The 'Mester de Clereci­a': Intellectuals and Ideologies in Thirteenth-Century Castile (Monografias A)

270 Pages·2006·1.53 MB·English

by  Julian Weiss

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Colección Támesis
SERIE A: MONOGRAFÍAS, 231
THE MESTER DE CLERECÍA
INTELLECTUALS AND IDEOLOGIES
IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY CASTILE
Profound changes in thirteenth-century Spanish society drove the
invention of fresh poetic forms by the new clerical class. The term
mester de clerecía(clerical ministry or service) applies to a group
of narrative poems (epics, hagiography, romances) composed by
university-trained clerics for the edification and entertainment of
the predominantly illiterate laity. These clerics, like Gonzalo de
Berceo, understood themselves as cultural intermediaries, trans-
mitting wisdom and values from the past; at the same time, they
were deeply involved in some of the most contentious and far-
reaching changes in lay piety, and in economic and social struc-
tures. The author challenges the predominantly didactic approach
to the verse, in an attempt to historicize the category of the ‘intel-
lectual’, as someone caught in the duality of the worlds of contin-
gency and absolute values.
This volume has relevance for a wide range of medievalists, in
part because of the topics covered (feudalism, gender, nationhood,
and religion), in part because many poems are either adaptations
from French and Latin or have counterparts in other literatures
(e.g., the romances of Alexander and Apollonius, the miracles of
the Virgin Mary).
JULIANWEISSis Reader in Medieval and Early Modern Spanish at
King’s College London.
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Tamesis
Founding Editor
J. E. Varey
General Editor
Stephen M. Hart
Editorial Board
Alan Deyermond
Julian Weiss
Charles Davis
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JULIAN WEISS
THE MESTER DE CLERECÍA
INTELLECTUALS AND IDEOLOGIES
IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY CASTILE
TAMESIS
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© Julian Weiss 2006
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Julian Weiss to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2006 by Tamesis, Woodbridge
ISBN 1 85566 135 7
Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Great Britain by
MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
List of Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
The movement 1
Didacticism 4
Intellectuals 8
Ideologies 11
A marvellous reality 14
1 Pollution and Perception in Gonzalo de Berceo’s Milagros
de Nuestra Señora 26
Finding an angle 26
‘El sacristán fornicario’ 29
‘El clérigo y la flor’ 35
‘El labrador avaro’ 42
‘El pleito de Teófilo’ 48
‘El judezno’and ‘Los judíos de Toledo’ 55
The overarching miracle 65
2 Female Associations: Three Encounters with Holy Women 67
Writing, Sanctity, and Gender in Berceo’s ‘Poema de
Santa Oria’ 68
The Polluting Body in the ‘Vida de Santa María Egipciaca’ 82
The Authority of Berceo’s ‘Abadesa pren˜ada’ 95
3 Dreaming of Empire in El libro de Alexandre 109
Measured by time 112
‘A single sovereign authority’ 123
The cleric and the Jews, inside and out 132
4 The Birth of a Nation: Feudal Fictions in El poema de
Fernán González 143
Structures of freedom 143
Homeland security 149
Feudal logic 159
Symbolic violence: the horse and the hawk 172
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vi CONTENTS
5 The Cleric, in Between 179
Between Church and Court: Allegory or ‘Othered Speech’
in ‘Elena y María’ 180
Between Court and Town: The Mercantile Morality of
‘El libro de Apolonio’ 198
Between Town and Church: Berceo’s ‘El mercader fiado’ 209
Afterword 226
Works Cited 231
Index 251
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For Clare, Jacob, and Cora
‘. . .bien valdrá, como creo, un vaso de bon vino’
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Acknowledgements
In the course of researching and writing this book I have incurred a variety of
debts. Over the years, a number of people have provided moral support or prac-
tical guidance, responding to queries, providing bibliographical information,
or reading draft chapters, and I would like to express my gratitude to them here:
Robert Archer, Olivier Biaggini, Simon Gaunt, Michael Gerli, Louise Hay-
wood, Clare Lees, Nieves Romero Díaz, and Dorothy Severin. In its final
stages, the manuscript benefited from Alan Deyermond’s meticulous copy-
editing and comments on matters of style and content. The ideas explored in
this book have been tried out in numerous conference and seminar papers, as
well as in the classroom. Even though I cannot name them here, it is a pleas-
ure to acknowledge the contributions of those many colleagues and students
who have helped me clarify my ideas in lectures and seminars. I would also
like to thank the institutions that provided material help: the research for this
book has been supported by a University of Oregon Summer Research Award
(1999) and, more recently, by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2004–05)
held while on sabbatical leave from King’s College London.
Chapters 2 and 5 include revised versions of two previously published arti-
cles: ‘Writing, Sanctity, and Gender in Berceo’s Poema de Santa Oria’, His-
panic Review, 64 (1996): 1–19; ‘Apolonio’s Mercantile Morality and the
Ideology of Courtliness’, inThe Medieval Mind: Medieval Iberian Studies in
Honour of Alan Deyermond, ed. Ralph Penny and Ian Macpherson (London:
Tamesis, 1997), pp. 501–16. I am grateful to the publishers for permission to
reprint.
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List of Abbreviations
AEM Anuario de Estudios Medievales
BHR Biblioteca Románica Hispánica
BHS Bulletin of Hispanic Studies
C La Corónica
CCa Clásicos Castalia
CHE Cuadernos de Historia Española
CN Cultura Neolatina
CSIC Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
CT Colección Tamesis
HR Hispanic Review
HSMS Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies
JHP Journal of Hispanic Philology
KRQ Kentucky Romance Quarterly
LH Letras Hispánicas
MLR Modern Language Review
NCSRLL North Carolina Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures
NRFH Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica
PMHRS Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar
RF Romanische Forschungen
RPh Romance Philology
Sp Speculum
VR Vox Romanica