The Wineskin of Love: Errors and Hybrid Prayers in the Libro de buen amor, MS S

Abstract

The following article shows how the well-known episode of the Canonical Hours in the Libro de buen amor (Salamanca MS 2198 or S) engages in a subversive,intentional hybridization of Latin and Castilian. Errors in this preserved manuscript must be understood not merely as corrupting intrusions, but more importantly as active collaborations in the Archpriest of Hita's parody of Love's eroticized prayer. Specifically, vernacular alterationscontribute to thepoet's representation of an undereducated, worldly clergygarbling verses from the Hours—a problem that was vividly described in popular penitential literaturefrom the period,such as the fourteenth-century Libro de confesiones by Martín Pérez. Supposed errors introduced into the Salamancan witness to the poem serve to mockingly alter, deform, and fragment language from the Divine Office, drawing marginal distortions of the sacred wordinto the textual centre.

Notes

¹Paul Zumthor, Essai de poetique médiévale (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972); Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989). I am grateful as always to Michael Gerli for his feedback and suggestions at different stages in the writing of this article.

²See, in particular, Stephen Nichols, ‘Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture’, Speculum, 65:1 (1990), 1–10.

³Michelle R. Warren, ‘Introduction: Relating Philology, Practicing Humanism’, ‘Philology Matters’ Cluster, PMLA, 125:2 (2010), 283–88.

⁴Edward W. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia U. P., 2004), 59.

⁵John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the ‘Libro de Buen Amor’ (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1994). More recently, Michael E. Gerli has studied the relationship between text and image in the late fifteenth-century Cancionero de palacio, in ‘On the Edge: Envisioning the Libro de buen amor in the Cancionero de Palacio’, eHumanista, 1 (2001), 1–11. He finds in this manuscript an important early reception of the Libro de buen amor that is lost in modern editions of the Cancionero. See also Laurence De Looze's book on Conde Lucanor manuscripts, Manuscript Diversity, Meaning, and Variance in Juan Manuel's ‘El conde Lucanor’ (Toronto: Univ. Toronto Press, 2006).

⁶Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor, ed. Manuel Criado de Val and Eric W. Naylor (Madrid: CSIC, 1965). A facsimile of the S manuscript was published by the Editoral Internacional de Libros Antiguos in 1975, making it readily available for Libro de buen amor scholars.

⁷ Biblia Sacra, Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. Robert Weber, 4^th ed. (Stuttgart: Bibelgesellschaft, 1994). MS. S includes verses and whole sections that are not found in Gayoso (G), or the more fragmentary codex from the Cathedral of Toledo (T) (Bible, Douay-Rheims Version [New York: Benziger Brothers, 1941]). The Douay-Rheims Version translation of Vulgate reads, ‘I have become like a bottle’. Following Dagenais, the translation ‘wineskin’ specifies that uter designates a leathern ‘bottle’ or bag intended to hold liquids. Subsequent English citations from the Bible are from the Douay-Rheims version, with slight adjustments.

⁸Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture, 140.

⁹Otis Green, ‘Medieval Laughter’, in Spain and the Western Tradition: The Castilian Mind in Literature from El Cid to Calderón, 4 vols (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1963–66), I (1963), 27–71; and Bienvenido Morros Mestres, ‘Las horas canónicas en el Libro de buen amor’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 34:1 (2004), 357–415. In addition, see José Luis Pérez López, ‘El Libro de buen amor a la luz de algunos textos litúrgicos de la Catedral de Toledo’, Revista de Poética Medieval, 6 (2001), 53–85.

¹⁰Morros Mestres compares the episode to Roman and Mozarabic liturgical manuals, while Pérez López looks at evidence of medieval liturgical practices at the Cathedral of Toledo. Another important study of the episode can be found in Luis Beltrán, Razones de buen amor: oposiciones y convergencias en el ‘Libro del Arcipreste de Hita’, Pensamiento Literario Español 5 (Valencia: Castalia, 1977).

¹¹See ‘Introducción’, in Martín Pérez, Libro de las confesiones: una radiografía de la sociedad medieval española, ed. Antonio García y García, Bernardo Alonso Rodríguez and Francisco Cantelar Rodríguez (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2002), xiv–xx. The editors document ten extant versions in Castilian, provide evidence of abbreviations, numerous fragments, and missing manuscripts, as well as the three Old Portuguese codices housed at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon.

¹²This Libro de buen amor manuscript was entered into the Colegio de San Bartolomé library in 1440, and its colophon gives the names of both author and scribe (574). The editors of the Libro de confesiones also discuss citations of Martín Pérez in a manuscript of the Tractatus or Conclusiones contra clericos concubinarios housed at the University of Salamanca Library (MS 2198), ‘conclusionem ponit expresse Martinus Petri in suo Libro confessionum’ (xxiv). Pérez is later quoted as an authority by Alonso de Madrigal, known as ‘el Tostado’, and the fifteenth-century treatise De clericis concubinariis, attributed to Juan Alfonso de Benavente (xxv).

¹³ Cf. sts 1690–709, 112–22, 1095, 1315. On the theme of clerical concubinage in the Libro de buen amor, see Anthony Zahareas, ‘Celibacy in History and Fiction: The Case of El libro de buen amor’, Ideologies and Literature, 1 (1977), 77–82. Also see, Jerry Root, ‘Space to Speke’: The Confessional Subject in Medieval Literature (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), in which he has studied, in more general terms, the relationship between medieval penitential literature and the Libro de buen amor's treatment of the seven deadly sins.

¹⁴See Rita Hamilton, ‘The Digression on Confession in the Libro de buen amor’, in ‘Libro de buen amor’ Studies, ed. G. B. Gybbon-Monypenny (London: Tamesis, 1970), 149–57. Of course, both writers draw on the Decretals of Gratian (‘Introducción’, in Pérez, Libro de las confesiones, ed. García y García, et al., x–xi; Hamilton, ‘The Digression on Confession’, 154). Cf. Libro de buen amor S ‘si el çiego al çiego adiestra o lo quier traer, / en la foya dan entranbos e dentro van caer’ (1145cd). Both Ruiz and Pérez point out that, at the hour of death, authority is granted to receive the confessions of all sinners (1156b, p. 365). The cited verse from Matthew is followed in the Libro de confesiones by a humorous series of short dialogues between confessing penitents and ‘el confesor çiego’, who ignorantly justifies all manner of sins on the authority of popular proverbs (366).

¹⁵For a history of the decadence and attempted reform of the fourteenth-century Spanish clergy, see for example J. Fernández Conde, ‘Decadencia de la Iglesia española bajomedieval y proyectos de reforma’, in Historia de la Iglesia de España, ed. Ricardo García-Villoslada, 5 vols (Madrid: La Católica, 1979), II, 417–62.

¹⁶Mikhail Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981).

¹⁷Bahktin, The Dialogic Imagination, 75.

¹⁸‘La vieja tiene a tu amiga presta’ (381b).

¹⁹ Constatini Liber de coitu: El tratado de andrología de Constatino Africano, ed. Juan Montero Cartelle (Santiago de Compostela: Univ. de Santiago de Compostela, 1983), 83.

²⁰Vincent Beauvais, Speculum naturale, Vol. I, Speculum quadruplex, 4 vols (Graz: Akademische Druck/Verlaganstalt, 1964–1965). The Liber de coitu is also cited as an example by Morros Mestres (‘Las horas canónicas’, 404), and the Speculum naturale is quoted by G. B. Gybbon-Monypenny in his edition, Libro de buen amor, Clásicos Castalia 161 (Madrid: Castalia, 1988), 189. The Psalm continues with an evocation of the Lord bestowing His power on the Kings of Jerusalem, ‘ex utero’ (‘from the womb’) (109:3). For readers familiar with the biblical text, this ellipsis could have taken on a salacious meaning in combination with Amor's virga and its paranomastic identification as uter.

²¹A. S. Walpole, Early Latin Hymns (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1922), 262. The same verb, surgit, is implicated in a quote from the hymn for Resurrection, ‘Aurora lucis’ (Martin v. 12; 376c). The first two Latin fragments are from the Psalms (122:4, 134:2), and the hymn attributed to Gregory is known as the ‘Primo dierum omnium’ (‘First of All Days’).

²²Jacques E. Merceron, ‘Obscenity and Hagiography in Three Anonymous French Sermons Joyeux and in Jean Molinet's Saint Billouart’, in Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages, ed. Jan M. Ziolkowski (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 332–44.

²³See Rabelais Encyclopedia, ed. Elizabeth A. Chesney (Westport: Greenwood, 2004), 218–19; and Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1984), 191–92. According to legend, St Pothinus or Pothin was a second-century bishop of Lyon, who was martyred in prison during the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

²⁴Edward D. Jervey, ‘The Phallus and Phallus Worship in History’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 21:2 (1987), 103–15 (p. 109).

²⁵See, for example, the poetry of Guillaume d'Aquitaine, Poesía completa, ed. Luis Alberto de Cuenca (Sevilla: Renacimiento, 2007), 44. Also, see the Catalan (Valencian) version edited by Michael Solomon, The Mirror of Coitus: A Translation and Edition of the Fifteenth-Century ‘Speculum al foderi’ (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1990).

²⁶George F. Whicher, The Goliard Poets (New York: New Directions, 1949); La Garcineida, ed. Maurilio Pérez González, Ediciones Griegas y Latinas 1 (León: Univ. de León, 2001); and Martha Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996). On burlesque saints in medieval Spanish literature, see Ryan D. Giles, The Laughter of the Saints: Parodies of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2009).

²⁷Green, ‘Medieval Laughter’, 30; Morros Mestres, ‘Las horas canónicas’, 403–04.

²⁸Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum, ed. W. M. Lindsay, Oxford Classical Texts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911); Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies, trans. Stephen A. Barney (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2006).

²⁹‘Pruina est matutini temporis frigus, quae inde pruina nomen accepit quia sicut ignis urit; πŨρ enim ignis … nam uno sermone duo diversa significantur, pro eo quod unum effectum habent. Similis enim vis est et caloris et frigoris ... Nam calor urit ... Item frigus urit’. Isidore cites an example from the Aeneid of Dido burning on a funeral pyre, following her self-afflicted wound, ‘Uritur infelix Dido’ (‘Unhappy Dido burns’), followed by an image of piercing, burning cold from the Georgics, ‘frigus adurat’ (6.456, 1.93).

³⁰Augustine of Hippo, Expositions on the Psalms, trans. J. E. Tweed, Vol. VIII, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff, 14 vols (Buffalo: Christian Literature, 1888), Ps. 119.83. ‘Ardentibus autem spiritualibus desideriis, carnalia desideria sine dubitatione frigescunt: propter hoc sequitur … “factus sum tanquam uter in pruina” … Nimirum enim per utrem carnem mortis hujus, per pruinam vero coeleste beneficium vult intelligi, quo carnis concupiscentiae velut frigore cohibente torpescunt’ (Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 36 [Paris: Migne, 1841], 1558). Specifically, comparable descriptions of figurative chilling and inflaming in this Psalm can be found in Alacuin, Enchiridion, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 100 (Paris: Migne, 1851), 0608c; in Venerable Bede, Homiliae, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 94 (Paris: Migne, 1850), 0400a; and in Alain of Lille, Distinctiones dictionum theologicalium, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 210 (Paris: Migne, 1855), 0913d.

³¹Walpole, Early Latin Hymns, 109. The hymn is known as the ‘Nunc, Sancte, nobis Spiritus’ (‘Come to Us, Holy Spirit’). This verse quotes from the Hours, ‘cantate’, no doubt evoking the subsequent image in the Psalm, ‘laetabuntur in cubilibus suis’ (‘they shall be joyful in their [wedding] beds’) (149:5).

³²Bahktin, The Dialogic Imagination, 77.

³³Walpole, Early Latin Hymns, 109–10.

³⁴Elsewhere in the poem, ‘caridat’ similarly refers to the attainment of sexual satisfaction, including the song of the clergymen of Talavera and the old bawd's ‘passos de caridat’ (1322d).

³⁵The next verse features another vernacular transformation in which a response from Compline, ‘sub umbra’ (‘in the shadow’), is interpreted as ‘cubiertas’, following the liturgical plea from Amor's lovers, ‘custodi nos’ (386d; The Hours, 451).

³⁶‘Aurora lucis rutilat’, ed. Michael Martin, in Thesaurus Precum Latinarum (1998–2010), <http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Hymni/AuroraLucis.html/> (accessed December, 2010), vv. 5–10.

³⁷‘Quicumque’, ed. Michael Martin, in Thesaurus Precum Latinarum (1998–2010), <http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Symbola/Quicumque.html/> (accessed December, 2010), v. 6; v. 1. Also see ‘O Gloriosa Domina’, ed. Martin, in Thesaurus Precum Latinarum (1998–2010), <http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/BVM/OGloriosa.html/> (accessed December, 2010). This Marian hymn is known as ‘O Gloriosa Domina’. Morros also points out that ‘Católica’ and ‘rredruejas’ are elliptical translations from the Latin texts.

³⁸The term is used several other times in the poem (see, for example, 592d, 605cd, 649a, 678d).

³⁹See Louise O. Vasvári, ‘An Example of “Parodia Sacra” in the Libro de buen amor: “Quoniam” Pudenda’, La Corónica, 12:2 (1984), 195–203. In keeping with the findings of Vasvári, this construction provides an example of wordplay on the formation of conno from cunnus (195).

⁴⁰Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1992), 22.

⁴¹Camille, Image on the Edge, 40–41.

⁴²Camille, Image on the Edge, 49, 45.

⁴³See Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading, 162–64. For studies on the influence of the medieval figure of Pseudo-Ovid on the Libro de buen amor, see Richard Burkhard, The Archpriest of Hita and the Imitators of Ovid: A Study in the Ovidian Background of the ‘Libro de buen amor’ (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 1999); Dagenais, ‘ “Se usa e se faz”: Naturalist Truth in a Pamphilus Explicit and the Libro de buen amor’, Hispanic Review, 57:4 (1989), 417–36; and Ryan D. Giles, ‘A Galen for Lovers: Medical Readings of Ovid in Medieval and Early Renaissance Spain’, in Ovid in the Age of Cervantes, ed. Frederick A. de Armas (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2010), 3–17.

⁴⁴Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1998).

⁴⁵Images of honey are recurrent, but a close parallel between misuse of language from the canonical hours in the Carmina Burana and the Libro de buen amor can be found in the poem, Laboris remedium (see Whicher, The Goliard Poets, 216).