Mourning and anger at the foot of the cross: Mary’s pain in thirteenth-century Castile and León

ABSTRACT

The Latin Marian lament “Quis dabit” (literally “Who will give”) began circulating in thirteenth-century Castile and León at a time when devotion to the Virgin Mary was principally associated with miracles and conquest. A central theme of this popular text was Mary’s physical pain rather than her disembodied mental distress at the foot of the cross. I argue that the reception of “Quis dabit” in Castile and León was twofold. In his Duelo de la virgen, Gonzalo de Berceo (c. 1196 – c. 1260) incorporated medieval mourning traditions to emphasize Mary’s rage (rabia) over the loss of her son, highlighting her military might as queen during an age of conquest. While the illustrators of the Cantigas de Santa María were directly informed by passages from the “Quis dabit” in two unusual representations of Mary grasping Jesus’s crucified feet and gazing up at him, these images echoed only her painful, active sorrow in the “Quis dabit,” rather than her rage. The contrasting treatment of the “Quis dabit” in thirteenth-century Castile and León sheds light on how spiritual practices concentrating on Mary’s pain could be incorporated into devotion to a powerful, conquering queen of heaven.

KEYWORDS:

• Virgin Mary
• lament
• history of emotion
• Berceo
• Cantigas
• Quis dabit

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Remensnyder, La Conquistadora, part 1. The Castilian devotional norms contrasted with the rest of Europe’s turn to the humanity of Jesus, especially in meditative texts on Jesus’s life and Passion, as discussed in Bestul, Texts of the Passion; Fulton, From Judgment to Passion; McNamer, Affective Meditation.

2 Remensnyder, La Conquistadora, 45–57.

3 Even more widespread than Johannes de Caulibus’s famous Meditationes Vitae Christi, possibly because of the ease of copying a short text. See Bestul, Texts of the Passion, 52.

4 The earliest extant version of the “Quis dabit” in a Castilian manuscript is the one copied by Gil de Zamora in his Liber Mariae, compiled during Alfonso X’s reign. See Zamora, “Liber Mariae,” 319–29. Two copies of Liber Mariae survive, each preserving a different variant of the “Quis dabit,” according to Bohdziewicz, “Edición crítica y estudio del Liber Mariae,” 133–34. Berceo’s Duelo is the proof that the “Quis dabit” circulated earlier than Juan Gil’s copies, although the date of composition for his lament is disputed (either at the end of Fernando III’s reign or early in that of Alfonso X).

5 Bestul elides the specific context of mourning when translating meroris as sorrow: “cum rectum erat amoris et meroris continens modum.” See Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 180–81. Bestul, Texts of the Passion, 130, also discusses the author of “Quis dabit” as wanting to portray Mary as passive rather than out of control. For a thorough discussion of male theologians who emphasized either Mary’s extreme grief or her decorous restraint, see Falkenburg, “The Decorum of Grief,” 65–89.

6 Klinck, “Singing a Song of Sorrow,” 8.

7 Scholars have discussed Berceo in relation to Alfonso X, though not specifically the Marian lament tradition that influenced them both. For broad strokes relating Berceo’s Marian work, Alfonso X’s Cantigas, and Zamora’s Liber Mariae, see Marchand and Baldwin, “Singers of the Virgin in Thirteenth-Century Spain,” 169–83; Fernández Conde, Plena Edad Media, 2:471–77.

8 Barbara Rosenwein’s influential term traces the presence of competing “emotional communities” in a given place and time, which can be identified through their reliance on different emotional vocabularies. See, among others, Rosenwein, Generations of Feeling.

9 García Jiménez, “Un compendio,” 33–50, situates Berceo’s Duelo with reference to elegiac forms of lament about death in medieval Spain, but nearly all the examples are from the fifteenth century and there is no reference to the range of possible public mourning rituals.

10 Doubleday, “Anger in the Crónica de Alfonso X,” 67.

11 For early Christian and early medieval representations of Mary as restrained, see Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, part 2; see esp. 425 for the shift to a new ideal of compassion and grief in the twelfth century.

12 For the widespread diffusion of the Marian laments, see Bestul, Texts of the Passion, 51–55.

13 The theology of co-redemptio is discussed in Sticca, Planctus Mariae, 19–31; Bestul, Texts of the Passion, 113. On its art, see von Simson, “Compassio and Co-redemptio,” 9–16.

14 Cohen, “Contextualizing Late Medieval Emotions,” 179: “Compassion carried a strong somatic element, expressed in stigmata and other corporeal markings of the passion engraved upon the body [sic] of compassionate religious women.”

15 “Quis dabit” mentions the sword at least twice, see Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 175, 185. For further discussion, Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 199; Sticca, Planctus Mariae, 60; Schuler, “Seven Sorrows,” 5–28.

16 Neff, “The Pain of Compassio,” 254–73.

17 Amelang, “Mourning Becomes Eclectic,” 3–31.

18 Miguélez Cavero, Actitudes gestuales en la iconografía, 127–31.

19 Sources for Iberian mourning traditions range from Christian chronicles to the Cantigas to Jewish and Muslim texts. See Martínez Gil, La muerte vivida, 99–101. For the specific example of Doña Lambra’s grieving over her dead servant by scratching her skin and crying in the Siete infantes de Lara (preserved in the Estoria General), see the appendix of Vaquero, “A Recurrent Theme,” 320.

20 Henry, “‘Plange, Castella misera’,” 32; Muñoz Fernández, "Llanto, palabras y gestos," 135. Muñoz Fernández, “'Plantus Mariae',” 237–61, situates Marian laments under the Catholic monarchs in relation to these highly embodied and self-wounding traditions of lay mourning.

21 Muñoz Fernández, “Llanto, palabras y gestos,” 130; Welsh, “Tearing the Face,” 43–61.

22 Casey, “Feeling It Like a Man,” 244.

23 Henry, “‘Plange, Castella misera’,” 31.

24 Bergqvist, “‘Era omne de grant coraçón’,” 15–36; Welsh, “Tearing the Face,” 44–50.

25 Lansing, Passion and Order, 96–98.

26 Arranz Guzman, “La reflexión sobre la muerte,” 118–19; Muñoz Fernández, “Llanto, palabras y gestos,” 111, 134. For discussion of the prohibition of the sacraments, see Welsh, “Tearing the Face,” 55–56. The early modern edition of the Siete Partidas has been digitized: López, Siete Partidas, available at https://7partidas.hypotheses.org/tag/lopez-1555±primera-partida/page/2.

27 Menéndez Pidal, Primera crónica general, ch. 1134, p. 773, cited by Muñoz Fernández, “Llanto, palabras y gestos,” 111n9.

28 Goodland, Female Mourning and Tragedy, 18.

29 Due to the elite nature of the records, we have significant evidence of the mourning traditions among royalty and nobility, which is not to say that such traditions would not have also been common at other levels of society.

30 According to Rosenwein, Generations of Feeling, 7–8, emotional communities expect standardized sequences of emotions. For example, grief might be followed naturally by joy according to some communities, or anger according to others.

31 Discussed in Henry, “‘Plange, Castella misera’,” 34.

32 Henry, “‘Plange, Castella misera’,” 35.

33 Remensnyder, La Conquistadora, 52–55, details Alfonso X’s view that Mary had been of direct aid in every one of his victories within Spain as well as his attempts to colonize North Africa. Notably, the only surviving Castilian manuscripts of “Quis dabit” from the central Middle Ages are from Alfonso’s court, discussed below.

34 White, “The Politics of Anger,” 135, for the association of angry grief with feuding culture, see 145; Henry, “‘Plange, Castella misera’,” 32. Even the troubadours discussed women’s pain during love and connected anger to grief (i.e., a broken heart), see Pfeffer, “Constant Sorrow,” 120–21. For anger and grief as overlapping in medieval literature and theology, see Foehr-Janssens, La veuve en majesté, 57–58. For a proposal to decouple the study of grief from anger, see Winkler, “Grief, Grieving, and Loss,” 128–83; for a study that simply does decouple them, see Delogu, “‘Ala grant temps de douleur languissant’,” 1–26.

35 For a brief suggestion that around 1200 vengeance started to be associated with grief rather than with rancor, at least in the emotional communities of Northern Europe, see Rosenwein, “Les émotions de la vengeance,” 251. Note that a public display of angry grief could be a moral or political action that moved others to help avenge the wrong that was mourned; scholars disagree whether women could enact such vengeance. See White, “The Politics of Anger,” 146–47 and note 67 below. On the moral weight of vengeance, see Throop, “Introduction,” 1–2.

36 Barton, “Gendering Anger,” 377–78; Cohen, “Contextualizing Late Medieval Emotions,” 182; Classen, “Anger and Anger Management,” 25–26. For zeal in crusades, see Throop, “Zeal, Anger, and Vengeance,” 177–202. There has been little study of female anger, per se, in medieval texts except for Gourlay, “A Pugnacious Pagan Princess,” 133–63.

37 Bergqvist, “‘Era omne de grant coraçón’,” 25, 28–30, quotation on p. 30.

38 Bergqvist, “‘Era omne de grant coraçón’,” 30; for the fever, Henry, “‘Plange, Castella misera’,” 33.

39 Bergqvist, “‘Era omne de grant coraçón’,” 33. Elsewhere Bergqvist, “Tears of Weakness,” 77–97, explores the necessity for kings to be moderate in their anger to avoid vice.

40 One lists “iram Dei et meam plenarie incurrat,” another only the wrath of the queen, another the wrath of the Trinity. González, Alfonso IX, documents 109, 10, 66, in 2:158, 2:159, and 2:235, respectively. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this reference.

41 Althoff, “Ira Regis,” 59–60.

42 In my analysis, I rely on Bestul’s critical edition and translation of the “Quis dabit” based on a fourteenth-century manuscript, with cross-references to Marx’s edition of a thirteenth-century manuscript and to the version compiled by Gil de Zamora in his Liber Mariae during Alfonso X’s reign which has only minor variants from the versions edited by Bestul and Marx. Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 165–85; Marx, “Quis dabit,” 118–29; Zamora, “Liber Mariae,” 319–29. A warning: the Latin text provided in the Patrologia Latina (and again as a comparative in the first critical edition of Duelo) is quite abbreviated. Ogier of Locedio, “Liber de passione Christi,” 1133A-42A; transcribed in Berceo, El duelo de la Virgen, 52–58.

43 For an overview, see Bestul, Texts of the Passion, 52–53. Note there is a recent translation of Ogier’s entire work, of which the “Quis dabit” is homily 12: Ogier of Locedio, “In Praise of God’s Holy Mother,” 23–168, especially 145–56. The variant titles for “Quis dabit” include Liber de passione Christi et doloribus et planctibus Matris eius or Tractatus beati Bernardi abbatis de lamentatione [or de planctu] Virginis Marie. For a summary of the debate about “Quis dabit” as Berceo’s source, without recognition that these two titles are variants of the same text, see Fernández Pérez, “El estilo,” 76–85.

44 See note 4 above for bibliography on Zamora. For an edition of the Liber Mariae, see Zamora, “Liber Mariae,” 161–508; for a study see 1–160 in the same work.

45 The version copied in the fifteenth-century Castilian miscellany BNE MSS/7767 ends abruptly in the midst of describing John and Mary’s reactions to Jesus giving her into his care, shearing the text of much of its iconic, gut-wrenching emotion. See Robinson, Imagining the Passion, 267–68.

46 Ogier of Locedio, De planctu, conserved as Universidad de Salamanca I-189. For brief discussion, see Robinson, Imagining the Passion, 267n78.

47 Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 168–69.

48 Bestul, Texts of the Passion, 128, discussing Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 168–69; John is silenced 174–76. Bestul, Texts of the Passion, 123, notes that Mary’s silence is a feature of the Vitae Christi narratives as well, including Johannes de Caulibus’s Meditationes Vitae Christi. For another discussion of Mary as silent in “Quis dabit,” see Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 426–27.

49 From the facing-page edition and translation in the appendix to Bestul’s analysis: “Tanto dolore et tristicia uexabar in morte, quantus non posset explicari sermon … . Volebam loqui, sed dolor verba rumpebat, quia verbum iam mente conceptum, dum ad formacionem procederet oris: ad se imperfectum reuocabat dolor nimis cordis. Vox triste sonabat foris, vulnus denuncians mentis … Videbam morientem quem diligit anima mea, et tota liquefierat pre doloris angustia.” Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 170–71; only minor variations in Marx, “Quis dabit,” 124, lines 85–92. Zamora’s version indicates that “too great a sorrow calls back the dead word” (with interfectum instead of imperfectum). Zamora, “Liber Mariae,” 321 line 26. Note the Song of Songs wording in the last line from 1:6 and 5:6.

50 For tristitia as a sub-category of dolor from Augustine to Aquinas, see Mowbray, Pain and Suffering in Medieval Theology, 23. Bestul translates “tam amaris repleri doloribus” as “filled with such bitter pains.” Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 182–83. For discussion of the physiological continuum between physical pain and emotional grief in scholastic theology in the decades after Ogier and Berceo which would ultimately impact the later medieval Castilian Passion tradition, see Boon, “The Body-and-Soul in Pain,” 249–87.

51 Latham, DMLBS, 1:86, including an example from Anselm.

52 Interestingly, the fifteenth century manuscript stops just short of this scene. See above note 45.

53 “Iuxta crucem stabat Maria intuens vultu benigno pendentem in patibulo pedisbusque nitens. In altum manus leuabat, crucem amplectens, in osculatum ruens ex qua parte sanguis vnda crucem rigabat … . Volebat amplecti Christum in alto pendentem, sed manus in frustra tense, in se complexe redibant; se eleuat a terra tangere dilectum, vt sic saltem doloris sui aliquatenus demulceat aculeum. Et quia tangere nequibat, membra virginea ad terram collisa iaciunter.” Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 179; with some differences that do not impact the overall sense of the phrase, Zamora, “Liber Mariae,” 325. My thanks to Linda Mitchell for consulting on the wording differences, personal communication, 29 November 2020.

54 In contrast, note that Arnald of Bonneval (d. after 1156) describes Mary as lifting her hands to celebrate her son’s sacrifice: “et elevatis in cruce manibus celebrare cum filio sacrificium.” Arnald of Bonneval, "Libellus de laudibus B. Mariae virginis," 1727A.

55 “[S]ed dum de cruce depositum fuit, supra ipsum ruens prae incontinencia doloris … ” Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 178–81.

56 “Interim frontem et genas, os simul et oculos, osculari lassata non desinit.” Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 180–81.

57 “[D]olorem … rectur erat amoris et meroris continens modum. Non desperabat, sed pie et iuste dolebat … ” Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 180–81.

58 For discussion of the swoon in medieval art, see Hamburgh, “The Problem of Lo Spasimo,” especially pages 66–67; von Simson, “Compassio and Co-redemptio,” 9–16.

59 “Commota sunt omnia uiscera mea (Gen 43:30) et defecit spiritus meus (Ps 76:4), et non erat michi sensus, neque vox.” Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 168–69. Loss of voice comes before loss of sense in other editions: Marx, “Quis dabit,” 126, lines 62–63; Zamora, “Liber Mariae,” 321.

60 Contemporary neurological theories, as in Freedberg and Gallese, “Motion, Emotion, and Empathy,” 197–203, suggest that seeing another person move or feel emotion causes mirror neurons to fire in our brains, so that we do not actually have to generate the movement or emotion ourselves in order for our brains to experience it. For application to medieval devotions, see Stevenson, Performance, Cognitive Theory, and Devotional Culture, 23–27.

61 Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 171, 179, 181. For discussion of the melting soul in a Marian antiphon in medieval Assumption liturgies, see Rothenberg, The Flower of Paradise, 34–35.

62 Scholars disagree as to whether angry grief could manifest in women; some who study the medieval lament tradition entirely foreclose the possibility of lamenting rage, while others have documented that mourning could lead to revenge, as women in the midst of angry grief might murder the killer of their loved ones. See Bailey, “Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography,” 529–44; for women’s mourning rage in the high Middle Ages, see Klinck, “Singing a Song of Sorrow,” 16; and for later medieval laments calling for vengeance as justice, see Goodland, Female Mourning and Tragedy, 20–21.

63 Zamora reads “O Iudei impii, O iudei miseri,” as does the 1500 Castilian edition. Marx reads “O Iudei impii,” and the PL version reads “O Judaei, ipsi.” See following note for citations.

64 “Quid faciam? Moritur filius meus … O mors misera, noli michi parcere … Exaggera vires: trucida matrem, matrem cum filio perime simul. Fili … .In tuo me suscipe patibulo, vt qui vna carne viuunt [et vno amore se diligunt,] vna morte pereant. O Iudei impii … nolite michi parcere! Ex quo natum meum vnicum crucifigitis, matrem crucifigite, aut alia quacumque morte seua me perimite … .male solus moritur.” Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 170–73, for minor variants see also Marx, “Quis dabit,” 124, lines 93–03; Zamora, “Liber Mariae,” 322, Ogier, De planctu, a3v. Some scholars have argued that Mary’s desire to die is added to the “Quis dabit” in a later recension, but the presence of this phrasing in Zamora’s Liber Mariae indicates that Marx, “Quis dabit,” 121–22, is correct to date this to the thirteenth-century variants.

65 Bestul, Texts of the Passion, 125–26.

66 Timmons and Boenig, Gonzalo de Berceo and the Latin Miracles, 107–29; Patton, Art of Estrangement, ch. 5.

67 “Transibat seuus, seue perimebat utrumque. Que magis amabat, seuior seuiebat in matre. Mater senciebat, et sentit Christi dolores . … Christi morientis vulnera matris erant; Christi dolores seui fuere tortores in anima matris. Mater erat laniata … . Mente mater erat percussa cuspide teli … . In mente eius creuerant magni dolores, nec poterant extra refundi, intus atrociter seuientes.” Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 174–76; Marx, “Quis dabit,” lines 154–63, p. 26; Zamora, “Liber Mariae,” 324.

68 Scarry, Body in Pain, 15–17.

69 I will cite Berceo’s work by stanza, as it exists in numerous editions and a translation. I utilize Dutton’s 1975 edition and the collective translation of Berceo’s works: Berceo, “El duelo de la Virgen,” 17–51; Berceo, “The Lamentation of the Virgin,” 189–207.

70 See above note 43. Oddly, a relatively recent article on the Duelo asserts that Berceo’s source for Bernardine material is unknown. Sol Rodríguez, “La Virgen María,” 239.

71 Daas, The Politics of Salvation, 78. Scarborough, “Co-redemptive Role,” 123–32, has discussed co-redemptio in Berceo’s Duelo, but does not discuss his transformation of his source, “Quis dabit.”

72 Cátedra, Poesía de pasión, 201. The work receives only passing summary in a seminal article on Berceo’s Mariology by García de la Concha, “La mariología en Gonzalo de Berceo,” 71–73.

73 Biographical details from http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portales/gonzalo_de_berceo/autor_biografia/, accessed 11 May 2020. It is worth noting that the attribution of Duelo to Berceo is nearly unanimous, disputed only by Brian Dutton in Berceo, “El duelo de la Virgen,” 53–62. Dutton’s grounds are stylistic, including a different copyist and different approaches to the couplets, and he suggests an anonymous Cistercian monk or nun instead. He lists it among the spurious works attributed to Berceo, p. 237.

74 Timmons and Boenig, “Medieval ‘Spin’,” 228; Catalina, “Literary Expressions of Pastoral Reform,” 250–53.

75 Bower, “The Body Embattled,” 176–78; García Otero, “Hag[e]ografía pro-castellana,” 44.

76 See for example Flory, Marian Representations; Twomey, The Fabric of Marian Devotion. The only monographs on Berceo’s spirituality do not address the Duelo, see Ruiz Domínguez, El mundo espiritual de Gonzalo de Berceo; Keller, Pious Brief Narrative, 73.

77 The Jews guarding Jesus’s tomb kept themselves awake with the song. For Eya velar as a parody or imitation of liturgical form, see Dutton, “Berceo's Watch-Song ‘Eya Velar’,” 253.

78 Some propose that the Milagros were written before the Duelo, dating the latter anywhere from 1240 to 1258. Dutton’s introduction dates it between 1237 and 1246, most likely on the earlier side. Berceo, El duelo de la Virgen, 3.

79 The discussion by Scarborough, “Narrative Voices,” 112, assumes that the discussion between the Virgin and Bernard is a detail unique to Berceo.

80 Berceo, Duelo, stanza 13; compare Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 169. See note 69 for edition and translation information.

81 “Abraçava la cruz hasta do alcançava,/ besávali los piedes, en eso me gradava;/ non podia la boca, ca alta me estava,/ nin facía las manos, que yo más cobdiciava.” Berceo, Duelo, stanza 138; Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 179.

82 Berceo, Duelo, stanza 153; Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 179.

83 Berceo, Duelo, stanza 145.

84 “Nunca podié el omne por grant cueita morir;/ yo pidía la muerte, non me qerié venir;/ yo a todo mi grado non qería bebir …  . batiendo miés massiellas, rastrando por el suelo … ” Berceo, Duelo, stanza 26, 28. This point contrasts with a later stanza, where she embodies the passivity of mourning typically represented in Romanesque art by standing: “[her] head hanging sadly, [her] hands on [her] cheeks” (la cabeza colgada, mano en massiella). Stanza 34, discussed in Caamaño Martínez, “Berceo, como fuente de iconografía,” 186.

85 For pleading with Jesus, see Berceo, Duelo, stanza 75, 123; for pleading first with Muslims and then with Jews, see stanzas 56–57.

86 Berceo, Duelo, stanzas 164–65; contrast Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 174–76, quoted above at note 67.

87 For Berceo’s frequent reinterpretations of his Latin sources, see Bower, “The Body Embattled,” 194. For this poem in particular, see Andrade de Labadía, “Pasión,” 226–27.

88 Berceo, Duelo, stanza 124, noted in Sol Rodríguez, “La Virgen María,” 250, 253. Further indications appear in stanzas 22 and 82, among others. For la gloriosa, see stanza 205.

89 Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 169. The events from the Last Supper through his mocking are found in Berceo, Duelo, stanzas 15–31.

90 Marrow, “Circumdederunt,” 167–81.

91 As ravia: Fotitch, An Anthology of Old Spanish, 240. Its absence from the Miraglos is based on a word search of the online edition: Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Señora / Gonzalo de Berceo (en Formato HTML).

92 For discussion of medical rabies in the Cantigas, see López González, “Rabid Melancholy,” 203–24.

93 Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana: rabia 2:155v; airado 1:10v, ira 2:80r.

94 Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana: furor 2:20r.

95 “Bien ploren los mis ojos, non cesan de manar/ el coraçón me rabia, non me puede folgar,” Berceo, Duelo, stanza 140. “Qa la rabia del Fijo las telas me tajaba,” stanza 149.

96 Berceo, Duelo, stanza 158. For the faint: “Cadió en tierra muerta como de mal ravioso,” stanza 109.

97 “Yo, con ravia del Fijo, estávali cerquiella … ” Berceo, Duelo, stanza 34.

98 “Judíos e paganos faciéndoli bocines … echávanli en rostro los malos su saliva,/ estava muy rabiosa la su madre captiva,” stanzas 50, 52. Kulp-Hill translates muy rabiosa as “seething with anger,” which evokes the Galenic concept of anger but is not a literal rendition of Berceo’s phrasing. She translates captiva as “sorrowful.”

99 White, “The Politics of Anger,” 151.

100 Andrade de Labadía, “Pasión,” 219. Note that the torneo that Andrade de Labadía reads as a tourney is made metaphorical in the English translation as “twists and turns.” Berceo, Duelo, stanza 43.

101 Andrade de Labadía, “Pasión,” 224; for Leonor, see Henry, “‘Plange, Castella misera’,” 36.

102 “[U]na noble señora agraviada y no solo dolorida … ” Andrade de Labadía, “Pasión,” 225.

103 “[U]na ‘gesta’ caballeresca requería de una madre luchadora, que convincentemente pudiera ‘reptar’ … a los vasallos fementidos y traidores … ” Andrade de Labadía, “Pasión,” 227.

104 Berceo, Duelo, stanza 28. See above note 84.

105 Berceo, Duelo, stanza 73.

106 For the morphology of lazdrar to lacerar, see Martinéz-Gil, “Consonant Intrusion,” 41–42.

107 Variously spelled as quieta, cueyta, cueita, and cuita. For the Old Castilian, see Fotitch, An Anthology of Old Spanish, 211. Artiles, Los recursos literarios de Berceo, 208–09, lists the following as regular terms throughout the Duelo: “lágrimas, duelo, planto, cuita, temblor, dolor, amargura, gemido, plorar, lazrar, penar, plañir, sufrir.”

108 Saugnieux, Berceo y las culturas del siglo XIII, 133.

109 Berceo, Duelo, stanza 98. Note that the English edition renders this as “she is upsetting us all.” My stronger translation is confirmed by the word index in Fotitch, An Anthology of Old Spanish, 213.

110 Highlights amongst the immense body of scholarship on the Cantigas are O’Callaghan, Poetic Biography; Flory, Marian Representations, 110–30. Art historical scholarship is cited in notes below.

111 Cantigas 30, 113, 170, and 190; Domínguez Rodríguez, “Compassio y co-redemptio,” 20n13.

112 The two surviving illustrated manuscripts were likely meant as a pair, such that the illustrations from the El Escorial manuscript (T.I.1) are the only visual renditions of 50 (f. 44v) and 140 (f. 196r), since the other, Florence Biblioteca Nazionale B.R.20, only provides the last 133 Cantigas (and only forty-eight are illustrated in the unfinished manuscript). Patton, Art of Estrangement, 136. El codice rico has been digitized at https://rbme.patrimonionacional.es/s/rbme/item/11337#?c = &m = &s = &cv = &xywh = -3673%2C-313%2C11089%2C6240.

113 The only song that describes Mary’s seven sorrows, Cantiga 403, lists them as a series of Jesus’s activities rather than her own actions or emotions, ultimately commenting on her sorrow solely in relation to Jesus’s ascension, not his death. Alfonso el Sabio, Cantigas de Santa María, 2:354–55; Alfonso el Sabio, Songs of Holy Mary, 485.

114 Domínguez Rodríguez, “Compassio y co-redemptio,” 20–26. For a survey of Marian imagery in the time of Alfonso showing Mary alone or with her son on her knee, not at the foot of cross, see Cómez Ramos, “Iconografía mariana hispalense,” 107–38.

115 This trope of Mary Magdalene was first popularized in Italian altarpieces and thence in the rest of Europe a few decades after the production of the Cantigas. Bohde, “Mary Magdalene,” 3–44. See also Domínguez Rodríguez, “Compassio y co-redemptio,” 20–26.

116 Domínguez Rodríguez, “Compassio y co-redemptio,” 20–26, classifies the two Cantiga crucifixions as the sole antecedents to the fifteenth-century tradition. Bohde, “Mary Magdalene,” 44, suggests the “Quis dabit” as the artist’s source but does not discuss the Cantigas antecedents at all.

117 Sánchez Ameijeiras, “Ymagines sanctae,” 516n3; Domínguez Rodríguez, “Iconografia evangélica,” 38.

118 Doubleday, “Anger in the Crónica de Alfonso X,” 67. The vocabulary of anger comes from the Siete Partidas 2:v:IX, discussed in Ferrer, “Emotions in Motion,” 154–55; Doubleday, “Anger in the Crónica de Alfonso X,” 72–73.

119 Domínguez Rodríguez, “Iconografia evangélica,” 43.

120 For the song’s wording, see Alfonso el Sabio, Cantigas de Santa María, 1:144–45; Alfonso el Sabio, Songs of Holy Mary, 66.

121 Domínguez Rodríguez, “Iconografia evangélica,” 42.

122 Alfonso el Sabio, Cantigas de Santa María, 2:112; Alfonso el Sabio, Songs of Holy Mary, 173.

123 Patton, Art of Estrangement, 149. Note that their inclusion is reminiscent of Berceo’s focus on a malevolent Jewish presence.

124 For discussion of the cloak as a Jewish stereotype, see Patton, Art of Estrangement, 33; on this image, 149, 152.

125 Bohde, “Mary Magdalene,” 44, clarifies that none of the Vita Christi manuscripts in circulation included this detail.

126 Ogier of Locedio, “Quis dabit,” 179, for the Latin see note 53 above.

127 See above at note 27.

128 For Alfonso’s creation of a cult of the Virgin Mary to support his monarchy, see Lappin, “The Thaumaturgy of Regal Piety,” 39–59; for Fernando III and Alfonso X, see Remensnyder, La Conquistadora, 45–57.

129 There has been no satisfactory explanation for the relative dearth of interest in the Passion in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Castile. Cátedra, Poesía de pasión, 202–07, acknowledges the “enorme laguna que tenemos” in terms of a textual Castilian Passion tradition, suggesting that the Italian laud tradition circulated in the central kingdom of the peninsula instead. Besides the Duelo, there exists only a brief Passion narrative in the Libro de buen amor, which does not include a Marian lament, and a few sermons. For discussion of the Libro de buen amor Passion, see Haywood, “Pasiones, angustias y dolores,” 935–44; for a late fourteenth-century sermon including a representation of Mary as influenced by the “Quis dabit,” see Sánchez Sánchez, Un sermonario castellano medieval, II:647–57. In comparison, over 400 manuscripts of 100 vernacular Life of Christ and Life of Mary narratives with extended Passion scenes survive from 1150–1500 in France. See Boulton, Sacred Fictions of Medieval France, 19. For Castilian Passion spirituality in the last quarter of the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth, see Whinnom, “Supposed Sources of Inspiration,” 268–91; Robinson, Imagining the Passion, ch. 5; Boon, Mystical Science, ch. 1.

130 See above notes 45–46.

131 For a recent overview of the printing history of La passión trobada, see Marín Pina, “La Pasión trobada,” 206–27. For the complete manuscript version, which is longer than the printed version, see Severin, El Cancionero de Oñate-Castañeda, 302–28.

132 Diego de San Pedro, “La passión trobada,” 203, verse 16. see also 163–64, verse 127.

133 For the verse, see Diego de San Pedro, Siete angustias, A2r. This passage is discussed under the rubric of mourning in Muñoz Fernández, “'Plantus Mariae',” 244–45.

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Jessica A. Boon

Jessica A. Boon is an associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Boon studies spirituality and mysticism in Spain, particularly 1450–1550 during its transition from a pluri-religious society to a Catholic global empire, but also the medieval antecedents to that transition. Theoretical interests include the body’s physiological and cognitive elements as understood in premodern medical theory, the impact of embodied emotion on mystical methods, the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and disability in visionary texts, and the body’s configuration through material culture in the process of spiritual practices. The Mystical Science of the Soul: Medieval Cognition in Bernardino de Laredo’s Recollection Method (University of Toronto Press, 2012), examined the intersection of medical and mystical discourses in Spanish “recollection” mysticism in order to reposition the medical body and the embodied soul as critical elements of sixteenth century spirituality. Boon has published articles on Passion spirituality, Mariology, and issues of gender, sexuality in medieval and early modern Castilian mystical and meditative texts, as well as in thirteenth century Flemish mysticism.