Suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages: Literary Representation of Self- Aggression and Transgression
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages: Literary Representation of Self- Aggression and Transgression The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40046566 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Suicide in the Spanish Middle Ages: Literary Representation of Self-Aggression and Transgression A dissertation presented By Luis F. López González to 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 © 2017 Luis F. López González ! 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. ! """! ! ! 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 ! "#! ! ! 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 ! $! ! ! 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). ! %! ! ! 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