Protected Sex: A New Look at the Cantigas de Santa MarÍa

 

Anne C. McCormick

Miami University

 

    In a span of less than fifty years three major collections of miracle tales dedicated to the Virgin Mary were com­posed in Romance: Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nos­tre Dame (ca. 1225) in Old French, Gonzalo de Berceo’s Milagros de Nuestra Señora (ca. 1250) in Old Castilian, and Alfonso X, the Learned’s Cantigas de Santa Maria (ca. 1270) in Old Portuguese. These three collections rep­resent the culmination of a practice that began in the sev­enth century, rose to prominence in Latin manuscripts in England and France in the twelfth century, and was at its height when the latter collection, the Cantigas de Santa Maria by Alfonso X, made use of Latin and other Ro­mance collections, accounts from local Iberian shrines, and autobiographical experiences to assemble a record 356 tales.[1]

    The tales in the extensive Cantigas corpus have been examined for many categories of information—poetic, folkloric, religious, and historical; however, to my knowl­edge, no systematic analysis has been undertaken on the subject of sex,which is central to fifteen percent of the tales in the collection. In fact, sex is often completely ig­nored and even obfuscated in scholarly studies. The theme of sex has been effaced from the collections in part by studies that categorize the tales based on Virgin Mary’s role in them, on didactic aims, on final outcomes, on the poet’s participation in the events of the tale, and on a combination of the above.[2] Important thematic content is thus overlooked, such as the cause of the narrative complication and the treatment of principal characters, who, afterall, are often more central to the story than Mary.[3] Because the major discourse of historians and critics of the Cantigas presents the compositions as ex­amples of the wondrous power and merciful kindness of the Virgin Mary, the sexual exploits of monks, abbesses, incestuous mothers, and sex-crazed husbands have been for all practical purposes erased. Studies have been eager to detect a unified devotion to a unified, prediscursive figure of the Virgin Mary, and yet there is no monolithic discourse about sex and Mary’s relation to it in these tales. The fact that the multifarious theme does not fit their agendas has caused more than one critic to rewrite the sex out of the tales.[4]

    An inventory of sexual tales offers a unique perspective not only to the Cantiga collection, but also to the miracle tale as a cultural phenomenon of popular piety in the thirteenth century. Such an examination reveals, for ex­ample, that the notion that “sex sells” is not an advertising adage known uniquely to Madison Avenue in the late twentieth century. If the miracle tales thrived in an effort to promote the Christian faith and the Virgin Mary as the premier devotional deity (Christian, Ward), they did so while gaining attention and entertaining with tales of lust, rape, incest, infanticide, and adultery, not to mention the accompanying miniatures that highlight sexual behavior.

    In addition to betraying a rhetorical technique to garner and hold an audience’s attention, the sexual activities de­picted in the stories reveal patterns of concern about secular issues that have heretofore gone unnoticed. These clusters of preoccupations become apparent through the classification of those tales that revolve around sexual behavior as outlined in Table 1 at the end of this article.

    The table shows four large groupings; the first com­prises those tales that thematize sexual demands made on the protagonist who is the object of a sexual urge. One of these protagonists is male: on a pilgrimage he is ap­proached by a girl who wants to marry him, falsely ac­cused of raping her, and then saved from dying at the gallows by the Virgin (1.2). The remaining tales of female victims foreground the plight of women threatened with a forced marriage (1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.3.2) and with a sexual aggressor (1.3.1, 1.4). Like early Christian chastity tales, such as the story of Saints Thekla, Perpetua, and Agatha, two of the tales in this first group recount torture to the chaste female who valiantly remains pure in a world full of sexual and physical danger. In the first of such tales (1.3.1), the very popular folktale of the Empress of Rome (which is still told in some form today in Spain),[5] a beau­tiful and virtuous noblewoman is accused of adulterous intentions toward her brother-in-law and then of infanti­cide; consequently she suffers a series of beatings and attempted rapes until, left for dead, she is finally rescued by the Virgin Mary (1.3.1).

    In the tale of the maid of Arras, a young girl who had vowed to Mary to remain a virgin is forced by her parents to marry a wealthy man. When the husband is unable to have sex with her on their wedding night and for a year afterwards, he slices her open between her legs in an act of vengeance, frustration, and rape. The cantigas manu­script (T.I.1) features an accompanying miniature that shows either her gaping wound or a doctor trying to repair it (1.3.2 [fig. 1; at the end of this article]). In addition to this injury, she contracts “hell fire,” which burns her right breast, also graphically illustrated (fig. 2; at the end of this article). Like the female martyr legends of early Christi­anity, these women’s vulnerability to male desire and the subsequent aggression and torture function to focus atten­tion on the female figure, eroticizing her body by narrat­ing the actions of characters who simultaneously desire and harm her. Mary’s intervention is delayed long enough (and in the second case the affliction in the breast is actu­ally attributed to the Virgin), to draw the audience’s at­tention to the woman’s body by exposing it to repeated injury. The sado-masochistic and pornographic moments in these tales are palpable and call for further investiga­tion.

    The second cluster consists of tales that treat sexual desire and Mary’s impact on it. Carnal desire is repre­sented as an aggressive threat from outside visualized as animals who attack monks in two tales: in the first (2.1.1) the devil, in the form of a lion, bull, and wild man, threat­ens a monk who has drunk too much wine, which stimu­lates the libido according to medieval sexology;[6] in the second (2.1.2) demons in the form of attacking boar “tempt” a monk as he lies in bed at night. The swine graphically symbolize the temptation of lust, connoting female genitalia, fecundity, and “dirty” acts.[7]

    Sexual desire that has already taken hold in a person is attributed to natural causes as well as the devil but Mary is able to thwart this desire with threatening images (2.3.1.1, 2.5.1.1), with miraculous cures of lust (2.3.1.1, 2.3.1.3), and with help to those who take the matter into their own hands, so to speak (2.2). In this latter instance, Pope Leo cuts off his own hand kissed by a beautiful woman because he considers it the source of his lustful passions. There are three tales that deal with Mary curing knights of their lustful ways. In the first, a lecherous knight (“o pecado de luxuri’ assi o vencia” [cant. 137, v. 12]), as a devotee of the Virgin Mary, is cured so that even when the devil puts sinful thoughts into his head, “per nulla maneira non podesse faze-lo” (51; he could not do it, in any way). In the dénouement the narrator repeat­edly insists that the knight lost no body parts, Mary was able to make him chaste

 

por maneira muit’estranna e mui vertudeira.

. . .

E fez-lle que non perdess’ollos, pees nen mãos

nen outros nenbros do corpo, mais que fossen sãos; . . . (43, 45–46)[8]

 

In other words, unlike the pilgrim discussed below, who is able to be chaste only after he castrates himself, thus losing his male “member,” here the knight is able to keep all of his body parts and, yet, he becomes impotent—un­able to accomplish the sinful deed.

    One story tells of a lustful knight of arms who always says “Ave Maria” and, therefore, Mary appears to him with a platter. It is beautiful and clean but full of rotten, foul-smelling food that the Virgin compares to the knight’s rotting soul in his handsome body to induce him to change his lecherous ways (2.3.1.2). He does and when his soul separates from his body it goes to heaven where it sees the Virgin.

    A third tale of this category recounts how a handsome, humble knight is full of goodwill but as lustful as anyone can be “tan luxurioso / era que mais non podia seer” (2.3.1.3 cant. 336; 23–24). Whenever he remembers the Virgin he is continent, but he repeatedly forgets about her and becomes lustful again. In this wavering state he sees the Queen of the heavens in a vision and asks for her help. When she instructs him to really want to change, he re­sponds to her,

 

    “Mia Sennor, eu sõo vosso,

e a vos per nulla guisa mentir non devo nen poss;

mais est’ erro per natura ben des Adan é-xe nosso,

de que non seremos sãos, se per vos non guare­cemos.” (46–49)[9]

 

The next day the knight, who had burned with lust, be­comes as cold as snow.

    The last tale of this type is that of the lecherous priest who is cured from lust after he drinks a potion consisting of spider dust (2.3.2). The protagonist of the tale, a priest saying Mary’s mass on her feast of the Assumption, is about to drink the blood of Christ when he sees a large spider “no sangui nadando” (cant. 225; 22; swimming in the blood). He thinks the spider’s presence is very omi­nous but, nonetheless, makes a great effort to drink all of the liquid anyway. Fearful that the spider’s poison will hurt or kill him, he is shocked to see the disgusting insect (“bestigo astroso,” 29) walking about his body beneath his skin. God is credited with making it so that the spider neither bites him nor dies in his body; instead, one day it simply walks out of his fingernail while the priest scratches his arm. He catches the insect, makes powder of it, and keeps it so that at the next mass he can consume it. The dénouement states that from this event on the priest is confirmed in his faith and not lustful (“non foi luxurioso,” 59). The twice-swallowed spider becomes an anti-lust potion that is effective because it appears while the priest is saying Mary’s mass on her feastday.

    In several tales the Virgin Mary functions as an alter­nate love object and men’s desires are easily transferable to her person. The first concerns the knight who is horri­bly in love and prays to Mary for help in winning the fa­vors of his beloved (2.4.1). After saying the Hail Mary 200 times a day for nearly a year he goes to a hermitage to complete the rest of the prayers and in so doing the Virgin Mary appears “tan fremosa’ e crara que a non pode’ el catar” (cant. 16; 63; so beautiful and glowing that he could not look at her). She demands: “Toll’ as mãos dante ta faz / e para-mi mentes, ca eu non tenno anfaz” (65–66; Take your hands from your eyes and look straight at me, for I wear no mask). Then Mary gives the knight an ultimatum: “de mi o da outra dona, a que te mais praz / filla qual quiseres, segundo teu semellar” (67–68; Choose which one you want, me or the other woman, / whichever pleases you more). The knight responds to the Virgin,

 

tu es a mais fremosa cousa que estes meus

ollos nunca viron; poren seja eu dos teus

servos que tu amas, e quer’ a outra leixar. . . . (70–73)[10]

 

Mary then demands that he say as many Hail Marys for her as he has done for the other woman. This he accom­plishes and so at the end of the year Mary takes him with her: “na cima do ano foy-o consigo levar” (83).

    Related to this last tale are three tales similar in plot except that Mary is presented as an alternate to an earthly bride. For this reason these tales are said to belong to the sponsus Marianus cycle. In the first case, a young man, taken with the beauty that he sees in the statue of Mary, places a ring on its finger, declares himself one of the Virgin’s servants, and promises to never love another woman (2.4.2.1). The statue, coming alive, grabs the youth’s hand, causing witnesses to suggest that he enter the order of the monks of Clairvaux. Instead he eventually breaks his promise to Mary’s statue by marrying his girl­friend. While in the nuptial bed, however, he immediately falls asleep and dreams of the Virgin, who reprimands him,

 

Ai, meu falss’ e mentiral!

. . .

De mi por que te partiste e fuste fillar moller?

Mal te nenbrou a sortella que me dést’; ond’ á mester

que a leixes e te vaas comigo a como quer. (cant. 42; 65, 67–69)[11]

 

She then threatens him with death if he does not leave his bride’s bed and go with her: “daqui adeante averás coyta mortal” (70; From now on, you will suffer mortal an­guish). This is not enough, however, for when the bride­groom awakens, he still does not want to leave, and so the Virgin Mary makes him fall asleep again; this time the groom sees Mary lying there between him and his bride and calling him very angrily, “Mao, falsso, desleal, / Ves? E por que me leixaste e sol vergonna non ás?” (75, 77; Evil, false, traitor, are you coming? Are you not ashamed for having left me?). She does give him another chance:

 

Mas se tu meu amor queres, daqui te levantarás,

e vai-te comigo logo, que non esperes a cras;

erge-te daqui correndo e sal desta casa, sal! (78–80)[12]

 

The groom is so fearful that he leaves alone, becomes a hermit, and serves Mary until she takes him to the “heavenly kingdom.”

    Another tale with this theme presents a cleric who, al­though he has vowed chastity, takes a wife (2.4.2.3). At the beginning of the canticle the narrator states that who­ever shall leave Mary for a woman, as “fremosa,” “rica,” “avondada,” or even “manssa” or “amorosa,” is commit­ting the greatest folly possible (cant. 132; 7–11). All of the beauty of other women is nothing, not worth a piece of straw next to that of Mary.[13] Because of pressure to keep the inheritance from his recently deceased parents in the family, the clerk marries. At the wedding, he remem­bers that he hasn’t prayed his hours and as the guests ar­rive for the banquet he enters the church to do so. While he is saying his prayers he falls asleep and sees a group of people descending from above with the “chosen Virgin” being brought in the middle of the group, as if in a wed­ding procession. The Virgin Mary then posits a long, rhetorical question:

 

Non es tu o que dizias

que mi mais que al amavas

e que me noytes e dias

mui de grado saudavas?

Porqué outra fillar yas

amiga e desdennavas

a mi, que amor ti avia?

Demais saudar-me ve[n]es

pois que te de mi partiste;

en todo torto me te[n]es,

di, e porqué me mentiste?

Preçaste mais los seus be[n]es

ca os meus? Porqué feziste,

sandeu, tan grand’ ousadia? (101–15)[14]

 

The groom returns to the wedding party, orders that the food be served, but feels miserable during the feast be­cause of the vision of Mary. Soon night falls and the newlyweds are left alone in their nuptial bed. The groom sees the brides breasts and they embrace, the bride think­ing that she will soon enjoy her wifely privilege: “cuidand’ ela seu dereyto / aver del” (138–39); but he cannot go through with his marital duty. Although the young bride’s beauty makes the groom passionate, al­though he willingly desires her and finds her very pleas­ing, the Virgin makes it so that he is impotent (“lle fez que o non fezesse,” 146). Unlike the similar story of the Maid of Arras (1.3.2), who wants to remain a virgin but is forced to marry and is attacked by her husband, this man simply gets up and runs away, leaving his riches to live in poverty and serve the Virgin Mary. When his soul leaves his body, Mary takes him with her to heaven.

    In songs of praise, the Virgin is also offered as a pre­ferred alternate to earthly women (cant. 130) and the poet king himself tells of his conversion from loving earthly women to loving and dedicating himself to the Virgin Mary (Prologue 10). In the tales of the statue bride and the bridal procession described above, Mary corrects her followers, who have not treated her like a real woman, who have taken her image as just that, instead of believ­ing that her statues are as real as she is. Mary reprimands these knights and priests for not complying with their promises to her—a real flesh-and-blood woman. She is imagined as demanding, requiring that her followers treat her and her plastic representations as a sentient being, even as a love partner.

    In these tales the Virgin Mary encourages sexual desire, inspiring it and directing it toward herself; in other tales her presence serves to hinder sexual activity. There are six tales in which a sexual transgression is about to take place but is ultimately prevented by the Virgin Mary. These tales feature nuns, clerics, and knights who are dissuaded by visions, physical harm, or simply the sight of Mary’s statue or the aura of its presence. In one tale a beautiful and diligent nun is frightened into staying in the convent when she sees an ominous vision of hell (2.5.1.1). The night in which she is to leave with her handsome knight, the enamored nun falls asleep and sees a narrow, deep well that is blacker than pitch; she sees the devil who tries to throw her into the hell fire, but first she screams for the Virgin. When Mary appears she replies mockingly, “Venna-ch’ or’ acorrer / o por que me deitast’, e non m’en cal” (47–48). (Let he for whom you left me come and help you, it does not matter to me.) The nun is then thrown into the well by the devil as she cries for Mary, who finally rescues her, admonishing,

 

Des oge mais non te partas de mi

nen de meu Fillo, e se non, aqui

te tornarei, u non averá al. . . . (56–58)[15]

 

She awakens trembling and frightened and tells those who have come for her that she was wrong to think of taking an earthly lover. “Mal quisera falir en leixar Deus por ome terre[n]al” (67–68; Seriously I had planned to err in leaving God for an earthly man). She promises that she will have no other love except that of Mary, the Mother of God.

    Another version of the nun on the verge of leaving the convent for a handsome knight tells of how the statue of Mary and a crucifix come alive: the Virgin sheds tears and Jesus leans over from the cross to smack the nun on the face, drawing blood with the nail that pierces his hand (2.5.1.2). The injured nun, knocked unconscious, falls to the floor; the mark on her cheek remains during her life­time to remind her of the dangers of acting on her sexual desire:

 

. . . do cravo a semella

teve sempre por sinal,

por que non fezesse mal

nen s’assi foss’ escarnir. (cant. 59, 78–81)[16]

 

    Sexual transgression is not so brutally deterred when it comes to men: the mere sight of Mary’s church or aura of her image is able to render male transgressors impotent. In one case (2.5.2) the impotency afflicts a clergyman who is known to do it with “maas molleres, e casadas e solteyras, / nen virge[n]es non queria leixar, nen monjas nen freiras” (cant. 151, 7–8; bad women [prostitutes], both married and single / not virgins nor nuns nor sisters did he want to leave alone). When he goes to have sex with one of his concubines one day, he looks out the win­dow and sees Mary’s church with its altars and shining stained glass, and is therefore unable to fulfill his desires with her. On the next occasion he has the woman close the windows but when they lie together, a wind comes up and blows them open so that again he sees Mary’s church. He determines then and there to leave all of his women and his go-betweens and enter a monastery. As a monk, his obedience to the Virgin is rewarded: accused of thiev­ery, his name is cleared only when his superiors see the Virgin Mary appear to him as he prays to her. In this tale, then, the first episode, sexual in nature, leads to the sec­ond that deals with a rescue by the Virgin.

    In one case a knight buys the right to an evening’s worth of pleasure from a fair maiden who has vowed her virginity to Mary (2.5.3.1). Her father, in his poverty, rents the girl to the knight, described as someone who refuses to marry and is a very licentious youth. Therefore,

 

    lle fazia

ssa luxuriosa voontade

que ouvera

sempre’ e boliçosa

. . .

que a cobiiçasse

e a demandasse

e sigo levasse,

e que averia

noite mui viçosa,

se con ela albergasse,

e mui saborosa. (cant. 195, 23–29, 31–37)[17]

 

However, as he is about to have his way with her she tells him that her name is Mary and that she always honors the vigil of Mary’s feast day. At this declaration he no longer wants to have sex with the maiden and so places her in a convent. When he is subsequently killed in a tournament, he is miraculously rewarded by Mary who directs the girl to his body in order that it be properly buried.

    In a third tale with this theme, a knight has a beautiful statue of the Virgin sculpted and painted in one of the rooms of his house. Returning home after he delivers the statue to the monastery where he has chosen to eventually be buried, he sees a beautiful woman and becomes sick with love for her. Unable to eat nor drink, he resorts to go-betweens who finally win the woman’s favors for him. He finds, however, that once he has her in bed, in the same room where Mary’s statue was sculpted, he cannot perform the sexual act, as beautiful as she is, and as ex­cited as he is. The lovers move to another room where they “compriron sas voontades e seu prazer acabaron” (cant. 312; 67; They fulfilled their wishes and they com­pleted their pleasure). This room is small and narrow, however, and so they return to the first room where again he is unable to “do it.” It now occurs to him that Mary does not want him to sleep with his “amiga” in the very room where he has had a statue made for her. The mes­sage the knight gleans from his intermittent lack of bodily control is that Mary wants him to only have licit sexual relations; he, therefore, marries the woman.

    The third large grouping of tales includes those that focus on the effects of sexual transgressions committed. I have divided the group based on whether the transgres­sion is forgiven, punished and forgiven, or simply pun­ished. These three subgroups have been further divided based on the type of transgression and on the type of mi­raculous outcome. The largest subgroup is made up of those transgressions that have been forgiven or over­looked. The most frequent type of transgressions is simple fornication and the most frequent perpetrators are male and female religious persons, at four each. The monks and clerics are usually given their life back through Mary’s intervention, while the nuns are beneficiaries of a mi­raculous occurrence when the convent they have aban­doned remains unaware of their absence.

    The first resuscitation tale concerns a monk who goes to have sex every night with his girlfriend but before do­ing so he says the Hail Mary (3.1.1.1.1). One night he drowns while crossing the river and because he has not confessed, the devil takes his soul to throw it in the fires of hell. Mary intervenes, however, has the soul returned to the body, and resuscitates the monk who is given a new life and another chance.

    The following tale of this type is that of the monk de­voted to Saint Peter but who “dos sabores do mundo mais ca da celestial / vida gran sabor avia” (cant. 14; 17–18; had more taste for the world than for the heavenly life). He dies without confessing, but Mary, when all other saints fail, convinces God to return his soul to his body so he can fulfill his vows that he made when becoming a monk.[18]

    Another tale is very similar to that of the drowned, lecherous monk except that this version involves a cleric who was “a lussuria tan deitado” (cant. 111; 18; so given over to lechery). He says his hours diligently but one night he “foi fazer,” shorthand for fornication. He enters a boat in order to cross the Seine but the boat turns over and he drowns while praying. Because of his transgression, the devil takes his soul and is about to put it in the hell fire when Mary, answering his prayer, resuscitates the cleric, pulling him from the river.

    The romero of Santiago is also resuscitated by Mary but not before he mutilates himself (3.1.1.2). The pilgrim, who goes to Santiago every year with true intentions, this time sleeps with a woman (“albergar foi con moller,” cant. 26; 23–24) without marrying her and starts the jour­ney without confessing. The devil approaches him dressed like Santiago and threatens the unsuspecting pilgrim with hell unless he “talla o que trages tigo / que te foi deytar / en poder do e[n]emigo” (43–45; Cut that which you carry that made you fall into the hands of the enemy). The devil also instructs him to slit his throat; the terrorized pilgrim complies with both directives. When devils come to col­lect his soul, Mary intercepts and places it back in his body. The pilgrim, although he gets his life back, never recovers “o de que foi falido, con que fora pecar” (101–02; That of which he deprived himself and with which he had sinned).

    The next series of tales deals with wayward nuns, a very popular theme considering there are four such sto­ries. The first is the story of the pregnant abbess whose underlings tell the bishop that she is pregnant (3.1.1.3). When the bishop comes to verify the claim, the pregnant abbess prays to Mary who lifts the child from her stomach and delivers him unharmed to a monastery where he grows up to become a very holy monk. Another type in this series features the Virgin Mary taking the place of the wayward nun so that after their sexual adventure she re­turns with impunity and is able to resume life in the con­vent. One such nun runs away with her abbot but when she gets pregnant, he abandons her (3.1.1.4). She subse­quently wanders back to the monastery and speaks to the abbess who surprisingly has never missed her. When it is time to give birth she prays to the Virgin that she be for­given and that the Virgin do something so that she not be shamed for her sins. The Virgin arrives and applies her medicine, instructing an angel to quickly take the baby from her body and to bring him up well. In this case we know that the Virgin Mary herself raises him and one day he comes down to meet his mother while she is singing with the other nuns, before ascending to heaven again. In two similar tales we do not learn what happens to the sev­eral children that the nuns bear while away from the con­vent (3.1.1.4.2, 3.1.1.4.3).

    The focus on sexual sins and the absence of negative consequences are two elements common to the tales about single mothers who commit incest and infanticide, killing their offspring and yet benefiting from Mary’s protection. There are three stories of infanticide carried out or planned by a child’s mother. In the first case, the protago­nist is “a onrrada dona de Roma” (3.1.2.1; the honorable woman of Rome) after her husband dies, finds “solace” in their son and bears the child of this incestuous liaison. When a son is born she kills it secretly so that nobody will find out about her transgression. The devil, who knows everything, however, turns her into the authorities. In the end Mary saves her by making it so that the devil no longer recognizes her and she is thus acquitted of the crime. The miracle tale is a version of the popular tale type known as Incest. Circulating as a folktale, Marian miracle tale, and exemplum, the tale type always features incest and often infanticide.

    Another tale, of the Incest type, features a young girl who has promised Mary that she will remain virgin (3.1.2.2). The girl has sex with one of her godfathers (spiritual incest) and becomes pregnant. When a beautiful son is born she is so distraught that she immediately kills him. She then repeats this cycle twice, killing in total three sons. Finally, she has so little consideration for her ruined life, she takes a knife and stabs herself. When this does not kill her, she swallows a spider; still not dead, she swallows a larger, more poisonous one. Mary comes to her rescue and passing her hands over her body makes it like new—fresh and pure.

    Another tale of incest and murder deals with a mother-in-law accused of having relations with her daughter’s husband (3.1.3). In the Alfonsine version of this popular tale, the mother-in-law is explicitly exonerated of any wrongdoing:

 

ca mao preço

a sogra avia

. . .

con seu genrro; pero a gran torto,

ca non fezeran eles feit’ atal

com’este. . . . (cant. 255; 32–33, 35–37)[19]

 

It is unclear in the canticle what the bad reputation refers to, and why the woman would then put a contract on her son-in-law’s life. The poet assumed that the audience knew the story and could fill in the details. After consult­ing Gautier de Coinci and Tubach’s index of exempla it becomes clear that the woman has her son-in-law killed because the neighbors are convinced that he is having sexual relations not only with his wife but also with her mother. To avoid a scandal she has him killed. She is condemned to be burned for the murder; however, Mary comes to her rescue and she escapes unharmed.

    The third tale of infanticide (3.1.4) tells of a woman who is very preoccupied with her looks and wants to kill her son in order to then lead a bawdy life “oge festa será pera mi ta morte” (cant. 399; 34–35). To free herself of the duties of motherhood, the woman sharpens a needle and puts it in his head; but the Virgin Mary intervenes, stopping her before she can murder the child. The woman then confesses her sin and joins a religious order.

    Another instance of a sexual transgression that is over­looked is the tale of the forgiven rapist. A student from Salamanca rapes a girl and so is pursued, captured, and locked in prison. While there he writes a song to the Vir­gin (3.1.5). As a reward the Virgin frees him, overlooking his sexual crime.

    The tale of a three-year case of leprosy that Mary cures (3.2.1.1) is the first example of those tales in which a sex­ual transgression is punished and then forgiven. This story concerns a “fillo dun burges,” a handsome, well-built, and lettered young man “mais tod’ aquele viço que à carne praz / fazia, que ren non queria en leixar” (cant. 93; 14–15; But he committed all of that vice that is pleasing to the flesh, for nothing did he want to leave it). Leprosy, thought in the Middle Ages to be caused by sexual contact and retribution from God, is attributed to divine hands in his tale: “quiso Deus que caess’ en el mui gran gafeen” (18; God wanted a severe case of leprosy to befall him). While he was so afflicted he said a thousand Hail Mary’s and “nunca errou.” Because of his repentant behavior, Mary appears to him and “a teta descobriu / e do seu santo leite o corpo ll’ongiu” (37–38; She uncovered her breast and anointed his body with her holy milk).

    A second miracle that features punishment and forgive­ness of fornication concerns a woman whose erring ways make it so that she is unable to open the door to Mary’s church (Santa Maria de Valverde) until she repents. Cry­ing and scratching her face, she prays to Mary, “fas-me, Sennor, que seja eu dos servos teus / e que entre na ei­greja tas oras oyr” (27–28; Make me one of your servants, Lady, and allow me to enter your church to hear your hours). She confesses her sins, sees the doors open, and enters. For the rest of her life she serves the Virgin. The tale is an analogue to the Mary of Egypt story, itself often included as a Marian miracle.

    A married couple who have raised their children vow to maintain a chaste relationship in one tale of sexual mis­conduct punished and then forgiven (3.2.1.3). The devil, however, causes the husband to intensely desire sex with his wife and to go from his separate bed, excited with carnal passion, to violate the chastity vow, against his wife’s wishes. The wife is so distraught about breaking the vow that in her anger she offers the fruit of the en­counter to the devil. Years later the devil comes to claim the now adolescent boy. Only after much searching for a remedy—traveling to Rome and to the East—does Mary liberate the boy from the devil’s powers.

    I place an enigmatic tale about a woman who carries a snake in her stomach (3.2.1.4) in this category of sexual transgression punished and then forgiven only after taking into account Romanesque architecture, the medieval es­chatological imagination, and other versions of the story. A woman feels a snake in her stomach and carries it for three years. After receiving advice in a vision, she makes several pilgrimages: to Silos, to Puerto Santa Maria, and then to the cathedral of the Santa Cruz in Cádiz. When she arrives there and sees the church, she praises the Vir­gin, and “abriu a boca . . . e vermella / deitou hu[m]a co­hobra per ela, a semella / du[m]a anguia grossa” (51–53; She opened her mouth and spewed a serpent through it, like a fat, red eel).

    The refrain of the canticle states that the miracle in­volves more than a cure; it exemplifies how Mary in­structs us to resist evil: “Como nos dá carreyras a Virgen que façamos / ben outrossi nos mostra como mal non ajamos” (3–4; How Mary shows us the way so that we do well. In the same way, she shows us how to avoid evil). In other words, the serpent in the woman’s body is associ­ated with evil that the woman is able to expel upon visit­ing Marian shrines. Carnal sins and serpents were com­monly allied in the Middle Ages: “Tundale’s Vision,” a mid-twelfth-century description of hell that was circulated in thirteen languages by the fourteenth century, includes a description of hell as a place where men and women who have defiled themselves by immoderate luxury on earth are punished by becoming pregnant with serpents (Gardiner 171). Caesar of Heisterbach, one of the sources of the Cantigas, includes a story of a saint who is led to the tomb of an adulteress by a monstrous serpent; Tubach’s index of exempla includes numerous tales of serpents associated with sexual sins.

    We do not need Freud to point out the phallic connota­tions of the serpent, which was particularly associated with women and sexual transgression in sculptures (sheela na gigs) placed on the outside of Romanesque churches and monasteries in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Although a male version of these images exists, the human figure suckling, giving birth to, or being at­tacked by snakes and other creatures is overwhelmingly female in Northern Spain and France (Weir 129). Al­though not explicit in the Alfonsine miracle, given the architectural and literary intertexts, the sexual implica­tions of the woman’s sin and punishment would have been present to the audience. Moreover, Gil de Zamora’s version of the tale included the detail that the woman was pregnant with both child and snake.

    The next tale of transgression does not center on forni­cation; rather on an excessive desire that causes a woman to employ a type of black magic with the host in order to win back the affections of an ex-lover (3.2.3). The pro­tagonist is punished explicitly because she disrespects the Virgin and God. Upset because her lover has married someone else, upon the advice of her neighbors, she places a host in her headpiece in order to regain his love. As she returns from mass people see red blood running down her clothing and ask her who has hurt her so. Sur­prised at their reaction, she begins to feel the hot blood streaming down from her head. She immediately returns to the church, throws herself before the image of Mary, begs her forgiveness, and enters a convent.

    The last tale of this group (3.2.4) presents a knight and his wife who are to take a camping trip. She is a devotee of the Virgin, and so while the husband goes ahead to pitch the tent, she goes to pray in one of Mary’s churches. The husband sends for her but is told that she is praying in a church, and enjoying it (“que á y sabor”). Upon learning this the husband declares that saying long prayers is of no use and especially, he claims, in a ruined old building. Suddenly he becomes blind. His wife, hearing his screams, hurries to him and pleads to the Virgin to forgive her husband. When he recovers his vision he donates his land with the fountain to Mary.

    On the contrary, however, there are certain transgres­sions that are not forgiven. Punishment for an attempted rape is not alleviated precisely because it happened in a hermitage dedicated to Mary (3.3.1). This was done to an “escudeiraz peon” who is in the end punished by losing his ability to speak because while chasing a woman who caught his eye, he attempted to kick down the door of the church. Another case of disrespect is severely punished in the tale of the priest who steals silver from the cross in a church and gives it to his girlfriend (3.3.2). The perpetra­tor is blinded and then his nose gets so long that it hangs down over his mouth and so wide that it touches both of his ears. This punishment, comically illustrated in the miniatures, causes the priest to say a thousand times a day that he would rather be dead.

    The last major grouping is a series of tales dealing with adultery, a subject approached from many different an­gles. I have not divided the tales into sub-categorizes based on their point of view nor the kind of punishment nor pardon; they do not divide in this manner, varying greatly as to their narrative emphasis. In one tale where the husband is to be away from his wife, he places her in Mary’s keep (4.1). When a man desires her and sends all types of go-betweens to win her favors for him, she resists until one go-between convinces the married woman to try on a pair of shoes, a gift from the suitor. But the shoe neither goes on nor can be taken off, and she thus remains chaste until her husband comes home and “takes the shoe off.”[20]

    The relationship between a man’s wife and his mistress is foregrounded in a tale told from the point of view of the wife (4.2). In this case the sin of adultery is not moralized against; instead Mary, through a vision, effects a recon­ciliation between the wife and the mistress. In another tale the wife of a devotee of the Virgin kills herself because she thinks her husband is carrying on an adulterous rela­tionship (4.3). Since the husband is actually carrying on nocturnal prayer sessions to the Virgin, Mary resuscitates the wife for her grieving devotee.

    In the next tale a conspiracy is undertaken to frame a daughter-in-law of adultery (4.4). The Moslem co-con­spirator, who had agreed to lie in bed with the sleeping woman, burns at the stake, while the innocent wife is protected by Mary. One tale features a Jewess of Segovia who is thrown off a cliff for a wrongdoing (4.5). Although the nature of her crime is not expressed, there exists an earlier written document, purported to be historical, about a Jewess so punished because of an adulterous affair with a Christian soldier (Benaim de Lasry). Another tale gets its narrative impetus from an adulterous act by a married woman but then focuses on what happens to the innocent husband when accused of his wife’s murder, a murder her illicit lover commits (4.6) In one tale the wife’s precarious dependence on the husband is thematized. A money-strapped husband sells his wife to the devil in the guise of a man. Mary foils the plot when she stands in for the woman and scares off the devil (4.7).

    In the last tale (4.8) the Virgin Mary herself becomes the object of an accusation of sexual misconduct. Relating back to the phenomenon of Mary and her images as real flesh and blood (a topic we treated when discussing the knights and clerics who choose to love Mary over earthly women), this miracle is performed for the sake of a here­tic who logically interprets a painted representation of the Annunciation. He declares that the painting shows that Mary was already pregnant when the angel Gabriel came to her because her abdomen is large and she wears her belt above the waist as pregnant women do. At this accu­sation, the figure miraculously changes shape and now shows a svelte midriff and the belt worn below the waist. The disbeliever is instantly converted. The tale thematizes the precarious position that Mary holds as carnal object of desire, as well as the virgin mother of God.[21]

    Besides the above-mentioned narratives of sexual themes, making up more than fifteen percent of all the narratives, there are over twenty depictions of the sexual act in the miniatures and thirty percent of the highlighted, two-page illuminations depict scenes from sexual tales. The tales of women about to be raped, of sexual desire on the verge of overtaking the protagonist, of protagonists already overcome with desire and on the brink of com­mitting a sexual transgression, and tales concerning the consequences of sexual misbehavior all point to a persis­tent narrative of sex in the religious and secular discourses of the collections.

    Virtually all of the propagandistic motives of the mira­cles, as noted by scholars (Christian, Ward), are repre­sented in these sexual tales. Sex is used to promote relig­ious practices that constitute the cult of Mary: pilgrimage to Mary’s shrines, proper dedication to her churches; de­votion to her prayers, vigilance of her feast days and re­spect for her name and her image. There is more, how­ever, than promoting Marian devotion through sex. In fact, many of the tales did not originate as stories about the Virgin Mary; rather they circulated in secular as well as sacred contexts and in oral folklore as well as in writ­ten texts. As folklore, the stories function as a vehicle to discuss subjects usually considered taboo (Dundes, Inter­preting 33–61). Examining the collection for sexuality uncovers clusters of concerns about the body—the cause and consequences of sexual behavior, the Virgin Mary as source and impediment of sexual desire, the supernatural control of lust, and the sexuality of nuns, priests, and sin­gle mothers. Tales about the transgression of proscribed sexual behaviors divulge concerns about boundaries of permissable sexual activity, and the attendant conse­quences if the boundaries are crossed.

    The categorization of sexual themes and the consequent patterns that emerge highlight the existence of distinctions in the collection as well. Men’s desire is naturalized while women are sexualized objects in danger in tales about chastity. There is also a difference between the portrayal of clerics and nuns, and of nuns and laywomen. No cler­gymen are responsible for children as consequences of their sexual liaisons, while there are four stories in which nuns become pregnant. This absence of progeny on the part of clerics is curious since the laws of medieval Spain demonstrate that this in fact was a problem. Marjorie Rat­cliffe states, for example, that “Gregorian reforms did not eradicate the problems of married priests because even in late thirteenth-century Spain the rights of priests’ children and grandchildren were still being protected by law” (347). On the other hand nuns are never shown harming their children like transgressive lay mothers do. Wayward nuns bear children unproblematically: the children are taken from them to be raised in monasteries, in the heav­ens with Mary, or are simply not heard from again. Moreover, nuns are never attacked sexually, shown in bed with their lovers, nor murdered.

    This categorization of sexual tales is a preliminary step in analyzing sexuality in the vast collection of Marian miracles, the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Further interroga­tion of the tales’ gender politics, pornographic elements, and folkloric functions might be elucidated by analyzing how these literary stories cohered with medical, scientific, legal, political, and theological discourses of the period to effect the social control of the body and sexuality.

 

Works Cited

Alfonso X. Cantigas de Santa Maria. Ed. Walter Mettman. Madrid: Castalia, l984.

Benaim de Lasry. “Marisaltos: Artificial Purification in Alfonso el Sabio’s Cantiga 107.” Studies on the Canti­gas de Santa Maria: Art, Music and Poetry. Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X, el Sabio (1221–1284) in Commemoration of its 700th Anniversary year, Nov. 1981, New York. Ed. Israel J. Katz and John E. Keller. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1987. 299–327.

Bétérous, Paule V. “Les Collections de Miracles de la Vierge en Gallo et Ibéro-Roman au XIIIe siècle.” Marian Library Studies 15–16 (1983–1984): 1–733.

Cadden, Joan. Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.

Callcott, Frank. The Supernatural in Early Spanish Lit­erature Studied in the Works of the Court of Alfonso X, el Sabio. New York: Instituto de las Españas, 1923.

Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. London: Reaktion, 1992.

Christian, William A. “De los santos a María: Panorama de las devociones a santuarios españoles desde el prin­cipio de la Edad Media hasta nuestros días.” Temas de antropología española. Ed. Carmelo Lisón Tolosana. Madrid: Akal, l976. 49–105.

Coinci, Gautier de. Les Miracles de Nostre Dame. Ed V. Frederic Koenig. Geneva: Droz, 1955–1970. 4 vols.

Davis, William Richard. “The Role of the Virgin in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.” Diss. U Kentucky, 1970.

Delpech, François. “Como puerca en cenegal: remarques sur quelques naissances insolites dans les légendes gé­néalogiques ibériques.” La condición de la mujer en la Edad Media. Madrid: Ed. Universidad Complutense, 1986. 343–70.

Dundes, Alan, ed. Cinderella: A Casebook. Madison: U Wisconsin P, 1982.

___. Interpreting Folklore. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980.

Edilán. Alfonso X el Sabio. Cantigas de Santa Maria.
Edición facsímil del Códice T.I.1 de la Biblioteca de San Lorenzo el Real de El Escorial, Siglo XIII. Madrid: Editora Internacional de Libros Antiguos, 1979.

Filgueira Valverde, José. Introduction. Cantigas de Santa Maria. By Alfonso X. Madrid: Castalia, l985. I–LXIII.

Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: U of Chi­cago P, 1989.

Gardiner, Eileen, ed. Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante. New York: Italica P, 1989.

Goldberg, Harriet. “Another Look at Folk Narrative Clas­sification: The Judeo-Spanish Romancero.” Hispanic Studies in Honor of Samuel G. Armistead. Ed. E. Mi­chael Gerli. Madison: Medieval Hispanic Institute, l992. 153–62.

Heisterbach, Caesarius of. The Dialogue on Miracles. Trans. H. Von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland. Vol. I–II. London: Routledge, 1929.

Kulp-Hill, Kathleen. “The Captions to the Miniatures of the “Códice Rico” of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a Translation.” Cantigueiros 7 (1995): 3–64.

Legman, G. The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliograhphy. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1964.

Montoya, Jesús. Introduction. Cantigas de Santa Maria. By Alfonso X. Madrid: Cátedra, l988. 13–89.

___. Las colecciones de milagros de la Virgen en la Edad Media (El milagro literario). Granada, Spain: Universi­dad de Granada, 1981.

___. “Destinatarios y público de Les miracles de Nostre Dame, de Gautier de Coinci.” Homenaje a Alonso Zamora Vicente, III. Ed. Jesus Montoya Martínez. Ma­drid: Castalia, 1988. 77–92.

Ratcliffe, Marjorie. “Adulteresses, Mistresses and Prosti­tutes: Extramarital Relationships in Medieval Castile.” Hispania 67.3 (1984): 346–50.

Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. The Politics and Po­etics of Transgression. London: Methuen, 1986.

Taggart, Jame M. Enchanted Maidens: Gender Relations in Spanish Folktales of Courtship and Marriage. Prin­ceton: Princeton UP, 1990.

Tubach, Frederic C. Index exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales. Helsinki: Academia Scien­tiarum Fennica, 1969.

Vasvari, Louise O. “Múltiple transparencia semántica de los nombres de la alcahueta en el Libro del Arcipreste.” Medioevo y Literatura: Actas del V Congreso de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval. Ed. Juan Paredes. Granada, 1995. 453–63.

Ward, Benedicta. “Miracles of the Virgin.” Miracles and the Medieval Mind. Aldershot: Scolar P, l987. 132–65.

Weir, Anthony, and James Jerman. Images of Lust: Sex­ual Carvings on Medieval Churches. London: Batsford, 1986.

 

Table 1: Sexual Activities

 

1.     Sexual demands

        1.1.      miraculous intervention to save virginity

                    1.1.1.       of woman betrothed: cant. 135[22]

                    1.1.2.       of prisoner in Tangiers: cant. 325.

        1.2.      miraculous intervention to rescue chaste pilgrim from death: cant. 355

        1.3.      torture > miraculous rescue, cure

                    1.3.1.       Empress of Rome: cant. 5

                    1.3.2.       Maid of Arras: cant. 105

        1.4.      murder > miraculous confession of prostitute: cant. 237

2.     Sexual desire

        2.1.      threat to monks of sexual desire in guise of animals repelled

                    2.1.1.       bull, lion, dog (wild man): cant. 47

                    2.1.2.       wild boars: cant. 82

        2.2.      sexual desire thwarted: Pope amputates own hand > cured: cant. 206

        2.3.      Mary cures lust

                    2.3.1.       in knights

                                    2.3.1.1.      “without losing body parts”: cant. 137

                                    2.3.1.2.      with vision of rotten food: cant. 152

                                    2.3.1.3.      has Jesus change his “natura”: cant. 336

                    2.3.2.       in priest: cant. 225 (var. 222)

        2.4.      sexual desire channeled to Mary

                    2.4.1.       knight says daily rosary: cant. 16

                    2.4.2.       sponsus Marianus, groom leaves nuptial bed for Mary

                                    2.4.2.1.      betrothed to a statue: cant. 42

                                    2.4.2.2.      clerk (black magic): cant. 125

                                    2.4.2.3.      clerk: cant. 132

        2.5.      imminent sexual transgression prevented

                    2.5.1.       in nuns

                                    2.5.1.1.      by vision of hell: cant. 58

                                    2.5.1.2.      by physical harm: nun slapped, 59

                    2.5.2.       in clerk by impotence caused by view of Mary’s church: cant. 151

                    2.5.3.       in knights by impotence caused by

                                    2.5.3.1.      Mary’s name: cant. 195

                                    2.5.3.2.      room in which Mary’s image had been sculpted: cant. 312

3.     Sexual transgression committed

        3.1.      and forgiven

                    3.1.1.       fornication

                                    3.1.1.1.      monks / clerks resuscitated

                                                      3.1.1.1.1.       drowned monk: cant. 11

                                                      3.1.1.1.2.       St. Peter’s monk: cant. 14

                                                      3.1.1.1.3.       drowned clerk: cant. 111

                                    3.1.1.2.      pilgrim resuscitated: cant. 26

                                    3.1.1.3.      nun relieved of pregnancy: cant. 7

                                    3.1.1.4.      nun not missed from convent

                                                      3.1.1.4.1.       abbot leaves nun when pregnant: cant. 55

                                                      3.1.1.4.2.       nun/treasurer, children: cant. 94

                                                      3.1.1.4.3.       image blocks escape, children: cant. 285

                                    3.1.1.5.      pregnant woman rescued: cant. 86

                    3.1.2.       incest and infanticide

                                    3.1.2.1.      with son: cant. 17

                                    3.1.2.2.      with “padrino”: cant. 201

                    3.1.3.       incest and murder of son-in-law: cant. 255

                    3.1.4.       attempted infanticide: cant. 399

                    3.1.5.       rape: cant. 291

Table 1: Sexual Activities (cont.)

 

        3.2.      and punished, then forgiven

                    3.2.1.       fornication

                                    3.2.1.1.      bourgeois’ son contracts leprosy> cured: cant. 93

                                    3.2.1.2.      church doors closed > opened: cant. 98

                                    3.2.1.3.      husband rapes wife > son to devil > freed: cant. 115

                                    3.2.1.4.      snake in stomach > exits: cant. 368

                    3.2.2.       black magic with host > bleeding > forgiven: cant. 104

                    3.2.3.       lechery/disrespect > blinded > cured: cant. 314

        3.3.      and punished

                    3.3.1.       attempted rape/disrespect > squire breaks leg, made mute: cant. 317

                    3.3.2.       fornication / theft > priest blinded, deformed: cant. 318

4.     Adultery

        4.1.      adultery prevented by shoe: cant. 64

        4.2.      wife plots against husband’s mistress: cant. 68

        4.3.      jealous wife commits suicide: cant. 84

        4.4.      Jewess accused of adultery and thrown off cliff: cant. 107

        4.5.      wife wrongly accused of adultery: cant. 186

        4.6.      husband accused of adulterous wife’s murder: cant. 213

        4.7.      husband sells wife to devil: cant. 216

        4.8.      Virgin Mary accused of sexual fraud: cant. 306

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. Cantiga 105. Frame 4, Edilán 151v.: “Como o novio astroso cuidou fazer algo e fezo nemiga” (How the wicked bridegroom plotted and committed a very shameful deed [Kulp-Hill 37]).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2. Cantiga 105. Frame 9, Edilán 152r.: “Como caeu fogo na teta daquela a que o marido fora chagar” (How the disease attacked the breast of that girl whose husband had wounded her [Kulp-Hill 38]).

 


[1]For a history of Latin and Romance collections of Marian miracle tales see Montoya, Colecciones 55–74; Bétérous 49–126. For a more general overview of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century practice of recording, collecting, and circulating miracle tales see Ward.

[2]For studies that classify the Cantigas based on Mary’s role see Davis 18–123. For categories based on didactic aims see Mon­toya “Criterio.” Callcott categorizes the canticles based on type of miracle performed and final outcome (135–37). For categori­zation based on a combination of criteria, see Filgueira Val­verde, LX–LXIII.

[3]See Goldberg for a review of the problematics concerning categorizing themes, motifs, and tale types, and for a new look at the sexual thematics of the Judeo-Spanish Romancero. Simi­larly, in an earlier study, Legman discusses the tendency of folktale indices to place sexual tales under categories that cover up their sexual focus (454–57).

[4]Montoya is wont to interpret sex in the tales as having uniquely allegorical significance in order to prove his theory that all the tales are unified in their “tensión laudatoria”; however, to sup­port his claim he finds it necessary to rewrite the incest out of one of the most popular tales in the Marian collections, one known, in fact, as “Incest” (Colecciones 35; “Criterio” 293). Callcott, almost fifty years earlier made a similar editiorial move when he replaced the “padrino” with a “young galan” as the sexual partner of the Woman who Swallowed a Spider, an ana­logue of the Incest tale (44).

[5]See Taggart for a fokloristic approach to this tale type, known as “The Slandered Maiden” in contemporary Spain.

[6]Cadden, writing on medeival views of conception points to the perceived relationship between wine and libido: “Sexual desire . . . along with the spirit and humor of which semen is com­posed, is one of the three things necessary for intercourese and therefore for procreation. Like semen, appetite depends on warmth: a man warmed by wine will have ample supplies of both” (63). Moreover, in Gautier de Coinci’s miracle about the pilgrim of Santiago, the sinner’s sexual transgression is com­mitted after he becomes heated with wine, “Et tant fu de vin eschaufez / Qu’il jut a une siue garce” (I Mir 25, vv. 14–15).

[7]For the sexual symbolism of pigs, see Delpech 343–44, 367; Stallybrass 44; Vasvari 460; Weir 113. Gautier de Coinci com­pares fornicating priests to pigs wallowing in mud (I Mir 26, v. 64; I Mir 42, v. 624, and II Mir 29, vv. 14, 38, 44).

[8]. . . in a very rare and wonderful way. / . . . / She did it for him in such a way that he did not lose his eyes, feet, hands, / nor parts of his body; rather they remained healthy.

[9]“My lady, I am yours / and in no way should I nor could I lie / but this sinfulness is our nature from Adam on, / of which we shall not be cured, if we do not become cured by you.”

[10]You are the most beautiful thing I have ever set eyes on; therefore I want to be one of your servants that you love, and I want to leave the other woman.

[11]Oh, my false liar! Why did you leave and go and look for a woman? You forgot about the ring that you gave me, and so you must leave her and come with me, by whatever means.

[12]If you want my love, you will get up from here and come with me now, do not wait for tomorrow, leave this room, leave!

[13]“Ca toda a ffremosura / das outras é nemigalla / nen toda ssa apostura/ tanto come hu[m]a palla / contra a desta” (13–16).

[14]Are you not the one who said that you loved me more than anything else and who day and night very willingly greeted me? Why were you going to now take another lover and disdain me who loved you? On top of it, you come to me now after you have separated from me; in all ways you are unjust with me, and why did you lie to me? Did you like her goods more than you liked mine? Why did you, crazy one, dare do such a thing?

[15]From today forward do not leave me nor my son again, or you will return here where there will be no other recourse.

[16]. . . she always had the likeness of the nail as a sign so that she would not do wrong nor would she thus mock herself.

[17]His lustful and turbulent disposition made him want her and ask for her to go with him, for if he slept with her she would have a very delicious and savory night.

[18]In Berceo’s version, “El monje de San Pedro,” the monk made a woman pregnant (161d).

[19]A bad reputation the woman had with her son-in-law, but it was a mistake for they had not committed such a deed as this.

[20]For the sexual connotations of shoes in the popular imagina­tion, see Dundes, Cinderella 111–12.

[21]For more on medieval readings of the Virgin based on Marian iconography see Freedberg 319–26.

[22]These numbers indicate the number of the Cantiga according to Mettmann’s edition.