiene and aseptic knives, his self- castration alone would have slowly killed him. But the devil exhibits a penchant for the gruesome. Gautier de Coinci, whose version of the miracle, according to Teresa Marullo and Mettmann, serves as a direct source to Alfonso X, writes a more graphic castration, making the pilgrim excise both his testes and his penis (tes genestailles et ton menbre).

Alfonso X’s representation of Guirart’s punishment is not as gruesome as Coinci, but if suicide is the ultimate goal, the act of castration (beyond the contrapasso symbolism and the oblique biblical reference that an infected limb has to be removed to avoid infecting the whole body) is an avoidable cruelty both aesthetically and pragmatically.

In order to ensure the success of his deceit, the demon has to achieve a level of verisimilitude. Hence he has to create a breach between his counterfeit personification and his real being. Since he is pretending to be his own enemy, he seeks to demonize himself, and he starts by referring to himself in third person (en poder do êemigo). For a

Christian, the quintessential “enemy” is Satan. The reader can see that the poet of the cantiga (and Satan) use language as means to create a dramatic effect, which is to lead readers to commiserate and identify with the pilgrim. Even more fascinating, he alludes to himself pejoratively to avoid suspicion. This attests to the level in which Satan moves away from himself to incarnate, represent and be Saint James. Even if only for a brief moment, Satan rejects his own evil nature to feign his primitive angelic nature before his

Fall. Paradoxically, he reassumes divinity in order to prompt evilness.

Teresa García-Sabell, who explores the history and influence of the pilgrimage to

Compostela from French and Provençal troubadours, suggests that Satan coerces Guirart to kill himself: “Lo obliga a matarse” (364). The devil, however, is very meticulous about

! 70! ! ! his process of persuasion so as to try not to violate any of the divine laws that govern the sublunary world. The demon temps Guirart to voluntarily end his life. If Satan “forces” the pilgrim to kill himself, the pilgrim would not be charged with suicide because self- murder is contingent upon motivation and willfulness. If a death is not willed, it falls outside of the purview of suicide. García-Sabell’s instinctive interpretation, however, attests to the effectiveness of Alfonso X’s writing, for he has been taking measures for the reader to identify with the pilgrim, depicting him as a victim of evil forces.

While the devil-apostle technically does not—and cannot—compel (obliga) the pilgrim to kill himself, it may seem as if he has forced him to castrate and decapitate himself because of the double bind. To say that Satan “obliga” the self-murder is tantamount to accusing Satan of homicide and to absolving the romeu of suicide, which is how some other readers interpret the poem. Alluding to Guirart’s self-castration,

Leopoldo Augusto de Cueto, Marqués de Valmar, one of the first critics of Alfonso X’s literature, asserts that Satan coerces (“obliga”) Guirart into castrating himself.60 Satan’s tempting suggestions cannot (and should not) be interpreted as coercion because it undermines the empowering effects of free will. As the fifteenth-century Catalan poet,

Ausiàs March asserts, fear to future evil makes many people kill themselves. March alludes to Cato’s suicide to show that men exercise their freedom in deciding to end their lives. Man cannot be coerced to kill himself because it falls under the jurisdiction of free will: “Car de tot àls pot hom ésser forçat/ sinó·n morir, qu·és en lo franch juí” (322).

Much like the Marquis of Cueto and García-Sabell, the poet shows unshaking benevolence toward the pilgrim despite his manifold trespasses. As I pointed out in the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 60 Augusto de Cueto (un)-consciously absolves the pilgrim of willful castration, saying “obliga á que se mutile á la manera de Orígenes” (112).

! 71! ! ! introduction, Alfonso X enacted some of the most lenient legislation regarding suicide, and his endorsed literature is consistent with his leniency. In Alfonso X’s legislation and literature, suicides are not merely objects that are to be taken advantage of and then discarded, as the French and English legislations did.61 Suicides are humanized by the personal travails and motivations that lead them to end their lives. Even the sin of lust, which makes him vulnerable to satanic temptations, is effectively blamed on the “moller sen bondade” (24). Though not explicitly avowed, the moller sen bondade is either Satan metamorphosed into the wicked lady or a satanic agent whose only intention is to upend

Guirart’s moral integrity before his journey. Unlike the evil woman, the poet depicts the pilgrim, who is described as a “moreu con bôa voontade” (20), as a sincere and righteous person, deceived by both the woman and the devil. These rhetorical signifiers are meant to lead the reader to place himself in the pilgrim’s position, underscoring that his suicide does not occur in a vacuum or merely out of his sheer immorality. Despite his good intentions and his religiosity, the devil and the woman coalesce to lead him astray.

Before Alfonso X tells his reader that Guirart castrates and kills himself, he asserts that the pilgrim sincerely believes that the command is a divine order: “O romeu, que ssen dovida cuidava/ que Santiag’ aquelo mandava” (48-9). With keen poetic artistry, the poet drags out the news of the pilgrim’s suicide using two relative pronouns (“que”).

He employs syntax to create an aesthetic effect and to intensify the reader’s interest. The poet enhances the dramatic thrust of his tale as he lets the story unfold. The syntactical structure of these two dependent clauses is an important tool to understand the author’s attitude toward the highly dialectical phenomenon of suicide, and to gauge the weight of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 61 Schmitt studies how authorities in France placed suicides’ bodies into barrels (tonneau) and dumped them into the river (11-12). Murray also studies the customs of casting the bodies of suicide into barrels and disposing them into rivers. See Murray’s Suicide Vol. II (37-41, 446-7, see also image in 328).

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Augustine’s views on clergy and laity alike. Because the romeu undoubtedly (ssen dovida) believes that the orders come from a holy man, he is caught in a double bind. The poet does not describe the injunction as a suggestion or a temptation. He defines it as a direct command (“mandava”). The direct command, however, does not wipe away

Guirart’s responsibility in his own murder. When Satan tempts Jesus, he also uses an imperative “praecipita te.” Rather, it simply attests to Satan’s dialectic power of persuasion. Since the command is perceived as a divine order, the pilgrim feels compelled to obey. Disobeying God—or any heavenly being—, as both Augustine and

Aquinas claim, would deserve divine punishment. Obeying these commands would end his life and, potentially, condemn his soul. Because he faithfully believes that it is a divine command, he does not think he is risking his soul’s damnation, but, as in both

Gauferius’s original version and the Codex Calixtinus’s recast, he is keenly aware of the sinfulness of suicide. Hence even if he places a lesser value on his worldly life, the anti- suicide condemnation still weighs on his consciousness, which could have intensified his predicament. The contradictory injunctions and the painful psychological torture brings out a benevolent disposition in Alfonso X and in many other people both inside and outside the diegetic framework.

Alfonso X is not the only poet to feel empathy toward the wronged pilgrim. For brevity’s sake, the Wise King does not mention how the reader/listener received Guirart’s story within the cantiga. But the miniatures, which are included in the codex known as the Códice Rico—one of the four surviving codices of Alfonso X’ Cantigas—, suggest that the companions of the pilgrim play a preponderant role in the legitimization and diffusion of the miracle. Luis Beltrán argues that the presence of Guirart’s companions as

! 73! ! ! ocular witnesses of the deceit represents the miniaturists’ conscious desire to “manifestar cómo el milagro pudo llegar a ser conocido, reconocido” (144). Although the cantiga does not support the artists’ pictorial representation of the gazing companions, it is revealing that the pilgrim’s thaumaturgic ordeal has become a popular tale both intra- and extradiegetically. There have other sources that allow us to argue that metadiegetically, the pilgrim earns both worldly fame and theological empathy. In his retelling of the milagro, Gonzalo de Berceo stresses that Guirart’s miracle is widely celebrated in Galicia and its surroundings. His metaphysical experience makes him an iconic figure in

Christendom, and local people flock to see him while he has remained in Compostela:

Sonó por Compostela esta grand maravilla, viniénlo a veer todos los de la villa; dicién: “Esta tal cosa, deviemos escrivilla; los que son por venir, plazrális de oílla.”

Quando fo en su tierra, la carrera complida, e udieron la cosa que avié contecida, tenié grandes clamores, era la gent movida por veer esti Lázaro dado de muert a vida (215-216).

People go to see Guirart for two main reasons. First, they have an aberrant curiosity to see his scars, and second he has been in direct contact with the divine, he has fought against evil, and he has conquered it. Hearing his story does not seem to satisfy people’s curiosity. They want to apprehend and feel him by means of the visual hapticity of the eyes. Because he has been in direct contact with a host of divine beings, people begin to perceive him as a man touched by the divine, someone who is worthy of veneration.

After he departs from Compostela, the people of his kingdom (Lyon, France, according to the tradition) flock to go hear his story and see his bodily scars, which become a symbol of both his sin of lust and God’s grace bestowed upon him.

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Berceo’s likening Guirart with the biblical Lazarus, who has physical contact with

Jesus, represents an effort to highlight the pilgrim’s status as a Christian icon. The parallels with Lazarus go beyond resurrection. Johan Huizinga notes that after his resurgence, Lazarus lives in misery and horror knowing that he has to face death and

God’s judgment once again after his death (Presilla 418). Guirart follows a similar path toward spiritual purification. In Berceo’s recount, Guirart retires to a cloister in order to renounce the world and prepare to embrace the eternal life in God’s service. Alfonso X likely knows Guirart’s laudable resolution to embrace a religious order but decides not to include it in his version, which allows the reader to participate in the elaboration of the miracle. The pilgrim’s trajectory draws a straight line from sinfulness to holiness, from damnation to blessedness and from being literally in the hands of the devils to being purified through God’s (and Mary’s) mercy. People want to write his story because his life is a living testament to Mary’s benevolence and unmitigated love for mankind, even if we are sinners. Guirart returns to the world to preach through first-hand experience that

Good trumps Evil, and that both Saint James and Mary will stand by sinners if they are devout believers. García Cuadrado reminds us that in the thirteenth century, Mary “es esencialmente refugium peccatorum y en calidad de tal María cuida, cura y en definitiva atiende a los que necesitan de su socorro” (352). And cantiga 26’s power stems from this very premise. Far from being anathema, Guirart’s suicide braces his faith and hope in

Mary and God. Both the poet of the cantiga and Guirart seek to reproduce the same devotion to Mary in the listener and reader. Miracle 26 can be interpreted as an

! 75! ! ! exhortation never to despair of God’s mercy even if you are a consummated sinner, for

God is with you if you have faith in Him.62

Other exegetical commentaries of the miracle are equally benevolent toward the suicide pilgrim. Supporting his thesis on Saint Augustine’s De civitate Dei, the Florentine

Dominican friar Remigio de’ Girolami (born c. 1247) asserts that suicides who are prompted by demonic deceit should be forgiven. If the victim truly believes, as the poet of our miracle tells us Guirart did, that God commands their deaths, no penalty should be exerted upon the victim. Remigio adduces our pilgrim’s miracle to enhance his argument:

If anyone should [commit suicide] through deception of the Devil, but in the belief that he is doing it by inspiration of God, he will easily win pardon from the most merciful Lord and Lady, as we learn from the pilgrim from Lyon and the other man who went to Santiago (Murray Vol. II 233-4).

Alexander Murray argues that Remigio’s indulgent stance regarding “divine”-induced suicides is a direct allusion to the “open fissure” that Saint Augustine adopts from

Socrates’ argument in Phaedo, asserting that “Remigio opened the fissure wide” (234).63

Not all hagiographers, however, are as benevolent as Alfonso X, Berceo and Remigio with Guirart. The thirteenth-century Franciscan theologian John of Wales, as Murray points out, is highly critical of the pilgrim’s suicide (see Murray Vol II, 212-3).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 62 Let us recall that Satan was effective in persuading victims to despair because he made them feel that their sins were far too many or too great to be forgiven. Juan del Encina captures this idea perfectly in one of his Psalmus in which he begs those who hear the poet’s cries “den favor para matarme” because his head (seso) is filled—possibly with sins—, so he has to kill himself immediately because he feels beyond salvation: “Mi seso está ya muy ciego,/ que yo me mataré luego./ No ay ninguna redempción” (346, emphasis added). 63 Because of “the multiplicity of versions in which the Santiago story now circulated,” Murray argues, Remigio made a mistake by making this miracle into two. Murray, however, does not take into account Voragine’s Golden Legend, which narrates two versions of what seem like the same miracle. The first exemplum lacks many of the details of the second, but it is likely that the suicide is one and the same. Therefore, if someone made a mistake, it is not, as Murray contends, the thirteenth-century Florentine friar but Jacobus de Voragine or another writer who copied the same miracle as if they were two.

! 76! ! !

After his altruistic caveat that the pilgrim sincerely believed the devil is Saint

James, the Wise King informs the reader that the pilgrim has followed the apostle-devil’s commands:

Quanto lle mandou tallava; poi-lo foi tallar, log’ enton se degolava, cuidando ben obrar (50-3).

The poet uses a tautological discourse (tallava...tallar) in contiguous verses to showcase the double mutilation. His action involves a double severance. He cuts off his penis and his head. Guirart dies a violent death, but he dies a blessed death believing that God is pleased with his action. Unbeknownst to him, his double sin only pleases the counterfeit divinity incarnated by Satan. The devil is pleased that his ruse works, but the same cunning usurpation becomes a determining element during the trial, as Saint James argues that Satan’s embodiment of a saintly physiognomy undermines both divine and human notions of free will.

Much like suicide, usurping a saint’s identity is neither explicitly forbidden nor allowed in the Bible. Hence the defense (Santiago) and the judge (Mary) use it against

Satan’s “divine rights” to inveigle souls. When Saint Isidore explores the etymology of the word “Satanas,” he argues that one definition is “temptator, quia temptandam iustorum innocentiam postulat, sicut in Iob scribitur” (Ety. Lib. VIII, XI, 19). Hence, it is theologically allowed for the devil to tempt people to sin. Tempting a sinner is an essential aspect of his characterological identity as an agent of evil. After all, Jesus allows

Satan to tempt him to commit suicide, but Christ does not fall into the trap. Far from being detrimental to the soul, Saint Isidore contends that demonic temptations contribute

! 77! ! ! to the perfection of souls.64 Jesus is further ennobled and purified by the enemy’s suggestions. Satan does not succeed in luring Christ into sin. Jesus, however, enjoys a vintage point that others do not enjoy. The Messiah knows he is dealing with demonic temptation. In the hagiography of San Millán, Braulio of Zaragoza recounts a metaphysical contest between San Millán and Satan. After living a long life of abstinences and forty years of holiness in deserted places, the tempter appears to him and invites him to fight—a metaphor for the temptations of the flesh. Satan’s temptations are so strong that after a long struggle, Saint Millán is “scarcely able to fight back” (Fear 27).

When San Millán is about to give in, he begs for divine help, and he is able to defeat the foe. Like Jesus, San Millán understands who his enemy is, and he is not caught in a double bind. Who knows what would have happened if they had been led to believe that

God (and not Satan) was commanding them to perform an immoral action. Guirart’s position is more like Abraham’s double bind than like Jesus or San Millán’s. Although at some level Guirart and Abraham’s conundrum differ, both hermetically entail a difficult choice between committing murder and angering God with disobedience. In his anti- suicide discourse, Saint Augustine brings Abraham’s case to the forefront to argue that because God has commanded Isaac’s death, his sacrificial act is praiseworthy, while he reiterates that God’s commands have to be observed.65 Søren Kierkegaard notices

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 64 Book 3, Sententias, cap. V, 4. “De tentationibus diaboli", Saint Isidore says: "Esti nolens, utilitati tamen sanctorum servit diabolus, quando eos tentationibus uis not deiicit, sed potius erudit. Nam temptationes, quas ille ad humanum interitum movet, interdum Spiritus sanctus ad exercitium virtutum salubri utilitate convertit.” See also, paragraph 9. Cf. Richard of St. Victor, Writings on the Spiritual Life, ed. by Christopher P. Evans, “Tractate on certain Psalms,” Brepols, 2013, pg. 211: “Based on a far different consideration, the divine dispensation allows the enemy to carry out his temptation, since God is always mindful of human salvation in all that he does.... And yet one must know that divine goodness relaxes the reins of freedom for the devil, whenever he determines that the devil's attack can benefic man.” 65 De civitate Dei, Book I, XXI: “Abraham non solum non est culpatus crudelitatis crimine, uerum etiam laudatus est nomine pietatis, quod uoluit filium nequaquam scelerate, sed oboedienter occidere.” And just a little later, Augustine warns fathers not to do what Abraham did (or was about to do) to Isaac, while it

! 78! ! !

Abraham’s dire impasse and notes that if the patriarch had not had faith, he would have escaped his double bind by committing suicide. Ironically, though, his suicide would have placed him in yet another double bind.66

After Guirart has killed himself, a group of demons (demôes) come to transport the sinner’s soul to hell. The devils come to the scene with a sense of urgency:

E logo chegaron a alma tomar demôes, que a levaron mui toste sen tardar (57-8).

It would appear that the devils know there has been an anomaly in the way the process of deception takes place. Despite their swiftness, while they are passing by a chapel of Saint

Peter, Saint James intercepts them to recover the bound soul. In the miniature, as Keller and Grant Cash point out, the artists depict the devils and Saint James as playing a game of tug-of-war with the pilgrim’s soul, which is represented with the physiognomy of a child. This metaphysical encounter represents the apotheosis of our poem and of

Guirart’s eschatological destiny. After the Apostle confronts the demons, it becomes apparent that he knows Satan is usurping his identity (“por razon de mi o enganastes”

70). Both Saint James and Virgin Mary are merciful toward Guirart because he does not kill himself out of wickedness or moral corruption. Rather he is trapped within a Satane fallacia (“falacia de Satán,” Guiance, Los discursos 365). Saint James, nevertheless,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! praises the Patriarch for following God’s commands, for God’s commands ought to be obeyed: “Cum autem Deus iubet seque iubere sine ullis ambagibus intimat, quis oboedientiam in crimen uocet? quis obsequium pietatis accuset? Sed non ideo sine scelere facit, quisquis Deo filium immolare decreuerit, quia hoc Abraham etiam laudabiliter fecit” (Book I, XXVI). 66 Søren Kierkegaard says: “But Abraham had faith and did not doubt; he believed the preposterous. If Abraham had doubted, then he would have done something else, something great and glorious, for how could Abraham do anything else but what is great and glorious! He would have gone to Mount Moriah, he would have split the firewood, lit the fire, drawn the knife. He would have cried out to God: ‘Reject not this sacrifice; it is not the best that I have, that I know very well, for what is an old man compared with the child of promise, but it is the best I can give you. Let Isaac never find this out so that he may take comfort in his youth.’ He would have thrust the knife into his own breast” (Fear and Trembling 20-21).

! 79! ! ! allows Satan to misappropriate his identity to mislead the pilgrim, when he could have avoided the deception by coming to his aid before the pilgrim castrates or kills himself like Saint Paul does in a similar situation.

Before recounting the story of Guirart, Jacobus de Voragine tells the story of a despairing man who is devoted to Saint Paul and always commends himself to the Saint saying: “Adjuva me, sancte Paule.” Just when the suicidal man has made the necessary arrangements to hang himself, a demon in the form of a “umbra squalida” urges him to kill himself as quickly as possible: “eya, bone vir, age quod agis, moram no feceris.” As the man is about to place the noose around his neck, he utters his routine prayer:

“Beatissime Paule, adjuva me” (385). As soon as the suicidal devout utters his name,

Saint Paul comes to his rescue, scaring the tempter away and saving the man’s life.

Unlike Saint Paul, Saint James allows everything to happen and then makes things right.

But because Saint James trusts that the devil’s discursive methodology runs counter to right reason, he has faith that God (and Mary) will grant his will:

Gran traiçon y penssastes, e, se Deus m' anpar, pois falssament' a gâastes non vos pode durar (71-4).

It is perplexing and unbecoming that Santiago uses words like “traiçon”, “falssament’” and “enganastes” to defend his rights to the pilgrim’s soul when those words define

Satan’s very essence. Saint James understands that these are Satan’s characteristic traits.

However, he deploys these words in order to underscore the identity theft. Only in light of this can the reader contextualize his words. Hence in Saint James’ words, the demon commits treason (traiçon) by deceiving (enganastes) under false (falssament) pretenses.

False words and stolen identity undercut the faithful pilgrim’s will to live.

! 80! ! !

The demons respond to Saint James’ accusations with aplomb (louçâos). Like the apostle, the devils feel they have enough evidence to support their claim, namely, suicide.

So they respond to James’ allegations with effrontery:

Cuja est’ alma foi fez feitos vâos, por que somos ben certâos que non dev' entrar ante Deus, pois con sas mâos se foi desperentar (77-81).

The demons vaguely refer to Guirart’s past sins, presumably the sin of lust, self- castration and perhaps others that the poet conceals from the reader (“fez feitos vâos”).

The reference to the plurality of the feitos vâos—suicide not being included—reaffirms the demons’ claims, but the most “unpardonable” sin of all—recalling Péticus’s opinion noted in the introduction of this dissertation—is self-murder. In Satan’s line of argument,

Guirart’s self-inflicted death does not constitute a God-commanded death. Rather, he is a sinner who commits an unwarranted suicide (“Con sas mâos/ se foi desperentar”). The tempter conveniently omits that he has counterfeited the form and the voice of a divinity to deceive the pilgrim because he knows that this component justifies Guirart’s self- murder in the eyes of Virgin Mary. Instead, Satan simply admits that he has tempted him because tempting does not transgress God’s ordinances. Rather, as Saint Isidore points out, temptations served to prove the psychological and spiritual strength of men. Satan, then, takes for granted that tempting does not represent a violation of canonical law. As far as he is concerned, the pilgrim has transgressed the anti-suicide doctrine, and his success merely attests to Guirart’s weakened and corrupted morality. For that reason, the suicide pilgrim “non dev’ entrar/ ante Deus.”

The devil uses a periphrastic euphemism to allude to Guirart’s suicide. As Jean-

Claude Schmitt has noted, in the Middle Ages people used the word “despair” to signify

! 81! ! ! suicide. Desperatio was the most common euphemism in the Middle Ages to refer the highly stigmatized Latin neologism “suicidium,” used by Gautier de Saint-Victor in 1180.

The reflexive form of the verb (desesperar-se), which often meant to kill oneself, was distinguished from desesperar, which had both meanings to commit suicide and to lose hope in God’s mercy. In Cantiga 284, for instance, Alfonso X orders the translation

(traladar-o mandei) of a miracle regarding a monk who is possessed by the devil, and the devil labors to make him despair of God’s mercy by creating a sort of amnesia of all the good deeds the monk had performed: “Que quantos bêes feitos avia, nulla ren/ prestar non lle podian” (25-6). The tempter erases the good deeds from the victim’s memory and magnifies the bad ones, like he does with Guirart, creating a spiritual psychosis that renders his victims vulnerable: “Lle metia medo polo desasperar” (31). With Guirart, the devil eschews all good deeds that the victim has performed in the past, only leaving shameful memories of his sin of lust, which makes Satan’s temptation more compelling.

In the miracle of the possessed monk, o demo works to make him despair in God in order to force him to kill himself. Alfonso X’s cantiga 26 uses the reflexive form of the verb

“desperentarse” to indicate that he is a “felo de se”: Se foi desperentar.

The paradox resides in the ambiguity of Satan’s linguistic terminology. According to Christian doctrine, the sin of despair represented an utter loss of hope in God’s mercy.

The sinner believed that his or her sins were beyond forgiveness. Hence despair in itself comprised one of the most dangerous sins because it represented a rejection of God’s mercy and a sin against the Holy Spirit. Despair, medieval theologians contend, often lead to suicide because the heart and mind of the desperato commingle to make him feel that both God and the world are rejecting him. In Guirart’s story, however, Satan is

! 82! ! ! misrepresenting the facts, attempting to sway the judges in his favor. Theologically,

Guirart does not “se desperenta” since he does not kill himself out of despair in God’s mercy. He never feels that God or the world is rejecting him for his sin of lust. Rather, the pilgrim believes that by renouncing the world and its pleasures, God is embracing him and rewarding him with the eternal blessedness of Heaven. Like Samson and the

Christian virgins, the pilgrim kills himself out of excess of faith and hope for eternal bliss. As the poet avers in his advocative excursus, the victim believes in the veracity of the divine command. Thus the tempter avails himself with a paralogistic line of attack

(another Satane fallacia) in order to buttress his case, employing a contradictory terminology: the sinner does not commit suicide for lack of spes (desperatio) or sinning against the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, he kills himself out of excessive faith and hope, for he obeys the false apostle in order to gain the heavenly kingdom by, in a Christ-like fashion, renouncing the earthly through the immolation of his body.

The psychostasis (which means “weighing of souls” in Greek) on Guirart’s soul also underscores the importance of the opposition between free will and theological determinism. Mary has to judge the extent to which Guirart has acted from his free will or if his free will has been compromised by Satan’s act of deception. She also has to carefully weigh in on the pilgrim’s good and bad actions to assess whether his good actions outweigh his bad ones. If so, Mary may save his soul. If not, he will be doomed.

Commenting on Berceo’s version of the pilgrim of Santiago, Guiance notes the phenomenon of psychostasis and the relevance of Mary’s judgment, pointing out that the same theme was already present in local iconography representing the physical weighing of human souls (Los discursos 212). Despite his good will, faith and righteousness,

! 83! ! !

Guirart’s wicked lust while undertaking the holy journey toward a sacred shrine has forfeited his eschatological destiny to external forces. Guirart’s salvation or damnation depends on three major components that are well beyond his power and control. First, he depends on the defense of Saint James and the Apostle’s ability to articulate a compelling argument on his behalf. Second, Satan’s discursive skills to refute Saint James’s argument become an important step toward his salvation or damnation. Lastly, he has to rely on Mary’s judgment—i.e., on weighing his good deeds (faith in Santiago, pilgrimage, good intentions, etc.) and his sins (lust, self-castration, suicide, etc.). Being inherently inclined toward the Good and toward mercy, Mary decides to forgive the pilgrim’s transgression(s), granting him the opportunity to expiate his sins.

Keller and Grant Cash point out that sinners who die without confession in

Alfonso X’ Cantigas are brought back to life to purge their sins. Other critics note Mary’s benevolence toward suicides: “She [Mary] practically condones the actions of suicides by bringing them back to life (Cantigas 84 and 201)” (Presilla, “The image” PAGE).67 It is worth noting, however, that the lady of cantiga 201, who attempts suicide three times, does not die. Keller and Grant Cash also suggest that she commits suicide (Daily Life 46).

But even though she survives her three suicide attempts, Mary forgives her moral

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 67 Cantiga 84 tells the story of the jealous wife who kills herself after hearing from her naive husband that he loves another Lady more than his own wife. Out of pity for her and, more importantly, out of the husband’s devotion and faith, Mary brings her back to life. Nevertheless, Presilla misinterprets the cantiga when she asserts that the lustful and the infanticide woman of Cantiga 201 kills herself. She tries to kill herself three times, one by stabbing herself and two by swallowing spiders. Just before she dies, she repents and Mary forgives her. Much like Guirart in Berceo's version, she joins a convent and dies a holy death. Perhaps following Presilla’s lead, Keller engages in a similar misinterpretation when he claims that “another suicide appears in cantiga F 2 (201), where a young girl tries to commit suicide, first by stabbing herself and then by swallowing venomous spiders. The Virgin forgives and resuscitates her” (John Esten Keller and Annette G Cash, “Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria” (46). The fact is that the girl never succeeds in killing herself, as Keller himself later (p. 56) acknowledges, then in his Appendix. She is swollen and perhaps she would have died had it not been for Mary’s intervention, but there is no certainty. At most, we can say that her is a suicide attempt, which is also a crime punished by both Church and State.

! 84! ! ! transgressions—three suicide attempts, three infanticides and incest. Presilla, Keller and

Grant Cash, however, are right in noting the compassion Mary displays toward suicides which mirrors Alfonso X’s own leniency toward victims of suicide and suicidal drives.

The Wise King exhibits an unwavering empathy toward those who ended their lives due to intense pain and/or illnesses. This Alfonsine altruism toward suicides foils the harshness that ecclesiastic institutions could display toward self-murderers, justified or not.

Keller and Grant Cash contend that the “Cantigas offered a kind of rejection of the Church’s more severe teachings” (19). Then, they refer us to Presilla who suggests that Alfonso “produced cantigas to convince his subjects that they should cling closer to him and to the teaching of the Cantigas, rather than to the unrelenting severity of the

Church” (Daily Life 34). Due to the sternness of the punishment—both in this and in the next life—, suicide constitutes an example of the Church’s “more severe teachings.”

Alfonso X’s attitude toward suicide, however, does not necessarily represent a

“rejection” of orthodox canon law. The Wise King underscores the irredeemability of suicide in cantiga 369, and he acknowledges the sinfulness of suicide in the romeu’s case. As Jesús Montoya notes, the vast majority of the Cantigas are about sinners whom the Virgin redeems (47). James F. Burke calls attention to Mary’s role as redeemer of those who transgress aspects of law as a means of evincing “the state of natural justice inherent in the structure of God’s universe” (“Virtue and Sin” 251). In many cases, the delivered sinners enter into monastic life, underlining the connection between the

Cantigas and the religious institutions. With regards to attitudes on suicide, it is evident that the Church’s teaching is never absolute and that holy beings can override empirical

! 85! ! ! systems of both natural and positive laws. As the mother of Christ, Robert A. MacDonald notes, Mary holds (and exercises) an unassailable power in cantiga 26 (317). These sequence of cantigas that show leniency toward self-murderers and to suicidal people attest to the personal worldview of Alfonso himself who sees and treats suicides as victims of others and not as inherently criminals or sinners. Bagby Jr. notes that Alfonso

X reveals his inner self and “his own personal attitudes” in his Cantigas (243). If the reader traces Alfonso X’s representation of suicides throughout his writings, the reader can see that his stances are consistently merciful.

It is difficult for a reader to find an unorthodox idea in the Cantigas that is not meant to enhance the faith and love of readers toward the Christian faith. The cantiga of the pilgrim, as most in the collection, underlines the importance of forgiveness and the idea of the theological virtue of “hope.” Minois refers to the example of Guirart to argue that the Church deployed moral tales to show that “one must not despair, since miracles are always possible” (33). It is not that Alfonso wants to showcase the forgiveness of

Mary in his Cantigas in order to undermine the Church’s rigidity, particularly since, concerning suicide, there is not an absolute and univocal view. Let us remember that the

Church had adopted Augustine’s Platonic philosophy, which condoned certain suicides like martyrs, crusaders and God-commanded suicides. Murray notes that in the Marian tradition, Guirart “the repentant pilgrim become a monk in a conventional ‘happy ending’” (Suicide Vol. I 283). According to Hugh of Saint Victor’s story of our pilgrim, as recounted by Berceo, Guirart enters the monastery of Cluny, i.e., while Mary affords him a second chance to redeem himself and atone for his sins and the Church welcomes him with open arms. The pilgrim performs the necessary actions to complete his spiritual

! 86! ! ! metanoia (conversion). In his study on the tradition of Mary Magdalene in Spain as a symbol of repentance, Seidenspinner-Núñez notes that a conversion entails “an awareness of sin, confession, repudiation of sin, and atonement” (112). Guirart is aware of his sins—lust, castration and suicide—, confesses, repudiates his sins and atones for his guilt before deciding to embrace the monastic life. The Cantigas do not represent a separate system operating independently from the Ecclesiastical Institution. Quite the opposite, the Church and the Cantigas jointly teach that people should not despair, regardless of the severity of the sin because God’s mercy is above any sins. They teach to hope in God and the Virgin, as the introduction of Cantiga 201 asserts.68

The pilgrim’s highly complex trial requires great command in canon law as well as mastery of rhetoric. The reader should ask if Mary’s ruling was fair to both defendant and plaintiff. Prima facie, it seems that the demons have already lost the trial before the hearing began, rendering the poet’s eulogy to the Virgin’s God-given syneidesis void.

The opposite is also true. If Lucifer had been the judge on duty for the trial, Saint James

(and Guirart) would have surely lost the trial. Is Mary unfair, then? Based on the evidence she presents and the defense she makes in the case, the reader can see that by usurping a saint’s identity and commanding an act of self-violence for which they have no authority, both Saint James and Mary have a good case against the demons’ claim.

Beltrán points out that Satan’s blurring of dualities, or utter identity usurpation, makes the pilgrim’s suicide more understandable and “que hace así más justo el fallo de María”

(144). But even this argument may be problematic. Satan represents a symbol of metamorphosis and changeability, which allows him to morph into objects, animals or

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 68 “Muit’ é mais piedade de Santa Maria/ que quantos pecados ome fazer poderia” (244).

! 87! ! ! people. As García Cuadrado reminds us, in Christian traditions Satan is a polymorphous creature: “El diablo medieval adoptará a voluntad forma antropomórfica o zoomórfica; como serpiente tentará a Eva… o simplemente actuará bajo forma humana o semi- humana” (358). In Cantiga 17, Satan (o demo mayor) morphs into a wise man: “Tornóu- ss’ en forma d’ ome sabedor” (26) to sway the Emperor of Rome to burn an incestuous lady who has killed her son. The caveat in our cantiga, however, is that Satan does not tempt the pilgrim while transformed in human shape. Rather, he transforms himself into a divine agent, one who has the power and authority to persuade and bend a person’s free will. MacDonald asserts that Mary always conducts herself with impartiality toward her creatures whether she deals with Christians or non-Christians (318). With regards to the pilgrim’s trial, however, the case is far from straightforward. It requires a meticulous analysis of canon law to determine the justness in the outcome of the verdict, which falls outside of the scope of this study.

Because Satan has tempted the pilgrim using a method that is neither explicitly banned by the Bible nor allowed, namely usurping a saint’s identity to tempt, Mary rules that Satan’s unorthodox modus operandi constitutes a violation to Guirart’s “human rights,” since he has been unjustly placed in a double bind. The verdict for his suicide is that he return to life, the state in which Satan finds him en route to Compostela, so that he may use his free will and decide to repent and make penitence for his misconduct.

Alfonso’s Cantigas employs the recourse of returning the soul of the sinner to the body, which is a leitmotif in Marian miracles, in order to save him/her from eternal damnation.

The lustful monk who drowns in the river after fornicating with his lover is also brought back to life to save his soul. Alfonso X—and other hagiographical writers—adopts this

! 88! ! ! thaumaturgic conceit in order to underscore God’s omnipotence and infinite mercy. The narratological strategy of bringing people back to life, moreover, serves as testament that there is life beyond death, and that God will judge men after they die. Guirart stands as living embodiment of the existence of the world beyond, and his metaphysical trial affirms that Saint Augustine’s condemnation of suicide has also been implemented in the heavenly realm.

The origin of the pilgrim’s tragedy—his sin of lust—is a different story. Although

Satan tempts Guirart into sleeping with his lover, it does not represent a violation of theological law, which allows Satan to tempt men in order to prove their spiritual fortitude. Mary forgives the mortal sin of suicide, but she does not address the sin of lust, which suggests that she is not willing to forgive his trespass without proper redress.

Despite self-castration being commanded while the pilgrim is placed in a double-bind situation, unlike the restitution of his life, the Judge does not order the restoration of his penis. Instead, as Berceo tells us, he ends up with a urethral orifice (filiello) through which he urinates. For brevity’s sake, Alfonso X does not mention this part of the story but ends his exemplum with the moral (moralis) of the story, which serves as a warning to avoid the sin of lust:

Mas nunca cobrar pod’ de que foi falido, con que fora pecar (100-2).

Conceivably the Virgin-judge weighs the element of his lust before deciding that the infected penis would not be restored. Mary’s judgment ensures the pilgrim’s physical— though not necessarily the psychological—self-restraint. The wronged pilgrim does not regain his sexual organ, but at least, he recovers his life and saves his soul from eternal damnation.

! 89! ! !

! 90! ! Conclusion

The miracle of the romeu de Santiago helps us understand the anxiety that the sin of lust provoked in the mind of the medieval man and the fatal consequences it could lead to if not restrained within the rational and moral purview. Once men fornicate out of wedlock, the sinner makes a symbolic movement from God’s domain into that of the devil. Body and soul become porous entities through which Satan can enter to coax them and lead them into spiritual and physical self-destruction. The pilgrim’s story reinforces the ecclesiastic and canonical laws, which underscore the importance of confession and good deeds. When men act contrary to the Church’s doctrines, they fall into Satan’s hands. It also shows Satan’s wickedness and his preponderant role in tempting people into committing suicide. Since suicide is believed to be an ailment of the soul, this miracle showcases the dominant opinion of the Church. The sin of lust sickens the pilgrim’s soul and leaves a fissure open so that Satan can enter and take control over the sinner’s life. This idea creates a paradoxical duality. On the one hand, it portrays the pilgrim as a sinner who allows his lust to blind his rational faculties. But on the other hand, it depicts him as a victim of Satan’s cunning and noxiousness. Because of his lax views on suicide, Alfonso X (as well as Saint James and Virgin Mary) choose to see and treat Guirart as a victim of unjust persecution, rather than as a sinner whose sins allow

Satan to reign over his life.

Saint Augustine’s Socratic loophole in his doctrine on suicide allow people to believe that God can command someone to commit suicide. Satan exploits this belief to persuade the pilgrim to end his life, convincing him that, paradoxically, his suicide is the only gateway through which he could enter Heaven. Because suicide is not categorically ! and unequivocally condemned, the devil puts Guirart in a double bind, from which he cannot escape without offending God and/or ending his life. Since the Judge (Mary) acknowledges Saint James’ plea on the “unlawful” identity appropriation, she absolves the sinner. Mary mandates the soul to return to the body so that the pilgrim can prove he is worthy of God’s mercy. An element that works in Guirart’s favor is that he never despairs of God and his mercy. Rather, he kills himself because he hopes in God, and obeys what he believes to be God’s will. Both the divine court and the laity in this world absolve him from the stigma that suicide and self-castration bring along. Much like

Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son, the pilgrim’s suicide proves to Mary,

Saint James (and God) that he is ready and even eager to sacrifice his earthly life in order to attain the blessedness of Heaven. For the ordinary people within the story, the elements of the divine supersede the crime. The mere fact that he has been in direct contact with divinity and has been the object of God’s mercy turns him into a sort of sacred hero whom people long to behold. In a way, these people perceive Guirart as the incarnating vicar of Saint James himself, so they flock to go see him. Despite his soul being literally in the hands of demons, it is not seen as contaminated because God has cleansed it with his clemency, and the miracle of his resurrection becomes factual evidence that he is in

God’s grace. Hence, unlike his genitalia, which is an accepted contrapasso for his sin of lust, Guirart’s life becomes a living testimony of the overpowering existence of the divine and a didactic example that the sin of lust can place men in the hands of Satan.

! 92! ! Stoic Suicide in Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de Amor

Leriano’s suicide in Diego de San Pedro’s fifteenth-century sentimental romance Cárcel de Amor has been a point of scholarly contention. The consensus among critics is that

Leriano, the dejected protagonist of San Pedro’s romance, exhibits paradigmatic symptoms of a keen lovesickness, which leads him to suicide (Weissberger, “The

Politics” 315). After he receives the final letter from his beloved Laureola, the daughter of the King of Macedonia, Leriano refuses to eat or sleep. According to medieval medical lore and love treatises, insomnia and inedia—a Latin noun meaning “fasting” or abstinence from food—were symptoms of lovesickness. For medieval thinkers, doctors and poets, lovesickness was a diagnosable and treatable psychopathological illness. If not treated properly, the illness was capable of upending the patients’ lives. Fifteenth-century writers redeployed the concept of melancholic states to pepper their literary works.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, doctors and scholars believed that melancholia could lead patients to lovesickness and suicide. In the beginnings of Cárcel de Amor and Celestina, both Leriano and Calisto are respectively paradigmatic cases of melancholic depression that has led to lovesickness and suicidal moods. Consequences of amor hereos run the gamut from extreme depression and recovery (Siervo libre de amor,

Calisto in Celestina) to suicide (Grisel y Mirabella, Grimalte y Gradisa, Repetición de amores, etc.). Poets of the sentimental romance had a proclivity to fashion their protagonists as lovesick characters in order to show a sublimation of love that transcends mere carnality. !

The first part of San Pedro’s romance represents a conscious effort to portray

Leriano as a lovesick courtly lover, following the blueprint of courtly love aesthetics that the author delineates in his Sermón (Munjic, “Leriano’s Suffering” 204). His all- consuming passion—personified by the allegorical Deseo—is leading him toward despair and an impending death. Without the intervention of his beloved, Leriano seems to be destined, like Juan de Flores’ Grisel in Grisel y Mirabella, to be burned by the flames of his own passion (“vi que [Leriano] siempre se quemava y nunca se acabava de quemar”

86).69 With the help of the Auctor, who represents the author’s literary alter ego and becomes the de facto mediator between Leriano and Laureola, the melancholic lover regains his hope in gaining Laureola’s love and recovers his long-lost psychosomatic health. Toward the middle of the story, Leriano turns from a lovesick moribund to a chivalric hero of epic dimensions in order to rescue his beloved from the tyranny of her own father. From this point on, and despite Laureola’s tepid rejection, Leriano adapts a contrasting outlook toward life and love. This chapter focuses on this shifting perspective, which critics have overlooked when commenting on Leriano’s suicide.

Leriano, then, does not die as a victim of the illness of amor hereos. Rather, he decides to end his life as a rational man who prefers to exit life following the Stoic precepts regarding a timely and circumscribed death. After Laureola declines to see him or speak to him, Leriano feels that if his beloved is not with him, life cannot please him anymore.

Hence like the Stoic Cato, he seeks his libertad in suicide.

Scholars of medieval Spanish literature have interpreted Leriano’s consumption of Laureola’s letters in diverse ways, ranging from the anagogical and the pragmatic (see

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 69 All quotes from Cárcel de Amor come from Keith Whinnom’s Castalia edition.

! 94! ! !

Deyermond and Whinnom, “Cardona” 207-213) to the psychoanalytical (Gerli, “Leriano and Lacan”). As Whinnom points out, Leriano’s death has been studied from different perspectives: “Suicidio de un desesperado, martirio de un creyente, castigo de un picador, acto de venganza” (“Cardona” 213). However, critics have overlooked the ideological and philosophical undercurrents that lead to Leriano’s willful death. And his rational composure as well as the methodology employed to end his life suggest a rational mindset that mirrors that of Stoic philosophers from antiquity. Further analysis suggests that Leriano’s Stoic views are fundamental for understanding both the etiology (causes) and the teleology (end or purpose) of his voluntary death. Stoic philosophy allows him to meditate about his death (meditation mortis) as Seneca advices Lucilius: “Meditare mortem: qui hoc dicit meditari libertatem iubet” (Ep. XXVI, 10). Stoic morality also prompts him to scorn death (mors timenda non est) and to accept it as an inherent part of human nature. And as we will see later, Stoicism enables him to understand life as an ongoing process of dying (cotidie morimur). But most important of all, Stoic tenets allow

Leriano to perceive suicide as a liberation (libertas) from the prison of the body. At one point or another, Leriano vocalizes these ideas either to reassure his warriors or affirm his own position in life.

Whereas for Platonic eschatology the separation of body and soul represents a new beginning, the Stoic philosophy views death in two opposing ways, as either a liberation or a destruction. Seneca aptly explains this duality in Letter XXIV. The deciding factor between these two different end-points is whether or not the soul is mortal or immortal. If the soul is mortal, death destroys body and soul. On the other hand, if the soul is immortal, as Socrates argues in Plato’s Phaedo, death represents its liberation (see

! 95! ! !

Seneca, Ep. XXIV, 18). Cynicism and Epicureanism adhere to the idea that the soul perishes with the body, and Platonism and Christianity opposed this idea. Stoicism is in a category in its own since it neither categorically denies nor confirms the immortality of the soul. Cynics and Epicureans believe that both body and soul experience a simultaneous demise. In his De rerum natura (book III, 830-831), Lucretius reiterates

Epicurus’ idea that the soul does not survive the body. Epicurus, from whom Seneca borrows many of his precepts, tells Menoeceus in a letter that death is irrelevant to men:

“While we exist, death is not present, and whenever death is present, we do not exist”

(D’Holbach 312). Epicureanism and Neo-Epicureanism, which doctrinally deny the immortality of the soul, as Dante attests in Canto X of Inferno, began to gain some traction toward the end of the Spanish Middle Ages within some converso (and Christian) subgroups. As the humanist from Salamanca López de Villalobos shows, the Epicurean doctrine on the mortality of the soul as defended by Pliny is categorically refuted and rejected, along with what modern scholars call “Averroistic rationalism,”70 and the

Sadducean doctrines that deny the resurrection of the dead.

Socrates has argued that the soul would transcend the body in order to dwell with the gods in a permanent state of ataraxia—Seneca used the Greek term “aochlesía”, which means “uninterrupted tranquility.” For Socrates, after death, the soul is liberated from the body and is free to return to the ataraxic realm of the gods. Seneca and Leriano,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 70 For a more complete study on Neo-Epicureanism in Spanish culture and literature, see Consolación Baranda. Baranda quotes Villalobos’ letter to the doctor Gonzalo de Moros: “duélese vuestra merced de que haya firmado [Plinio] que el alma es mortal… si sus ojos hubieran sido dignos de presenciar los estupendos milagros que en sus días verificaban los discípulos de Jesucristo, hubiera podido aprender cada paso de los corruptos y horrendos cadáveres, vueltos a la vida, la indestructibilidad del alma y la resurrección de la carne…,” (58). A few pages later, Baranda cites another Salamancan professor of theology who harshly alludes to Pliny’s Epicureanism and his anti-Christian views for denying the immortality of the soul, referring to Pliny as an “acérrimo burlador de la divinidad y contumaz enemigo de la inmortalidad de nuestras almas” (62).

! 96! ! ! however, do not use the word “libertas/ libertad” within the Socratic semantic field, where only those who are summoned by the gods are “free” to kill themselves. Rather,

Seneca resemantizes the Socratic “libertas” to give it a more Epicurean meaning, where death represents a return to a state of non-being. This concept of willful death as freedom is known as philosophical suicide, which was perpetrated in order to show scorn for life.

For Seneca, as for Leriano, death constitutes an escape from life and its afflictions, and being a man afflicted by passions and sorrow, Leriano perceives self-murder as freedom from the travails of life. The general idea of death as freedom from the prison of the body has had a long tradition in Christian theology and Western thought. This is not, however, what is at stake in Seneca’s (and Leriano’s) idea of suicide as freedom.

First, early Christianity adopted a similar concept to explain the immortality of the soul. In Christianity, the body was seen as a prison for the soul, which became free to return to God after the body perished. Hence one might think that Leriano thought of death as a (Christian) liberation of the soul to ascend to Heaven. Commenting on

Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen, the fifteenth-century poet and humanist Enrique de

Villena translates Petrarch’s Stoic dictum: “mors adimit curas, mors omnia vincula soluit

(quiere dezir: ‘la muerte quita las curas, la muerte las carçeles suelta’” (Tratado de consolación 104). Neither Petrarch nor Villena postulates suicide as freedom. In Cárcel,

San Pedro refers to a natural death as freedom too. When Deseo is dragging Leriano to the prison of Love, the former tells the Auctor that Leriano “con solo morir se espera librar” (84). All of these allusions point out that a natural death frees the soul. However,

Leriano, like Seneca, views suicide as freedom, which is contrary to Church doctrines

! 97! ! ! since voluntary death constitutes a deadly sin and, therefore, the certainty of eternal damnation.

Second, in his overview of possible theories on the origin of courtly love literature, Roger Boase notes that the Crypto-Cathars extol “death as a form of liberation”

(78). The death-freedom theory, however, does not mean that Leriano’s allusion to it is comparable. After he returns to his patria of Castile, the Auctor clearly refers to death as freedom: “Mejor quedar muerto en Macedonia que venir bivo a Castilla; lo que deseava con razón, pues la mala ventura se acaba con la muerte” (154). The Auctor’s reference to the paradigm death-freedom aligns with Christian eschatology. “Quedar muerto” does not mean suicide although it does not deny that possibility. Likewise, in one of his “poesías menores,” San Pedro parodies an old ballad in which he equates death with freedom:

“Porque sólo con morir/ esperava libertad,” (Whinnom and Severin 259). This idea is not in conflict with religious doctrines because it neither refutes the sinfulness of suicide nor denies the immortality of the soul. The verses imply that the poet alludes to a liberation of the soul from the body to return to Heaven since, during the Middle Ages, people believed that men came to this world as pilgrims and that the real morada, as Jorge

Manrique expresses it in his Coplas, was Heaven.71

There is, however, a seeming contradiction in Leriano’s outlook, which I will address in the course of the chapter. On the one hand, he is imprisoned in an allegorical prison of love, which represents his abject subjection to erotic passions and, as

Chorpenning points out, a metaphor for Hell (347). Such subjection renders him both effete and dependent upon the object of his desire. His beloved, Laureola, seems to be the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 In his Coplas, Manrique avers: “Este mundo es el camino/ para el otro, qu’es morada/ sin pesar; mas cumple tener buen tino/ para andar esta jornada/ sin errar” (49).

! 98! ! ! sole being capable of giving death or letting him live, a poetic conceit prevalent in the sentimental genre. This notion of Laureola assuming the role of God and suzerain creates a palpable tension between Leriano’s refractory passion and his Stoic values since self- sufficiency and living according to nature are essential cornerstones of Stoicism. As

Fothergill-Payne reminds us, the most important Stoic principle is to never be “siervo de otro mas señor de ti mismo” because “la mayor potencia y señoría es ser señor de si mismo” (Seneca 71). Without Laureola, the despondent lover can neither be self- sufficient nor live according to nature. On the other hand, after Leriano embraces his role as a chivalric hero, he exhibits a more circumscribed attitude toward love and life. He begins to adopt both Stoic discourses and worldviews that will condition the way he chooses to end his life. Rather than being irreconcilable concepts, this tension represents another ironic twist in the romance since, as Corfis points out, it is a tragic irony that a man imprisoned within the cárcel of his own passions die a Stoic, rational death

(“Sentimental Lore” 164).

! 99! ! Suicide as Freedom: Leriano’s Stoic Discourse

They may fear death! Their yoke has become their world; they know nothing better than their servitude; they shy from the divine freedom that death gives us?

Friedrich Hölderlin Hyperion

As the reader dives into Cárcel de Amor’s plot, he can observe that Stoicism plays an important role in the configuration of the novel. Keith Whinnom and Dorothy S. Severin note that San Pedro has read Seneca for the composition of his Desprecio de la Fortuna, and a close reading of his Sermón and Cárcel would show that San Pedro is familiar

Seneca’s moral philosophy for the framing other literary works. Cvinatonic observes in

San Pedro’s Desprecio an author with “una actitud de estoico desengañado” (161). The seed of San Pedro’s Stoicism is planted in his fictional works. Stoic ethics can be observed (and heard) essentially through all major characters of the Cárcel, including through relatively minor ones, such as the Cardinal of Gausa and the Queen, Laureola’s mother. However, in all four of Leriano’s letters, there is a Seneca-like obsession with suicide and his compulsive doctrine of suicide as libertas. This heterodox perception of death (or rather of “life”) represents the most distinctive originality in San Pedro’s

Cárcel. San Pedro’s undogmatic idea regarding Leriano’s attitude toward suicide, however, does not mean that fifteenth-century people did not take the Church’s condemnation of suicide seriously.72 Rather, San Pedro’s redeployment of Stoic ideas in a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 72 In his introduction to San Pedro’s Obras completas, Whinnom asserts that fifteenth-century people did not take seriously the Church’s condemnation against suicide: “Aunque la Iglesia miraba el suicidio como un pecado mortal, no parece que el siglo XV lo tomase muy en serio. Diego de San Pedro mismo, al ! sentimental context represents a conscious stylization of aesthetic effects, which are meant to create a powerful impression in the primary (Laureola) and immediate readerships (the ladies of the court). No other writer of sentimental romance—or any other cancioneril poet or writer of his time, except for the anonymous author of the chivalric Catalan novel Curial e Güelfa—makes use of this “heretical” idea. The author of Curial juxtaposes the Stoic and the Christian doctrines in the dynamic dialogue between Camar, a young Muslim convert who wants to end her life out of erotic despair, and her mother, (ironically) a Muslim. Camar tells her mother:

Virtut es la fortalesa del meu cor; e Cato, honor de tots los Romans, me mostra en Vtica lo cami de la libertat; e per aquell caminare: e a tal maestre tal dexebla (381).

Just like Camar serves as the mouthpiece of Senecan doctrines, the young suicide’s mother expresses (not the voice of reason but) the Church’s doctrines, as Saint Augustine articulates them in De civitate Dei: “¿E libertat penses que sie la mort? Carçre escur e tenebros la pots apellar, e exili dens sperança de retorn” (381). Camar’s mother uses a euphemistic periphrasis to allude to the Christian conception of Hell (“carçre escur e tenebros”). The author of Curial is deploying the Stoic worldview in a new poetic form to represent his/her character as a strong-willed, self-affirming heroine. San Pedro uses

Leriano’s Stoic outlook to create a similar effect, but unlike the author of Curial, he does not juxtapose Leriano’s Stoic assertion with a statement to express the Church’s doctrines

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! enumerar las mujeres virtuosas de la historia, incluye a varias suicidas, no sólo a las romanas sino también a doña María Coronel, española y cristiana. Nicolás Núñez, que, mostrándose insatisfecho de la conclusión de la novela escribió una continuación, no criticó el suicidio de Leriano—antes lo justificó plenamente; lo que le molestaba era que le parecía truncada la historia, quería saber cómo reaccionó Laureola a la noticia, etcétera. Y en la España humanista de los Reyes Católicos, donde tanto se discutían las obras clásicas, encontramos aun en escritores religiosos y devotos la idea del suicidio (hasta por amor) ventilada sin sombra de censura” (38). If Whinnom had said that San Pedro did not take the Church’s tenet against suicide seriously, he would have perhaps been closer to the mark. However, there is an overwhelming amount of thinkers, theologians and poets that go out of their way to voice out the Church’s condemnation. Since this idea deserves more time and effort, I am currently working on a study to elucidate fifteenth- century Spaniards’ attitude toward suicide and suicidal attempts.

! 101! ! ! on suicide. Since the suicide-as-freedom conceit suggests an internal channel of communication between Leriano and Seneca, it allows us to interpret Leriano’s death as a symbol of his inherent belief in a Stoic moral system regarding suicide, in detriment to

Catholic eschatological doctrines.

Pamela Waley points out that Leriano “may desire death as release from suffering” (“Love” 262). Leriano’s suffering is an important component in his decision to end his life. Suffering—which suggests subjection to human passions—and Stoic rationality are not irreconcilable concepts. Most Stoic philosophers acknowledge that people who suffer great ills can choose death as means to end their travails. The imperative was, however, that men should rationally prefer death to a painful life. The question, then, is not of suffering but of rationality. Folger refers us to Whinnom to assert that “Cárcel presents the lover’s suffering from lovesickness as the result of a reasonable, premeditated decision” (Images 211). Even amor hereos, as Folger notes, could be the result of a rational choice. Hence if Leriano is driven to death by his psychoaffective pain, he is not precluded from a Stoic death given that he makes a conscientious decision, knowing that Laureola’s “beauty, virtue and nobility are worth dying for” (Folger,

Images 211). Even if he is in extreme pain and deeply in love with Laureola—as long as he decides to exit life based on the suffering his passions provokes—, his death could still be categorized as Stoic if he makes the rational decision to die. An important question would be: How was San Pedro (and Leriano) exposed to Stoicism?

It remains uncertain as to whether San Pedro read Seneca in Latin or in the one of the translations that circulated in fifteenth-century Spain. As Mario Schiff points out,

Santillana owned manuscripts of Seneca in Latin and in the vernacular. Although it seems

! 102! ! ! farfetched that San Pedro had access to Santillana’s private collection, Seneca’s philosophy had a vibrant currency in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Castile. Between

Senecan and pseudo-Senecan works, Cartagena rendered into Castilian at least twelve moral treatises in the mid-fifteenth century (Delgado León 423), and based on textual context and word choice, it is likely that San Pedro read Cartagena’s translations. San

Pedro references one of Cartagena’s glosses from Seneca’s De la providentia de Dios:

“Nota: No hay cosa más desaventurada que el hombre a quien nunca vino desaventura alguna” (215). San Pedro says in Sermón, which pretends to be an ars amandi: “Dize un varón sabio [Demetrius] que no vido hombre tan desventurado como aquel que nunca le vino desventura” (179). This quote leads us to believe that San Pedro was acquainted with Cartagena’s translations. Hence San Pedro fashions Leriano’s character both as reader and as militant of Stoic philosophy. In San Pedro’s creative mind, Leriano embodies the upright man who has attained virtue by his never-ending afflictions

(desventuras). In Senecan philosophy, hardships lead to virtue, as he asserts in the

Demetrius’ reference, and Leriano has been tried by misfortunes, and his voluntary death represents the apotheosis of the conquest of his passion and the assertion of his free will.

Other references and ideas in Cárcel de amor come from De ira, a text that

Cartagena did not translate but that he seems to be familiar with. San Pedro could have read it directly from the original Latin or from a thirteenth-century translation dedicated to Sancho IV in order to help him heal from this vice of wrath (Villacañas Berlanga, Los cinco 48). Schiff notes that in the fifteenth century, there were two manuscripts in the

Escorial library of the translation of De ira. The catalogue credits Fray Gonçalo

Suficiente, a chaplain of Doña Inés de Torres, for the 1445 translation, but Schiff does

! 103! ! ! not believe that Fray Gonçalo is the translator but rather a copyist (128). Fernando Rubio mentions three manuscripts of Nuño de Guzmán’s fifteenth-century revision of the thirteenth-century rendering, Tratado de Séneca contra la ira y la saña. There were other translations into Catalan, but it is difficult to gauge if San Pedro was able to read Catalan.

The availability of multiple copies shows the popularity of this Senecan moral treatise.

Despite Cartagena’ insistent warnings to beware of Seneca’s “pagan” ideas on suicide,

San Pedro makes Leriano live and die a Stoic death. Leriano forgoes all Christological rituals prescribed to dying men and embraces the Senecan idea that his suicide will lead him to freedom.

When Leriano speaks to the Auctor for the first time about his passion for

Laureola, he reveals a suicidal libido moriendi. In a Christ-like description of his

“Passión”— San Pedro is playing with the polysemy of the word “passion,” referring to the Passion of Christ, his suffering and his love for Laureola—, he tells the Auctor that his Judgment (a personification of “Juicio”), “viendo que vo con mi desesperación a matarme, dízeme [Juicio] que no lo haga” (91). Rohland de Langbehn notes that “en la construcción de Severin todo suicidio se considera paralelo al sufrimiento de Cristo” (“La parodia” 86). Rohland de Langbehn acknowledges that Leriano’s suicide has

Christological undercurrents. Deseo’s violent dragging of Leriano offers more

Christologial imagery, but it is clouded by the allegorical edifice of the scene.

From the start, there is an evident tension between Leriano’s passion and his reason that persists until just before his death. Reason advises him to live, and his violent passion prompts him to die. This plight represents his internal conflict that is at stake throughout the entire novel. Frederick de Armas notes that Leriano’s “libertad es

! 104! ! ! imposible sin la muerte” (401). De Armas only refers to Leriano’s freedom from his violent passion for Laureola, not to the eschatological consequences if he chooses to end his life. The paradox is that if he carries out his plans to kill himself, his libertad is one that will bind him within the limits of Hell for eternity.

On top of suffering for Laureola’s unrequited love, Leriano also has to struggle with his own internal conflicts. On the one hand, his lovesickness for Laureola impels him to flee from this life. On the other, his reason, an allusion to the Stoic Logos, prevents him from acting upon his suicidal urge. His libido moriendi does not represent a rational exit from life in Stoicism because he is utterly subjected to his passions, embodied by the allegorical guardians of the Prison of Love. In her study on passion in

Celestina, Fothergill-Payne suggests that unable to control her affectus amantium,

Melibea commits suicide, “incapaz de controlar ‘ille… affectus… libido moriendi’”

(“Afección” 403). Contrary to Melibea, Leriano dies after having controlled and dominated his own passions. Melibea and Leriano, however, exhibit contrasting erotological trajectories. Whereas Melibea meets Calisto resisting his courting with mesura and ends being the victim of her own passions, Leriano presents himself to the

Auctor (and reader) as a lovesick persona and ends his life as a “Stoic.” Unlike Melibea,

Leriano learns to accept his destiny and to control his passions. Seneca warns not to long for death defeated by bodily passions. In his Epistula XXIV, Seneca condemns such cowardly escape (fugere) from life.73 Seneca differentiates between fleeing (fugere) and exiting (exire). As we will see in chapter three of this study, Melibea flees from life to avoid punishment. Leriano, on the other hand, exits life because life is not worth living

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 73 Epistulae XXIV, 25: “Vir fortis et sapiens non fugere debet e uita, sed exire. Et ante omnia ille quoque uitetur affectus, qui multos occupauit, libido moriendi.”

! 105! ! ! without his beloved. Fugere implies coercion by external forces or internal passions; exire is a rational exit, based on internal harmony with the self. In Consolatio ad

Polybium, Seneca avers that there is nothing more womanly (muliebre) than letting passion destroy a person (Book VI, 3). The Cordovan Stoic confesses that due to his sickly condition he, like Leriano, became extremely emaciated and meditated killing himself (“saepe impetum cepi abrumpendae vitae”). However, he imposes life upon himself (“Itaque imperavi mihi ut vivem”) out of consideration for his own father (Letter

LXXVIII, 2). Leriano’s libido moriendi, like Seneca’s, foreshadows his impending suicide, after he decides that conquering his own passions and exiting life is the only way to free himself from his grief.

Laureola refuses to reciprocate this request and to free the lover from his allegorical prison, but neither does she completely close the door upon any future amorous possibilities. Dejected but persistent, the Auctor continues to woo her, but to no avail. Before King Gaulo imprisons Laureola for the slandering accusation of Persio, she has been already a prisoner of her own morality and honor. Honor, as Waley notes, is a fragile, gendered ideal that belongs to the realm of femininity. Laureola’s social and political responsibility is heightened due to her condition of princess and heiress to the throne. Seeing Laureola’s obstinate rejection, the Auctor-turned-go-between decides to return to Leriano’s “prison,” where he finds him emaciated, nearly consumed by his amor hereos. The panderer advises Leriano to write a letter to confess his love and to plea for his own life (and freedom). The hopeless lover accedes. This represents the beginning of his two “libertades”: freedom from his prison of love (i.e., passions) and freedom from his wretched life, death as a psychopathological catharsis. For Leriano, as for Seneca,

! 106! ! ! death is a state of non-existence that marks an impenetrable limit for passions and pain.

He lives immersed in a life, allegorized by the prison of love, fraught with unrequited love, desire and agony, which he hopes to escape through death. And it is this overwhelming torturing passion and sorrow that impels him to seek satisfaction through the mediation of the Auctor, who encourages him to write a letter to express his patio.

Leriano’s first letter is an apology of his despair. He describes his appalling physical and affective state to appeal to her com-passion. His emotional blackmail consists of blaming her beauty for his misfortune: “No te maravilles, que tu hermosura causó mi afición, el afición el deseo, y el deseo la pena, y la pena el atrevimiento” (99).

His rhetorical gradatio begins with an accusation of Laureola’s beauty as the origin of his lovesickness, and it ends with an excuse for writing her the letter. In the same sentence, the emotional blackmail continues, but now it goes to the extreme. Leriano exhorts

Laureola to kill him if she deems his “atrevimiento” worthy of death (99). With his letter, he hands over his life, bestowing upon her the power to kill him. His life is no longer his but his beloved’s. Juxtaposing Leriano and Calisto’s sacroprofane attitudes, Peter G.

Earle points out that Leriano never goes as far as Calisto in calling Laureola his God, like

Calisto in Rojas’ Celestina.74 Leriano, however, often refers to Laureola’s redemptory qualities (93). Leriano entrusts his life and death to Laureola just as a religious person commends his life to God. San Pedro is playing with the Platonic and Stoic idea that God

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 Sempronio and Calisto’s interaction shows both Calisto’s sacroprofanity and his detachment from his own reality, caused by his intense amor hereos. After Sempronio’s misogyny, calling women imperfect and weak, Calisto equates Melibea to God: Calisto: ¿Qué me reprobas? Sempronio: Que sometes la dignidad del hombre a la imperfeción de la flaca muger. Calisto: ¿Muger? ¡Grossero! ¡Dios, Dios! Sempronio: ¿Y assí lo crees, o burlas? Calisto: ¿Que burlo? Por Dios la creo, por Dios la confiesso, y no creo que ay otro soberano en el cielo, aunque entre nosotros mora (237).

! 107! ! ! owns men’s lives, which should prevent men from taking their own lives. Medieval poets span this idea to make their beloveds occupy the locus of God, a sacroprofane hyperbole,

Lida de Malkiel notes (La originalidad 367-69), that became a cliché in fifteenth-century

Iberian literature. Paradoxically, it is during this un-Stoic loss of self and self-effacement that Leriano seems to gain some aplomb: “Y hablándote verdad, la muerte, sin que tú me la dieses, yo mismo me la daría, por hallar en ella la libertad que en la vida busco” (99, emphasis added).

Leriano establishes a discursive bridge between himself and the Stoic Cato, as articulated in Seneca’s multiple references to Cato’s suicide. Leriano is seeking his freedom through the love of Laureola. Like Cato sought his freedom by fighting with

Cesar, Laureola represents the gateway through which he can obtain his metaphorical libertad. If such freedom is not possible, self-death offers them an exit from their respective challenges. Like Cato, Leriano attempts to live his life in harmony with himself and with the external world, but he needs his beloved to find the happiness that would afford him a freedom from his hurtful passion. At first sight, the word “libertad” does not need to be an indicator of Stoicism since the idea of the body as prison for the soul has Pythagorean origins, and it became a trope in the Middle Ages, as Ayala’s

Rimado en Palacio v. 717 showcases. But as we pointed out above, Pythagoras’s philosophy condemned unwarranted suicide, and when he alludes to death as freedom, he refers to a natural death.

The word “libertad” in this suicidological context is not used in any of the sentimental romances. In fact, the only author who came close to its Stoic denotation was

Ximénez de Urrea, who seems to recognize the unorthodoxy of the word and cites

! 108! ! !

Petrarchan sources in order to hide his own voice. In his Penitencia de Amor (ca. 1514),

Ximénez de Urrea cites Petrarch’s De Remediis, which is a philosophical treatise modeled after Seneca’s De Remediis Fortvitorvm. Ximénez de Urrea makes Darino say after contemplating suicide: “Bien dize Petrarcha quell morir es vn salir de presión” (7).

Then Renedo, Darino’s servant, addresses Finoya, Darino’s beloved, and after telling her that Darino is in her prison, Renedo tells her: “Tú tienes la llaue de su libertad” (16).

Renedo’s use of libertad represents both the metaphorical freedom from his prison of love and (voluntary) death. Ximénez de Urrea is recasting Leriano’s ideological paradox in his own character. But unlike San Pedro, Ximénez de Urrea makes his characters allude to and quote both Seneca and Petrarch multiple times. San Pedro is more subtle in the redeployment of philosophical doctrines in his literary works, using the concepts without naming the sources. Erich von Richthofen calls attention to Petrarch’s influence on San Pedro’s Cárcel. San Pedro, moreover, borrows from Petrarch’s Stoic writings in order to craft Leriano’s erotic attitude toward Laureola (von Richthofen 31). Von

Richthofen notes that San Pedro selectively chooses elements from Petrarch, Dante and

Capellanus for his “elaboración de su novela medio psicológica y medio doctrinal” (36, emphasis added). Even without naming his sources, San Pedro is operating under the assumption that his informed reader will pick up on his doctrinal cues and recognize the source of his Stoicism. As we observe in Santillana, Gómez Manrique, and Cartagena,

Cato’s story—in which they clearly establish the binomial suicide-libertas—has gained poetic currency in the early fifteenth century. Unlike Darino, Leriano does not need to name Seneca to validate his opinions and attitudes toward life and death. Instead, he

! 109! ! ! appropriates the Stoic’s doctrines and uses them in real-life situations, which has more poetic power.

In a recent article, Sanda Munjic explores the way in which San Pedro uses

Seneca’s doctrine of wrath (ira) in order to rein in King Gaulo’s instincts against Leriano and Laureola. For Munjic, San Pedro scholars have misunderstood King Gaulo’s actions, due to the mischaracterization of the Auctor. Rather than cruel and tyrannical, the king is

“a judicious and rational monarch” (“The Vindication” 333). Whether Munjic’s assessment of interpreting King Gaulo as a rational king is compelling or not, what remains clear is that San Pedro uses Senecan philosophy to give psychological depth to his characters. Munjic refers to the Cardinal’s rhetorical plea to the king to spare

Laureola’s life as a “Christian-Senecan message” (“The Vindication” 338), which shows just how much San Pedro relies on Senecan morality to frame his plot and to fashion his characters’ psychological mindset. Before we show the Seneca-like fascination of San

Pedro for the suicide-freedom idea, let us see the direct source of his pagan allusion to suicide as “libertad.” In order to understand it better, we will turn our attention to the two

Senecan books that San Pedro read and quoted extensively from, i.e., De la providencia de Dios, translated by Cartagena, and Núñez’s rendition of De ira.

When Seneca talks about the aequanimitas of the wise man (vir sapiens) facing adversities, he extols Cato’s never-ending virtue for seeking his own death, rather than submitting to Cesar’s power. Despite Cesar’s surrounding him from land and sea, without possible physical scape, Cato has a way out: “Catón bien tiene por donde se vaya, y con una mano solo suya haría camino para su libertad” (Cartagena, Los V libros 212). Cato’s

“libertad” is a loaded word. He has the path to freedom from Cesar, but he also has the

! 110! ! ! libertad to die an honorable death, a Socratic death, as Cicero argues in his Tusculan

Disputations (Book 1, XXX, 74). In Senecan discourse, only the free man (libre) can dispose of his life, provided that he makes the decision rationally. The internecine wars between Cesar and Cato offer Seneca the perfect historical backdrop to show Cato’s struggle for Roman freedom, so he says that “la libertad que no pudo dar a Roma, dar la ha a Catón” (Cartagena, Los V libros 212). In his gloss, Cartagena interpolates the meaning of the word “libertad” and also warns (repeatedly) against such a “pagan” idea of suicide:

Cerca de todo lo suso dicho es de catar que aunque Séneca esto habla hermosamente, ello es gran error, ca matar a sí mismo no es de loar ni es acto de fortaleza ni de virtud, así según la verdad católica como según la doctrina de los filósofos, ante es acto de flaqueza y reprobado; lo cual más largamente se dirá en el capítulo postrimero deste tratado donde Séneca habla desta materia (Cartagena, Los V libros 212).

The above quote appears shortly after the fragment San Pedro quoted in his Sermón, regarding Democritus’ idea that a man ought to be tried before judging his virtue.

The last chapter of Cartagena’s translation is an exhortation to despise anything that is external to the self. For Seneca, the intangible liminality between life and death can be crossed effortlessly because “en presto lugar vos puse el ánima, ligeramente sale”

(Cartagena, Los V libros 233). The soul is imprisoned inside the body, but it rests impatient, like an angelus sepultus, in Donne’s terms, always longing to be freed. Seneca continues: “Parad mientes ahora y veréis cuán breve y ligero camino es para venir a la libertad. No vos di tan luenga tardanza para salir de la vida como para entrar en ella”

(Cartagena, Los V libros 233). Seneca, moreover, reminds his reader—both Lucilius and us—that such libertas could be achieved in different ways. Seneca offers a catalogue of suicide methods including strangulation, drowning and hitting your head on the ground, fire to asphyxiation.

! 111! ! !

After Martin de Braga’s sixth-century translation of De ira, another rendition appeared in the thirteenth century, and it was presented as a gift to Alfonso X’s son

Sancho IV. Then, Nuño de Guzmán revised the thirteenth-century translation in 1445.

There are multiple excerpts that show Seneca’s influence on Cárcel. For example,

Laureola uses Seneca’s discourse to appeal to her father’s rationality against his anger:

“quien quiere ser temido, forzado es que tema” (132), which echoes Seneca’s reference to

Decimus Liberius’ verse: “Qui timetur a multis, multos timet” (De ira II, 11, 3). As

Munjic points out: “Laureola’s own letter to the King shows her rhetorical skills and her familiarity with Senecan principles of clemency in regulating the implementation of laws” (“The Vindication” 342). However, in De ira—as well as in letter LXX—, Seneca pronounces his most lucid apologia pro suicide and, like he has done in De la providencia de Dios, he uses the word libertas to express the exit of life through suicide as means of escaping from prison:

‘Quocumque respexeris, ibi malorum finis est. Vides illum praecipitem locum? illac ad libertatem descenditur. Vides illud mare, illud flumen, illum puteum? libertas illic in imo sedet. Vides illam arborem breuem retorridam infelicem? pendet inde libertas. Vides iugulum tuum, guttur tuum, cor tuum? Effugia seruitutis sunt. Nimis tibi operosos exitus monstro et multum animi ac roboris exigentes? Quaeris quod sit ad libertatem iter? quaelibet in corpore tuo uena’ (De ira, III, 15, 4, see also Letter LXX, XII, LXXVII, XIII and XXVI for the use of the word “libertas” in a suicidological context).

In his Neo-Stoic treatise, the seventeenth-century poet Quevedo quotes this passage with pain (“no sin dolor”) in order to reject its underlying idea. Despite his overt admiration for Seneca and his moral doctrines, Quevedo feels a moral obligation to impose his opinion upon his reader. Unlike Cartagena and Quevedo, San Pedro does not question

Seneca’s pagan resemantization of the suicidological word libertas. Instead, San Pedro

(and Leriano) internalize the semantic denotation of “libertas,” and it seems to be such a powerful idea that he uses it multiple times, as if to ensure that his reader made the

! 112! ! ! connection with Seneca’s philosophy. When Leriano asserts to Laureola in his first letter that his self-murder will bring about his “libertad,” it is an endorsement of Seneca’s lax views on the immortality of the soul.

Despite the attempt to guilt Laureola into loving him, the princess does not respond to his letter. Patricia Grieve notes that Laureola refrains from responding because she understood the imperative need for maidens to “above all, retain their honor, their good reputation” (Desire 45). As any noble lady from the time and space in which San

Pedro wrote, Laureola is aware of the dangers of engaging in a romantic relationship with a man without her father’s consent. A misstep can cost her honor and her life. After the first epistle to Laureola, the Auctor-turned-go-between continues to vicariously court

Laureola. After a few days and private conversations with Laureola, the Auctor sees signs of affection in the princess’ behavior. Encouraged by the good tidings, the lovesick lover begs the Auctor to deliver a second letter to the princess in which he bids farewell to life.

Leriano’s determination to die again has tragicomic overtones, which undermine his self- fashioning as a courtly lover of heroic dimensions.

The second letter can be read as an extension of the first. He pretends to guilt

Laureola into loving him, using yet more emotional blackmail. He reiterates her power to kill him or to let him live and repeats the same Stoic formula of voluntary death as freedom: “Morir no creas que me desplaze, que aquél es de poco juizio que aborece [sic] lo que da libertad” (107). Like Seneca, Leriano believes that it is irrational (“de poco juizio”) to loathe death. His discourse of reason is yet another link to Stoicism. Death represents a gateway to freedom, and death is inherent to nature. Hence to reject death is irrational (“de poco juizio”). It is in this second letter that we find the only reference to

! 113! ! ! eschatological apprehensions regarding suicide: “Si en el lugar donde van las almas desesperadas hay algún bien” (108). This oblique allusion to the Church’s condemnation of suicide seems to be in the back of San Pedro’s (and Leriano’s) minds, even if Leriano is skeptical about traditional eschatological dogmas. San Pedro’s limited interest in eschatology is not due to his possible crypto-Jewishness or his alleged converso origins since, as Lida de Malkiel cogently argues in her study on Rojas’ Celestina (La originalidad 447-8), Judaism rejected suicide almost as adamantly as Christianity did.

Rather, in his Cárcel, San Pedro decides to adopt a Stoic cosmology, where rational suicides attain a freedom from psychopathological afflictions. Swayed by the Auctor’s pandering and by Leriano’s victimist romanticism, the lover’s emotional blackmail renders positive results.

Fearful—and perhaps worried about the damnation of Leriano’s soul—, Laureola replies to his second letter. Aware of the danger of her decision, she reiterates that she responds out of compassion to save him from his impending death. When Leriano receives the epistle, he extrapolates beyond the literal meaning of Laureola’s words.

Despite the rejection of his love, Leriano cheers up and recovers his will to live. The rejecting letter, paradoxically, “le dio libertad.” The author uses “libertad” with the opposite meaning as he did before. Now “libertad” is a will to live with the hope that he will attain his erotic desire. This libertad is now a postern to life and the world.

Wardropper calls attention to the allegorical prison as a metaphor for Leriano’s psychoaffective grief. His liberation from the prison represents a literal freedom from his pain. This release from the prison, Weissberger points out, is a symbol of a cure of

“Leriano’s suffering” (“The Politics” 316), which marks a turning point from the bond of

! 114! ! !

Deseo as his jailer to allowing Juicio (Reason) to rein in his passions. Freed from his prison of love, he heads out to the court to see Laureola.

Leriano’s freedom, ironically, turns into the incarceration of Laureola when

Leriano’s lauzengier (jealous rival), Persio, accuses Leriano and Laureola of a furtive and improper rendezvous. Persio avows his false accusation to the king who discharges his anger upon his daughter. This imprisonment marks the beginning of what Francisco

Márquez Villanueva identified as a “novela política,” which conveyed a criticism on unrestrained monarchic power (“Cárcel de Amor” 185-200). This iniquitous act also marks the beginning of an ideological and spiritual metanoia in Leriano, which also represents an abandonment of his allegorical world to enter headlong into the real world of epic heroes. Deyermond notes the complexity of Leriano’s simultaneous existence in the real as well as the allegorical world (Tradiciones 72). After Laureola frees him from his prison, Leriano abandons the allegorical world, which subjected him to an abject condition of passivity and ungendered (dimasculinized) subservience. As Cvitanovic and

Bermejo assert, after Leriano kills the slanderer Persio and frees Laureola and himself from defamation, “el itinerario de Leriano en su servidumbre de amor inicia su culminación. Su drama… deriva hacia la muerte liberadora” (292). Death frees him from his psychopathological travail but fetters him to the uncertainty of spiritual salvation.

Cvitanovic and Bermejo note: “Negado a la esperanza por la propia índole de su negocio de amor, sólo le restará esperar a la muerte como el único atisbo de libertad total” (292).

This “libertad total,” however, can be problematic because, mush like Leriano seems to do, it ignores the Church’s doctrines against unjustified suicide. But San Pedro does make Leriano say that his willful death will bring a “libertad total.”

! 115! ! !

While Laureola is in prison, Leriano sends her a third letter. The tone and content differ from the first two. Fortune (and the king) have inverted their positions. Now

Leriano is free, and Laureola is imprisoned. The power has also shifted. Now Leriano is empowered and Laureola utterly vulnerable and despairing. Her fear of dying, though, sheds some verisimilitude to an otherwise suicido-centric romance. Leriano’s letter attempts to assuage her fears by promising his life for her deliverance. His amatory rhetoric has turned into euphuism, a chain of bombastic promises to offer his life for her freedom that reminds us of the typological characterization of the miles gloriosus. As the battles with the king unfold and he displays his canny leadership, the reader discerns that

Leriano’s pledges are fraught with unconditional grit and reckless heroism (Boase, The

Origin 77).

Leriano’s struggle to free his beloved has suspended his melancholic effeteness and transformed it into relentless mettle. Leriano sees the opportunity to either become a hero in the princess’s eyes or die an honorable death. In his third letter, Leriano discloses his “secret” plan to liberate her. Stoic morality returns stronger than ever. Leriano assures his imprisoned beloved that if he dies in the attempt, his death will free them both:

“Donde si en tal demanda muriere, tú serás libre de la prisión y yo de tantas desaventuras, assí que será una muerte causa de dos libertades” (125). Although suicidal, Leriano’s action would not have been equated to suicide since his exploit fall within the realm of a feat of arms. His double use of the word “libertad,” however, still denotes the idea of complete disregard for eschatological doctrines. A violent death without confession, as

Laura Vivanco and Ariel Guiance point out, was perceived as a certain conduit to Hell in the Middle Ages. Leriano further complicates the semantics of the word libertad. The

! 116! ! ! hero encapsulates two antithetic significations in the same signifier (libertades).

Although Leriano attempts to equate his libertad with Laureola’s if he were to die, they involve contradictory meanings. Even if Leriano succeeds in his temerarious quest and

King Gaulo frees Laureola after Leriano’s death, “libertad” for the lover means ceasing to live, regardless of salvation or damnation of his soul. For the princess, libertad means returning to her “normal” life. Symbolically, Leriano will have died for the two of them, and Laureola would be free for both of them.

With Laureola in prison, the main goal of the suicidal lover has shifted. He still regards his body as the abject means to serve Laureola, but he sublimates his erotic desire into freeing the princess, like she has freed him from his allegorical prison. The king advises the forger Persio to challenge (rebto) Leriano to a trial by ordeal (ordalía or

Juicio de Dios) to substantiate his accusation beyond doubt. After signing a written indictment, they fight, and Leriano cuts Persio’s right hand, a sign of Leriano’s truthfulness. Just before the hero completes his victory over the perjurer, King Gaulo breaches the ethics of chivalry by stopping the battle. King Gaulo tampers with chivalric traditions, but as Marina S. Brownlee notes, the king’s action also represents “a transgression against Divine justice” since God grants victory to the warrior upholding the truth (The Severed 168). Leriano believes King Gaulo would exonerate him and

Laureola, charging Persio with perjury, but Persio bribes three men to uphold his false accusation. The gullible king believes Persio and his accomplices. King Gaulo, inexplicably, condemns Laureola to be executed within three days in order “to wipe out the stain of dishonour that she has brought upon the family” (Waley, “Cárcel de amor”

345). In light of these obvious flaws, Munjic’s thesis that the king is righteous and just

! 117! ! ! seems problematic. His anger and his lack of compassion for his own daughter foils

Laureola’s (and Leriano’s) Stoicism in welcoming death as an inherent part of nature.

Irritated by the king’s resolution, Leriano takes a precipitated determination to go into the court to free Laureola by force, but after the Auctor dissuades him from acting upon it,

Leriano decides to exhaust his diplomatic channels before acting against his natural liege.

After all the diplomatic routes close, Leriano feels compelled to act because as

Whinnom notes, Leriano considers his courtly service and his honor more important than his feudal obligation toward his liege (“Introducción” 57). The hero is not led to act against his king by an irrational instinct or a false sense of entitlement. Rather, he has an unwavering conviction to defend the truth at the cost of his own life and at the cost of rebelling against the man he hopes to turn into his father-in-law. During the struggle,

Leriano lost most of his warriors in the civil war, and so he recedes to a fortress with his last men to keep fighting for what he believes in. As the king’s men prepare an attack to take the fortress, Leriano exhorts his men to die a good death (bien morir), and he alludes to the Stoic doctrine of ars moriendi. Morir bien represented the corollary of a virtuous life. In his exhortation to his warriors, Leriano shows his familiarity with Senecan moral philosophy:

Esta vida penosa en que bevimos no sé por qué se deva mucho querer, que es breve en los días y larga en los trabajo, la cual ni por temor se acrecienta ni por osar se acorta, pues cuando nascemos se limita su tiempo, por donde es escusado el miedo y devida la osadía (146, emphasis added).

Leriano adduces the leitmotif of the Stoic cotidie morimur to exhort his men to fight unto death. This philosophical tenet underscores the teleological principle of death as the unavoidable endpoint of life. Seneca uses the imagery of the clepsydra to show life in a constant state of decay.

! 118! ! !

As Blüher points out, this topos of cotidie morimur, which is present in Díaz de

Toledo’s translation of Plato’s Phaedo,75 became a widely used trope in fifteenth-century

Spanish poetry (183).76 Seneca avers: “Quomadmodum clepsydram non extremum stillicidium exhaurit, sed quicquid ante defluxit, sic ultima hora, qua esse desinimus, non sola mortem facit, sed sola consummat” (Blüher 183). Commenting upon this quotation,

Blüher asserts: “El pensamiento parece aquí incrustado en la doctrina estoica del desprecio a la muerte; el aceptar que todos los días morimos un poco nos debería quitar el miedo a la muerte” (183). Leriano’s allusion to the Stoic idea regarding the brevity of life, as expounded in Seneca’s De brevitate vitae, underscores his familiarity with and internalization of Senecan philosophy. Leriano’s exhortation to despise death goes beyond the pessimism that Ayllón notes (La visión 21). Rather, it attests to Leriano’s

Stoic worldview and willingness to accept death as an inherent part of life. Instead of pessimism, Leriano exudes optimism and a conviction that an honorable death can lead to a long-lasting life of honor, which Jorge Manrique associated with heroicity and human memory (“pues otra vida más larga/ de fama tan glorïosa/ acá dexáis” 65).

Thanks to his virtuosity as a commander, Leriano frees Laureola after killing the perjuring Persio. He captures one of the three slanderers who have falsely accused the princess, and, arrogating the king’s prerogatives to dispose of the lives of his subjects,

Leriano tortures him to make him confess and then kills him. In order to appease Persio’s family—in yet another display of injustice and tyranny—, the king exiles Leriano from

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 75 Pero Díaz de Toledo translates: “¿Qué otra cosa faze el honbre, desde que sale el sol fasta que se pone, sinon passar desta vida a la otra” (236). As Nicholas G. Round points out in a footnote to this dictum, this idea was included in the Floresta de philósophos: “Desde que sale el sol fasta que se pone, siempre pasa el hombre de esta vida a la otra” (340). 76 As Blüher points out, this idea is already present in Pere March, Ausiàs March’s father: “Al punt c’om naix comença de morir,/ e, morint, creix, e crexint, mor tot dia” (183). Juan de Mena and Gómez Manrique express the same idea in their poetry (183-5).

! 119! ! ! his court and from Laureola’s life. His command is a double move. On the one hand, the monarch avoids an impending conflict between two of the most powerful families in

Macedonia, and on the other, he keeps Leriano away from his daughter. King Gaulo aims to protect Laureola’s stained reputation, preventing as Márquez Villanueva points out, the happy ending that the reader would expect after Leriano’s heroic feat of arms. Leriano, however, decides to write what would become his last letter to his beloved. Once again, he offers himself to Laureola. He returns to his erotic despair, with powerful Stoic overtones:

Si todavía te plaze que muera, házmelo saber, que grand bien harás a la vida, pues no será desdichada del todo; lo primero della se pasó en inocencia y lo del conocimiento en dolor; a lo menos el fin será en descanso, porque tú lo das, el cual, si ver no me quieres, será forçado que veas (152).

This is the only of the four letters where he does not combine his Stoic formula suicide- libertas. But the reader can infer it by his wording. When he says that his death will be a

“descanso,” he seems to suggest that his death will liberate him from his woes, which we can interpret as libertas from his passion—passion as pain and as his affection for the princess. Laureola does not reply to the last letter, which triggers Leriano’s decision to exit life. Chorpenning suggests that upon bringing the epistle to Leriano, the Auctor counsels Leriano to kill himself (“Cuando llegué a Leriano dile la carta, y como acabó de leella díxele que… tanta razón havía para que deviese morir,” 347). Chorpenning interprets a literally codified enunciation that in courtly love discourse simply means that the letter contains a rejection of his love. Grieve argues that Leriano’s suicide gives the impression of bringing King Gaulo to justice (Desire 54). It is rather likelier that Leriano intends to either guilt Laureola into loving him or to compel her to feel remorse for not loving him. Leriano understands that there is a tension in Laureola between her sense of

! 120! ! ! honor and her affections toward him. And he deploys these Stoic precepts to sway her to put her feelings before her honor. De Armas notes that Leriano represents the code of courtly love and Laureola the code of honor, and this clash of codes brings about the tragedy in the dénouement (394). For Laureola, honor is above life, and for Leriano, love

(for Laureola) is above his life. Each one has ideals and sociopolitical obligations that shape up their ethopoetic identities as courtly lovers. Laureola is willing to sacrifice her love life in order to safeguard her honor and her post in life as the heir of Macedonia.

Leriano is eager to sacrifice his life on the altar of his sublimated love for the princess.

Hence as individuals with distinctive personalities and priorities, they embrace their destiny with unwavering faith. Whereas Leriano chooses death, Laureola embraces life, one that in Núñez’s continuation of San Pedro’s Cárcel, is filled with guild and remorse, on the one hand, and empty of love, on the other.

Leriano employs and deploys Stoic ideas and discourse to convey his utterly disempowered self. His use of Seneca’s unorthodox ideas on suicide could represent the espousal of Stoic doctrines in detriment to Christian orthodoxy. Leriano does not attend to Christian eschatology, where suicides do not attain “libertad” but eternal damnation— at the very least, we perceive a poetic suspension of Christian doctrines. Throughout his ordeal in Cárcel, Leriano lives and dies outside of religious orthodoxy. He perceives the afterlife as an abstract void that offers him freedom from his woes and his passions.

Chorpenning draws attention to the paradox of Leriano’s death. Leriano’s “suicide provides him an escape from the damnable prison of Love,” but it does not free him from damnation because “according to contemporary theology and belief, it condemns him to hell” (Chorpenning 350). It is his Stoicism—as he understands it from his readings of

! 121! ! !

Seneca’s treatises—that help him overcome the fear of voluntary death and to take the necessary steps to achieve his goal, seeking his own destruction. Hence Leriano both expressed himself like a Stoic and dies a Stoic death by inedia.

! 122! ! Inedia: Leriano’s Stoic Suicide

In a letter to Caninius Rufus, Pliny the Young recounts the peaceful death of the Stoic

Silius Italicus, whom José Amador de los Ríos argues was born in Andalucía (Historia

165-75). Italicus, whom Pliny describes as “φιλόκαλος” (lover of beauty), has an incurable tumor (“insanabilis clavus”) that impels him to devise his death. Overall,

Italicus is described as a happy man. The death of his younger son is his only affliction, but his older son is a respected and prosperous consular. Just before his death, Silius

Italicus decides to retire to Campania in order to write and die in peace, presumably away from Roman politics and intrigues. Weary (taedius) of his illness, but with an incontestable firmness (“irrevocabili constantia”), “usque ad supremum diem beatus et felix”, he runs (decucurrit) to his death. When the “Spanish” poet and statesman believes his time had come, he makes a rational decision to exit life. Hence, he is determined to stop eating: “In Neapolitano suo inedia finisse vitam” (Pliny 182). Although for different reasons, Leriano also decides to end his life by inedia.

Despite the long tradition of Stoic suicides by inedia, Leriano’s decision to kill himself by starvation is rather equivocal. Unlike the Stoic Silius Italicus, Leriano is inserted within a tradition of courtly love, where amor hereos is an inborn condition, and depressive moods are effects of the erotic illness. In his commentary on Constantine the

African’s influential treatise on lovesickness, Viaticum, Peter of Spain, a thirteenth- century Portuguese scholar, speaks about some medicinal cures for amor hereos.77 Peter of Spain alludes to the Persian doctor al-Rāzī (!"#$) to support the thesis that fasting !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 77 Constantine the African prescribes wine (uinum), music (audire genera musicorum), conversation with friends (colloqui dilectissimis amicis) and with beautiful women (cum femina), etc. !

(ieiunium) was beneficial in lovesickness: “Rasi dicit quod in amore hereos completit ieiunium” (108). While Avicenna provides the antithesis: “Et Avicenna dicit in tertio quod in amore heroes competit cibum temperatus” (Peter of Spain108). Peter of Spain synthetizes the dialectical argument by claiming that fasting could reduce the seminal matter (material spermatica). On the other hand, fasting can lead to a feeble appearance or emaciation (habitudo tenuis vel macilenta). Hence Peter leans toward Avicenna’s prescription to cure lovesickness, namely, a healthy diet (“cibum temperatus”). In his

Glosses on the Viaticum, Gerard of Berry ratifies this prescription (“nutrimentum laudabile”). None of the medical authorities on amor hereos, however, suggests inedia as a cure. It would be tantamount to advocating suicide. Karl Menninger, meanwhile, notes that a total refusal to eat is commonly found in melancholia, which could be triggered by

“a disappointment in a loved object” (108). Melancholic personality is associated with a set of social and psychological anxieties ranging from antisocial behaviors to a disconnection with their surroundings and disregard for others, and, unlike the poetic persona in Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor—who exhibits clear symptoms of melancholia (López González, “Libro)— Leriano does not exhibit textbook characteristics of melancholics.

Whereas depressive lovesickness can lead to melancholia, Leriano displays a rational mindset after restoring Laureola’s life. He is not killed by a severe depression caused by an acute amor hereos, as Menéndez Pelayo (Orígenes Vol. II 46), Gili Gaya

(Obras ix) and Whinnom (“Introducción” 38) suggest. Menéndez Pelayo, Gili Gaya and

Whinnom only mention Leriano’s suicide briefly and without taking into account the lover’s underlying Stoic ideology. During his last rendezvous with Laureola, the go-

! 124! ! ! between sadly discerns that the princess has changed from a receptive, willing lover to thy typological leitmotif of the “belle dame sans merci.” Ruiz Casanova observes

Laureola’s cruelty toward her lover as a defense mechanism to safeguard her honor and her life (“Introducción” Cárcel 41-2). As noted earlier, Leriano shows a libido moriendi from the start that impels him to contemplate suicide, and the narrator tells us that

Laureola’s rejection casts him back to his lovesickness: “Viéndose apartado della, dexadas las obras de guerra, bolvióse a las congoxas enamoradas” (148). As a person who has loved profoundly, after receiving the news that Laureola refuses to see him,

Leriano feels her disdain to the core of his heart. But after processing, assimilating, and rationalizing the report, Leriano begins to accept Laureola’s rejection with laudable mesura. When the Auctor brings the fatal news about her dogged rejection (“determinada voluntad”), Leriano receives the news with aequanimitas and composure. The go- between says that Leriano “tanta razón había para que deviese morir; el cual me respondió que hasta allí me tenía por suyo, porque le aconsejava lo propio” (154).

As he does in many occasions, the Auctor uses a word that is preponderant in

Stoic discourse “razón.” The Auctor avers that there is razón to die. And based on language and plot, this is how San Pedro intends Leriano to die: rationally. San Pedro hints at this very idea at the beginning of the text. When Leriano is explaining his erotic plight to the Auctor, San Pedro makes Razón (Logos) command Leriano’s death: “Dixo la Razón: ‘Yo no solamente do consentimiento en la prisión, mas ordeno que muera; que mejor le estará la dichosa muerte que la desesperada vida’” (90). Razón’s words are a prolepsis to his subsequent rational suicide, but Razón’s words also juxtapose a rational suicide (namely, Razón commanding his self-murder: “Dichosa muerte”) vis-à-vis a life

! 125! ! ! lived contrary to Nature (“desesperada vida”). After repeating the Stoic paradigm suicide- libertas multiple times and bestowing upon him a Stoic suicide, San Pedro prepares for his hero a rational death, and just like he has done at the beginning, Razón commands his death. If the author had intended to represent Leriano’s death as a cowardly escape

(fugere), he could have chosen to drag him back into the allegorical prison of love, chained by a personification of Deseo, Desesperança or any other allegorical figure to parade his deplorable state of mind. But because Leriano dies a peaceful death surrounded by his loved ones, defending the honor and virtue of women, the Auctor- author fashions a Stoic death for his dying friend.

Commenting upon Núñez’s continuation of Cárcel, Robert Folger notes that after rejecting Laureola’s feelings, “Leriano has regained his rationality and agency”

(“Cárceles” 628). But Leriano regains his rationality and agency before and, above all, after liberating Laureola from prison in San Pedro’s Cárcel. Hearing that Laureola has rejected his love, he accepts her decision with rationality, and exercises his agency to end his life. Leriano never attempts to change Laureola’s mind, nor does he, like Calisto or

Don Melón de la Huerta in Libro de buen amor, attempt to undercut his lady’s resolution through disreputable proxenetes. Instead, he receives the news and understands that her decision is beyond his control, and he maps out his own exit from the world. Grieve, as most critics do, suggests that “Leriano despairs and falls into a mortal lovesickness”

(Desire 48) so that he “sees no recourse but suicide” (Desire 49). Whereas Leriano does despair of attaining Laureola’s love, it is not lovesickness but reason that leads him to exit life. Perhaps his unrequited love triggers his resolution to end his life, but there is no textual evidence to argue that his erotic illness killed him. The narrator tells us that

! 126! ! !

Leriano receives the news thankfully and rationally, which shows that his suicide is not a rushed act taken in a moment of irrational despair, like other rejected lovers from the sentimental genre.

Most other rejected lovers behave with a ridiculous display of hyperbolic sentimentalism and melodramatic effeminacy, as Leriano himself has done while he is imprisoned in his cárcel de amor. As José Luis Varela points out, the “sentimentalismo… monocorde” is the blueprint of the novela sentimental and the main reason critics find their “idealismo radical” distasteful (“Revisión” 351). After leaving his prison, Leriano does not wallow in self-pity. His stolidity suggests that he kills himself “rationally.”

Leriano is not led to suicide defeated by his passion for Laureola. Instead, like Italicus and defending the honor of women against his friend Tefeo’s misogynist rant, Leriano determines to cut his life short rather than having to live a long life without Laureola’s love. Prefiguring Albert Camus’s assertion that the fundamental question in philosophy is to determine whether life is or is not worth leaving (11), Seneca notes that the essential question in life is how one dies. For Seneca, as for Leriano, it does not matter when you die but how you die. Therefore, wise men must live the right amount of time (sapiens vivet quantum debet) not as long as he can (non quantum potest, Ep. LXX, 6).

Aware of his dire sentimental and political situation, Leriano sees death as an opportunity to assert his self-affirmation. He chooses to die well, rather than to live long, as he likely has learned from reading Seneca and Musonius Rufus. Leriano has a clear concept of choosing the right moment to die, and he also understands the ephemeral nature of life, as he has expressed to his warriors above. Torres Naharro’s Febea has this

! 127! ! ! very Senecan idea when she tells her brother, who is threatening to kill her to punish her for losing her virginity:

Cuanto más que las doncellas, mientras que tiempo tuvieren, harán mal si no murieren por los que mueren por ellas (60).

Febea shows unwavering Stoic beliefs in the face of extreme danger. She affirms her selfhood both as a courtly beloved and as a free individual. Like Febea, Leriano’s suicide affirms his libertas in choosing when and how to die. Although Torres Naharro represents

Febea as happily married to Himeneo and does not need to end her life, Leriano’s situation demands a radical decision to self-affirm his power over his own life and death, a prerogative that he has bestowed upon Laureola in the past.

Leriano’s death, however, can be puzzling because of the tension between his lovesickness and philosophical ideas. Although they stem from opposite ideological mindsets, both can lead to the same end. Leriano’s amor hereos has the potential for suppressing his appetite, a psychopathology that goes beyond his reasonable purview. A rational suicide, however, entails the conscious decision to stop eating. The former is a psychosomatic effect that occurs in lovelorn lovers, while the latter is a rational action, which only men with a strong conviction can undertake and achieve. Whereas depressive states of mind could quell the hunger and will to live, overwhelmed by psychological or affective torment, Leriano devises his own “honorable” and dignified departure from life, according to Stoic ethics.

Leriano refuses to eat. It is not that he is unable to eat, for he has the composure to make his own decisions. Robert Folger suggests that Leriano’s “failing mental faculties causes distress in his family” (Escape 86). Contrary to Folger’s opinion, Leriano does not

! 128! ! ! show any signs of losing his “mental faculties.” Paradoxically, if Leriano had lost his mind, he would not have killed himself since it is the overwhelming memory of Laureola that impels him to end his life. Losing one’s mind also implies a weakening of psychological faculties and willpower. Suggesting that Leriano suffers from a kind of alexithymia—the failure to understand the emotions about one’s self—undermines both

San Pedro’s efforts to represent his hero as a rational lover who forcefully articulates a feminist discourse as well as Leriano’s unwavering faith toward his beloved and toward himself. Barbara Matulka points out that “Leriano commits a slow suicide,” and before he expires, “he spends his last breath to sing the praises of the lady he has worshipped”

(34). In his idealization of women, Leriano extols the virtuous suicides of classical literature (Lucretia, Ipola and Portia) and contemporaneous (María Coronel and Doña

Isabel), all of who die Stoic (rational) deaths, attesting to his own circumstantial immediacy. Leriano might have lost his heart but never his mental faculties.

Far from losing his mind, Leriano seems to be more lucid in the last moments of his life. Before Folger, Menéndez Pelayo had noted that Leriano lost his mind (“perder el seso”), but Menénez Pelayo does not seem to suggest that the lover’s mental capacity

“fails”, namely, to loose his sanity. The Spanish philologist seems to imply that during the opening scenes, Leriano allows his passion to triumph over reason. Arguing that

Leriano loses his mind is be tantamount to condoning his suicide since both the Church and the civil laws treated madmen as victims of their own illness, thus unable to rein in their own will. Morón Arroyo notes that unlike Cervantes with his Quijote, Fernando de

Rojas fashions Calisto’s character as a sane person in order that “el pecado le fuera imputable y la condenación resultara lógica” (80). The same argument can be marshaled

! 129! ! ! for Leriano. During the Middle Ages, insane criminals, including suicides, were seen and treated as irrational people. Leriano does not lose his mind, but despite of being surrounded by people, he seems to feel lonely in life, and his perceived loneliness contributes to his scorn of death (contemnite mortem). Weary of his existence (taedius vitae), he decides to die but also embraces all the travails of life as part of nature: “Todo lo que podía acabar su vida alabava, mostrábase amigo de los dolores, recreava con los tormentos, amava las tristezas” (154). This attitude suggests a Stoic mindset. He accepts his psychoaffective grief as an inherent part of nature. Comparing Calisto’s display of cowardice and whiny complaints in a similar situation, Leriano behaves with equanimity and mesura in the face of erotic adversity.

There is evidence of masochistic elements in Leriano’s suffering, a phenomenon, as Slavoj Žižek convincingly argues in his study “Courtly Love, or Woman as Thing,” intrinsic to amour cortois. Leriano enjoys his torments (“se recreava con los tormentos”), and he loves his sorrow (“amava las tristezas”). Leriano even suffers his passion stoically. During their first encounter, the Auctor oxymoronically tells Laureola that

Leriano is constrained within a “prisión dulce” (95), and later the Auctor tells Leriano that “de tu pena te veo gloriar” (105). Leriano’s welcoming attitude toward his own sorrow perpetuates the cultural values of suffering, as advanced by cancionero poets and courtly love literature. Leriano embraces a scornful Christ-like “passion” and is happy with his impending demise, knowing, as any adept of Stoicism would know and accept, that Laureola’s rejection is an external force that he cannot control.78 But he can control

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 78 Quevedo deemed this the most important principle in Stoicism: “La doctrina toda de los estoicos se cierra en este principio; que las cosas se divides en propias y ajenas; que las propias están en nuestra mano, y las ajemas en la mano ajena; que aquéllas nos tocan, que estotras no nos pertenecen, y que por esto no nos han

! 130! ! ! his reaction to it, and he decides to welcome any outcome to demonstrate his ultimate test of loyalty and love: suicide. With his death, he proves that his words and his love are true, and his final action serves the purpose of making his words concord with his action.

His promises of love and of death throughout his erotic ordeal find the final consummation with his passing, so he decides to face it with mettle and serenity. When he gets to the point where he has to make a transcendental decision about his life, seeing that he has no hope of being with his beloved, he finally decides to die. The saddened

Auctor asserts:

Y desconfiado ya de ningún bien ni esperança, no podiendo sustenerse ni sofrirse, uvo de venir a la cama, donde ni quiso comer ni bever ni ayudarse de cosa de las que sustentan la vida, llamándose siempre bienaventurado porque era venido a sazón de hazer servicio a Laureola quitándola de enojos (154-155).

These words echo the words that the Auctor had told Laureola about Leriano’s turbulent and equivocal mindset before Laureola has liberated from the prison of love: “Por olvidar su cuita pide la muerte; porque no se diga que tú la consentiste, desea la vida; porque tú la hazes llama bienaventurada su pena” (102). Commenting on these words, Petter N.

Dunn notices the dilemmas and paradoxes of the lover, asserting that his lack of viable alternatives makes his death inevitable: “Leriano’s alternatives are not real alternatives at all, before which rational choices might be made” (“Narrator” 192). Dunn, however, does not take into account that death could represent a “rational choice” if undertaken with an equanimous resolve. Leriano feels blessed for suffering because Laureola is the cause of his sorrow. Paradoxically, he feels happiness for his suffering, which suggests that his misery can be interpreted both as voluntary and rational. Even on the brink of death,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! de perturbar ni afligir; que hemos de procurar que en las cosas se haga nuestro deseo, sino ajustar nuestro deseo con los sucesos de las cosas, que así tendrémos libertad, paz y quietud” (Obras 414).

! 131! ! !

Leriano is thankful for dying in his beloved’s service, rendering his death an altruistic and selfless suicide (“quitándola de enojos”).

Leriano despairs (desconfiado… de esperança) of Laureola’s love, but he does not despair in God because God never figures in his immediate reality. Theologically,

Leriano does not sin against the Holy Spirit because he sins against God himself by committing suicide and by dying outside the Church’s proper prescriptions. Besides oblique allusions in his “razones porque los ombres son obligados a las mujeres” and in his “prueva por enxemplos la bondad de las mujeres”—which were expurgated by the

Inquisition in the sixteenth century because of the heterodox nature of them—, God is conspicuously absent in Leriano’s mind. His reaction to his own impending death is commendable. He does not victimize himself in the eyes of his family and friends, nor does he demonize Laureola for her unrequited love. And he does not blame God for his lack of success in love. Despite his masochist suffering, he does not show signs of self- loathing. Instead, like Italicus, who feels “beatus et felix” up to the day of his death, the

Auctor uses the same exact word to describe Leriano’s reaction to his own determinism:

“bienaventurado” (beatus). The word bienaventurado—a word that was recognized by

Iberian Christians in the fifteenth century as the standard Spanish rendering of the biblical μακάριοι / beati (“Blessed be…”) in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5)—represents a deliberate appropriation of the Christian term “beatus” to express Stoic or Aristotelian concepts. In the fifteenth century, poets and writers used the term bienaventurado—and its cognates—in Stoic contexts, as seen in Cartagena’s translation of Seneca’s De vida bienaventurada (Fothergill-Payne, Seneca 48), which attests to the permeability of

Christian doctrines. When recounting the story of the Roman suicide matron, Yúlide,

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Álvaro de Luna describes her Stoic death as “bienaventurada” in his early fifteenth- century biographical book of virtuous women. Before he warns against suicide for

Christians (“comoquier que segund nuestra santa Fe esto non sea bien fecho nin meritorio antes sea avido por cosa muy dañada”), the Condestable Luna describes the octogenarian’s Socratic suicide as blessed and praiseworthy: “Por ventura fallarás que ninguno [fuerte varón] non pasó desta vida tan constante nin tan bienaventuradamente”

(414).

When he decides to die by starvation, Leriano is likely remembering other famous wise men that died by inedia. When Diogenes Laërtius recounts the life of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, Laërtius says that there are two versions of Zeno’s death. The first is that being old and weak, he falls down and breaks his toe. Zeno interprets his fall as a

Socratic sign to end his life, and after reciting Niobe’s verse “I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?, he held his breath and died” (Laërtius, Lives VII: 1.28). The second version, however, is that when Zeno is old, he “is set free,” which conveys the Senecan linguistic paradigm “suicide-libertas”, so he died by “ceasing to take food” (Lives VII:

1.31). It is not certain whether San Pedro had read this story, but we know that De vita et moribus philosophorum, an abridged elaboration of Laërtius’ Βίοι (Lives), attributed to

Walther Burleigh, circulated widely in fifteenth-century Spain (Crosas 7). Even if San

Pedro had read Burleigh’s De vita, the English philosopher does not include the mythic deaths of Zeno in his text. However, roughly five decades after Cárcel’s publication, the

Platonic Cristóbal de Villalón, has no doubt that Zeno has starved himself to death.

Villalón asserts in his El scholástico: “Zenon Ziteo prinçipe de la seta stoica y discípulo de Crates thebano se dexo morir de hambre” (53).

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Like Zeno, his successor Cleanthes killed himself by inedia. Michel de Montaigne recounts that Cleanthes’ gums are swollen and rotten (“enflées et pourries”), so his doctors advise him to be abstemious. After not eating for two days, he recovers his health. Instead of returning to his normal life, he decides to keep fasting until death: “Lui, au rebours, goûtant déjà quelque douceur en cette defaillance, entreprend de ne se retirer plus arrière et franchit le pas qu’il avait si fort avancé” (150). De Montaigne describes

Cleanthes’ inedia as a sweet process to death (“goûtant déjà quelque douceur” 150), which echoes Leriano’s “prisión dulce.” Montaigne also recasts the ironic story of

Pomponius Atticus, Cicero’s correspondent. After being sick for a long time, he resolves to kill himself by inedia (“ayant choisi de se tuer par abstinence”). So Atticus begins his abstinence. After he has started his starvation, he recovers his health. Despite his good health, he decides to go through with it, and since he has to die one day, “il se voulait ôter la peine de recommencer une autre fois” (150).

Seneca—Montaigne reports the same anecdote—tells the story of a Tulius

Marcelinus, who has a curable illness (“morbo et non insanabili”). After meditating on the question if he should die voluntarily, a Stoic man encourages him not to see life as an important matter. The Stoic adviser tells him that the important matter is to die well, not to live long. The desire to die (mori velle) occurs in “prudens aut fortis aut miser, etiam fastidiosus potest (Ep. LXXVII, 6). After Marcelinus makes his due preparations, he ceases to eat for three days (triduo abstinuit) and, like Seneca himself before cutting his veins, goes into a bathtub (solium) for a long time and dies. In Seneca’s Epistola CX, 19, an Attalus asks a rhetorical question: “Quaeris quod sit remedium inopiae? Famem fames finit.” This paradoxical idea that starvation ends hunger is redolent with the idea that

! 134! ! ! suicide brings about freedom. Although both seem to be true prima facie, they violate important principles of human and religious laws. The former is paradoxical because food ends hunger and starvation ends life. The latter is contradictory because according to

Christian eschatological doctrines, suicide causes the opposite of freedom, namely, eternal damnation. In Dante’s poetic cosmology, suicides are forever imprisoned within the trunks of trees. With this wordplay, Seneca is advancing his idea that inedia represents yet another method for suicide, an honorable gateway to exit life. San Pedro and Leriano exhibit awareness of these stories of wise men who understand the ennobling act of maintaining their passions in check by means of starvation.

Leriano’s method of death, then, is well attested in Stoic traditions, and it provides a framework for the ideation of his own suicide. San Pedro has likely read

Cartagena’s gloss on his translation of De providentia that states: “Nota: que más blanda es la muerte que viene con ayuno que la que viene con pujamiento de vianda” (224).

Death by inedia is a respectable method of suicide in antiquity. Belying Grisé’s assertion that inedia was practiced by “individus faibles et impuissants”, van Hooff argues that

“refusing food was counted as a highly distinctive method of suicide.… Old Greek sages and Roman dignitaries have a preference for this harsh method” (41). In Leriano’s case, he freely chooses to die that way, perhaps in order to afford Laureola some time to think about her own feelings and change her mind. He could have chosen a swifter death, such as the sword, which Loraux claims to be a more “manly death” (55). As Severin points out: “Leriano dies a death of choice and inevitable destiny” (Tragicomedia 29). Because he possesses the consciousness to decide his own destiny, he decides to end his life and chooses inedia as the means of attaining his goal. Inedia has the quality of testing self-

! 135! ! ! endurance and self-inflicted physical torment. Jesus is tempted after fasting for forty days in the dessert (“cum ieiunasset quadraginta diebus et quadraginta noctibus postea esuriit”

Matthew 4:1-11) because starvation weakens the natural capacity for resistance in the body and brain. Leriano wants to die an exemplary death, so as to prove that his love can endure the harshest of self-punishments.

Leriano’s methodology has confused many critics when they comment on his death. Perhaps attempting to assuage readers’ perception of his benefactor’s self-murder, the Auctor informs us that his friends and family have been flocking to Leriano when they find out that “Leriano se dexava morir” (155). The meaning of the sentence is complex. “Dejarse morir” (“to let oneself die” or “to allow oneself to die”) is a vague description for Leriano’s deed. The narrator allows himself this elusive evaluation to attenuate Leriano’s suicide since “dejarse morir” implies passivity and lack of intent. In his sequel of San Pedro’s Cárcel de Amor, Nicolás Núñez, who addresses the important issue as to whether Leriano has been justified in killing himself (Brownlee, The Severed

173) and who has felt profound pity for Leriano’s suicide, makes Laureola overtly suggest to the Auctor that she loves Leriano: “Agora sabrás si hizo bien en dexarse morir” (55). Núñez acknowledges the lover’s suicide, but he also uses this description to soften the damning act of Leriano’s suicide. Ticknor points out that Leriano “takes to his bed and with sorrow and fasting dies” (388). As I noted above, Leriano feels

“bienaventurado” (blessed), so he does not die “with sorrow” because he blindly accepts with Stoic aequanimitas any adversity that comes from his “Lady,” as San Pedro recommends lovers to do in his Sermón (178). Leriano repeats with Stoic gallantry “en mi fe, se sufre todo” (82) as Deseo leads him to the allegorical prison. Cvitanovic

! 136! ! ! interprets these words as a reflection of human anguish (145), but it is also a conviction of his inner courage and Stoicism.

Inedia does not mean passive suicide. In fact, deciding to stave to death can be one of the most active methods of suicide, since it is through one’s agency that one may achieve the goal. Compared to stepping onto the railroad, where the train does the killing, inedia brings the individual into close contact with his own ontological death because he has to reexamine and reflect upon his action, and there are many chances—before it becomes too late—to counteract depressive moods and to live, or to embrace his philosophical convictions and die. Like Cleanthes or Marcelinus, Leriano can also meditate half way through and decide that he wants to continue dying or return to the world of the living, overcoming the causalities that drive him to choose death. Leriano does not “se deja morir”. Rather, he runs toward his own self-destruction.

Whinnom (“Introducción” 38) and Robert Folger (Escape 85) hesitate to label

Leriano’s death a suicide. Nicolás Núñez, who has written his sequel out of empathy toward Leriano, recognizes that the hero’s action is a suicide. In an oneiric scene in

Núñez’s continuation, Leriano confesses to the Auctor: “No creas que si creyera que era más servida beviendo que dexándome morir, me matara” (60). Even in medieval thought, inedia constituted a form of suicide. In Alfonso X’s cantiga 369, when the humble woman stops eating, afraid that she will have to pay for a stolen jewel that she has borrowed from a wealthy wicked man, her daughter warns her mother:

Madre, comede e avede algun conorto; ca seria maravilla se con tal coita morredes, que vos[sa] alma entrasse en parayso, ca nunca y entrou quen sse matasse (84-86).

Like the despairing woman from cantiga 369, the Cantar de Mio Cid suggests that inedia is a form of suicide. After Mio Cid defeats and captures Don Ramón Berenguer, Count of

! 137! ! !

Barcelona, the downcast count decides to starve himself to death. Berenguer knows that his action is tantamount to suicide, which will cause his damnation:

Non combré un bocado por cuanto ha en toda España, Antes perderé el cuerpo e dexaré el alma, Pues que tales malcalçados me vencieron de batalla (v. 1021-3).

The count feels humiliated, and his utter humiliation prompts him to consciously lose both his life and his soul. Saint Bonaventura recounts a story of St. Francis of Assisi, when emaciated by his asceticism and falling into a hallucinatory trance, he hears a voice, which St. Francis attributes to Satan: “Nullus est in mundo peccator, cui, si conversus fuerit, non indulgeat Deus; sed quicumque semetipsum poenitentia dura necaverit, misericordiam non inveniet in aeternum” (Menninger 78). Saint Thomas Aquinas also warns against willful starvation: “As a person would sin by doing without food, so acting against life” (Vol. 48, 173).79 Leriano himself has a clear conscience of what his death means. Even seconds before his death, when he is debating what to do with the three letters Laureola sent him, he decides not to die a Christian death. Or rather, he decides to die a Stoic death.

Besides the absolute absence of clergymen on his deathbed, Leriano forgets to commend his soul to God before his passing. The traditional Christian rituals for passing from this world to the other would be a commendation of the soul in its ascend to

Heaven, like Jesus had done on the cross before he dies (Lucas 23, 46). In Jorge

Manrique’s Coplas, the last words of Don Rodrigo Manrique, Manrique’s father, are a direct invocation and a supplication to Jesus that He may forgive his sins. Only after his prayer and supplication does he let his soul go (“dio el alma a quien ge la dio” 67). Don

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 79 Minois cites the example of a suicide by inedia in the prose versión of Lancelot. Minois notes that Galeaut was decided to starve himself to death, but the priests warn him against such course of action because “if he died in that fashion his soul would be lost and damned” (13).

! 138! ! !

Rodrigo Manrique dies a good death because he follows the Church’s prescriptions for a buen morir. Instead of turning towards God (like Don Rodrigo), Leriano turns to the

Auctor: “Y llegada ya la hora de su fin, puestos en mí los ojos, dixo” (176). Leriano entrusts his last words to a warrior-turned-panderer. And instead of uttering his words in confirmation of his faith in God or an entreaty to guide his soul to Heaven, he utters what could be interpreted as an allusion to Seneca’s philosophy: “Acabados son mis males”

(176). Leriano’s last words imply an imprisoned and suffering body in this world, which is freed after its demise, and either a complete void after his death (libertas) or an irreligious negation of the immortality of the soul. In a clear allusion to Stoics and

Epicureans, Alfonso X scolds those, like Leriano, who believe in the transience of the soul.80

Alan Deyermond sees in Leriano’s last words an echo of Jesus’s last words in the

Gospel of Saint John: “Consummatum est” (“La micropoética” 410). Whinnom points out that Leriano’s assertion echoes another set of similar words from his earlier Pasión trovada, where Jesus says: “Acabados son/ mis dolores y amarguras” (“Cardona” 211).

Because of the situational contexts, Leriano’s and Christ’s words have contradicting meanings. Upon a closer look, “Acabados son mis males” and “acabados son/ mis dolores y amarguras” (“Consummatum est”) might have less in common that it appears.

In fact, they convey opposite meanings. Both Saint Augustine (De Genesi ad Litteram,

Liber IV, Caput XI, 21) and Antonio de Guevara (421) rightfully note that Jesus’ sacred

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 80 Alfonso X, Partida 1, Título 13: “Erraron algunos omes muy malamente, creyendo que quando muere el cuerpo del ome, que muere e otrosi el alma con el, e que todo se perdia en vno; e este fue entendimiento de desesperados: ca tenían, que non auia mejoría de otra animalia que Dios fiziese en este mundo, nin auia de auer ningún gualardon del bien que fiziesse en este mundo, nin otrosi pena por el mal: e tales como estos non deuen ser contados por omes, mas por peores que bestias, ca pus que por el entendimiento se aparta el ome de todas las otras animalis, aquel que lo pierde, peor es que bestia.”

! 139! ! ! words confirm his belief in his redemptive mission in this world. Hence his words

“Consummatum est” indicate that he has completed the redemption of mankind. Men may now enter Heaven because his death has opened the gates of Heaven. On the contrary, if Leriano’s words “echo” Jesus’s words, they mock them since they seem to negate Jesus’s belief of an eternal life after death and the redemption of humanity. Far from Jesus’s divine message, Leriano’s words amount to saying that despite his suicide, he is setting himself free. His departure from this world does not mark the entrance into a divine realm. Neither Heaven nor Hell figures into his immediate consciousness. After death, his immediate reality is freedom and not a divine psychostasis, like the weighing of good and evil we have witnessed in Alfonso X’s cantiga 26, expounded in chapter one. He is finally achieving the libertas that he has expressed in his first three letters to

Laureola. Pamela Waley points out that the death of a lover in the sentimental romance is not requisite in Courtly Love, but with Leriano’s suicide, he “is carrying out of a poetic threat often made but never implemented in the cancioneros” (“Love” 262). More than carrying out unfulfilled promises by other poets of Courtly Love, Leriano is carrying out his own promise to kill himself in order to achieve his libertad.

Juan de Cardona’s Tratado (ca. 1545), a sentimental romance modeled after

Cárcel de amor, does conscientiously emulate Jesus’ last words. In a Leriano-like death, the lovesick protagonist, Cristerno (Cristo) exclaims: “Ysiana [Cristiana?], en tus manos me encomiendo” (176). Cardona’s sacro-profane hyperbole—the medieval conflation of sacred and profane discourses—represents a poetic effort to commingle love with religion and to parallel the lady with God and the lover with Cristo—a recast of the mystical union between the Amada (the soul) and the Amado (God). These demarcations

! 140! ! ! are blurred and vague in Cárcel. Unlike Leriano, even Cardona’s seemingly extra- religious (or meta-religious) poetic world—since the protagonist, like Calisto, adheres to the religio amoris—does not perceive death as a dead-end for the human soul. Contrary to Leriano’s lack of awareness or faith, Cristerno is certain that his looming suicide will cast him into Hell (156, see also p. 173). Leonardo Funes and Carmen de la Linde interpret Leriano’s final act of dissolving in water and drinking Laureola’s letters as a happy end (Whinnom, “Cardona” 210), but it is only happy so long as we believe Leriano that “acabados son mis males.” But if we interpret his action from an eschatological prism, we have to conclude that his suicide represents the beginning of his torments.

Contrary to Cristerno’s, Leriano’s death represents the absolute end, which is a blatant transgression to Church beliefs. Leriano’s suicide has more elements of Stoicism and Epicureanism than Christianity. Indeed, if Leriano had believed, like Jesus, that there was a heaven or a hell, he would not have seen his death as the end of his woes

(acabados son mis males). He would have seen it as the beginning of his agonies, given that he was killing himself and was dying a “pagan” death. Absent in Leriano’s mind, the element of the Christian teachings on the immortality of the soul is very present in

Núñez’s continuation of Cárcel (“vi que era yerro perder el alma sin gozar del cuerpo”

69). Leriano’s peaceful death belies Persio’s sudden death in that Leriano died in the quietude and peacefulness of his bed, whereas Persio dies a bloody and violent death. But they have an astonishing symmetry: they both die without confession and without the prescribed rituals of the Church. In Persio’s case, it is the author’s conscious decision to punish him for his perjury and his slandering. In Leriano’s case, it is a reflection of the hero’s belief system. Hence, on a fundamental Christian level, both deaths are considered

! 141! ! !

“bad deaths” (Vivanco 64). In the Middle Ages, as Maravall and the unknown author of the Celestina Comentada note,81 dying without confession was anathema, which made even someone like the sorceress Celestina beg for confession before dying. Commenting upon Calisto’s death, Oostendorp points out that “Calixto causó su perdición eterna muriendo sin confesarse” (115). Like Calisto or Persio, Leriano does not confess before dying, so even if his death is voluntary, he would have been transgressing Christian dogmas that would merit eternal damnation.

In conclusion, Leriano chooses to die by inedia because it allows him to underscore his Stoic beliefs. An important creed of Stoicism is to endure the vicissitudes of life with rational aequanimitas (Seneca, Ep. LXVI, 13). Waley calls attention to San

Pedro’s ideals regarding the characterization of his heroes, arguing that the lover must

“behave with patience and discretion, mesura, mildness, honesty, [and] must not betray himself by signs of love, such as blushing, a tremulous voice, speechlessness, melancholy or by embroideries of ‘invenciones que lo publiquen’” (“Love” 255). Leriano comes to incarnate all these attributes that are also cornerstones of Stoicism. Jorge Manrique’s reference to his father’s composure before death and the comparison with the Stoic

Marco Aurelio’s “igualdad/ del semblante” (61) represents a direct allusion to Don

Rodrigo’s Stoic aequanimitas before his impending departure. Leriano consents to his death with Don Rodrigo Manrique’s equanimity and tranquility (Euthymia) and decides to die well rather than to live long. Death by starvation tests both the endurance and the deliberate determination of an individual. By having a long and painful death, Leriano

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 81 Celestina Comentada: “No puede ser muerte mas triste que la que en semejantes actos toma a los hombres e sin confession. Lo qual avemos de creer que es permission divina que Dios Nuestro Señor permitte según dize Sancto Agustin en el sermón de penitencia que los peccadores al tiempo de su muerte no se acuerden del ni de si mismos pues en el tiempo de su vida tuvieron gran negligencia” (480).

! 142! ! ! proves that he is not killing himself out of a rushed moment of passion or out of an irrational impulse. As Weissberger notes: “Leriano proceeds to commit suicide, slowly, ceremonially, and very publically, despite the concern for the princess’s honor” (“The

Politics” 319). He has the conviction to die, and he proves it because, like Cleanthes or

Marcelinus, he has the opportunity to change his mind before his death, but he chooses not to.

Leriano’s articulate defense of women shows that he is not psychologically or emotionally impaired. If he has the presence of mind to marshal a persuasive defense of women and women’s dignity, he also has the rational determination to kill himself. His decision to die by inedia is a well thought-out one, and therefore it is not a passive

“dejarse morir.” Rather, much like Italicus, Leriano decucurrit (runs) with conviction to his death. His last act, drinking the dissolved letters of his beloved—a metonymic symbol of Laureola, as Brownlee notes—, shows another act of rejection towards Christian doctrines since he replaced the ritualistic communion with an irreverent symbolic communion of Laureola. Cvitanovic and Bermejo point out that Leriano’s willful death disavows categorically “una de las virtudes teologales, la Esperanza” (293), which represents another rejection of Christian dogmas. His dogmatic aposiopesis marks a breach and a disavowal of the Church and the society’s system of values and a stolid adherence to his own ideological worldview. Finally his last act of turning toward the tercero, instead of turning to God, confirms his godlessness, while his invocation:

“Acabados son mis males” simply ratifies his Stoicism because he conceives of an afterlife where there is only an abstract libertad (a spatial void) and not a Heaven or Hell as the Christian doctrine has taught. Both the Inquisition and Juan Luis Vives branded

! 143! ! !

Cárcel as a pernicious book for maidens. Based on San Pedro’s representation of Leriano and his antiestablishment discourse, the reader can understand the discomfort and anxiety that both the Church and Vives felt after reading these irreligious ideas. And Leriano’s

Stoic suicide only confirms their suspicion that Cárcel is a pernicious work.

Society and Suicide in Fernando de Rojas’s La Celestina

De todos soy dexada; bien se ha adereçado la manera de mi morir. Algún alivio siento en ver que tan presto seremos juntos yo y aquel mi querido y amado Calisto. Quiero cerrar la puerta, por que ninguno suba a me estorvar mi muerte. No me impidan la partida, no me atajen el camino por el qual, en breve tiempo, podré visitar en este día al que me visitó la passada noche. Todo se ha hecho a mi voluntad. Buen tiempo terné para contar a Pleberio mi señor la causa de mi ya acordado fin. Gran sinrazón hago a sus canas, gran ofensa a su vegez, gran fatiga le acarreo con mi falta, en gran soledad le dexo (594-5).82

These words uttered by Melibea after deciding to end her life convey the disturbed emotional and psychological mindset of the heroine. Unlike Leriano’s Stoic suicide in

San Pedro’s Cárcel de Amor, Melibea exhibits a troubled mind and a wounded heart that together make her lose control of her inner (rational) self. As Deyermond points out,

Rojas (and Melibea) explicitly rejects stoicism, and he ignores Christianity (The

Petrarchan 117). There is no harmony between her inner and outer lives. Her words convey confusion, but above all, they express desolation. Calisto’s untimely death has upended her life and shattered her dreams of being Calisto’s beloved, which was all she !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 82 All quotes from Celestina come from Peter E. Russell’s Castalia edition.

! 144! ! ! longed for and aspired to be in life: “Más vale ser buena amiga que mala casada” (547).

Rojas describes for his reader Melibea’s thought process in order for the reader to commiserate and identify with her grief, on the one hand, and for Melibea to express the psychoaffective crisis that leads her to make the transcendental decision to end her life, on the other. Melibea’s grief and existential pessimism overarch her final soliloquy, which serves as testament to the intensity of her passion for Calisto. Her lover is an overwhelming presence in her heart and mind, and after his death, he leaves a void that, in Melibea’s blinding sorrow, no other man can fill. Yet, despite her pain for Calisto’s death and her pessimism caused by her wounded heart, Melibea does not commit suicide because she cannot live without Calisto. Rather, her pain and her pessimsm are catalysts that trigger a complex set of psychological and affective responses. Melibea’s words in the last sentence of the above excerpt show that her social responsibilities and her filial obligations lead her to end her life.

Martín de Riquer notes that when Melibea’s world crumbles into pieces, and she is unable to justify her existence, she speaks to her father with a voice “clara entonces y serena… de su amor y de su dolor sosegada y tiernamente, pero con la misma actitud que una heroína de tragedia pagana” (67). Melibea, as Riquer points out, is profoundly hurt, but she projects a calm and equanimous mien. Melibea explains to her father the purported “causa” of her looming suicide with “una terrible frialdad de presuicida”

(Martínez 56). The cause, as she would report to her father, is that she had a month-long dalliance with Calisto who has just suffered a fateful accident, falling from the high wall of Pleberio’s garden as he was rushing to flee from danger. In an exquisite brush-stroke of tragic irony, Calisto dies trying to get out of harm’s way (Rutherford 167-176). When

! 145! ! !

Melibea says that her actions are disgraceful and offensive toward her father, she refers both to her loss of chastity and to her impending suicide. The first one is directly correlated to the second, since both are equally damaging for a family’s honor.83 After losing her virginity, Melibea compromises her integrity as a “doncella encerrada” and as a member of the social fabric. In Rojas’s sociocultural world, maidens’ virginity represented the standing upon which their self-worth was measured. Alisa assures her husband when they are musing about the possibility of marrying Melibea: “Yo sé bien lo que tengo criado en mi guardada hija” (551). Melibea’s worth rests on her condition of being “guardada” (literally, kept isolated from erotic commerce). Joseph T. Snow points out that Alisa is projecting herself onto Melibea: “I believe it entirely probable that Alisa was, at Melibea’s age, the very image of the well-mannered and ‘guardada hija’ that she credits Melibea with being now” (“The Sexual” 152).

In the world that Rojas created for Melibea, a “doncella deshonrada” was considered an infected member of the social body, one that ought to be severed from it as a prophylaxis against contagion. Punishments for sexual transgressions ranged from

(religious) confinement to death (cf. Laureola in San Pedro’s Cárcel, Mirabella in Flores’

Grisel and Febea in Torres Naharro’s Propaladia). Wondering if Melibea could have lived in her parents’ household after her lost honra, Snow is categorical: “La respuesta a esta pregunta es negativa” (“Una nueva lectura”). Melibea is aware of the consequences of her sexual offense. More than her hopeless (objectless) passion and her wounded heart, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 83 I will use the word “honor” with the full extension of its meaning. The word honor in English encompasses the meaning of the Spanish terms “honor” and “honra,” which have different denotations and connotations. “Honor,” as conceptualized by Américo Castro, has a more intrinsic meaning, i.e., “honor” belongs to the person who is honorable and worthy of the honor conferred upon him/her. It is almost intrinsic to the honorable man. “Honra,” on the other hand, belongs to the realm of the extrinsic, since it depends exclusively on the opinion of others. A person is “honrada,” when people have a good opinion of him/her. For further details, see Américo Castro’s De la edad conflictiva. Given that many in her society know about her sexual relation with Calisto, Melibea has lost both her “honor” and her “honra.”

! 146! ! ! it is society that prods the lovelorn lady to make the resolution to end her life. Contrary to

Melibea, Laureola did not kill herself after Leriano’s death, because she did not lose her chastity, so she could continue to participate of her communal life. Melibea, on the other hand, was socially dead and condemned. Commenting upon Juan de Flores’s representation of Mirabella’s sexual trespass in Grisel y Mirabella, John T. Cull avers:

“Mirabella’s illicit loss of virginity deprives her of social identity” (421). In Melibea’s case, her disrepute divests her of her social standing and self-worth. Hence suicide represented an escape from her impasse. Leriano literally died to free Laureola of suspicion and dishonor, and he ingested her letters in order to destroy any physical evidence that could taint Laureola’s reputation. Calisto’s death, on the contrary, stains

Melibea’s honor, because he died just outside her house, and people were already suspicious of their affair. His death outside her house confirms the rumors. Calisto’s death and her suffering trigger her decision to impose upon herself the punishment that her father would have performed if he had discovered her transgression. As Snow has noted, Melibea would have had no room in Pleberio’s house if she had lived, but perhaps more hurtful for the young suicide, she would not have found any room in her father’s heart. Besides the sorrow it causes in Melibea, Calisto’s death serves as a Socratic sign to indicate that God has summoned her to share in the afterlife with her lover: “Su muerte combida a la mía, combídame y fuerça que sea presto, sin dilación” (600). Melibea interprets Calisto’s death the same way that Socrates interpreted his execution sentence and the Stoic Zeno interpreted his broken toe, as we pointed out in chapter two. But beyond this clear Socratic sign, Melibea’s death is not caused by an isolated event.

Rather, as Menninger notes, self-murder never has only a single cause (Man Against

! 147! ! !

110). Snow echoes Menninger’s opinion: “Reducir el motivo de [Melibea’s] suicidio sólo a la inesperada y repentina muerte del señor por quien había sacrificado su vergüenza y su virginidad nos parece una respuesta superficial” (“Una nueva lectura”).

As Fothergill-Payne asserts, for Seneca, man is never an isolated individual. Man is, above all, a member of a given community (Seneca 33). Social norms and principles help shape individual identities and influence the way people think and act. In Celestina, all characters are aware of their social system and attempt to abide by its rules, even if they go against their personal interests. Melibea is painfully conscious of society’s oppressive conventions, which hinder her individual freedom and intimate desires. Berndt calls attention to Melibea’s social consciousness: “Melibea demuestra, además, una preocupación por su responsabilidad social” (60). Berndt, moreover, underscores the tension between society’s tacit codes of conduct and the characters’ self-interests.84

Celestina’s characters do not seem overly preoccupied with harmonizing their wills with the divine will. Instead, they have to reconcile their will and their desires with that which society prescribes and dictates. This represents Rojas’ most innovative artistic accomplishment. He decenters God from the position of human affairs and posits Man at the center of his immediate world. This does not mean that Rojas rejects God as Creator and overseer of his literary universe. In Celestina, there is a clear divide between the sublunary and the heavenly realms.

Rojas’ paradigm change underlines the conceptual breach between a medieval mindset—in which God and religion steered the destiny of mankind—and the

Renaissance’s ideas of humanism, where man was in charge of his own destiny. In !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 84 Berndt: “existe siempre en La Celestina el gran conflicto entre lo que el hombre quiere personalmente y lo que la sociedad le impone. No se trata de armonizar la voluntad divina con la propia, sino con la humana, con la que rige la sociedad” (Amor 107).

! 148! ! !

Celestina, men judge men, and they punish each other’s transgressions, and soteriological concerns are subordinated to the immediacy of communal expectations. Celestina’s characters sin and break the law freely, knowing that they expose themselves to judicial laws. As Morón Arroyo asserts, “todos pecan con plena conciencia y libertad” (80). We are no longer in the world of Alfonso X’s Cantigas or Berceo’s Milagros, where Virgin

Mary could bestow her grace upon dishonored ladies like Melibea (cf. cantiga VII) or exonerate criminals arraigned for execution. In Celestina, God is in the background of human affairs: Man is at the forefront. God guides human matters from afar, rather than from within. After sleeping with Areúsa and arriving home the following day, Pármeno is worried about Calisto’s wrath and never thinks about God’s anger for transgressing the sin of lust. As José A. Maravall points out, Celestina’s characters are concerned first and foremost with their individual needs and personal gain. Ángel Alcalá goes further in suggesting that “el mundo de La Celestina es un mundo vacío de Dios” (242). Both during her last soliloquy and in her final words to her father, Melibea is more concerned with her family’s honor than with the impending damnation of her soul. Social judgment and prejudice have a subjective immediacy that overrides the spiritual ramifications of her actions. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the role that society plays in

Melibea’s decision to end her life. In responding to the question: How does society contribute to Melibea’s death? I hope to demonstrate that social norms have a capacity to lead people to end their lives.

! 149! ! The Structure of Society and the Limits of Personal Desire

“Agora perderé contigo, mi desdichada hija, los miedos e temores que cada día me espauorecían: sola tu muerte es la que a mí me haze seguro de sospecha” (614).

Pleberio’s puzzling words, uttered in the midst of his doleful threnody for the death of his daughter, convey a glimmer of solace amid the whirlwind of his tragic sorrow. The apostrophized lamentation directed to his lifeless daughter confers on this planctus a heightened dramatic effect, while it brings the fallen body back into the focus of the readers’ gaze. Rojas divides this sentence into two. In the first sentence, he tells his daughter that along with her life, he will lose his concerns and fears that tormented him every day. But he does not tell her what those “miedos e temores” consist of. The second sentence only adds more mystery to his already cryptic assertion. Melibea’s death frees

Pleberio from being suspicious, but what does it make him suspicious of? Who is suspicious of him while Melibea lives? After this alleged less suspicion, Pleberio does not feel the need to clarify the ambiguity of his assertion. Instead, like many other instances in Celestina, Rojas allows his reader to extrapolate and to become an active agent within the diegetic framework. Pleberio’s sentence is troubling to modern readers because, unlike Rojas’s contemporaneous reader, we are not equipped with the cultural sensibilities that he and his immediate readership possessed. Hence what is troubling to us may have been clearer for Rojas and his sixteenth-century reader.

Gerli interprets Pleberio’s enigmatic words as an “incongruous” relief for the pessimistic realization that human beings’ teleological purpose in this world is to suffer and to endure pain (Celestina 206). Gerli’s deterministic exegesis may apply to an overall analysis of Pleberio’s lament, for many critics have pointed out its pessimistic ! undercurrents, unfoundedly associating his pessimism to Rojas’s own experience as converso (Girón Negrón 252).85 However, Rojas’ ethno-religious identity does not resolve the “miedos e temores” that terrified Pleberio while Melibea was alive. Pleberio’s concerns and fears are immediate and tangible, for they disappeared with Melibea’s death. Pleberio, Gilman notes (La España 362), does not seem to be concerned about the stigma and shame that his daughter’s suicide may bring to the family. Paradoxically, her self-inflicted death makes him “seguro de sospecha.” But still, it does not answer the question: what is it that he is suspicious of? Why does Melibea’s lifeless body free him of the burden of an enigmatic suspicion, which he conceals more than the suicide of his daughter?

Navarro Durán interprets these words as a fear of Melibea’s death, citing

Petrarch’s De remediis, Book II, 48 (292), which is undoubtedly the direct source of

Pleberio’s words (Deyermond, The Petrarchan 61-2, Castro Guisasola 126-7). In a footnote, Russell refers to these words as incongruous, arguing that Rojas wanted to add a

Stoic Petrarchan paradox. In order to fix this “incongruence” that both Russell and Gerli perceive in Pleberio’s words, Francisco Rico replaces Rojas’ word “sospecha” with

“temores.” Hence Rojas’ phrase “me hace seguro de sospecha” is rearticulated as “me libra de temores” in order to make Rojas’ words fit into Petrarch’s existential- philosophical context (Rico et al., “Introducción” 343). In his Tesoro de la lengua,

Covarrubias does not confer Rico’s meaning on the verb “sospechar.” The renowned lexicographer defines “sospechar” as: “Tener barrunto, o recelo de alguna cosa, del verbo

Lat. Sospicor. ris. Sospechoso, el hombre de quien nos recelamos, sospecha, el mesmo

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 85 For a through analysis on the two dominant schools of thought regarding the pessimism in Celestina, see Severin’s “Introducción” (23-25).

! 151! ! ! recelo” (34). In his 1631 translation, James Mabbe, who also rendered into English Mateo

Alemán’s picaresque novel Guzmán de Alfarache and who praises Celestina as a work of art worthy of being read by the most learned men, translates the sentence with accuracy and faithfulness, although interpolating a word (“jealousies”) as filler:

Now shall I lose together with thee (most unhappy daughter) those fears, which were daily wont to affraight mee. Onely thy death is that which makes mee secure of all suspitions and jealousies (284).

Like Mabbe, the source-driven reader can decontextualize these words from its original

Petrarchan source and apply them to Pleberio’s personal, social and political context.

Taking Petrarch out of the equation, these ephemeral consoling words stop being

“incongruous” and may help us comprehend Pleberio’s fears and worries in life.

Stephen Gilman, who finds Rojas’ “planteamiento de tesis” of Celestina in

Pleberio’s planctus, gives us the foundation for understanding the meaning behind

Pleberio’s words. Melibea’s death frees him from being “sospechoso” in the eyes of society. Due to the great importance people bestowed upon the chastity of noble maidens,

Pleberio’s social position and “honra” are closely interrelated with Melibea’s virginity.

The “deshonra” of nubile maidens, as Juan Ruiz and Martínez de Toledo assert, falls on the entire household and can lead to death. In his Libro de buen amor, which served as inspiration for Rojas’s Celestina, Juan Ruiz says:

Desque ya es la dueña de varón escarnida, es d’él menospreçiada e en poco tenida, es de Dios airada e del mundo aborrida, pierde toda su honra, la fama e la vida (1422).

For maidens, losing their virginity and honor amounts to losing their lives. God and men abhor unchaste maidens. Echoing Juan Ruiz, Martínez de Toledo makes a woman express the social apprehension regarding the dire consequences of losing the “honra”: “¡Allá irás ladrona, puta, no destruyrás mi casa y honra” (430). Even female servants endanger a

! 152! ! ! family’s reputation. A lady’s actions has a built-in capacity for dragging the entire household into dishonor. Hence Pleberio’s words convey this sense of relief that at least he does not have to worry about Melibea as a source of shame. Along with Melibea’s life, death takes away Melibea’s potential for shaming the entire household. Unbeknownst to

Pleberio, his family’s reputation has been irreversibly stained by Melibea’s sexual dalliance with Calisto.

As long as Melibea remains unmarried and alive, Pleberio will be “sospechoso” of dishonor. Pleberio, indeed, lives preoccupied with the chastity of Melibea as the private dialogue with his wife Alisa in Act XVI shows. Pleberio feels that until his daughter finds a suitable husband, his social standing depends largely on Melibea’s virginity (Cf. Russell, “Introducción” 57). In Antonio Díez’s Auto de Clarindo, (ca.

1535), Raimundo, the father of the male protagonist declares: “Avéis de ver, pues Dios puso en la mujer la honra del hombre en ella, no se deve de perder, como veis, por culpa della” (F. J. Herrera “La honra”). The men’s honor depends in great measure on the conduct of the females within their households. Honra is a gendered concept, and it is a feminine work, which conveys within itself the anxiety of a deeply gendered society.

Society perceives the female gender as a threat to the household’s reputation. Once her virginity is lost, their “honra” and their social life die with it. Even noble ladies are seen as sexual objects in the eyes of the servants when perceived unchaste. María Eugenia

Lacarra notes that after losing her chastity to Calisto, even Socias and Tristán see

Melibea as an “objeto usado, poseído, mercancía dañada, y por tanto accesible en potencia a todos y a cualquiera” (“El erotismo” 139). Losing honra, then, makes others perceive Melibea as someone with less value—or even valueless.

! 153! ! !

The desolate father is aware that all the “honras” (“¿Para quién adquirí honrras?”

609) he had acquired with his life-long determination and hard work can disappear in an instant. More important than acquiring more wealth, Pleberio lives tormented by fears of losing his social standing if Melibea transgresses the fossilized social rules dictating that maidens ought to remain chaste until marriage. In matters of honor, society can be as unrelenting as it can be merciless. Cull notes that Grisel and Mirabella’s suicide represents a tragic triumph of the individuals over societal control (“Irony” 425). In

Melibea’s death, we have the opposite phenomenon: Melibea’s suicide represents the ultimate triumph of society over the individual. Society’s internal mechanisms of control, ingrained in people’s consciousness, drive those disgraced maidens to flee society’s inveterate control by using death as an escape route. Carmelo Samonà refers to the medieval concept of honor as a “fuerza institucional represiva… como un valor en sí”

(Rodríguez Puértolas 123). Honor itself, aided by the social and cultural institutions, possesses the intrinsic power to repress (and oppress) those individuals who fall under its purview. Those who fall outside of the hermetic realm of honorability—such as the black slave in Don Juan Manuel’s story, now known by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The

Emperor’s New Clothes”—escape this “fuerza institucional represiva.”

Pleberio’s words, moreover, illustrate the extent to which society govern and control private desires through an abstract mechanism of conferring or divesting “honra.”

There is an ingrained anxiety in people’s consciousness regarding the way the outside world perceives them. For Pleberio and his family, Melibea’s sexual transgression means a loss of repute. For Melibea, it could have meant death even if she had not taken her own life. The esteem that noble medieval Spaniards attached to “honra” goes beyond the value

! 154! ! ! of life itself. In his fourteenth-century Rimado de Palacio, Pero López de Ayala believes that he who defames his fellow Christian should be seen as a murderer (“otrosí quien enfama de mal a su christiano,/ matador le dirán” 40ab) because defaming a person was equivalent to killing him: “Ca mata e sotierra biuo a su hermano” (40c). Hence he who dishonors a fellow Christian should rather kill himself: “Por ventura le valdría morir más por su mano” (40d). Both in history and in literature, men kill women in their families if they suspected of having brought “deshonra” to their families. In his De la edad conflictiva, Américo Castro points out the dangers of women who bring about dishonor through sexual misconduct, underscoring the story of a man who has killed his wife because he suspects that she is having an affair: “Carlos de Pomar mató a María Samper, su mujer, porque le dijeron que era adúltera, sin haberla hallado con hombre” (40). In medieval Castile, catching someone in flagrante delicto was irrefutable evidence of a crime (like Mirabella), but even suspicion of a crime could have been enough evidence to punish women for a suspected crime (like Laureola). “Honra” was a bourgeois ideal sine qua non noble families maintained their nobility, and this is the main reason King Gaulo felt compelled to execute his only daughter and heir to the kingdom. This factor is not ancillary in the axiological belief system in which Rojas inserted Melibea. Rather, the idea of “honra” is attached to the very core of human existence and the essence of society.

One of the many problems facing those who lived (or wanted to live) according to the strict codes of honra was that “honra” was not intrinsic to the self. For, as Castro and

F. J. Herrera note, “honra” consisted of the opinions of others. There was a palpable disjunctive between honra and ethics or morality. So long as an unethical or immoral act,

! 155! ! ! such as Melibea’s tryst, stayed clandestine, the reputation of the person remained unscathed. Of course, the opposite was also true. In order to increase or maintain the honra, the generous deeds (even if immoral at heart) had to move through the public sphere. As Sempronio tells Calisto after the latter gives Celestina one hundred gold coins as payment for her pandering: “Allende de remediar tu vida, ganaste muy gran honrra. Y para qué es la fortuna favorable y próspera sino para servir a la honrra, que es el mayor de los mundanos bienes?” (283-4). However, this “honra” was a fragile construct, and it could decline quickly, placing the “deshonrada” in great danger, as Antonio Díez’s Auto de Clorindo, eloquently points out: “No es cosa sino que la muger hermosa, hija mía, en este siglo, su honra jamás reposa, contino corre peligro” (Herrera “La honra”). In

Celestina, there is always an imperative for those who possess “honra” to keep it unstained, lest society would shun them and lead them to death. Melibea’s aberrant behavior threatens to undermine and disrupt the social order that polices such sexual misconducts.

Jeremy N. H. Lawrence notes that Rojas seems to have believed that his Celestina was a moral story deployed “para que se guarden de falsos sirvientes, hechiceras….”

However, Lawrence affirms that Rojas alludes to social problems, to malfunctions in the social system rather than inner morality. More than moral consequences, the effects of loco amor has social and political consequences. The social structure upholds the very dramatic configuration of Celestina. Unlike San Pedro’s Cárcel, in which Lawrance perceives a weak social factor, in Celestina “the social dimension is no structural makeshift for motivating a plot with other centres of interest; it is the centre of interest”

(103). The realism that has been widely noted in Rojas’s masterpiece stems largely from

! 156! ! ! the vivid representation of what Gilman calls “a frozen society” (The Spain 142), which was set in its ways and pushed its constituents to the limits of psychological endurance.86

Commenting upon Flores’ Arnalte y Lucenda, Julio Rodríguez Puértolas underlines the societal pressure upon individuals regarding transcendental decisions: “La presión del sistema es tal, que los héroes no tienen libertad ni para decidir su propia muerte. Así dice

Arnalte en Tractado de Amores” (124). Due to religious and legislative laws, nobody could decide his own death. Only God—and the king—could. Even more powerful was the societal pressure, which decreed that no heroine could make decisions about her own body and her own sexuality.

Kristen Brooks and Peter Stallybrass point out the importance of women in the patriarchal households to uphold and/or increase, or ruin the honor of the family. In medieval Europe, Stallybrass and Brooks note, the noblewoman’s body constituted a symbolic and economic property either of the father or the husband. Noble women could increase the “honra” of the family, but at the same time, they could “bring down the household from within” (Brooks 96), as Melibea asserts when she rebukes Celestina’s pandering the first time the go-between approaches her: “¿Perder y destruyr la casa y la honrra de mi padre, por ganar la de una vieja maldita como tú?” (329). Melibea reiterates the same idea shortly before she jumps from the tower: “¡O mi padre honrrado, cómo he dañado tu fama y dado causa y lugar a quebrantar tu casa!” (517). In order to prevent bringing shame on the household, noble maidens have to remain doncellas encerradas and keep their orifices closed. As Stallybrass puts it, the doncellas encerradas’ “signs are the enclosed body, the closed mouth, the locked house” (127). Melibea, who claims to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 86 Cf. Berndt, who after citing Celestina’s words: “E pues como todos seamos humanos, nascidos para morir, sea cierto que no se puede decir nacido el que para sí sólo nasció,” Berndt asserts: “En cada acto, en cada escena, se siente la presencia de la sociedad humana” (103).

! 157! ! ! have been a doncella encerrada, transgresses all precepts prescribed by her social system.

She speaks to and receives Calisto at unbecoming hours of the night, thus bringing suspicion to her “honra.” She also allows Calisto into her garden, which is the symbol of her chastity and of Pleberio’s honorability. And finally, Calisto penetrates her body. The violation of any of the three precepts would have been enough to stain her reputation.

Having violated nearly every social code of decency, at the end of her life, Melibea knows that there is no space for her within her rigid society. Even if she had decided to repent and atone for her multiple social trespasses, Melibea should have known that she would still be deemed a contaminated member of her society. Because of her disrepute, the social body would deny her everything she should have denied to Calisto: noble women will not speak to her without suspicion; noble houses will close their doors on her for fear of contagion, and no nobleman will want to penetrate her body with the endorsement of the holy institution of matrimony. The elite class arrogates to themselves the right to be the gatekeepers of the patriarchal culture, and they feel the obligation, in

Stallybrass’ words, to produce the normative “woman” (127). Society will do unto her— both as punishment for her transgression and as lesson for others—that which they expect their young noble ladies to do unto men like Calisto. Melibea to all effects and purposes would have become an outcast, an exile from her social class, and ironically, death represents the only gateway to escape such harsh punishment. Biologically, her suicide brings about libertad from societal oppression. In such extreme moment of despair,

Melibea opts to escape social punishment without considering the long-lasting consequences of her salvation.

! 158! ! !

Even before Melibea considered the idea of accepting Calisto as lover, she knows the value of her repute. But even after her masked hatred has turned into amor hereos and an unrelenting lustful passion, she never stops worrying about the consequences of her loss of “honra” and her good name if she yields to her erotic desire. During the first rendezvous with Calisto, after having contravened the social norms that prescribe women to remain doncellas encerradas, Melibea summons all of her willpower to reject the chivalric gallantry of the lovesick Calisto. With a timid voice, Melibea begs Calisto to be mindful of her honor:

Desvía estos vanos e locos pensamientos de ti, porque mi honrra e persona estén sin detrimento de mala sospecha seguras. A esto fue aquí mi venida, a dar concierto en tu despedida e mi reposo. No quieras poner mi fama en la balança de las lenguas maldezientes (476).

Melibea’s words echo those of her father. Calisto’s very presence in Pleberio’s house represents a “sospecha.” Society is always suspicious of its constituents’ behavior. They police the ladies’ every move to ensure the integrity of the entire social body. Melibea purports to send Calisto away in order that she may be segura de sospecha. Without

Calisto by her door, Melibea is suspicion-free. This is an exact analogy of Pleberio’s words during his sorrowful planctus. Without his daughter’s existence, he is suspicion- free. Only Melibea’s death makes Pleberio “seguro de sospecha.” As Sempronio reminds

Celestina before she heads to Pleberio’s house to seduce Melibea, the go-between is an embodiment of “sospecha”: “Piensa en su padre que es noble y esforçado; su madre celosa y brava; tú, la misma sospecha” (304). Like Celestina, only enhanced due to his condition of potential lover, Calisto is a metonym for “sospecha.” In the vicinity of

Pleberio’s house, Calisto becomes the very embodiment of sospecha. Hence Melibea grudgingly requests him to forgo his erotic enterprise. In order to be free of “mala sospecha,” Calisto himself must not be near Melibea because, like a contagious decease,

! 159! ! ! any physical or dialectical contact with her would infect her with “sospecha,” which inevitably would develop into “deshonra” and could lead to social exclusion and death.

In this tepid rebuff, the reader can see an internal tension in Melibea. On the one hand, her behavior and her words strongly suggest that she feels a strong desire for

Calisto, and, on the other, she knows that this illicit passion will lead to an impending self-destruction. Melibea, however, in a self-delusional way claims that she only accedes to see Calisto at such indecorous hour (midnight) to inform him that she does not want to yield to his request—even though her mere presence belies her words. However Melibea,

Calisto, Lucrecia and the reader know that far from being a farewell, her words convey an irrational passion that neither her sense of honra nor social mechanisms for regulating individual desires can restrain. Melibea, echoing Areúsa’s words during the banquet scene regarding that which “el vulgo piensa,” does not want to offer fodder to the

“lenguas malezientes” to stain her “fama” (reputation), a stain that could bring about the destruction of her family. Studying the concept of honra in the Romancero, Anahory-

Librowicz notes that “la deshonra recae sobre ellas y el resto de la familia, sobre todo el marido, y, en general, el castigo para tal afrenta es la muerte infligida por el agravio”

(324). Even in the lowest social strata, women had to be mindful of their sexual conduct because a misstep could have upended their lives. Before Celestina succeeds in seducing

Areúsa for Pármeno, the young prostitute, tongue-in-cheek, associates illicit forms of sexuality with death: “Que tengo a quien dar cuenta, como has oydo, y si soy sentida, matarme ha” (389). Areúsa offers the reader a key to understanding the idiosyncrasy of her social system even if she operates outside of social norms. Whatever the level of social marginalization may be, both Areúsa and Celestina are shown to be very aware of

! 160! ! ! the self-image they portray to the outer world. Catherine Swietlicki suggests that

Celestina displays more concern with her professional honor as go-between than Calisto and Melibea as nobles (5). Appearance of moral rectitude was more important than rectitude itself, as Eufrósina tells her cousin Silvia in Cómedia Eufrósina.87

Melibea begins to be apprehensive about the risk of her lax conduct. Should her parents find out, she jeopardizes her affective and her physical integrity. Hence, when

Calisto departs from the garden, the noise outside their chamber awakens Pleberio and

Alisa. Pleberio is concerned and perhaps even “sospechoso” of his daughter’s misconduct, so he yells at Melibea:

Pleberio: ¿Quién da patadas y haze bullicio en tu cámara? Melibea (afuera): Señor, Lucrecia es, que salió por un jarro de agua para mí, que havía gran sed. Pleberio: Duerme hija, que pensé que era otra cosa. Lucrecia (afuera): Poco estruendo los despertó. Con gran pavor hablaban. Melibea (afuera): No ay tan manso animal que con amor o temor de sus hijos no [asperee]. Pues, ¿qué harían si mi cierta salida supiessen? (487).

Pleberio’s “pensé que era otra cosa” already hints at his fears and “sospecha” that his daughter may expose his family’s honra to, in Sempronio’s words, “el vulgo parlero,” who “no perdona las tachas de sus señores” (423). Lucrecia only confirms the anxiety in

Pleberio’s words: “Con gran pavor hablaban.” Pleberio may, indeed, be fearful that he may lose his honor through Melibea’s virginity, but this dialogue only shows his apprehensive “sospecha.” Hence Melibea ponders what will happen if her father’s suspicions are confirmed. “¿Qué harían si mi cierta salida supiessen?” (487). This rhetorical question goes unanswered, but Melibea knows what will happen if her parents find out about her tryst with Calisto.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 87 Eufrósina tells Silvia: “O doudo, e se vem a mâo andalo ha dizendo a tudo mundo, e mina fama nam se quer assi, que a das molheres mais estaa no que dizem que no que he. Pois que cousa pera vir ter aas orelhas de meu señor, que faraa barafundas: ficaremos bem aviados vos e eu” (147).

! 161! ! !

Melibea responds to her own question the following day when she receives

Calisto in the garden. Melibea’s words after she had lost her virginity and honra convey the psychological tension that characterizes her personality throughout the Tragicomedia:

Melibea (Aparte. Adentro): ¡O mi vida y mi señor! ¿Cómo has quesido que pierda el nombre y corona de virgen por tan breve deleyte? ¡Pecadora de [ti], mi madre, si de tal cosa fueses sabidora, cómo tomarías de grado tu muerte y me la darías a mí por fuerça! ¡Cómo serías cruel verdugo de tu propia sangre! (516-7).

This apostrophic lament is placed within exclamation points to showcase the anxiety that

Melibea feels for losing her virginity. The first rhetorical question represents Rojas’ poking fun of the inexperienced lover who may suffer from premature ejaculation, due to his lack of practice, a problem that Pármeno also experiences the first time he sleeps with

Areúsa. Most important of all, Melibea responds to her previous question regarding what would happen if her parents found out about her “cierta salida,” which stands in direct opposition to “encerrada” or “guardada.” Melibea’s sexual euphemism “cierta salida” represents a symbol of her “salida” from the social norms, but it also portends her exit from life. Melibea has lost her virginity in the garden, which is a locus between the realm of the civilization and the animal. It is an outdoor place. Her “salida” is also a literal allusion to her act of coming out of her chamber to consummate her desire, but above all, this “salida” opens the pathway to her suicide.

Russell highlights Melibea’s assertion that, should her parents find out about her sexual life, Alisa would kill her and then commit suicide. According to Russell, in the literary tradition of Rojas’ time, it was the father who punished the daughters’ dishonor, but Swietlicki, who argues that Rojas’ female characters espouse a feminist worldview, notes that Alisa does not follow the pattern of literary mothers. Instead she “breaks out of the mold by showing parental sternness, usually associated with the father” (9). Although

! 162! ! ! fathers or mothers killing their daughters for illicit affairs represents a topos in fifteenth and sixteenth-century literature, Melibea’s words are not a mere cliché. They give voice to the norms of the social edifice. Patriarchal families prefer dead daughters to dishonored ones. In Fernández’ Tragedia Policiana, Philomena echoes Melibea’s fear of her mother sacrificing her if she corroborates her suspicion. Philomena points at her father as the executioner: “¡O padre mío, si sintieses mis desonestas pisadas, cómo acabarías mi vida por no gustar de tu desonrra” (247). Fernández repeatedly reiterates the idea of sacrificing the guilty maiden for the sake of honor.88

Severin notes that Melibea’s words echo the Endecha “Señor Gómez Arias, which shares many similarities with Melibea’s words:

Si mi triste madre tal cosa supiese con sus mesmas manos la muerte se diese (Tragicomedy 99).

Melibea’s anxious words leave an indelible mark in the Celestina tradition that flourished during the sixteenth century. In Sancho de Muñón’s Tragedia de Lisandro y Roselia,

Roselia pronounces Melibea’s words nearly verbatim. Roselia goes further and threatens her suitor, Lisandro, to kill herself if he perseveres in his intention of dishonoring her: “Y de mí tomaría tal castigo, si en poder me viese de tu atrevido pensamiento, cual la dueña

Lucrecia forzada de Tarquino” (116). In Ferreira de Vasconcelos’ Comédia Eufrósina, the eponymous character recriminates Silvia de Sosa the imprudence of listening to her cousin’s love for Eufrósina. Eufrósina is concerned that her lovesick suitor may sully her

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 88 Echoing Melibea’s concerned words, Theophilón warns his wife about a “sospecha” he has of his daughter’s affair: “Quando tal (desvergonzada) la conoscieres o tú deves procurar de perderla con darla la muerte, o aparejarte al perdimiento de vida y honra tan delicada” (237). And later, he reiterates his pledge to kill his daughter if she is having an affair: “Grandes señales veo en ella de su perdición y ningún remedio para remediarla sino con la sepultura….” Then: “Y esto porque el crimen de la liviandad en la mugger no se ha de castigar sino con la muerte, y qualquier castigo que éste no sea no es sino una licencia para que sea mala con la facilidad de la pena,” pg. 238.

! 163! ! !

“fama” by speaking about her in public. Silvia, who feels guilty for having given the courtier an excuse to speak about Eufrósina, tells the apprehensive maiden: “E bem, señora, e que conta daria eu de mi dessa maneira? se eu nam soubesse muito certo qu’ee tudo nelle pedra em poço com minhas mâos me mataria” (146). Eufrósina mistrusts

Silvia’s words, and she lectures her on the importance of reputation (fama) and honra.

The anonymous maiden from Gómez Arias’ Endecha, Roselia, Eufrósina and

Melibea’s situation stems from a common anxiety, namely, the loss of honra through public gossip. Like the impassioned lady in Gómez Aria’s Endecha, Melibea fears that her mother would punish her anti-social conduct. Melibea’s words are not mere hyperbole or unfounded paranoia. Alisa, more than Pleberio, is likely to avenge

Melibea’s loss of honra, which we can see through Sempronio’s admonition to Celestina before the go-between departs to seduce Melibea is revealing: “Piensa en su padre que es noble y esforçado; su madre celosa y brava; tú la misma sospecha” (304). Whereas

Pleberio receives the epithets of “noble y esforçado,” Alisa is portrayed as “celosa y brava,” which may suggest that she could be capable of killing both Melibea and herself if she feels threatened by Melibea’s transgression.

Santiago López Ríos studies the relation between honra and Melibea’s suicide, and he points out Melibea’s ever-increasing importance bestowed upon her honra. More than a preoccupation with the intrinsic concept of honor, Melibea exhibits a concern for the social consequences of losing her honra: “Indudablemente, uno de los factores que sostiene la tensión dramática en La Celestina es el motivo de la honra” (317). Melibea does not kill herself because she bestows excessive importance upon her honor. Rather, she is “espauorida” by the teleology of her lost reputation. It is not just her mother who

! 164! ! ! threatens her physical integrity. López Ríos notes that Melibea does not seem too preoccupied by her honra “perdida” before casting herself down from the tower.

However, even after her world has crumbled into pieces after the death of Calisto, she cannot stop thinking about her family’s honor. When Melibea—like Dido in Virgil’s

Aeneid who deceives her sister Ana and her servant in order to be left alone—tricks

Pleberio and Lucrecia into leaving her alone so she can flee from life, she cannot stop thinking about the damage done to her father’s honor. Even in this extreme circumstance, she bewails the loss of her father’s honor: “Gran sinrazón hago a sus canas, gran ofensa a su vegez, gran fatiga le acarreo con mi falta, en gran soledad le dejo” (495). The

“sinrazón,” “ofensa” and “fatiga” are clear allusions to the loss of “honra.” López Ríos notes that Melibea is conscientious about the dishonor that her suicide will bring to her father. The social body will also bring out her “no acostumbrados delitos,” which is an allusion to her sexual transgression. The “no acostumbrados delitos”, namely, those are not a part of accepted social “customs,” more than Calisto’s death, are the hidden forces that impel her suicide.

Calisto’s death after falling from the ladder as he is trying to escape from

Pleberio’s garden underscores his most salient characterological traits: His cowardice and selfishness (see Pérez Romero, The Subversive 259). In his attempt to save his life,

Calisto disregards Melibea’s honra. As John Rotherfort points out, he abandoned his incriminating weapons inside the garden in order to run faster unimpeded by the weight of his armor. A man’s weapons or armor in the garden is enough evidence to condemn

Melibea’s transgression. Aware of the impending danger, Melibea attempts to get rid of the irrefutable evidence of her dalliance: “Melibea… le arroja las corazas olvidadas por el

! 165! ! ! muro para deshacerse de cualquier evidencia enojosa de su secreta actividad nocturna”

(Lacarra, “El erotismo” 142). Calisto’s cowardice is met with Melibea’s presence of mind to save her honor in the face of danger. In Calisto’s haste, he conveniently “forgets” his weapons and armor in the garden. Hearing the uproar on the street and knowing that it could cause her father’s suspicion, Melibea hastens to cast his arms out of the garden.

Most critics have interpreted Melibea’s action of throwing Calisto’s weapons out of her garden as a sign of Melibea’s concern for Calisto’s safety, since without them, he could have been easy prey for his armed enemies. Nevertheless, just as Calisto is rushing to save his life, in a “very unidealistic impulse of fear” (Brownlee 14), Melibea hurriedly orders Lucrecia to get rid of the evidence in a desperate effort to save her honor and, subsumed in it, her life:

Calisto: Señora, Sosia es aquel que da bozes. Déxame yr a valerle. No le maten, que no está sino un pajezico con él. Dame presto mi capa, que está debaxo de ti. Melibea: ¡O triste de mi ventura! No vayas allá sin tus coraças; tórnate a armar. Calisto: Señora, lo que no haze espada y capa y coraçón, no lo fazen coraças y capacete y covardía. Sosia (Aparte. Afuera): ¿Aún tornáys? Esperadme; quiçá venís por lana. Calisto: Déxame, por Dios, señora, que puesta está el escala. Melibea: ¡O desdichada yo! Y ¿cómo vas tan rezio y con tanta priessa y desarmado, a meterte entre quien no conosces? Lucrecia, ven presto acá, que es ydo Calisto a un ruydo. Echémosle sus coraças por la pared, que se quedan acá (585-586).

The dialogic dynamic and dramatic tension allows the action to move at a fast pace.

Despite the short sentences (or because of them), the events flow swiftly so that they foreshadow the impending tragedy. Melibea, sensing Calisto’s fear, begs him over and over to arm himself (“tórnate a armar”), but Calisto seems to have decided that his best chance for escaping unscathed is to flee. As Calisto has done when Pármeno and

Sempronio were dishonorably killed, he now seeks to flee and hide himself behind the walls of his house (“de día estaré en mi cámara, de noche en aquel paraýso dulce” 526).

Rojas heightens the dramatic effect by suggesting a pull-and-tug struggle between the

! 166! ! ! lovers (“déxame, por Dios, señora, que puesta está el escala”). In order to avoid waking

Pleberio and his servants, Melibea lets him go. She is, however, alarmed by the incriminating evidence. Although she fears Calisto’s death, she fears her honor and life more (“¡O desdichada yo!”).

Melibea summons Lucrecia, while Calisto runs at full speed to escape. In this scene, Rojas prefers dramatic tension to verisimilitude. Even if Lucrecia had already been by her side while she was pushing and tugging at Calisto, Melibea could not have uttered those words before Calisto fell to the ground. This represents another example of what

Lida de Malkiel has referred to as “el tiempo relativo,” for Calisto should have been dead by the time they dump his weapons over the wall. The words “Lucrecia, ven presto acá, que es ydo Calisto a un ruydo” imply that when (or if) they manage to cast away the armor Calisto has already fallen—let alone the illogical idea that Melibea could have knocked Calisto down with her lover’s armor when she was trying to get rid of the evidence, as Ian Michael informally suggested to Lacarra (Lacarra, “El erotismo” 142).

Regardless, Melibea orders Lucrecia to help her cast out the evidence that threatens her

“honra” (“echémosle sus coraças por la pared, que se quedan acá”). This action takes place just before daylight, which means that Pleberio and his servants were about to wake up. This explains Melibea’s promptness to eject the armor and weapons. If Pleberio were to wake and find the “coraças” or any other manly garment inside his garden, it would be enough to incriminate her. The scene ends with Tristán’s reassuring Calisto that the threat has passed, but Calisto’s fear goes beyond the noises outside of the garden. Pleberio is a much greater threat than any petty rufián in loitering the streets at the unbecoming hour of dawn. The reader never finds out if Melibea and Lucrecia have enough time to cast out

! 167! ! ! the evidence, for the scene is abruptly interrupted after Tristán warns Calisto to be cautious.

! 168! ! Social Structure as Catalyst for Melibea’s Suicide

Thus far, we have studied the way in which a “frozen society” can control and regulate individual desires through a complex mechanism of reward and punishment. Melibea’s society bestows or retrieves honra as means to police the social body and to limit behaviors that may infect the community. Those who allow their personal desires to threaten social order, if caught, lose their honra, and they expose themselves to the anger of their families, who often punished them with seclusion, social ostracism, exile or death. Laureola and Mirabella from San Pedro and Flores’ sentimental romances are immediate examples of unsuspecting cruelty from patriarchal systems. Waley draws attention to the dire consequences for ladies who lose their chastity. In San Pedro’s

Cárcel, after condemning his daughter to execution, King Gaulo attempts to rationalize his dead penalty to the Cardinal: “Bien sabéis que establecen nuestras leyes que la muger que fuere acusada de tal pecado muera por ello” (133). For King Gaulo, an accusation of unchastity justifies an execution. In Flores’ Grisel, the infamous Ley de Escocia establishes that those who are caught having an affair must be punished. The guiltier party is be burned at the stake, and the lesser guilty must be exiled. The narrator explains:

“Que qual quiere que en tal yerro cayesse… que padeciesse muerte” (Matulka 337).

Barbara Matulka refers us to the laws of various medieval states where they sentenced the lady to death and the man to lesser punishments (Oostendorp 81). San Pedro and Flores’ fictionalization of death penalties represent a literalization or a literary legislation of the tacit cultural law that allows fathers, husbands or brothers to punish sexual misconduct.

Matulka argues that Flores’ feminism is a forceful response to and rejection of the man-made laws of his time. These biased laws, Matulka notes, often led women to ! suicide: “To show how they were brought to grief and even lead to suicide or death by man-made law and social prejudice, he illustrated the oppression of women by a tragic story modeled after the lives of Great Lovers, from which he constantly borrowed motives all through his works” (45). Like Flores, Rojas is exposing—if not rejecting—the oppressive system of laws that objectivizes and dehumanizes women and women’s desires. Commenting upon the erotic scene between Calisto and Melibea, where Calisto interprets the coitus as his “gloria” and Melibea as her “yerro,” Lacarra points out “la degradación evidente de Melibea, objeto de los brutales comentarios de los criados” (“El erotismo” 139). Women are objectifications of male desires, but they are also mere objects of gendered social norms and of biased laws. The stern social laws spur Melibea to kill herself because she unconsciously understands that to her family and to her society, her death is preferable to her immoral life. If she lives, her mere presence becomes a symbol and an embodiment of her guilt. Melibea’s society will always perceive her as an infected/infecting agent whose mere presence provokes “sospecha.” If her offense goes unpunished, other ladies may follow her example. The poet of a romance (ca. 1550) makes the Roman Lucretia express this very idea before plunging the sword (“espada”) into her chest: “Yo me daré tal castigo como adúltera malvada/ porque ninguna matrona por mi ejemplo sea mala” (Díaz Roig 262, emphasis added). Unlike

Lucretia, who executes the punishment upon herself, society will punish Melibea’s transgression so that “ninguna matrona por [su] ejemplo sea mala.”

After losing her virginity and honor, Melibea is forever in a double bind.

Regardless of her decision, she will suffer greatly. If she decides to accept her life without Calisto, she will be punished by a social system that considers her unchastity

! 170! ! ! damaged goods. If she kills herself, she will be damned and her family stigmatized. She opts for the latter because death offers her immediate solace to her psychological sorrow, and if she lives, she is forced to suffer both for her guilt and Calisto’s: “Prefiere quitarse la vida a seguir viviendo condenada por todos” (Snow, “Una nueva lectura”). Américo

Castro states that Melibea does not believe suicides go to Hell: “Melibea no cree que el alma y el cuerpo de un suicida vayan derechos al infierno” (102). Melibea, however, never confirms or denies this idea. She believes in God, as she shows when she apostrophizes God before jumping: “Señor, que de mi habla eres testigo, ves mi poco poder” (597). But life without Calisto within a social system that will reject her represents another hell, is one that she rejects as much as society rejects her. Since she has to choose the lesser of two evils—and between two hells—, she opts for avoiding the most real and most tangible. Melibea has to suffer in the earthly hell to which society will condemn her without her lover Calisto, and she is convinced that even if she goes to hell after dying, she will reunite with Calisto, and the latter gives her the strength to end her life.

In his sociological study on suicide of 1897, Durkheim speaks about the influence of society in great depth. Durkheim argues that dysfunction in social norms and anomic conditions contribute to depressive states of mind both in the individual and in the collective social body. The sociologist argues that economic crises, high divorce rates and serious readjusting are aggravating conditions for suicide. Durkheim, moreover, contends that aspiring beyond unattainable goals drives people to unhappiness: “To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness” (248). Unhappiness, of course, is a precondition for depression and suicidal

! 171! ! ! moods. Durkheim, paradoxically, notes that the demands of far-fetched goals make the fulfillment of such demands harder to achieve: “Since this race for an unattainable goal can give no other pleasure but that of the race itself, if it is one, once it is interrupted the participants are left empty-handed” (253). Finally, he asks: “How could the desire to live not be weakened under such conditions?” (253). When the means rather than the end become the goal in life, people are bound to lose sight of the real priorities in life.

Melibea desires Calisto and Calisto’s desire more than life itself. Without her lover,

Calisto’s absence becomes a symbol of her will to live. Although Durkheim is mainly alluding to an unattainable goal based on economic wealth or professional success, the

Celestina reader can see the parallels between the unattainable goals set by society to accrue wealth or success and Melibea’s oppressive pressure to remain chaste until the sexual drive is channeled through the religious institution of marriage. Remaining a virgin until marriage was the ultimate goal for noble ladies. For this reason, many medieval Castilian families married their daughters as early as possible. Pleberio and

Alisa fail to marry Melibea sooner, and Celestina scholars have faulted Melibea’s parents for neglecting their obligation to marry her as early as customs prescribed.

Following Durkheim’s footsteps in his now classical study Social Theory and

Social Structure, Robert K. Merton seeks to understand the way an individual interacts with society as a whole and the way the social system shapes the identity and attitudes of individuals. In “Social Structure and Anomie,” Merton studies the way in which some cultures place immoderate weight on achieving a desired goal but do not provide the means to accomplish the given goal. From this imbalance of social goals vis-à-vis means to achieve them emerges what Merton calls “deviant behavior.” Celestina’s livelihood

! 172! ! ! depends upon this asocial, deviant behavior; her job is largely based on enabling this behavior in her social environment. Melibea, however, is a victim of the greed that catalyzes this amoral deviancy. Merton points out the pressure social systems impose upon the individual: “Some social structures exert a definite pressure upon certain persons in the society to engage in nonconforming rather than conforming conduct”

(186). Though on another discursive level and perhaps because Merton’s argument is so closely related to Durkheim’s, the reader of Celestina can see why and how Melibea’s

“deviant behavior” affects the way she perceives her own life and other people’s lives. In the sociocultural context Rojas created for Melibea, her actions (loss of chastity and suicide) are perceived as the extreme of behavioral deviancy. Both loss of virginity and suicide are permanent conditions that have an intrinsic damaging effect in victims.

Merton acknowledges the power social structures exert on people to comply with its norms and its systems of control, which pushes some women over the edge: “The suicide deriving from excessive regulation, that of persons with futures pitilessly blocked and passions violently choked by oppressive discipline” (Durkheim 276). Excessive regulation or abusive mechanisms of control lead Melibea to prefer death to life. Merton studies the disjunctive between that which society prescribes to individuals and the lack of avenues to achieve the prescribed goals: “Is a symptom of dissociation between culturally prescribed aspirations [virginity] and socially structured avenues for realizing these aspirations [i.e., lack of control over Celestinas, Caslistos, lack of sexual education, sexual harassment, etc.]” (188). In Celestina, there is an inordinate amount of pressure for maidens to remain doncellas encerradas. Remaining chaste until marriage is not a goal. It is their primary goal, one that determines their self-worth. Any form of sexual

! 173! ! ! interaction is highly censured, but as Brooks notes when she studies the extreme pressure society places on women’s chastity, “La Celestina suggests that the ideal of the closed body of the doncella encerrada is an impossible patriarchal dream” (98). The fact that it is an “impossible patriarchal dream” does not exempt maidens from being punished when they engage in what Merton calls non-conforming behavior. Another consequence of such a high burden upon individuals’ desired goals is that, if unfulfilled, a literal demoralization takes place: “The process whereby exaltation of the end generates a literal demoralization, i.e., a de-institutionalization, of the means occurs in many groups”

(Merton 190). Melibea’s demoralization can be perceived through her tone of voice and her disillusionment in life. Melibea, in fact, goes through a process of “transvaluation” of axiological ideals, which takes her from bestowing the highest value upon her honra to seeing Calisto as the only person worth living for. When Melibea calls on Celestina to confess her passion, the lovesick lady confers more importance to her passion than her honor:

O, ¡cómo me muero con tu dilatar! Di, por Dios, lo que quisieres, haz lo que supieres, que no podrá ser tu remedio tan áspero que iguale con mi pena y tormento. ¡Agora toque en mi honrra, agora dañe mi fama, ahora lastime mi cuerpo! Aunque sea romper mis carnes para sacar mi dolorido coraçón, te doy mi fe ser segura y, si siento alivio, bien galardonada (446).

Melibea acknowledges the social goal when she alludes to her “honra,” but she rejects the unrealizable ideal of chastity. She is demoralized, and her demoralization provokes a

“transvaluation” of values, where her desire for erotic pleasure decenters the unrealistic prescription for chastity and honra. Critics have singled out Melibea’s fainting in Act 8 as the defining moment of conversion. It represents a spiritual and an ideological metanoia in which she embraces her passion for Calisto as well as the consequences of her decision.

! 174! ! !

Oppressive societies—like the ones in which Melibea, Laureola, and Mirabella are represented—play a preeminent role in women’s decisions to kill themselves. There are multiple cases of women who have committed suicide for fear of social sanctions.

Oostendorp points out the rigid morality in fifteenth-century authors regarding the damning effects of suicide, adducing Flores’ vivid imagery in Fiometa’s punishments in

Hell by devils after her wrathful suicide (120). Melibea never overtly blames society for her fatal decision to end her life. Instead, she obliquely refers to “honra” as a determining factor. In her study about Melibea’s self-delusion, Victoria Burrus notes that the despaired Melibea commits suicide to avoid the chaos of reality after her loss of chastity

(57-88). More than to escape the chaos of reality, Melibea decides to die to avoid the punishment that awaits her after the social body denounces her immoral liaison with

Calisto because, as Sempronio assures during the banquet scene, “el vulgo parlero no perdona las tachas de sus señores.” Then, Pleberio’s “sospecha” would be corroborated and the boisterous “vulgo parlero,” particularly bourgeois-haters like Areúsa and Elicia who feel superior to Melibea—except in wealth (Deyermond, “Sociedad” 5)—, demand

Melibea’s punishment. Paloma Ferrer insightfully points out that Melibea’s impetus for life is dominated by “los estrictos cauces de la sociedad, por la fatalidad vengativa, por su propia pasión desbordada” (359), which underscores the role society plays in Melibea’s consciousness and worldview.

Juan Varela-Portas has studied the dialectics of the public and the private spheres, and he notes the importance of keeping sexual relations in strict secrecy. Once the private enters the realm of the public, lives run the risk of public exposure that could lead to death. As Varela-Portas notes, Melibea and Calisto’s secret was “en la plaza” after the

! 175! ! ! death of Celestina (cf. “todo el negocio de sus amores y los que por su causa ay muertos”

566). If she does not yet know it, Melibea might suspect that her love affair with Calisto is in the public domain. She also knows that it is just a matter of time until her parents find out and that she will become society’s scapegoat to dissuade other maidens from committing a similar crime against morality. If she does not die, on top of her heart- wrenching grief for Calisto’s death, she will have to suffer public humiliation and corporal punishment. Varela-Portas adds that Calisto’s death is the consequence of “la victoria de ese nivel público sobre el privado, de la voz sobre el secreto, o, en otras palabras, consecuencia de la salida a la voz pública del privado secreto de los amantes”

(575). More than a mere victory of the public over the private, Melibea’s (and Calisto’s) deaths show the power that a rigid social structure can exert over the psyche of individuals in order to control and regulate their private desires. Calisto’s death is a direct consequence of the rigid social system. If Pleberio or Pleberio’s servants caught him in flagrante delicto, he would have died, so he tries to escape, ironically, dying instead.

Melibea is no different. Only, her death represents an escape from her father’s (and mother’s) wrath as well as society’s tacit laws.

P. C. Moya offers an alternate explanation regarding Melibea’s motives for jumping to her death. Moya argues that, unlike other exemplary self-murderers who kill themselves for chastity’s sake or for religion’s sake, Melibea dies in order to follow her lover to the afterlife. In such a case, Melibea’s unrepentant suicide would draw the anger and the condemnation of society. If she did not kill herself, Melibea’s social world would have punished her trespass and her lack of repentance for her crime, which constitutes the greatest of transgressions: “A Melibea se la castigaría por su deshonestidad, y su rechazo

! 176! ! ! del arrepentimiento… constituiría su mayor transgresión” (Varela Portas 208). Even in the nineteenth century, Carl Marx believed that harsh parents and a ruthless society could push people to suicide.89 Melibea’s social system is structured within a well-founded framework of punishment and reward to control the very will of its constituents. As

Moya notes, society would have punished Melibea had she not killed herself. But even before society, Pleberio and Alisa would have exacted a punishment had she not jumped to her death. Seidenspinner-Núñez interprets Rojas’ reference of Mary Magdalene (an image associated with conversion) as an illustration of society’s penchant for non- conversion, moral blindness and, echoing Brooks’ idea that female enclosedness was an impossible patriarchal dream, self-delusion (Seidenspinner-Núñez 115, cf. Burke “The

Mal” 119). Self-delusion, indeed, also plays an important role in Melibea’s decision to end her life, as Burrus noted.

In a study about the reformulation of Melibea’s demise, Amanda J. A. Tozer posits that Melibea is a prisoner of social convention (289). Lida de Malkiel had also argued that after Calisto’s death, Melibea does not react with personal discomfiture.

Rather, she has in mind her social standing: “Enamorada y todo, Melibea no reacciona con pudor personal, sino mencionando su puesto en la sociedad…. Destacar la responsabilidad social de la doncella” (La originalidad 407). Later, however, Lida de

Malkiel argues that Melibea commits suicide without social coercion (La originalidad

428). Tozer goes beyond pointing out Melibea’s allegorical imprisonment within her own and her society’s axiological systems. Tozer points out that Melibea’s suicide was imposed upon her by her oppressive social system: “From Melibea’s viewpoint, even the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 89 See Marx’s comments on Jacques Peuchet’s text on suicide, which Marx commented and published (50- 51).

! 177! ! ! choice to take her own life is one which seems to have been forced upon her, as is exemplified in her reference to a ‘forçada y alegre partida’” (293). Indeed, it is neither

Calisto who is forcing her to kill herself nor her wounded heart. It is not guilt, either, or wrath, as some critics have suggested (see Fothergill-Payne, “Affectus” 406-7, Lacarra,

“La ira” 109), which is coercing her to take her own life. Rather, Melibea seems to be expressing a subversive voice against the social establishment, which treats men and women differently. By killing herself, Melibea places herself beyond societal control and unjust prejudices, much like Mirabella does by jumping into the den of lions in Flores’s

Grisel. Death makes Melibea equal to men, but above all, death brings her closer to

Calisto.

Melibea understands the limitations imposed upon her by the patriarchal order.

She knows that she lives in a biased, gendered society. Women are simply in disadvantage to their male counterparts. Her house, which is governed by her father, could represent a microcosm of the entire social structure. Even within her house, she lives in a micro society ruled by a masculine figure. Pleberio, as Alisa tells him when they are secretly planning Melibea’s future, has to assume Celestina’s role and seek a suitable husband for his daughter. The ruling patriarch, as Gustavo Correa notes, categorizes “virginity” as the most important attribute, followed by ancillary conditions, for an advantageous marriage. In a Tratado de amores, Juan de Mena, who was the most influential fifteenth-century poet in Castilian literature, offers a checklist of values that lead lovers to “bien querer,” namely, fall in love within social norms. Like Pleberio,

Mena posits “virtud,” which enshrouds virginity, chastity, honor, etc., as the cornerstone of ladies’ attributes: “Las cosas que despiertan e atrahen los coraçones a bien querer las

! 178! ! ! principales son: virtud, fermosura, vida conforme, dádivas, e grandeza de linaje, e fabla dulçe, antiçipación en el querer, oçio, familiaridad, entrevenimiento de persona medianera, perseguimiento” (37). Rojas borrows many of the elements of this list for the sequence that Pleberio attributes to Melibea, but “virginidad” and “virtud” are values sine qua non for virtue. If Melibea is not a virgin, it follows that she has no virtue, and if she is not virtuous, none of the other attributes make up for such lack.

Melibea is conscious of her oppressed situation: “¡O género femíneo, encogido y frágile! ¿Por qué no fue también a las hembras concedido poder descobrir su congoxoso y ardiente amor, como a los varones? ¡Que ni Calisto viviera congoxoso, ni yo penada!”

(440-441). Melibea’s woeful words, as Swietlicki notes, are fraught with resentment toward her society. Melibea’s words (“¿Por qué no fue también a las hembras concedido poder descobrir su congoxoso y ardiente amor, como a los varones?”) exhibit a painful and bitter complaint for her condition of “penada.” Gilman suggests that suicide offers a way out of oppressive social systems, such as the one Rojas creates for Melibea: “Only suicide… provides a possibility of escape from a world in which no values are left” (The

Spain 142). Gilman interprets Melibea’s suicide as an escape from a world that has lost its values, or rather, as evidence that she wants to flee a world whose values do not represent her own worldview. Melibea ends her life because her own values have shifted from society’s ideals. Tozer asserts that Melibea commits suicide to dissent from “a future of loneliness and dishonour” (290). Being a doncella encerrada was for Melibea, as it was for Alisa, the highest ideal, but after falling in love with Calisto, her ideals shifted. Paradoxically, even beyond death, society could have punished her sexual and religious transgressions.

! 179! ! !

In matters of honra, suicide always offers a way out. In a sociological study on suicide, Jimeno Agius reports that from the 581 suicides he studied, eight cases were triggered by “el deseo de evitar la deshonra” and seven because of “el temor al castigo”

(143). Melibea fits into both categories. Deshonra and castigo are inherently dovetailed in medieval Castile. Deshonra had a built-in mechanism of punishment. Even while

Calisto is alive, Melibea knows that her decision to give herself to Calisto is threatened with an impending self-destruction. It may not be entirely because Melibea thinks that her erotic desire is intrinsically evil, for she is simply following her instincts. Rather, her social surroundings have made, as Juan Ruiz claimed when he alluded to Aristotle’s principles of nature, nourishment and sex,90 a natural drive into a reprehensible and punishable matter. Hence, as Tozer argues, Melibea’s partida is forçada by her disadvantaged position, and her suicide could be construed as a masked criticism to her social order. Pérez Jiménez notes that “el suicidio no es solo una forma de morir, es una acusación” (15). In Melibea’s case, it is a tacit accusation to society and its unbending, hermetic norms against sexual expression. Melibea casts herself down from the tower, knowing that if she does not kill herself, her rigid social system will either kill her, as she claimed her mother would, or she would be marked and shunned by her society.91

Society, then, places Melibea in a double bind: She could either die willingly or be socially killed.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 90 Juan Ruiz tells us: Como dize Aristótiles, cosa es verdadera, todo el mundo por dos cosas trabaja: la primera, por aver mantenencia; la otra cosa era por aver juntamiento con fenbra plazentera (71). 91 Cf. Alfonso Martínez de Toledo’s words: “que en la ora e punto que tal crimen [sex] cometan, por todos e todas en estima de fembra mala es tenida e por tal havida e en toda su vida reputada,” 81.

! 180! ! !

! 181! ! Conclusion:

Rojas represents Melibea as a character who is constrained within very strict honor codes, which limit her individual freedom and personal desires. Melibea carries upon her shoulders her own honra and her family’s. Examining her suicide from this perspective,

Melibea’s role within the household is analogous to that of Pleberio or even greater, given that the respectability of the household depended mainly upon the honra of the women within. Melibea has the power, as Brooks pointed out, to make the household implode from within. Pushing the analysis further, women are the real agents of change in their stagnant society. Rojas’s female characters are, indeed, empowered characters.

Even Celestina, who exerts the most power through her keen acumen and dialectic prowess, is capable of corrupting and desecrating the social and religious establishments, not only through her anti-Christian use of magic but also through her sexual commerce.

Because of their immoderate hatred toward the noble class, incarnated in Melibea, Areúsa and Elicia unleash the dramatic tragedy that results in Calisto’s death and Melibea’s suicide. Areúsa and Elicia employ their vindictive powers to unveil an occurrence that ought to have remained private. It is unlikely that the prostitutes believe that their collusion with Centurio would lead to Calisto’s death and Melibea’s suicide. Rather than attempting to bring about Calisto and Melibea’s death, the prostitutes want to retaliate against the young lovers by bringing their love affair to public light, which would have upended their lives and unleashed a wave of violence that could have ended by taking the lovers’ lives. !

Thus society and its unbending moral codes possess the mechanisms to push maidens to end their lives when they are unable to comply with their imposed goals. As

Merton noted, society places an inordinate amount of value on a given goal (in this case on maidens’ virginity) but does not offer the means to achieve its goal. So long as society does not get rid of Calistos and Celestinas, the “impossible patriarchal dream” will remain impossible, for Calisto and Celestina penetrate surreptitiously into Melibea’s fortress to corrupt her and bring about her destruction. Melibea is compelled to accept a man whom she initially had rejected for chastity’s sake. But even in the vortex of her passionate love, Melibea never stops thinking about her social position and responsibilities as a member of her fossilized society. Hence, after Calisto dies, she knows that her place in this world is compromised by her illicit sexual conduct.

Therefore, as Gilman points out, Melibea understands that the only way out of her existential predicament is suicide, for as she has told Calisto, death is preferable to life without honra. At the end, as Durkheim forcefully contends, tight (tyrannical) social norms could lead women to make the transcendental decision to end their lives. In

Melibea’s case, indeed, the asphyxiating axiology metaphorically pushes her down the tower. Melibea is not an exemplary maiden within her strict social system, but at least she has the courage to escape it—even if her escape means transgressing yet another moral tenet (namely, suicide)—and transcend it.

! 183! ! !

The Christianization of Suicide in Joan Roís de Corella’s Història de Leànder i Hero

Hero and Leander’s legendary tale became one of the best-known stories of tragic love during Middle Ages. As Krummrich (1) and Morros Mestres (2013) assert, Hero and

Leander’s tragedy spread throughout the Western world after the recasting of Virgil,

Ovid and Musaeus, and it continued to exert a vast influence during and after the

Renaissance. In the Iberian Peninsula, the lovers’ story was known from Ovid’s Heroides and from King Alfonso X’s adaptation in his thirteenth-century General Estoria. After

Alfonso X’s dissemination—the first extant translation into the Spanish vernacular—, the story was translated, recast and imitated. The most successful poet in the Iberian

Peninsula to recast Hero and Leander’s legendary tale was the fifteenth-century

Valencian mythographer and poet Joan Roís de Corella, whose rendition of Hero’s self- murder remains one of the most romantic suicides staged in medieval Catalan (and

Spanish) literature.

Modeling the story’s final scene on Thisbe’s death on top of Pyramus’ lifeless body (Miquel i Planas lvii and Guia i Marín 137), Corella deploys in Hero’s suicide a poetic stylization of literary mastery, surpassing any of his predecessors in aesthetic value. However, despite the pagan roots of the diegetic backdrop and of Hero’s suicide,

Corella imprints a profound sense of Christian morality and orthodox eschatology that permeates his entire epyllion—a short narrative poem that is similar to an epic poem in

! 184! ! ! style.92 As Guia i Marín points out, “la propensió de Corella a fer reflexions catòliques, més pròpies d’un predicador en la trona de La Seu de València que d’un escriptor de temàtica amorosa que reescriu Ovidi o el Tirant, es deixa veure fins i tot en textos pagans com la Història de Leànder i Hero” (147) [Corella’s tendency to make Catholic reflections, more proper of a preacher in the pulpit of La Seu of Valencia than of a writer of romantic themes who rewrites Ovid or Tirant, allows us to see [Corella’s reflexions catòliques] even in pagan texts such as the Història of Hero and Leander].93 Lola Badia perceives Corella’s moralizing voice upon his narrative as the opinion of the theologian overriding the voice of the poet: “Corella adopta sense fissures l’actitud del teòlog” (De

Bernat Metge 161) [Corella adopts without fissures the attitude of a theologian].94

Being a clergyman and a “Maestre en sacra Teologia” (Mikel i Planas xiv) with a clear consciousness of his literary outreach, Corella weaves with refined embroidery a balanced narrative, conflating the pagan and Christian worldviews with poetic mastery to create a unique work of art capable of both entertaining and moralizing his Christian readership. Hero and Leander’s immoral passion and tragic deaths represent an apposite

(pagan) canvas upon which the Valencian poet imprints his ideological outlook with his unwavering Christian faith as a privileged member of his cultural polity and the Church.

The interplay (or clash) between the pagan and the Christian in the Història allows the reader a glimpse of Corella’s poetic awareness. Unlike Ausiàs March, who believed that

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 92 As Trillá Millas notes, Corella’s reelaboration of the tragedy of Hero and Leànder has such a high poetic value that it can be considered an epyllion (694). 93 Except for Corella’s Història de Leànder i Hero, all translations from Catalan into English are the author’s. 94 Badia adds that Corella “ens fa saber que la teologia és la seva màxima ocupació d’estudi i que la seva ploma s’exercita normalment en la redacció de sermon” (162).

! 185! ! ! suicide was justified provided that it was undertaken for the greater good,95 Corella rejected suicide even in pagan characters, an attitude seldom expressed in medieval

Spanish literature.96

The objective of this chapter is twofold. First, it aims at offering an interpretation of Roís de Corella’s Història from the perspective of Christian values, placing particular emphasis on Corella’s literary efforts to “Christianize” Hero and to use his belief system as a theological yardstick through which he judges her suicide. Martínez Romero calls attention to Corella’s penchant for Christianizing Ovidian pagan characters, bringing them closer to the immediate sociocultural and religious ideologies of his readers. Being a distinguished member of the Church, Martínez Romero argues, Corella performs a poetic and symbolic “bateig d’Ovidi” (“Joan Roís”) [baptism of Ovid], which made both

Ovid and his literature more palatable to his contemporaneous reader. Second, the study also attempts to show how Corella’s moralizing voice can be heard over his characters’ discourses, drawing a moral contrast between his characters’ a-Christian actions and his readers’ obligations as Christians and members of a social and religious polity. Through

Corella’s poetic conceit, Hero is transplanted from her pagan roots into a Christian macrocosm in order to teach his readers Christian codes of conduct through negative example, as he would do if he were preaching from the pulpit of his parochial church.

Without attempting a religious conversion, the author imposes his moral and ethical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 95 Although in a previous poem, March rejects his own suicide for fear of divine punishment, in poem XXX, the poet says: “Guanya virtut qui son cors a mort dóna/ per un gran bé o de molts benifet” (232). 96 It is important to note that condemning pagan suicides marshaling Christian values was rare in medieval Spanish Literature. As Gilman points out about the Greek tragedies and epics, pagan stories “se situaban en un mundo mítico, y, por lo tanto, fuera del tiempo y del espacio” (338). Otis Green notes a similar phenomenon with Boccaccio’s narratives. Green speaks about the supposed unrepresentability of suicide in the Golden Age, so when he speaks of an adaptation of one of Boccaccio’s stories, he says that it was accepted because it was far removed from the writer’s contemporary consciousness: “The fact that the scene is laid in Italy, in an atmosphere far away and long ago, may have had some part in determining the acceptability of the [suicide] episode” (221).

! 186! ! ! values upon his pre-Christian Hero and Leànder by bestowing upon them psychospiritual traits distinctive in Christian characters, often eschewing their pagan traits.

Corella underplays their paganism and underscores Christian qualities that render his literary endeavor both aesthetically pleasing and innovative.97 Aesthetically, Corella forces Hero to inhabit a Christian world without completely abandoning the natural habitat of her pagan realm. Hero’s self-murder is represented as the perfect paradigm of the pagan suicide judged from the optical lens of Christian morality.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 97 Martínez Romero notes: “En este contexto, los personajes mitológicos, sin desprenderse del todo de sus rasgos, adquieren un nuevo contenido, con lo cual Corella, como bien ha sabido ver Bigvava (1999: 85), abre un camino hacia lo que será un fenómeno propio del siglo XVI” (“La poesía” 638).

! 187! ! Hero’s Suicide and Christian Morality

Whether or not Corella read Musaeus Grammaticus’s Hero and Leander remains a point of contention among scholars. Morros Mestres and Perdices observe some traces of the

Greek poet’s story in Corella’s rendition, but Miquel i Planas (lvii), Menéndez Pelayo

(339), Martí de Riquer (310) and Moya del Baño (141) argue that Musaeus’ poem was unknown in fifteenth-century Valencia. It is uncertain if Corella read (or was familiar with) Musaeus’s epyllion, but we can affirm that Corella read multiple versions of the legend to fashion his love story, including Ovid’s Heroides—which was translated into

Catalan in the second half of the fourteenth century by Guillem Nicolau (Garrido i Valls) and into Spanish in the first half of the fifteenth century by Rodríguez del Padrón. Both

Nicolau and Rodríguez del Padrón provide introductory notes at the beginning of each letter with the purpose of guiding the reader through the complexity of mythographic discourses.

Most earlier versions, however, concord in staging the first scene of Hero and

Leander’s encounter during the pagan festivities honoring the goddess Venus, for whom

Hero was a virgin priestess (Krummrich 14). Musaeus placed the Hero and Leander’s first meeting during a pagan celebration in honor of Venus and Adonis. Corella eschews the reference to the pagan festivity, thus inserting his protagonists into an ideological world that mirrors his own. Venus’s celebration in earlier stories is reduced to a “great festival that was solemnly celebrated on the island of Sestos.”98 As the plot unfolds, the reader can notice a conscious effort from Corella to moralize and Christianize his poetic

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 98 All quotes come from Corella, Joan Roís (121). And all translations into English come from Krummrich (24): “Gran festa que solemne celebraven en l’illa de Cestos.” ! diegesis, often raising his voice above those of his characters. From the start, the narrator interposes his authorial voice to forewarn his reader of the lovers’ impending destruction.

He foretells that their undermining of social and political institutions dooms them. They have crossed each other’s paths because “thus it was decreed by cruel fate” (24).99 Corella attempts to avoid the references to Venus’s pagan celebration, but he alludes to the syncretic idea of “Fortuna” as the deity responsible for deciding the destiny of mankind, undercutting the Christian dogma of free will. Unbeknownst to the lovers and the reader, the “iniqua fortuna” has prescribed earthly and divine punishments for diving headlong into the fury of their passions.

Despite the overwhelming passion caused by the intersection of their gazes that emit arrows of love, neither Hero nor Leànder abandon their moral principles and social obligations. Instead of seeking to satisfy his lustful inclinations, as he does in Musaeus’s epyllion, Leànder attempts to fulfill his desire through the sacred institution of matrimony. In Ovid’s Heroides, marriage is not an important element of their dalliance.

Only in Hero’s letter to Leander does she wonder with sorrowful diffidence if the residents of Abydos deem her unworthy of being his wife.100 In Corella’s tale, marriage is a preponderant concern that reins in the actions of the lovers and curbs their desires. Only after the greed of Hero’s father prevents them from fulfilling their wish to channel their love through the sacred institution of matrimony do they allow their passions to override their sense of propriety and honesty.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 99 “Que així ho disponia la iniqua fortuna” (121). 100 In Juan Rodríguez del Padrón’s Bursario, a translation of Ovid’s Heroids, the despairing beloved complains: “A vegadas he miedo que no sea yo offendida por las gentes de la tu tierra, e que yo, Hero, no sea vista digna del matrimonio tuyo, Leandro” (194).

! 189! ! !

Unable to contact Hero directly, lest he stain her honor and damage her honesty, he approaches Hero’s dida (nursemaid), Latíbula, to find a way to ask for Hero’s hand in marriage, observing both her honor: “Within the bounds set by honor there is no other blessing in this world that I desire, except that I might, as both captive and husband, spend my life in arms of the one you watch over” (25).101 Leànder’s allusion to becoming

Hero’s “catiu” represents a discursive hallmark of courtly love, and his desire to be her

“marit” within the “terms d’honestat” underscores a deep concern for moral codes highly valued in Corella’s milieu. As Josep Lluís Martos notes, “la relació que Leander es planteja amb Hero es fonamenta en l’honestedat, però hi ha unes lleis humanes que s’han d’acomplir, per les qual es regeix la seua societat” (“Con li suoi” 264) [the relationship that Leander considers with Hero is founded upon, but there are certain human laws that must be accomplished, which govern his society]. The social laws that Martos alludes to bind Hero to an utter submission to her father’s will and control over her body and womanhood—a central feature of the patriarchal sociopolitical system in which Corella lived (and believed in). As head of the family, Austerus, Hero’s father, represents a gatekeeper of her wellbeing and her honor. Honesty, Arthur Terry (42) and Martínez

Romero (“Source”) remind us, represents the blueprint of Corella’s conception of a transcendental love, one that goes beyond mere physical lust. Leànder refers to Hero’s

“honestat” rather than her “honor” to defend his reason to marry her. The idea of marriage, as Morros Mestres notes, only appears in some variants of the story (2013).

Corella adopts this attitude with the purpose of assuaging the moral guilt in the lovers’ passions and sexual transgression.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 101 “Sia manifest dins los térmens d’honestat altre bé en aquest món no desitge, ni m’és possible desitjar puga, sinó que, ensems catiu e marit, en los braços de la tua criada ma vida s’allargue” (122).

! 190! ! !

Oblivious to Hero’s feelings, Latíbula approves Leànder’s wooing and endorses a future relationship provided that his love is chaste and honest. The dida feels compelled to reiterate that his love will only be welcomed if he can prove his honorable love through marriage. Latíbula, then, advises Leànder to speak to Hero’s parents regarding his intentions to marry their daughter. Her voice of reason and morality strikes a higher note when she warns Leànder to flee from the sinful desires of the flesh. As Cingolani points out, Corella is “sobretot i essencialment un moralista tenaç i inflexible, només preocupat de declarer i condemner els tràgics efectes de l’amor” (13) [above all and essentially a tenacious and unbending moralist, only preoccupied to declare and condemn the tragic effects of love]. Since Latíbula’s (and Leànder’s) preponderant concern for religious and cultural normative institutions is overarching in Corella’s recasting of the myth, the maidservant’s moral rhetoric represents the conduit through which the author voices his own opinions and moral values. The reader, however, Cingolani warns, should not read the tale as a moral treatise (15). Despite moral and religious concerns, the story is still anchored in a syncretic world of Christian-pagan views.

Encouraged by Latíbula’s advice, Leànder seems to have asked for Hero’s hand, but the reader cannot be sure since we are never shown Leànder speaking to Austerus.

And it is even more unlikely that Leànder’s parents have spoken to Hero’s parents on their son’s behalf. It is rather implied that Leànder have talked with them since the story moves rapidly to portray Leànder’s erotic melancholy and Hero’s suicide attempt, which shares many similarities with that of Myrrh as she prepares to kill herself despairing of

! 191! ! ! her father’s love.102 After Austerus’s peremptory reluctance to marry his daughter to

Leànder, both lovers become suicidal and withdrawn.

Leànder is described as a wandering melancholic, adrift from his social and political reality, staring at the sea unconscious of his own immediate surroundings. A year after his proposal is rejected, Leànder feels hopeless (“ab esperança perduda” 123

[having lost hope 26]) and leads a sorrowful life away from Hero: “Spending his life in sadness, and waiting for time, which brings great matters to pass” (26).103 In his

Teseida— rendered into Spanish in the fifteenth century—, Boccaccio had already described the dejected lover’s melancholy: “Leandro era así mesmo llegado a la ribera, con bulto triste e de lágrimas lleno” (146), which mirrors Leriano’s psychoaffective condition as he is being dragged to the prison of love by Deseo at the beginning of San

Pedro’s Cárcel. Corella’s words “pasant la vida trista” and “esperar lo temps” allude to

Leànder’s melancholic constitution as well as to the inexorable passing of time. The narrator describes long periods of time in a short paragraph, which becomes a suitable metaphor both for the brevity of life and the ephemeral nature of their passion.

Meanwhile, the lovers cannot act upon their feelings because Austerus has contrived an ambitious plan to marry his daughter to a wealthy suitor. The narrator laments Austerus’s greed, describing him in a codified Christian language: “It often happens that our Lord

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 102 In is significant that Corella makes Myrrh’s maidservant utter the only explicit condemnation to Lucretia’s suicide, marshaling Saint Augustine’s argument in his influential De civitate Dei. Myrrh’s maidservant says: “¿No et recordes que major fón l’erra de la romana Lucrècia, quan se matà, que si voluntàriament hagués consentit al desordenat voler de Tarquí?” (Joan Roís 118). Just after condemning Lucretia’s “unwarranted” suicide, Corella also makes the maidservant condemn Dido’s suicide: “Si et dols per pèrdua o absència d’alguna persona a qui en extrem ames, record-te quant mal reparà Dido matant-se” (Joan Roís 118). As Gilman and Green noted, poets and writers did not feel compelled to condemn pagan suicides since they believed that they had lived in a distant time and place that rendered their suicide irrelevant to their own value and belief systems. 103 “Passant la vida trista, esperar lo temps, lo qual grans negocis termena” (123).

! 192! ! !

God, to show how little the gifts of fortune are to be esteemed” (27).104 In Corella’s tale,

Leànder’s social and political standing is uncertain. The overture of the epyllion merely states his physical and moral qualities. The reader can only surmise that he is not of the most wealthy since Austerus’s greed becomes the only impediment for their marriage, foreshadowing Góngora’s mordant satire that “[Leandro] no tuvo para un barco,” and that he was the son of a “escudero de Abido,/ pobrísimo, pero honrado” (Moya del Baño 247-

248). Beyond Góngora’s ludic parody, Austerus’s refusal to accept Leànder showcases the sociopolitical and economic pragmatism of arranged marriages, which then becomes the etiology of sinful passions and tragic deaths.

Like Leànder, Hero harbors destructive thoughts caused by her lovesickness, but unlike him, she takes her erotic melancholy to the extreme, driving her to a suicidal amor hereos that she cannot veil: “Remaining silent about the true malady of her love for

Leànder” (27).105 In a suicidal scene that mirrors that of Fiammetta’s in Boccaccio’s

Elegia and Melibea’s in Rojas’ Celestina, Hero’s lovesickness impels her to seek a solution to her grief through death: “And so the sad maiden kept her first and most overpowering love hidden, and the weight of the burden was so heavy that she could see no remedy for her ills other than to lose her life” (27).106 In medieval courtly literature, unrequited love nearly always seeks remedy through the conduit of death. Love is perceived as an illness whose only cure is either erotic satisfaction with the loved one or death. In most courtly love stories, love is a permanent condition and not an affective state from which a person falls in and out of love. This very ideological conceit leads

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 104 “Per mostrar nostre senyor Déu dels béns de fortuna la poca estima” (123). 105 “Callant la verdadera malaltia de l’amor de Leànder” (124). 106 “Així portava la sua primera i extrema amor encoberta la trista donzella, ab pes de tan feixuga càrrega, que alter remei, sinó la vida perdre, de sos mals no estimava” (124).

! 193! ! ! both Leriano, in San Pedro’s Cárcel, and Melibea to reject life in the name of their transcending love. Hero cannot imagine living a life without her lover. Corella himself shared many of the romantic traits of his heroine. Marshaling Aristotelian philosophical doctrines, in Corella’s poetic mind, as he expresses it in his youthful epistolary debate with the Prince Carlos de Viana, the ultimate good in love lies in the affective condition of reciprocal love.107

Keenly aware of her lovesickness and the unlikeliness of bringing her love to fruition, Hero maps out a scheme to end both her life as well as her pangs of love: “One day, at the time when the sun hides itself from the inhabited portions of the earth, the mournful maiden had climbed a lofty tower” (27).108 Like Fiammetta’s suicide attempt in

Boccaccio’s Elegia, which foreshadows her wrathful suicide in Flores’ Grimalte y

Gradisa, Hero’s will to end her life prefigures her suicide, in some traditions by jumping from the top of her tower into the sea.109 Unable and unwilling to contravene the social norms against illicit love, the lovesick lady decides to end her life, rather than endure a sorrowful life without Leànder. Jordi Carbonell points out Corella’s penchant for choosing characters with a propensity for extreme emotional outbursts, rendering them

“presa fàcil dels sentiments” (“Introducció” Obra 30) [easy prey for their feelings]. Hero, like the (self)-deceived protagonist of Corella’s masterpiece Tragèdia de Caldesa,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 107 When the prince of Viana presents Corella with the question of whom he would cast out of his sinking ship if his options were a lady he loves or a lady who loves him, Corella responds that he would save the lady he loves. If he were to drown the lady he loves, he argues, it would inevitably lead to him jumping after his beloved: “Car seria’m forçat, llançant la que en infinit ame, ab tard o no agraït penediment llançar aprés a mi, perquè ma vida ensems ab mos desigs prengués terme” (Obra profana 84). And after withstanding the dialectic harassment of the prince, the Catalan poet affirms that the ultimate good for the lover is to love: “E com sia condició als elements elementats… que la fi e delit ab propia actes alcancen, segueix-se que, en amar, no en ésser amat, mon darrer bé reposa” (Obra profana 87). 108 “Tan, que un jorn, a l’hora que el sol de nostra habitable terra cobrir se volia, era pujada la plorosa donzella en una alta torre” (124). 109 Even in the Middle Ages Hero’s suicide was depicted as jumping from the top of the tower. See Alfonso X’s recast and later Boscán’s.

! 194! ! ! embodies the very intensity of her passions, which enables her overwhelming sorrow to supersede her will to live after losing Leànder.

As in Fiammetta and Myrrh, whose stories Corella knew well (Martos, “Con li suoi” 257-75, Carbonell Obras 27), Hero’s dida arrives to prevent her self-destruction.

Latíbula then asks Hero the reason she wants to die, and the despairing lady confesses her passion for Leànder. In her discourse, Hero reiterates her unwavering love, while also suggesting that her body and soul will be lost forever: “The cause for which my life is going to be lost is Leander, whom, within the bounds set by decency, I desire as my husband; and if there is no hope of achieving this during my life, I wish to suffer no more woes except a despairing death” (125).110 The term “desesperar,” as noted in the introduction, was the most common theological term to denote both suicide and damnation, since despair represented a symbolic rejection of God and loss of hope for

His mercy. Hero recasts the word twice as an unfolding antanaclasis (the repetition of a word with different meanings), each word fraught with bisemic undertones in order to create a specific effect in his reader. The “vida se desespera” is an explicit allusion to suicide since she overtly refers to her life, but it also hints at the rejection of God’s mercy. The “mort desesperada” only reiterates both ideas with slightly more spiritual and eschatological connotations since the noun changes from “vida” to “mort.” The despairing “vida” represents her physical death and her “mort desesperada” is a symbol of her spiritual damnation for her suicide and her rejection of God’s mercy.

Latíbula persuades Hero to desist from her self-destructive thoughts. The narrator’s moral voice emerges to advance the topos of blind love and blinding passion: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 110 “La causa per on ma vida se va a perdre, és Leànder, al qual, dins los limits d’honestat, jo per marit desitge, e, si del terme d’aquest design ma vida se desespera, no vull que mos mals, sinó a mort desesperada, passen” (125).

! 195! ! !

“But in the end love, which more than the other emotions can put a blindfold on our understanding, conquered the prudent and honorable old woman” (29-30).111 In Francisco de Sá de Miranda’s sonnet about Hero and Leander, the sixteenth-century poet underscores the blindness of Leander’s love: “Blind love, that’s seen and done such savagery!” (Krummrich 136). Commenting upon Pero Guillén’s brief allusion to Hero and Leander’s story, Rodríguez del Padrón offers a gloss for the verse “Las sombras impiden Leandro ser visto” to allegorize it and claim that the sombras (shadows) “son los pecados, que impiden o embargan que sea visto y visitado de la gracia de Dios” (200).

Leander cannot be seen, but his moral blindfold also prevents him from seeing the dangers of his journey in the sea because, as Sá Miranda writes, his passion blinds him.

The idea of a blinding passion overarches the stories of both Mercader and Joan Escrivá in Corella’s Parlament en casa de Berenguer Mercader. For Corella, as Terry points out,

“love is always dangerous, and what may begin with gratification usually ends in disaster” (46). Since Hero and Leànder have sullied their bodies with the pollution of illicit sex, the logical effect is their destruction. The preaching voice of the narrator resurfaces to berate Hero’s blind desire for pursuing Leànder to the detriment of her honesty and her spiritual wellbeing. Badia points out that Corella announces the punishment for the lovers at the moment they agree to enter into a secret and transgressive dalliance (De Bernat Metge 174). Corella exalts God’s doctrines and commandments as the only way to achieve true happiness:

Oh, what great folly, to believe that any wrong can be remedied by another, for it is a maxim, that a thing increases as it adjusts to match its counterpart. Oh, blessed are those who, serving God according to the rules of virtuous life, reflect on his commandments, and whatever may happen to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 111 “Mas a la fi, amor, que sobre les altres passions nostre enteniment embenat encega, vencé a la prudent honesta vella” (126).

! 196! ! !

them, count it as nothing, so long as it is not an affront to God! How much better for Hero to have suffered any sorrow or woe rather than make a furtive marriage with Leander! And if she had died resisting sin, her death would have been eternal life, worthy of praise, and now she would not be in Hell, feeling the ineffable woe that the desperate wretches feel there for all eternity (30).112

Commenting upon this discursive outburst, Martos notes that (in Corella’s poetic mind),

Hero would have enjoyed (“gaudit”) Heaven “si hagués mort per honestat” [if she had died for chastity’s sake], while following Jordi Ventura, Guia i Marín argues that Corella could be tempering the pagan undertones in order to “quedar bé davant l’ortodoxia inquisitorial de la València finisecular del XV” (147) [make a good impression before the inquisitorial orthodoxy of the end of fifteenth-century Valencia]. Corella’s moralizing voice, however, appears to owe more to his own moral conviction and religious faith than to inquisitorial qualms since other authors had recast mythical stories in which suicide was central to the plot, and the Inquisition did not act against its outhors. His unequivocal avowal that Hero is now in Hell represents an explicit rejection of her sinful passion and a condemnation of her unwarranted suicide, a line of thought that Góngora, Quevedo and

Vázquez de Leca would echo, satirizing it with the imagery of the cracked egg, fried with the oil of Hero’s lamp that Satan eats for supper (Alatorre 1961).

Hero, nevertheless, rejects any form of religious prescription and decides to embrace her sexuality, undermining her chastity and her honestat. The poet’s condescending reprimand denotes both his disappointment in Hero’s decision to follow her base desires by abandoning the codes of moral conduct and his lack of authorial control. Hero’s decision to follow her heart (as well as her impending suicide) is beyond

Corella’s authority, unless he decides to take poetic licenses and alter the outcome of a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 112 “O! Benaventurats aquells que, servint a Déu, per regla de virtuosa vida los seus manaments contemplen, e, qualsevol cosa los esdevinga, per no res l’estimen, puix a Déu no sia ofensa! Quant fóra millor a Hero soferir qualsevol ristor o pena, ans que furtadament contractar de matrimony ab Leànder! E si ans per dolor fos morta contrastant a vici, fóra la sua mort vida eternal, digna de premi, i ara en los inferns no sentira aquella pena ineffable, que els miserable desesperats eternament senten” (126).

! 197! ! ! tragic story that he inherited. The entire paragraph already represents a poetic intrusion into the fictional world. Through prolepsis, the narrator hints Hero’s suicide, and he allots to her an unequivocal condemnation. In Virgil, Ovid, Musaeus and even in Alfonso X’s version, Hero lives a pagan life and exhibits pagan principles. These writers conceive her as a pagan character and allow her to live a pagan life and death. Corella, on the other hand, knows and accepts her paganism, but his empathy toward Hero impels him to bring her close to his own religious principles. Hence despite her unquestionable behavior as a pagan lady in Corella’s story, she is forced to suffer eschatological punishments, conceived by a theological value-system far removed from her presumably pagan ideology. In his Lo juí de Paris, Corella doubles down in lamenting Hero’s suicide as a moral transgression,113 and perhaps blames himself as a (failed) author for enabling her suicide.

After a few months of passion and sexual pleasure, the winter becomes the avowed enemy of illicit desires. If during the summer Hero “era lo vent de les sues ales”

(127 ) [was the wind behind him filling his sails (31)], now the winter gust represents an impassible barrier that prevents their rendezvous from taking place. Corella points to a tragic irony. Since Hero was a metonym for the wind, and it is the wind that enhances the high tides that contribute to Leànder’s drowning, the beloved is (in)directly responsible for his death. The “la riba de la mar furiosa” (128) [The shore of the raging sea (32)], is a metaphor for the “terrible força d’amor” (127) [Terrible power of love (31)], which become one and the same force that drives Leànder to his death. The adjective “furiosa” to qualify both the intensity of the storm and the force of Leander’s passion became !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 113 The narrator laments Hero and Leànder’s destiny and tragedy: “Oh, quant li fóra millor al miserable Leànder, que la sua Hero, ab castedat honesta als seus desigs contrastant, d’abduis hagués delliurat la vida!” (Obras: 92)

! 198! ! ! commonplace in the Hero-Leander poetic tradition. In his rendition, Garcilaso de la Vega provides a fascinating example by juxtaposing Leander’s amorous flames (“en amoroso fuego todo ardiendo”) with the fury of the sea: “El agua con un ímpetu furioso” (Sonnet

XXIX), which also echoes Quevedo’s celebrated verse: “En crespa tempestad del oro undoso,” which “bring together the guilty excesses of sexual desire” (Gaylord, “The

Making of Baroque” 237). Gaylord’s observation regarding Quevedo’s verse also applies to Corella’s use of the seascape to describe Leànder’s heightened sexual (and blinding) desire. The passion of Leander and the fury of the sea are so intricately connected that poets often use the qualifier “furiosa” to describe Leander’s passion and the force of the storm.

But beyond the Hero-Leander tradition, the fury of passion linked with the fury of the sea was a leitmotif in fifteenth-century Valencian poetry and literature. In La lletra que Honestat escriu a les dones, Corella uses the metaphor of the troubled sea to allude to the passion of love: “navegant en lo tempestuós mar d’amor deshonesta, he sovint encorregut naufraigs en vàlida fortuna” (94) [sailing in the tempestuous sea of dishonest love, I have often incurred in shipwrecks of true misfortune], and he repeats it in his Le juí de Paris: “O benaventurats… quells qui desdenyant a Venus, ab castedat matrimonial, o ab honesta viduïtat, o ab excel·lent virginitat, de la mar tempestuosa de Venus deliures”

[Oh blessed be those who disdaining Venus, with matrimonial chastity, or with honest widowhood, or with excellent virginity, are freed from the tempestuous sea of Venus]

(Joan Roís 91, see also Terry 45). And again: “E no us vull negar… gran part de mon viura he despès navegant, no ab vent prosper, en aquesta mar tempestuosa de Venus”

[And I do not wish to deny to you… that I have spent a large part of my life sailing, and

! 199! ! ! not with a prosperous wind, on this stormy sea of Venus].114 In Tirant lo Blanc, Martorell repeats the same idea multiple times.115 More than half a century before Corella and

Martorell, the anonymous author of the Catalan romance, Frondino e Brisona (ca. 1400), makes the lovesick Frondino equate his amorous cry (“crits”) of his entrails with the tempestuous sea.116 Those who dive headlong into their unbridled passion are, like

Leànder in the Hellespont, navigating in a raging sea that is destined to destroy them.

Lola Badia points out the echoes of Virgil’s Georgics in Leànder’s death drowned in the sea of his own passion: “Leandre mor ofegat en un mar que acull retòricament els suggeriments imatjats de les comparaciones entre les tempests i la fúria de l’amor”

[Leander dies drowned in a sea that embraces rhetorically the immediate suggestions of the passions between the tempests and the fury of love] (Tradició 205).

As Leànder approaches the windswept shorelines to embark upon his last voyage, the narrator reiterates the fury of the sea. Leànder puts on the shirt that Hero has woven for him,117 an original poetic conceit that adds eroticism to the story, since the shirt does not appear on Ovid’s letters or on any other poets before Corella (Guia i Marín 129). And inside the shirt he sheaths his “capagorja” (dagger). The erotic symbolism of Hero’s woven shirt and the phallic capagorja with which Hero takes her life is preponderant.

Hero’s decision to end her life with Leànder’s dagger, Trilla Millás and López (1996) and

Badia (173) note, offers parallels with Dido’s suicide in Ovid’s Metamorphosis IV, 62- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 114 Quoted and translated by Terry 45. 115 See for example, when Love responds to the queen of England during the year-long chivalric tournament: “Donant-vos potestat absoluta de poder premiar e punir tots aquells i aquelles que en la mar d’amor navegaran, donant a uns tempestat vàlida sens atènyer al port que desigen, als altres pròsper vent per atènyer a port de llur voler” (201). 116 After finding out that unlike the slandering rumors of Brisona’s unfaithfulness, his beloved is faithful, Frondino says that those who were near him when he thought she was unfaithful could hear: “Los greus trencaments e crits de les mies entràmenes cruxents axí com ondes de tempestosa mar sclafants en la riba de la terra” (120). 117 “I vestia’s una camisa de les mans d’Hero filada” (129)

! 200! ! !

166 and Thisbe’s (Krummrich 16). The narrator, however, foreshadows Leànder’s death, using coded Christian language. The blindness caused by his inordinate passion resurfaces to underscore his impending death and damnation:

Oh, dark blindness of those who love uncontrollably! With such spirit, so much care and diligence do they labor to lose at once their soul and their life! Oh, brave terror of those who, shrinking back, fear the dangers of living and dying in sin, and, with invincible and wise spirit, give up their lives for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven (33).118

These words show the poet’s moralizing voice. The theological discourses overarch the entire paragraph, which, if read out of context, could lead readers to believe that one is reading a moral treatise on soteriology. The narrator alludes of Leànder’s sins (“treballen ensems l’ànima e la vida perdre!”). Leànder, however, always conducts himself with upright integrity and morality. What sins, then, can the poet refer to that are damning his soul? As far as the reader (even the fifteenth-century reader) can see, Leànder’s passion represents his only “sin.” Unlike Exosus and Austerus, Leànder is portrayed as a virtuous man whose only fault is his unwavering passion for Hero, and if they married in secret— as the narrator indicates they did—, their sin of lust is attenuated. The “oscura ceguedat d’aquells qui desrdenadament amen” is a reference to the sin of lust. With this “oscura ceguedat,” the narrator suggests that Leànder’s blinding passion constitutes a theological vice that will bring about his loss of body and soul.

In his loose translation of Ovid’s Heroides, Rodríguez del Padrón had already performed a tropological interpretation of Ovid’s tales. The letters, according to the

Galician poet, contained morally codified allegories to teach readers how to avoid falling prey to the weaknesses of the flesh. Rodríguez del Padrón divides the Ovidian letters into two subcategories: those that reprove illicit or unchaste love and those that praise licit or !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 118 “O escura ceguedat d’aquells qui desordenadament amen! E ab quin ànimo, ab quina sol·licitud e diligència treballen ensems l’ànima e la vida perdre! O animosa por d’aquells qui, recelant, temen los perils de civiós morir e viure, e, ab invencible e discret ànimo, per lo regne del cel la vida abandonen” (129).

! 201! ! ! chaste love: “La materia d’este tratado es de amor líçito e illíçito, honesto y deshonesto, cuerdo y loco…. A otras reprehende de loco amor” (66). In Rodríguez del Padrón’s overture to the letter of Leander to Hero, he suggests that Ovid wrote the letter to reprove

Leander’s “loco amor”: “La intinçión del actor es de reprehenderlo de loco amor, porque ponía su vida a peligro de muerte cada vez que yva a ver su enamorada” (183). It is the interplay between his mad passion and his dangerous crossing in the sea that makes

Leànder’s life immoral and his death sinful, for his perilous voyages across the

Hellespont to see Hero amounted to an unwitting suicide.

As noted before, the fury of the sea is but a mirror of Leànder’s furious passion: the force of one is directly proportional to the other. The fury of the sea is so interconnected to the fury of his passions that the rise of one provokes the rise of the other, and the subsiding of one tempers the other. So the incessant meteorological tempest represents a direct effect of Leànder’s inability to control his licentious passion.

Both the narrator and Leànder explicitly allude to the referentiality of the fury of the waters and the fury of his passions. Just as he readies himself to depart for his last voyage, the narrator describes both Leànder and the sea as furious: “E, venint a la riba de la mar furiosa, ab irada veu contra la sua fúria blasfemant” (173) [Coming to the shore of the raging sea, he cursed its fury in an angry voice (32)]. Both the “mar furiosa” and

Leànder’s “fúria” mirror each other. Leànder, then, laments the furious symmetry between himself and the waters: “Oh what a great misfortune is mine, that every time the waters become turbulent my heart turns dark and turbulent as well!” (32).119 Leànder’s

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 119 “O gran desaventura mia, que tantes vegades com s’enterboleix l’aigua lo meo cor se faça escur e tèrbol!” (173). Hero also sees a parallel between the power of the waves and her own inner life: “Quan la mar, movent les braves ones, la sua gran fúria descobre, la mia entristida pensa figura que el meu Leànder, per mi, en les amargues aigües ja no per mi, mas per la vida, trebella. E així, no són majors les ones que al

! 202! ! ! emotions display an imitative quality. When his passion enrages, the storm mimics it.

When his lustful desire assuages, the storm wanes.

When Leànder’s passions are tempered by his fear of dying, “the sea began to abate its fury a little” (129).120 The abating of the waters provokes Leànder’s passions to stir again, imagining himself in Hero’s arms. He, then, appeases his fears and begins to swim faster so that he can reach Hero’s bed: “He rejoiced inwardly that he had triumphed over adverse fate by the power of his enamored hope, and along with his memories of past delights, he hoped to enjoy the future ones soon” (33).121 His desire and passion intensify as the sea ebbs. He is so inflamed with lustful desire that he imagines Hero’s embraces. His passionate fury, aided by the malice of Fortune, provokes the fury of the sea: “Hostile, inimical fortune, enraged by the venturesome spirit of Leander, restored the original fury of the sea with redoubled waves” (34).122 As with Ulysses in Homer’s

Odyssey, it is a deity’s desire to punish his exalted desire for Hero that provokes the fury of the sea. Fortune causes the ebbs and flows of the passion and the sea. Just as Leànder’s furious desire arises with the expectation of having Hero in his arms, the waves grow with a passionate fury to quell his desires and his life. The sea and Leànder’s passion exhibit an up and down motion that mimics the movement of the waves, until both the tempest and his life end. It is significant that after Leànder (and his passion) is dead, the fury of the sea dies with him.123

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! meu Leánder, si per mi navega, combaten, de les que la mia trista dolorada ànima ara turmenten, la qual, en tèrbola aigua de dolor extrema, per ell navegant eaualmente perilla” (179). 120 “Començà la mar un poc detenir la sua fúria” (129). 121 “Gloriós dins si, ab esforç d’enamorada esperança havia vençut l’adversa fortuna, i ab record dels passats delits, los esdevenidors contemplant en breu esperava” (129). 122 “Enutjada l’adversa iniqua fortuna de l’esforçat ànimo de Leànder, restituí a la mar furiosa ab multiplicades ones la primera fúria” (130). 123 Before Hero’s plaint for the death of her lover, the narrator overtly associates the calmness of the sea with the death of Leànder: “Estava la mar segura, que paria sol contra la vida de Leànder havia pres tanta

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Just before Leànder drowns, the narrator tells us that Hero fills Leànder’s entire body and being. Hero occupying his whole body, a metaphor for his passion, prevents the waters from entering into his mouth: “But the love of Hero filled him so completely that it barred the way of the bitter waters” (34).124 But in an image that echoes Juan de Mena’s poetic description of the Conde de Niebla’s fleet drowning during a raid in Gibraltar:

“Que aguas entraban do almas salían” (CLXXXV), Corella describes Leànder’s death with the most felicitous imagery and poetry of the entire epyllion: “And, as he cried out the name of the one for whom he was going to lose his life, when he was approaching so close to death and the shore, he opened a way for the waters to enter into the depths from which ‘Hero!’ emerged” (34).125 Krummrich’s translation does not capture the beauty of

Corella’s poetic imagery, which is the hallmark of the Valenciana prosa or “vulgar poesia” [vernacular poetry], as Corella preferred to call it (Badia, De Bernat Metge 153).

The similarity between Mena and Corella is more manifest in the Catalan original: “Donà lloc les aigües entrassen en los retrets d’on Hero se partia.” As Leànder utters Hero’s name, his soul departs from his body leaving a physical void that the water fills. Unlike other poets who narrated the legend, this sentence seems to deny the idea of a love beyond death. With his last breath and his last word: “The final syllable of the name of

Hero brought the end in this world to his speech, his love, and his life” (35).126 Life and love end, thus ruling out the medieval topos of love beyond death. As he pronounces

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fúria; lo cel clar, la nit quieta, los aires, los elements e Diana, los planetes e les esteles ab una seguretat atenta, a l’adolorit plant d’Hero planyent atenien; los peixos e los ocells, per l’aigua nadant, e volant a la riba, venien a les obsèquies de Leànder, e ab llurs veus ensems ab Hero dolent, la mort de llur hoste planyien” (135). 124 “Però l’amor d’Hero així tot [lo cos] ocupava, que a les amargues aigües l’entrada defenia” (130). 125 “I, per reclamar lo nom d’aquella per qui la sua vida s’anava perdre, quan més prop de la mort e de la riba s’acostava, donà lloc les aigües entrassen en los retrets d’on Hero se partia” (130). 126 La darrera síl·laba del nom d’Hero en aquest món fón terme del seu parlar, amar e viure” (130).

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Hero’s name, his mouth maintains the same countenance of his lips articulating her name, a conceit that the Catalan poet Boscán imitates in his recasting of the tale (Perdices 213).

After Leànder’s death and just before Hero learns of it, the heroine understands that her lover’s life and her own life are so intertwined that one cannot exist without the other. From an erotic semiology, Leánder’s life symbolizes Hero’s. The image offered by the poet, of Hero filling Leànder’s whole ontological self, represents the perfect metaphor for the inextricability of their lives. Hence, seconds before his drowning, he symbolically spits Hero(’s name) into the sea, thus drowning her along with himself.127 This image of both lovers drowning in the sea brings us back to the epistolary debate with the Prince of

Viana, where Corella assured the pragmatic prince that if he cast his beloved into the sea he would have to jump after her. For Corella, one lover is a complement of another, which echoes Aristophanes’ conception of the lover as one half of the other, as articulated in Plato’s Symposium. As Hero awaits Leànder’s arrival, the sorrowful heroine alludes to the unity of their bodies and lives, as she apostrophizes the absent lover:

If other men shy away from foolish dangers to protect just one life, how much more, Leander, should you avoid them, who have my life along with your own in your charge, and certainly cannot lose yours without also losing mine (35).128

Hero’s despairing discourse is a prolepsis to Leànder’s death and her suicide. If

Leànder’s life is but an extension of hers, once dead, her death is only a matter of time.

Hero and Leànder’s “honest” love metamorphosed into an overwhelming passion of the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 127 It is important to note that in some traditions, Hero jumps from the tower into the water, and she drowns. Alfonso X’s General Estoria, for instance, claims that Hero jump from the tower into the sea and died drowned like Leander: “E con grant pesar e grant dolor que ovo ende derribóse de aquella su torre en la mar e morió y” (354). In his Tragicomedia de Lisandro y Reselia, Argote de Molina also refers to Hero as jumping into the sea: “La desventurada Hero, de que vio el desastrado fin de su muy amado Leandro, de la torre muy alta en la profundidad del mar se echo, y otras muchas que, por no gastar el almacén, las dejo de contar” (258-9). Morros (2013) notes that the third Vatican Mithographer simply asserts that Hero fell from the tower, thus saving her from the stigma of suicide. 128 “Si els altres hòmens los folls perils recelen per guarder sola una vida, quant més tu, Leànder, los deus més recelar, que, ensems ab la tua, tens la mia acomanada, i és cert la tua sens la mia no pots perdre” (131).

! 205! ! ! flesh, which makes it nearly impossible for one to live without the other. Leànder’s voyage through the Hellespont represents a jaunt to satisfy their sexual desires, an erotic pilgrimage to the shrine of Hero’s bed. Their hope for a transcendental love has been thwarted by Austerus’s unwillingness to prioritize his daughter’s happiness over his greed. Ausiàs March declares that when the flesh dies, he who loves the flesh is left with only pain.129 This is certainly true for Hero and for Rojas’s Melibea. Their lovers’ have become such an important part of their affective and sexual identity that their lives without the other are but shadows of their lives with the loved one. Leànder’s death upends Hero’s whole world so, as March emotes in an analogous loss: “Ella finint, lo món per me feneix” (45) [She having died, the world dies for me]. Boccaccio’s

Fiammetta offers an assessment of the impossibility of a lover living without the loved one. With her customary solipsism, Fiammetta purports to equate her loss of Pánfilo to the loss of Hero after Leander’s drowning. Boccaccio’s heroine claims she understands the overwhelming effects of losing a lover, and she asserts that Hero only has two paths: to forget or to die. Since the passion is so powerful, Fiammetta avers, death is the only possible way out of Hero’s depressive grief: “Niuno consiglio se non la morte ci piglierei” (186) [No other remedy but death can we take].

Fiammetta assesses Hero’s predicament with keen discernment, perhaps because they share more psychoaffective traits than she is willing to admit. Leànder’s death represents Hero’s death because they are (and strive to be) one and the same person. This becomes even clearer when Hero confesses to Latíbula that her heartache, in a clear parallel with Leànder’s final pronouncing of her name which occupied his entire being,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 129 Ausiàs March: “Qui ama carn, perduda carn, no ama,/ mas en membrant lo delit, dol li resta” (Vol. 2, 48).

! 206! ! ! prevents her from uttering his name: “And my tongue, because of extreme sorrow, cannot clearly pronounce the name of Leander” (37),130 and yet she does. It is, however, a poetic conceit to indicate that, in the same way that she filled Leànder’s whole being, he occupies her entire being as well. So that when one dies, the other dies with him or her.

In his Georgics, Virgil had already perceived Hero and Leander’s ontological fusion.

When the intrepid lover dies, “moritura super crudeli funere virgo” (Moya del Baño 9)

[the virgin will also die a cruel death]. Both Virgil and Corella concur that one lover will be incapable of surviving the other because their mutual passion represents an invisible force that transfers life from one to the other.

Hero reiterates the idea of ontological unity when Leànder’s ghost appears to her in her tower: “Comporta que al teu cos meu jo done sepultura” (134) [Only wait for me to bury your body (38)]. Hero’s idea is also expressed syntactically. Leànder’s “cos” (body) is grammatically between the possessive pronouns “teu” and “meu,” which denotes that his body is the matrix of both his and her life. Martos points out that Ms. J offers an alternate syntactic morphology, which changes the meaning: “Porta que al teo cos he meu to·t dave” (Les proses 356).

The allusion to the burial of his body and her body hints at an idea that the story had denied earlier, namely, love beyond death. Just as Melibea requests of her father before jumping from the top of the tower, Hero expresses her desire to be buried in the same tomb as Leànder. Perhaps inspired by Corella’s scene, after Tirant’s death,

Carmesina writes in her will that she wants to be buried with Tirant in order for their bodies “en la mort sien units fins a la fi del món” (1164) [to be united in death to the end

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 130 “E la mia llengua, per extrema tristícia, no pot clarament pronunciar lo nom de Leànder” (132).

! 207! ! ! of times]. More than a romantic ideal, lying together forever with her lover in the same tomb represents a psychological comfort and a sense of amorous continuity from one world to the other, thus accomplishing in death that which life has denied them.

Seeing her lover dead only reinforces her will to die with and for her lover.

Despite the poet’s efforts to bring Hero into his religious belief system, the heroine cannot hide her own pagan instincts. Hero lives a spiritual life in accordance with her own pagan values and convictions. Just as she vows to kill herself in order to be buried in the same tomb, Hero utters a pagan worldview that undermines Corella’s efforts to incorporate her into his own world:

And then, along with mine, your spirit will descend to the realm of Pluto, so that one prison, one punishment, one set of chains may bind together after death two souls, which a single love had united in life, and the dead bodies, embracing each other, will be in a single grave, and we, living in pain, may be punished together (38).131

The sorrow for Leànder’s death has cast Hero into a vortex of suicidal pessimism and melancholic despair, emphasizing the sense of oneness between her lover and herself.

However, the most important element in her soliloquy is her allusion to the mythological god of the underworld, Pluto, thus eschewing Christian eschatology and doctrines. The reader should not conclude that Hero has been in effect “Christianized,” even if Góngora

(and Corella) do allude to her damnation in a Christian-centric hell.132 Rather, the poet has policed and obliterated nearly all undertones of paganism from his tale by turning it into an exemplum of moralizing doctrines. Yet his authorial control is, once again, taken away from him by a rebellious character who decides to disobey authorial control like she has disavowed her father. Hero refuses to be fettered by the hegemonic patriarchal system !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 131 “I après, ensems ab la mia [sepultura], davallaràs als regnes de Plutó, perquè un carçre, una pena, unes cadenes, après la mort lliguen aquelles dos ànimes, les quals una amor havia lligat en vida; e així, los cossos morts abraçats estaran en un sepulcre, e nosaltres, en dolor vivint, juntes en una pena” (134). 132 Góngora writes: “Desde la alta torre envia/ el cuerpo á su amante dulce,/ y el alma donde se queman/ pastillas de piedra azufre” (95).

! 208! ! ! that threatens her free will as well as her sense of womanhood, which plays into Terry’s argument that Corella perceives women as victims. If women sin (with the exception of the deceitful Caldesa), it is nearly always the fault of men (Terry 46).

Her sense of guilt for Leànder’s death exacerbates her will to die. Although absent in Corella’s epyllion, in some variations, he dies because of Hero’s negligence. She falls asleep before lighting the lamp that guides Leander to her tower. Once in the sea,

Leander drifts away and dies lost in the sea. In Alfonso X’s General Estoria, Hero succumbs to her exhaustion and falls asleep: “E acaeció una noche que tardó mucho

Leandro e adormióse Ero e menguó la lumbre en la torre tanto que desque Leandro fue en la mar non la veyé, e perdió el siesto de la torre e andido errado por la mar tanto que se levantaron las aguas e cansáronle e murió y” (353). In Corella’s story, as in Ovid’s,

Leànder makes a “conscious” decision to swim despite his presentiments and the furious storm. Hero’s sense of guilt and self-loathing is not rooted in empirical evidence. Rather, her deep sorrow and taedium vitae lead her to blame herself. As Hero lays on Leànder’s seminude dead body, she exclaims: “Oh most miserable of all because of me, Leander, because of me dead in the waters, who lived on earth only for me!” (40).133 Her guilt becomes an important element weighing in her decision to end her life.

Hero’s resolution to kill herself is further problematized by her own sense of obligation to bury and mourn Leànder’s body. On the one hand, her suicidal sorrow impels her to die. On the other, who will inter and mourn his body if she dies? Hero places herself in a double bind. Dying will compromise Leànder’s corpse, perhaps even expose him to her father’s wrath should he find out about their immoral liaison. Living

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 133 “O, per mi sobre tots miserable Leànder, e per mi en les aigües mort, qui per mi sol en la terra vivies!” (135-6).

! 209! ! ! will compel her to endure a painful existence without her lover. Hero resolves her double bind by postponing her death:

I will live a little while yet, so that I may weep for your drowning with great sorrow. For if I should abandon life at once, who would be left to grieve over your ill fate and mine with the grief it deserves? Then let me live, that I may feel the pain of your death caused by me, and then let me die for you, and I will not be mourned by you, even though I die for you: and this is very fitting, since you lost your life for me first (40).134

Hero simply desires a short amount of time to fulfill her moral obligations toward her defunct lover. The postponement of her death prefigures Laureola’s mother in San

Pedro’s Cárcel de Amor, who vows to stay alive just so that she can avenge her looming daughter’s death caused by Persio’s malevolent slandering.135 But unlike the vengeful queen, who will likely not have killed herself after retaliating against the mudslinger,

Hero’s decision to die is unavoidable since she feels that part of her has already died with her lover. Her syntax and her wording points to the coupling of the two lives. She espouses again the two possessive pronouns to showcase the proximity of their (affective and ontological) lives: “La tua mia iniqua sort.” Hero and Leànder’s luck (Fortuna) is uniting them to their tragic end. In his poem “Cor Cruel,” Corella deploys the poetic “I” as a martyr-like lover, who has the beloved inside himself:

Só ja content per amor sia martre: puix que, dins mi, vos tinc en bella forma, treta del viu en perfeta figura, ab les colors sobre el fresc, i l’empremta (Obra profana 54).

[Now I am happy to be a martyr of love: since, inside of me, I have you in a beautiful shape, extracted of the living in perfect figure, with the colors on the fresco, and the fingerprint]. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 134 “Jo viuré, perquè lo teu naufraig, un poc espai vivint, ab gran dolor lamentant deplore. Que si jo tantost la vida abandone, ¿qui bastarà la tua mia iniqua sort mèritament plorant dolre? Doncs viuré jo, perquè la tua mort per mi causada dolga; e prest per tu more, e per tu no seré plorada, ab tot que per tu muira; i és molta raó, puix tu primer per mi has perdut la vida” (136). 135 The angry queen vows to postpone her death despite her desire to die with her daughter: “Si algund tienpo bivo, él (Persio) recebirá de sus obras galardón justo; y aunque no me queden fuerças para otra cosa sino para desear morir, para vengarme dél, tomallas he prestadas de la enemistad que le tengo, puesto que esto no me satisfaga, porque no podrá sanar el dolor de la manzilla la secución de la vengança” (135).

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Contemplating his dead body, Hero (Corella) feels the need to anoint his corpse. As

Morros and Perdices point out, the anointing of the body is closely linked to

Christological rituals. Knowing that she will not be able to fulfill her promise of waiting to bury or mourn his body, Hero laments not being able to anoint him: “And if I expire, dying, I will not be able to warm nor anoint your body with the ointments that I had prepared for it” (136).136 Perdices notes that Boscán turns Hero into a Mary Magdalene- like character (214), and Martínez Romero finds anagogical echoes in Hero’s lament with the Virgin Mary’s planctus after the death of Jesus (“Funus triumpho”). Being a clergyman, Corella is likely remembering a Christian ceremony of anointment, a common practice in medieval Iberian burial rites. Laura Vivanco notes that from the twelfth century onward, the sacrament of “extreme unction” was regularly administered to the dying as a penitential rite to help “cleanse… their sins and prepare them for death and life to come” (47). Although Leànder is already dead, and the Sacrament of Extreme

Unction was inefective post-mortem, Hero (Corella) may want to apply the sacrament of

“extreme unction” to cleanse him from his sins and in a desperate attempt to save his

(pagan) soul.

Hero begs her dida to bury them in the same tomb, which represents the hallmark of the motif of love beyond death. Guia i Marín points out that Corellas borrows this topos from the Lamentació de Tisbe, which Corellas later redeploys in the Història de

Josep (137, see Miquel i Planas 43). She seeks to be embracing her lover’s body for eternity, but beyond that, she desires their dust to mix together as a symbol of their eternal love:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 136 “E si així morint espire, no pore calfar ni untar lo teu co sab los engüents que hi aparelle” (136).

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This, it will be better if, dying for you and on you, bathing and warming your cold body with my blood, I anoint you for burial, and with those cloths that I had ready to dry your living body, my nurse (who loved you no less than she did me) will wrap the two of us, embracing each other, like one body in a winding sheet, and bury us in such a narrow grave that our mingled bones in the end may crumble to one dust, and in Greek letters on our tomb let an epitaph like this be written (41).137

The imagery of physical union overarches her plaintive discourse. She wants to be buried

“abraçats,” embracing one another within a single shroud so that it would give the impression of being “un cos.” Hero desires her bones to merge with Leànder into oneness. In order to prevent their corpses from falling apart, she wants a narrow tomb.

Carmesina’s will, which is modeled after Hero’s, does not quite reach the same level of emoting pathos. As during her initial suicide attempt, Hero has lost all marks of individual identity and has lost touch with reality. All these symbols of oneness underscore her deadened selfhood. She exists but merely as a selfless presence. A great part of her has drowned in the sea with Leànder. Hence more than prefiguring her death, she is already treating herself as dead, for she feels (and is) already dead inside.

Hero’s affective and psychological world has crumbled into pieces. The only task that remains for her is to carry out her desire to die. Once she has mapped out her will and communicated it to her nursemaid, she is ready to depart. Hero, then, grabs Leànder’s capagorja from the camisa she has weaved for him, and she braces the handle of the dagger on her lover’s heart, and the point of blade on hers. Just like Leànder died uttering

Hero’s name, the heroine strives to die uttering words to her lover:

And then, speaking these words accompanied by grievous weeping, she pulled from its sheath on the dead Leander’s belt the poniard, and, bracing the handle against Leander’s body and the point

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 137 “Doncs, serà millor que, morint per tu e sobre tu, ab la mia sang llavant i escalfant lo teu cos ja fred, embalsamant unte, e ab aquelles teles que per eixugar a tu viu aparellades tenia, la mida dida… abduis abraçats, semblants a un cos amortallant nos embene, i en un sepulcre tan estret nos tanque, que els nostres ossos mmesclats a la fi en una pols se converteixquen; i en lletres gregues sobre la nostra tomba, semblant epitafi escolpit escriva” (136-7).

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against her own, throwing her body onto Leander’s with the cruel weight of love, the miserable Hero expired between the cold arms of the dead man for whom she was dying (42).138

Hero dies for love without any form of repentance or regret. Cingolani points out that

Corella is open to the idea of repentance and atonement from lovers as a means to reach heaven (175), but Hero shows no interest in repenting or atoning for her “sinful” passion or for her immoral sexual transgression, let alone for her impending suicide. Neither the civil criminality nor the sinfulness of her suicide crosses her mind during such a moment of extreme misery. Instead, she exhibits complete indifference toward any kind of spiritual contrition. Unlike other Christian suicides, including the Muslim convert Cámar in Curial e Güelfa’s fifteenth-century chivalric novel, Hero does not invoke God or his mercy before killing herself. In Martorell’s Tirant, which plagiarized some parts of

Corella’s História, after Tirant’s death, Carmesina doubts as to whether she should kill herself or allow death to come to her. As Leriano does in San Pedro’s Cárcel, the despairing widow opts for the latter for fear of eternal damnation139—she chooses a passive death, which still represents an active suicide. Most (if not all) of the religious symbols deployed throughout the epyllion represent Corella’s conviction of moralizing and Christianizing a pagan narrative, in an attempt to make it more palatable to his contemporaneous readers and to the Inquisition, which was omnipresent in fifteenth- century Valencia, as Guia i Marín noted. Hence despite Corella’s attempts to obliterate

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 138 “Encara dient aquestes paraules, de greus plors acompanyades, tirà de la baina la capagorja que la corretja de Leànder mort sostenia, e, mès lo pom sobre lo cor de Leànder e sobre lo seu la punta, llançant lo cos ab esforç d’amor cruel pesada sobre el de Leànder, expirà la miserable Hero entre els braços freds d’aquell mort per qui moria” (137). 139 “E per los mals tan grans que em tenen afligida só fora de mon seny, e ja haguera dada fi a ma dolor sinó que d’una part me tira amor e d’altra temor” (1165-66) 871. The “temor” is a fear of divine punishment. Had it not been for the law against suicide, she would have ended her life after she found out about Tirant and her father’s death.

! 213! ! ! all symbols and traces of Hero’s pagan world, he cannot prevent her from committing a pagan suicide, even if he compels her to suffer a Christian punishment in Hell.

The Història de Leànder i Hero, to conclude, represents a conscious attempt by

Corella to represent his eponymous characters as Christian characters. Not only is Hero not a priestess of Venus’ pagan religion, but she is endowed with all the psychospiritual traits that ought to guide the morality of a good Christian woman. Hero is compassionate, just and unmoved by greed and depravity, vices that embody both Austerus and Exodus.

Instead, as Terry pointed out, she is portrayed as a victim of a patriarchal system that preys on nubile maidens to advance the economic gains of greedy parents. However, despite her uprightness and high moral standing, she allows her passion to override her reason, moral obligations and social laws, as Martos noted above, that ought to be observed regardless of individual desires or aspirations. Her suicide, as the narrator tells us from the start, is a direct consequence of her self-alienation and immorality, spurred by her furious passions. Leànder is also punished by Fortune for allowing his passion to blind him, and it is this spiritual and moral blinding that impels him to enter into the tempestuous sea to fulfill his basest desires. Leànder’s furious passion propels him to enter into the furious sea, thus defying both the “iniqua fortuna” and death. At the end,

Corella’s moralizing voice transgresses his fictional world in order to show that immoderate passions lead inexorably to (self)-destruction. Hero and Leànder die a physical death merely because they have already died both morally and spiritually, so their deaths are but an exteriorization of their metaphysical deaths.

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Concluding Remarks

After studying the representation of suicide and the attitudes and responses to such a complex existential phenomenon, it is difficult to point to a unifying theory, mainly because the act of suicide itself is a slippery concept. The four major texts we studied collectively demonstrate different aspects of suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages. Each author perceives and represents suicide in a way that could be traced to the author’s own personal opinion and philosophical worldview. In their own way, each author makes his characters embrace or express traits of the author’s own outlook. Alfonso X shows an uncharacteristic and uncommon empathy toward suicide, and this is in full display in his representation of Guirart and of other suicides in his Cantigas. Guirart’s self-murder in cantiga 26 exhibits a traceable influence of Platonic-Augustinian doctrines and ideas regarding suicidological discourses in which the agency of holy characters is at the center of the miracle. San Pedro, on the other hand, refers to Seneca and quotes his moral philosophy in many of his literary texts, and he makes Leriano die a Stoic death, forgoing any eschatological tenets or religious references. Being a moralist and a doctor in theology, Joan Roís de Corella imposes his moral opinions and eschatological beliefs upon his pagan character, Hero. Rojas, on the other hand, notes social injustices and gender prejudice, and stages Melibea’s suicide in a way that seems to criticize his male- made and male-oriented social system. Although it would be difficult to gauge the extent to which authors fashion their characters as spokespersons of subjective beliefs and opinions, it is evident that literary characters are the product of a creative mind, which

! 215! ! ! seeks to express something. At least in these four texts, the authors’ voices can be heard through the words and actions of their characters. These four texts exhibit a polyphony of voices that express some of the opinions and attitudes regarding suicide in the Spanish

Middle Ages.

Medieval Spanish people had conflicting ideas regarding suicide. On the one hand, it was an immoral act condemned by the State and the Church, and both institutions could punish those who transgressed the anti-suicide laws. On the other hand, both the

Church and the State mandated that men had to sacrifice their lives to protect their country and their faith. The difficulty often lied in the act of drawing a distinctive line between acceptable and deviant behaviors. The same act could have been interpreted as a holy or as a demonic act depending upon people’s perception of the suicide’s other motives. If the person were perceived as virtuous and moral, her suicide would have likely been interpreted as divinely mandated, particularly if she was dying defending her faith or her chastity.

The Church decreed that men had to stay alive until God willed their deaths. This

Socratic ideal became the backbone of the Church’s dogmas against suicide, but it also said that if God commanded their deaths, men had to obey God’s will. The belief that

Satan could deceive people only complicated men’s position further. If God can command suicide, and men have the moral and spiritual obligation to carry out God’s command, and Satan can impersonate a holy being, medieval men could be placed in a double bind. This is exactly what caused Guirart to end his life. If Guirart had known, like Jesus did when Satan tempted Him by commanding him to cast himself down from the cliff, the pilgrim could have made an informed decision. Jesus did, and decided not

! 216! ! ! fall into Satan’s trap. Alfonso X complicates Guirart’s position because the pilgrim is compelled to act blindfolded. He trusted that the seemingly holy being who commanded his death was a divine agent, and as Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas pointed out, disobeying God’s commands was anathema. In the end, the Virgin Mary decided to bring the wronged pilgrim back to life because he had been unjustly placed in a double- bind situation. Alfonso X exhibits great compassion toward Guirart because the pilgrim was a faithful and, despite his sexual transgression before his journey, righteous man. But

Guirart was a faithful and righteous man precisely because the poet chose to represent him to his readership as such. Alfonso X could have represented him as an immoral and sinful man, based on the wicked acts that enabled Satan to tempt him in the first place.

During the Middle Ages, suicide was merely an externalization of internal immorality and sinfulness, but the poet chooses to blame the pilgrim’s lover (moller sen boontade) for his sin against lust and Satan for his suicide. However, under the entire poetic edifice, there is a perceptible influence of Augustine’s theology. Saint Augustine furnishes the premise that God can command suicide, and he provides the loophole to excuse self- murderers of an unwarranted and sinful death. Alfonso X’s cantiga 26 represents an allegory of Augustine’s defense of Samson and the Christian virgins’ suicides. The main difference is that God’s voice commanded Samson and the Christian virgins’ death, and

Satan feigned to speak on God’s behalf to beguile the pilgrim. But they share the most important element of all: They all died knowing that God willed their deaths. They did not despair of God’s mercy. Rather, they ended their lives with the hope of an eternal life in Heaven.

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Like the Church, the medieval social system sent mixed signals regarding self- inflicted deaths. According to civil legislations, as we saw in Alfonso X’s Partidas, unwarranted suicide was a crime. On top of the criminalization of suicide, the act of self- murder had a built-in potential for social stigma. Self-inflicted murder represented a rejection of God’s gift of life and an act of defiance toward the social body. Suicide brought dishonor and deshonra to families. Paradoxically, honor was an important catalyst for suicide. Medieval Spaniards placed an inordinate amount of importance on the concept of honor. An honor-less person was perceived as valueless. Hence many preferred death to living a life as a social outcast. In Rojas’ Celestina, Melibea ends her life because she knows that she has no place in her social system. Just like the Church’s contradicting injunctions placed Guirart in a double bind, the hermetic social system places Melibea in a double bind. If she lives, her implacable society will punish her sexual transgression. Pleberio could (and would have) punished her for losing both her chastity-honra and the honor of Pleberio’s household. If she kills herself, she will be condemned to Hell. Despite the threat of eternal damnation, the social ostracism and her parental punishment are more immediate to her. The eschatological damnation is more abstract, so she resolves her double bind by jumping from the tower. Like Alfonso X toward his pilgrim, Rojas exhibits compassion and benevolence toward Melibea. She is represented as victim of her social system and of her overwhelming passion-devotion toward Calisto. Melibea is often seen as a heroine who preferred to end her life rather than living without her lover. Her death showed the perfection of her love and a courageous act of self-affirmation. As critics have pointed out, she chooses to die freely.

In this way, her death has some similarities with Leriano’s act of self-liberation.

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Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor marks a suspension with medieval systems of thought. San Pedro breaks in this narrative with a particular tradition of Christian values. Just like Alfonso X’s cantiga 26 represents an allegory of Augustinian philosophical thought, Leriano’s suicide could be interpreted as an allegory of Stoic doctrines regarding self-inflicted death or a philosophical suicide which leads to a metaphysical void because “philosophical suicides went to the great void, romantic suicides to heaven, popular suicides to hell” (Minois 277). Seneca made the case that

Cato had died in order to defend libertas and found his libertas in death, and San Pedro bestows upon Leriano an analogous honor. The reader of Cárcel can trace Leriano’s spiritual and ideological metanoia. He goes from a despairing and effete prisoner of love—one who is utterly subjected to Laureola’s desires—to embodying all the virtues of a heroic warrior and embracing the worldview of Stoicism, as he shows during the exhortation to his warriors before the battle against King Gaulo. Leriano resurrects and exemplifies the mythical death of Cato who purports to find his freedom in death. San

Pedro had read Seneca and Seneca’s account of Cato’s equanimous death, and he decides to give Leriano a Catonian death. Whereas Cato found his libertas from Cesar’s tyrannical despotism, Leriano found his libertas from Laureola’s disdain and indifference. Unlike Cato, who killed himself with a sword, Leriano chose to imitate

Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, and Cleanthes by starving himself to death. Inedia represents the blueprint of Stoic suicide because it tested endurance and self- determination. But as Leriano’s courtly-Stoic emblem “en mi fe se sufre todo” avers, he is determined to prove his fe through his death, and his faith is an all-encompassing ideal that includes his erotic love and his unflinching Stoic idealism. Leriano’s suicide has

! 219! ! ! more traits of paganism than Christianity, and this blend of Christian and pagan symbols renders his death both original and unorthodox for his chronotopic position.

Leriano’s suicide is also revealing for the lack of diegetic condemnation to his act.

Beyond his philosophical ideology, San Pedro created a fictional world in which Leriano was Christian and lived within a sociocultural milieu that perceived suicide as the ultimate transgression against God and society. Joan Roís de Corella’s representation of

Hero’s suicide has more elements of Christianity than Leriano’s. Hero, who was a pagan heroine, was mindful of her transgression. Leriano was not. Roís de Corella, who was a staunch moralist and a doctor of theology, reminded his reader that Hero’s act represented an aggression and a transgression against Christian morality. Even though

Hero lived before the foundation of Christendom, the narrator assures his readership that she is purging her sins in Hell. Roís de Corella’s morality, however, deviates from other narrators of pagan heroes and heroines. When other medieval poets represented pagan suicides, they seldom condemned their self-inflicted deaths, given that they were far removed from the Christian ideology. There is a paradox in Leriano’s and Hero’s suicides. The Christian hero died a pagan death, and the pagan heroine died a “Christian” death, and Roís de Corella, just like Juan de Flores did with Fiometa after her suicide, makes her reader see (or imagine) Hero’s harrowing punishment in Hell. More than aesthetic representability, these diverging attitudes attest to the wide range of opinions and attitudes toward suicide and suicidal discourses. Suicide, as Minois pointed out, was far from being a monolithic phenomenon. Instead, it was a changing and evolving concept that transcended religious beliefs and social systems. People ended their lives despite prohibitions and social stigmas because when physical and psychological pain is

! 220! ! ! greater than fear of eternal damnation, even death was seen as an escape and a preferable option. Despite religious and State laws, societal pressures often held greater power over people when it came to decisions regarding suicide because, as Melibea asserts, “las lenguan malezientes” determined and conditioned the position of a person within social fabric and in the world.

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