Subaltern Saints: Medieval Iberian Hagiography in Dialogue with Latin American Testimonio By © 2017 Erik Alder Submitted to the graduate degree program in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________ Chair: Isidro Rivera _______________________________ Patricia Manning _______________________________ Robert Bayliss _______________________________ Santa Arias _______________________________ Luis Corteguera Date defended: 27 April 2017 ii The dissertation committee for Erik Adams Alder certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Subaltern Saints: Medieval Iberian Hagiography in Dialogue with Latin American Testimonio _________________________________ Chair: Isidro Rivera Date approved: 10 May 2017 iii Abstract This dissertation rereads five thirteenth-century Spanish hagiographic poems in the light of modern subaltern studies: the anonymous Vida de Santa María Egipciaca, and Gonzalo de Berceo’s Martirio de San Lorenzo, Vida de San Millán de la Cogolla, Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos, and Vida de Santa Oria. Observing the numerous similarities between hagiographic writing and twentieth-century Latin American activism literature known as testimonio—the innocent and suffering victim, the elite facilitator of the narrative, the illiterate speaker, and the sense of urgency caused by oppression and injustice—the project concludes that the invention and promotion of martyrs and saints provided a crucial space for Christianity to constitute and maintain its power and identity while at the same time providing a space for diverse, marginalized individuals to find expression and influence in their societies. In hagiography, as in testimonio, powerful writers seek legitimacy within their communities by representing, imitating, conveying, facilitating, or portraying voices in pain, exploiting the heroism of suffering and the ideal of administering to others in need. In this way, the politics of suffering unifies the discourses of both hagiography and testimonio as multivalent interests and variant powers cohabitate not merely to entertain or instruct, but to motivate change in society. iv Acknowledgements This project is deeply indebted to the professional mentoring and financial support of the University of Kansas, especially its faculty and staff of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. I would particularly make mention of my committee members. Thank you, Dr. Isidro Rivera, for believing in this project and for the detailed guidance and advice throughout the length of my graduate journey. I would also like to thank Dr. Patricia Manning and Dr. Robert Bayliss for providing their unique perspectives on my dissertation, and particularly for taking the time to read through my drafts and make comments for improvement. Thanks also to Dr. Santa Arias and Dr. Luis Corteguera for their enthusiasm and support for the project. Thanks also to Dr. Magalí Rabasa for offering her expertise on testimonio. Christi Ivers offered invaluable time and support to my analysis of the French version of Vida de Santa María Egicipiaca; she has also been very supportive and shown so much helpful interest throughout the project. I hope I can offer the same kind of support as she embarks on her journey. Thanks Dr. Anthony Lappin, for the listening ear during my ramblings about reviving an obscure anchoress from Villavelayo. Finally, this would not have been possible without the support of my wife, children, and other family members and friends. Thanks, Meredith, for your love and encouragement and giving up so much time with your husband so that this could be realized. v Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1 Listen to the Dead: Saint Lawrence of Rome and the Politics of Christian Suffering…………..20 Chapter 2 The Dominatrix of Alexandria: Saint Mary of Egypt’s Reconfiguration of Oppression………..50 Chapter 3 (Ob)literating the Enemy: The Poetics of Exorcism in Vida de San Millán de la Cogolla……...84 Chapter 4 The Importance of Secrets: Intellectual Collaboration in the Cult of Santo Domingo de Silos..122 Chapter 5 “A ella merçet pido: ella sea mi guía”: Female Protagonists as Authors in Vida de Santa Oria168 Conclusion..…………………………………………………………………………………….211 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….220 1 Introduction Shortly before his death in 1284, Alfonso X, king of Castile and León,1 began work on an impressive funerary display for his parents Fernando III and Beatriz in Sevilla, where the Great Mosque had been rededicated as a cathedral after Fernando conquered the city in 1248 (Dodds 199). Though an earthquake destroyed the majority of this homage in 1365, contemporary descriptions indicate an underlying Christian imperialist discourse there. At the focal point of the display near their tombs sat enthroned life-size sculptures of the three monarchs below an interpretation of the Virgin Mary and her Son all adorned in colorful garments and jewels. An inscription on Fernando’s casket broadcasted his and his son’s expansionist project in Latin, Castilian, Hebrew, and Arabic as he “who conquered all of Spain.” The ornamented piers near the tombs told the story of St. Helena, the Christian mother of Constantine, who, according to tradition, inspired her son to deal mercifully with those of her faith and played a crucial role in his conversion, connecting Fernando and the first Christian emperor of Rome together.2 We are accustomed to thinking of rulers like those in Christian Iberia as operating with enormous power and oftentimes oppression, but both the Christianity before Constantine and the Castile prior to Fernando III were once weak and oppressed themselves, hardly worth noticing for the world powers of their time. How could such insignificant religious and political 1 These are his most prominent and oft cited titles. His complete titles also include king of Toledo, Galicia, Sevilla, Córdoba, Murcia, Jaén, and Algarve from 1260 onward. 2 Description of the tomb is based on Hernán Pérez de Guzmán’s report of 1345 as transcribed in Burriel 214-216. For information on the multilingual inscriptions, see Dodds 199- 201. Description of the ornamented piers comes from Teresa Laguna Paúl 242. 2 movements become so effective? This dissertation examines the ways in which Christianity used its own suffering and inferior position to Roman authority as an advantage to gain a voice in Mediterranean politics that contributed in many ways to its rise to hegemony and even perpetuated it long after the reality of its powerlessness faded into memory. This is a study of how individuals and groups across time use discourse to frame themselves as oppressed, regardless of the reality of their circumstances, and regardless of their political orientation, doing so through the leverage and promotion of saints like Helena. Gayatri Spivak denounced this strategy in an interview with Leon de Kock, saying, “Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most dangerous” (45). Because of the multivalence of this rhetorical strategy, at times the project will confront the powerful as they abuse the signification of the victim, while at other times it will inquire into the limits that such a discourse offers for hearing the voices of those in pain and otherwise inaudible, making use of the only political strategy they have available to them. In contrast to the role suffering plays during the Middle Ages, historian and thinker Joseph Amato observes that If any one thing distinguishes the modern mind from the traditional mind, it is our doubt about the universality of suffering as the measure of human good. Ambivalence about the place of suffering in human life characterizes the modern mind. On one level, all modern men and women have no doubt that they will suffer to love and to accomplish things. On another level, though, they doubt whether suffering is inevitable or a universal requirement, much less a good. We no longer are ready to accept suffering as the price that God and nature have put on all things. (24) 3 He then explains that because of this suspicion of suffering along with larger and more available political and medical mechanisms, many today compete about who suffers the most in order to procure measures for an antidote, oftentimes thwarting systems to which they appeal, as lines between sufferer—usually portrayed as an innocent victim—and perpetrator grow ever more oversimplified and equivocal. Amato calls this a “politics of suffering” that individuals and groups leverage for the sake of gain and recognition, regardless of pain’s reality, cultural construction, or falsity.3 While Amato acknowledges how other cultures face suffering and even notes that modernity’s crusade on oppression resembles Christianity in several respects, his concentration on modern secular political and legal machines divert his attention from earlier uses of this attitude for political and social advantage. Hagiography, or biographies of saints, the most visible locus for this rhetoric from the Middle Ages, constitutes a genre that has seen increasing attention from scholars during the last three decades.4 “Hagiography” serves to describe this genre along with related terms “vita” and “lives of saints” despite Heffernan’s reticence that the term “hagiography” has “become fossilized and [falsifies] the psychological realities of [the] 3