Miguel-Prendes Reimagining Cárcel Readers

Reimagining Diego de San Pedro's Readers at Work: Cárcel de
Amor
Sol Miguel-Prendes
La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and

Cultures, Volume 32, Number 2, Spring 2004, pp. 7-44 (Article)
Published by La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures,

and Cultures
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cor.2004.0013
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/430163/summary
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REIMAGINING DIEGO DE SAN PEDRO'S
READERS AT WORK: CÁRCEL DE AMOR
Sol Miguel-Prendes
Wake Forest University
Envisioning Diego de San Pedro's readership has proved a vexed
question. The difficulty in objectively reconstructing any sentimental
fiction's readership dirough documentary sources leads Carmen Parrilla
in a recent article to resort to complementary principles. Under the
influence of reader-reception theory, in particular the outlining of
the horizon of expectations to hypodiesize a Model Reader who de-
codes the textual cues proposed by the authorial function, Parrilla
presumes a public analogous for that of cancionero poetry. It is fully
acquainted wiüi the religio amoris fhat articulates erotic desire in terms
of Christian love and stresses die contemplation of the lover's suffer-
ings. The social environment for these sentimental reflections is die
royal or nobiliary courts or ofher culturally refined circles ("La ficción
sentimental y sus lectores" 22).
Determining die audience for cancionero poetry dirough documen-
tary sources, however, presents similar difficulties. A possible solution
to this quandary may lie in Ana M. Gómez-Bravo's examination of
cancionero poetry as a group practice within the limits of noble patron-
age. She advocates a re-evaluation of premodern audiorship as a so-
cial process through an analysis of the culture, social groups, historical
development and the material conditions of writing.
I propose to combine diis notion of social audiorship widi an analy-
sis of the cues provided in the works themselves to reimagine die
intended readership for Diego de San Pedro's most celebrated mas-
terpiece, Cárcel de amor, and, more generally, to explain the reading
habits of die patrons who commissioned sentimental fictions as part of
the network of practices diat produced literary texts at die Isabelline
La corónica 32.2 (Spring, 2004): 7-44

8 Sol Miguel-PrendesLa corónica 32.2, 2004
court.1 I shall consider the cultural context of Castilian literary and

artistic patronage during the age of the Catholic Monarchs, dien ana-
lyze Cárcel's rhetoric of reading and social audiorship. Aldiough I am
in no position at fhis point to extend my conclusions to the whole
sentimental genre, I wish to address the recent controversy and present
a fresh perspective on one of its canonical works from my larger project
on die impact of contemplative practices in fifteenth-century literary
creation.2
Parrilla is righdy puzzled by die documentary evidence. Aldiough
San Pedro himself complained of Cárcel de amor s enormous appeal,3
die meager evidence in private libraries challenges this assumption
and disagrees widi the number of editions and translations into odier
languages traditionally cited to substantiate Cárcel's success. Cárcel, de
amor left no trace in die book inventory of Queen Isabel's library nor
in any odier noble library ofher entourage (Parrilla, "La ficción sen-
timental" 21) although it is well-known diat the work was composed
for die Isabelline court in die years immediately before die conquest
of Granada. While for most of San Pedro's works, Parrilla postulates a
female readership receptive to literary fashions (23), she acknowledges
that Cárcel was written at the explicit request of the nobleman Diego
Hernandes, alcaide de los donceles (prólogo to Cárcel de amor xliv). Ex-
ploring the literary and artistic fashions that appealed to the aristo-
cratic readers of the Isabelline court may explain the cultural and
material conditions oí Cárcel's writing.
1 See Margaret J. M. Ezell, Social Authorship and the Advent ofPrint. She states that, "a
reader in a manuscript culture, with a fluid text constantly subject to change, is respon-
sible for participating in literary production as well as consumption; it is interesting to note
here, too, how often the role of the reader of manuscript text becomes conflated with the
roles of editing, correcting, or copying the text and extending its circulation of readers"
<41)\- For the debate on the generic limits of the Sentimental Fiction, see the fourteen
articles in the Critical Cluster "The Sentimental Romance" in La coránica 29. 1 (2000): 3-229,
and the subsequent Forum with fourteen follow-up responses on the same theme in 3 1 .2
(2003): 237-31 9. An advance of mv project appeared in La coránica as "Chivalric Identity
in Enrique deViWena s Arte cisoria" .
1 San Pedro repented from the frivolous writings of his youth in a later poem,
"Desprecio de la Fortuna" (ca. 1498), where he regrets that Cárcel de amor "no tuvo en leerse
calma".
Reimagining Diego de San Pedro's Readets at Work9
The "prayer-book" mentality

Jeremy Lawrance coined die term "vernacular humanism" for die trans-
lations of the classics diat became so popular in die Iberian Peninsula
during the fifteenth century. He claims that the fictional character
Curial, a warrior familiar with classical literature, in fact reflects a
social reality of noble lay readers ("On Fifteenth-century Spanish Hu-
manism" 64-65). His conclusion diat the aristocracy developed a keen
fondness for reading is indisputable, but it is more important to em-
phasize his observation that their tastes veered toward ancient history
and moral philosophy or, as he apdy explains, toward texts diat pro-
vided "solace and consolation" ("The Spread of Lay Literacy" 90).
Furthermore, diey disliked scholarly marginalia, as Ruy López Dávalos
indicates in a letter to die translator of Boethius into Castilian (81).
They were "lazy readers", as Enrique de Villena says in his translation
of and commentary on the Aeneid, widi little patience for academic
subdeties but eager to spend dieir leisure time in texts that were "rooted
in dieir actual living conditions" (90). An oustanding example of the
Castilian gentry's literary tastes is evinced by the book collection that
Pedro Rodriguez de Velasco, first Count of Haro, donated in 1455 to
die Hospital de la Vera Cruz.4 In this library, chivalric romances and
treatises on nobility share shelf space widi Franciscan mystical works,
such as die Meditaciones de la Pasión, a mixture that Lawrance terms
"sacro-militar" and diat is representative of die period's cultural mi-
lieu ("Nueva luz" 1076-77).
Odier inventories of noble libraries confirm diis perspective. Along
with die expected chivalric novels and pious books, Boefhius's Conso-
lation of PhUosophy occupies an eminent position.5 Furfhermore, when
we consider sixteenth-century best-sellers, die picture is not greatiy
altered. Whinnom states diat "Golden-Age printing [was] dominated
by prose non-fiction, devotional, moralizing and historical works"
("Problem of the best-seller in Spanish Golden-Age Literature" 194)
4 The hospital was an institution devoted to the support of twelve old hidalgos and the
care of the sick and poor in the area (Lawrance, "Nueva Luz sobre la biblioteca del conde
de Haro" 1074).
5 Isabel Beceiro Pita, "Los libros que pertenecieron a los condes de Benavente, entre
1434 y 1530"; Beceiro Pita and Alfonso Franco Silva, "Cultura nobiliar y bibliotecas: cinco
ejemplos, de las postrimerías del siglo XIV a mediados del XVI"; M.A. Ladero Quesada and
M. C. Quintanilla Raso, "Bibliotecas de la alta nobleza castellana en el siglo XV".
10Sol Miguel-PrendesLa coránica 32.2, 2004
and Sarah Nalle notes that manuals for private devotions remained
immensely popular.6
The material evidence from art history demonstrates the same
religious taste. Retablos decorating aristocratic burial chapels prolifer-
ated during the age of the Catholic Monarchs (Yarza Luaces 240).
These multipaneled altarpieces sat behind and above die altar" and
depict scenes from die lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary and sym-
bolic representations, such as die Cross, Mary's Sorrows, or Christ as
Man of Sorrows. Analogous images embellish the devotional books
owned by the Castilian gentry. The Misal Rico of the Mendoza family
and the book known as Libro de Horas de Alonso de Zúñiga, now in die
Escoriai, arejust two examples of prayer books, owned by members of
the aristocracy, which are decorated in the late-Gothic style of Flanders.
This style was favored in the religious paintings and richly illuminated
books commissioned by Queen Isabel (Yarza Luaces 94-95).
If die literary and artistic preferences of aristocratic circles are
clearly oriented toward religious devotion, a question arises regard-
ing fheir reading practices. C. Harbison has studied Flemish aristo-
crats who commissioned works of art. He notes diat, like die Castillans,
devotional texts and Books of Hours constituted their primary per-
sonal and communal reading. Devotional books were read "contem-
platively" according to a mediod diat "emphasized the need for a direct,
vivid, visual re-enactment of Christ's life on earth ... [and] encouraged
die devout to focus dieir attention so that they might truly be present
at certain moments of Christ's life". Paintings and miniatures illustrate
diis modus operandi and often show an inviting, open prayer book in
the foreground and a scene from Christ's life in the background ("Vi-
sions and Meditations" 87, 95).
A portrait of a wealfhy nobleman now at El Prado evinces die same
reading practice in late-medieval Castile. It is part of the Sopetrán
altarpiece, dated after 1460. The sitter is supposed to be the powerful
Duque del Infantado, kneeling at his prie-dieu, where a small book
lies open, but his gaze is directed toward an altarpiece depicting a
Crucifixion scene in die banco, or predella, and an image of the Virgin
6 One third of the books stocked by the printer Guillermo Remón between 1528 and
1 544 were devotional, precisely the titles identified by Whinnon as the century's best-sellers:
Garcia de Cisneros's Exercitatoiio de la vida espiritual, Kempis's Contemplas Mundi, Ludolfof
Saxony's Vita Christi, St. Vincent Ferrer's sermons, books explaining the mystery ofthe mass,
artes moriendi, lives of the Virgin, and books of hours (Nalle 82, 86).
' Judith Berg Sobré explains that the word retablo comes from the Latin "retro
tabulum", meaning behind the (aitai ) table" (3). See also Yarza Luaces 163 andJ. R. Buendia.
Reimagining Diego de San Pedro's Readers at Work1 1
and child surrounded by smaller panels impossible to identify (Yarza

Luaces 253). The prie-dieu, the prayer book, and the small altarpiece,
probably located in his personal chapel or oratory, constitute the ap-
paratus of private devotion designed for use outside the liturgical set-
ting of a church's main altar (Williamson 380).
While art historians accept that Renaissance influence in Spain at
the end of the fifteenth century was not very strong and that the domi-
nant artistic trend at the court of the Catholic Monarchs was die late-
Gothic style of Flanders, which was associated with the emotional
spirituality of the Modern Devotion (devotio moderna), literary scholars
have tried to identify a Renaissance or humanist flavor in works like
Cárcel.6 Instead, diey are clearly related to social circles whose way of
diinking can be best described as a "prayer-book mentality", a phrase
coined by Harbison to describe the mindset of the Flemish patrons
and donors who displayed such a strong desire to participate imagina-
tively in die Passion of Christ that they commissioned panel paintings
recording their own visionary experiences (Harbison, "Visions and
Meditations").
Whinnom demonstrated diat there is no direct knowledge of the
devotio moderna in Spain before 1496 and no documentary evidence
for one of its most famous texts, die Vita Christi of Ludolf the Saxon
(or, 'the Cardiusian'), in Castile before die 1490s. Yet die contempla-
tion of Christ's life (Contemplatio huma.nitatis Christi), presented as an
illuminating and purgative act for the ordinary man, was one of the
most distinctive manifestations of the Franciscan reform. It found its
way into four, long, versified narratives of the life of Christ in Castilian
that appeared in print in die 1470s and 1480s, loosely based on the
Meditaliones vitae Christi by Juan de Caulibus (c. 1346-c. 1364):
Comendador Roman's Trovas de la. gloriosa pasión (c. 1485) and his
Coplas de la pasión con la resurrección (I486?), Montesino's Coplas sobre
diversas devociones y misterios de nuestra, santa fe católica (c. 1485), and
Diego de San Pedro's Pasión trovada, composed ca. 1480 and printed
some time before 1492.9 The religious lyric poetry of cancionero com-
pilations and some theatrical pieces that Pedro Cátedra labels
8 See the latest formulation in Parrilla: "En lo que tiene de cuestionamiento y

especulación de una nueva cultura de los afectos, podría tomarse como un sueño humanista
que se asoma a las páginas de aquellas obrillas que hoy bautizamos como sentimentales" (" La
novela sentimental en el marco de la instrucción retorica" 1 7).
9 See Whinnon, "The Supposed Sources". For a review of the passional tradition and
an analysis of various instances ofpassion literature in the Castilian context, see Pedro M.
Cátedras exhaustive study Poesía de pasión en la Edad Media.
12Sol Miguel-PrendesLa corónica 32.2, 2004
"paralitúrgicas", such as Alonso del Campo's/4wío de la Pasión or some

plays by Lucas Fernández and Encina, are just anodier expression of
the intense religious atmosphere of spiritual renewal that predates
and coincides widi die ascendancy of die Queen's Franciscan confessor,
Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros.10
The proliferation of portable prayer books used in affective devo-
tion is closely related to die evolution of reading habits in die late
medieval period, in particular die advent of silent reading (Paul Saenger,
"Books of Hours" 142). Furdiermore, die transition from oral to si-
lent reading had profound cultural ramifications. "The new privacy
gained through silent reading . . . intensified ordiodox devotional and
spiritual experiences . . . [and] played an important role in die spiritu-
ality of the reformed mendicants in the Fifteenth century" ("Silent
Reading" 40 1).11
The framework of die "prayer-book mentality" informs both Cárcel's
readership and die work itself as a vision or meditation on die suffer-
ings of its protagonist, the noble Leriano, madly in love widi Princess
Laureola. They are articulated in terms of a Passion of Christ12 and,
like die Flemish paintings, depict die visionary experience of Diego
Hernandes, die nobleman who petitioned San Pedro to write die work
for his pleasure and that of "otros cavalleros cortesanos". These courdy
readers were not only consumers but active participants in Cárcel's pro-
duction as social authors.
10Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436-1517) became Isabel's confessor in 1492 and

Archbishop of Toledo in 1495. In 1507, he became both Inquisitor General and a cardi-
nal. Under his "tutelage portions of the Scriptures and numerous devotional and mysti-
cal works were translated into Spanish and distributed to convents and monasteries" (Alison
Weber, Teresa ofAvila and the Rhetoric ofFemininity). The time, as Ronald Surtz reminds us,
"was especially propitious for all sorts of extraordinary religious phenomena" (The Guitar
of God, 2).
11This article is reproduced in Space Between Words.
'- Leriano's Christ-like nature and the analogy of his sufferings to a Passion were
noticed early on by critics such as Bruce Wardropper, Bruno Damiani, Keith Whinnom's
"Cardona", and Joseph F. Chorpenning's "Leriano's Consumption of Laureolas Letters
in the Cárcel de amor" , who traces some biblical sources for Cárcel. Because I do not think
that it is possible to establish a direct correspondence between Leriano and the figure of
Christ as it appears in the Gospels, Chorpenning's analysis is not entirely convincing. More
Fitting for this article's purpose is Anna Krause's connection oiCdrcel's expression and
mystic writing: "Al hacer de la angustia del incumplimiento —que muero porque no muero—
el tema básico de sus obras, Diego de San Pedro anticipa en su retórica galante la
terminología que los místicos del siglo próximo habían de emplear al describir su inefable
aspiración a la divinidad" (269-70). It is sufficient to note that Leriano's sufferings are
articulated in religious terms, as Parrilla ("La ficción sentimental") and Dorothy Sherman
Severin ("The Sentimental Genre: Romance, Novel, or Parody?") maintain.
Reimagining Diego de San Pedro's Readers at Work13
One of Cárcel's most obvious characteristics is die importance of

feelings. Since Menéndez Pelayo assigned die modifier sentimental to
these romances in 1905, it has defined the genre. Barbara F.
Weissberger argues that the adjective reveals a patriarchal ideology of
gender -and genre- that identifies sentimental romance as feminine,
private, and interior as opposed to chivalric romance, which is diought
of as masculine, public, and exterior. This gendered taxonomic divi-
sion of late-medieval Iberian romance has determined critical ap-
proaches up to die present. Aldiough I fully agree widi Weissberger's
sociological analysis of early twentieth-century Spanish scholarship, I
would like to open another inquiry into the term sentimental from a
medieval horizon of expectations. I am following die patii forged by
Keidi Whinnom in 1974, who insisted diat Cárcel's opening allegory
must be analyzed widiin die framework of the arts of memory. I pro-
pose to extend that context to analyze San Pedro's creative process,
die rhetorical inventio, as a meditation or vision, the product of an act
of contemplation diat relies on the recollection of previous texts and
images.13 Cárcel's reading requires anodier act ofcontemplation, similar
to the one illustrated in the Duque del Infantado's portrait: die pri-
vate, silent reading of a text fhat leads to a visual re-enactment of
Christ's torments with the help of a retablo.
I am not trying to revive Enrique Moreno-Báez's Panofskian anal-
ogy, comparing Cárcel's structure to a Gothic cafhedral,14 but instead
to ascertain the modes of communication shared by San Pedro, who
was likely trained at the University of Salamanca, and his courtly read-
ers.15 Pedro Cátedra has demonstrated that the parodie amatory trea-
tises composed within Salamancan academic circles are strongly
connected to the court of die Cadiolic Monarchs.16 My analysis sup-
ports the parodie nature of sentimental fictions but also stresses
their traditional inventive techniques. The private, inner journeys
13In Whinnom's posthumous article, "Cardona, the Crucifixion, and Leriano's Last
Drink", edited by Alan D. Deyermond for Studies in the Spanish Sentimental Romance, he states
that, "Juan de Cardona's use o{ Cárcel de amor, only two generations after San Pedro wrote
his romance, lends some support to the hypothesis that early readers may have looked for
analogies no further afield than the literature of the Passion" (212-13).
14See Moreno Baez's prologue to his edition of Cárcel, 18-35.
15Although there is no documentary evidence, Whinnom presumes from San Pedro's
elaborate style that he studied rhetoric in Salamanca ("Diego de San Pedro's Stylistic
Reform" 15), and most critics agree on the key role that rhetoric plays in Cárcel.
16See A mor y pedagogía en la Edad Media (Estudios de doctrina amorosa y práctica literaria)
and Del Tostado sobre el amor. Also Severin, "Audience and Interpretation" and "The Sen-
timental Genre: Romance, Novel, or Parody?".
undertaken by sentimental heroes are a product of the prayer-book

mentality common to the three intellectual groups that Guillermo
Seres identifies as comprising vernacular humanist circles as well as
the sentimental genre's readership: "el universitario, el alto clero y el
curial culto letrado" ("La llamada ficción sentimental" 13). Similarly,
E. Michael Gerii places Siervo libre de amor within the larger medieval
penitential tradition by identifying its old French source in Le Rommant
des trois pèlerinages and questions analogies to Dante, Boccaccio, and
Virgil as "equivocal" ("Old French Source" 18). 17 What all diese auc-
tores -also cited by critics as possible sources for Cárcel- have in com-
mon widi vernacular humanists and their reading preferences is the
rhetorical craft of contemplation.
The rhetorical craft of contemplation

Prayerful reading, or contemplation diat stressed memorization as a
means of spiritual progress, was an essential part of medieval teaching
and learning. It is the rhetorical craft of making thoughts by continu-
ously reading and reflecting on the Scriptures and dien building ideas
into superstructures on their foundation, as Mary Carruthers explains
in The Craft of Thought .18 Contemplation is also an art for composing
"in terms of making a 'way' among 'places' or 'seats'". These "places"
were generally stories taken from the Bible or related sources such as
hagiography, and "The trope of 'steps' or 'stages' was commonly ap-
plied to the affective, emotional 'route' that a meditator was to take in
die course of such composition..." (60).
Carruthers's study does not go beyond the twelfth century but in
her 2002 anthology of mnemotechnical texts, she states: "Later in the
1 ' See also Eukene Lacarra Lanz's interpretation in "Siemo libre de amor «autobiografia
espiritual?".
18 See also the Henri de Lubac's classic study Exégèse medievale. For a useful survey, see
Roberta D. Cornelius, The Figurative Castle. For its use in sixteenth-century Spain, Joseph
F. Chorpenning, "The Literary and Theological Method of the Castillo interior" and "The
Monastery, Paradise, and the Castle: Literary Images and Spiritual Development in St Teresa
ofAvila". George Lakoffand Mark Johnson's linguistic investigations show that the act of
'building' is still a widespread metaphor for thinking in modern English. It equals theo-
ries and arguments with buildings; for instance in such expressions as, the 'foundation'
of a theory, 'constructing' a strong argument, the argument 'collapsed', we need to 'but-
tress' the theory with solid arguments, etc. (46). Similarly in Spanish, la 'base' de una teoría,
basar' un argumento sobre hechos, 'construir' oraciones, 'construcciones' gramaticales,
la teoría 'se cae por su peso', las razones para 'apoyar' la teoría.
Reimagining Diego de San Pedm's Readers at Work15
Middle Ages memory lost none of its urgency, but what was considered
essential to remember took on somewhat different contours". As a
consequence of the reforms brought about by the Fourth Lateran
Council (1215), regular canons and the newly founded mendicant or-
ders revived oral rhetoric for homiletic purposes (The Medieval Craft of
Memory 21-22). The Victorines' great iconographie schemes, such as
Hugh of St Victor's Didascalicon, were popularized by the friars so that
with them, the art of memory "entered again into its original sphere,
for these itinerant preachers used the art for rhetorical purposes. They
preached. They also realized a closer connection with the moral di-
mension, for dieir art of memory concerned die memory of virtues
and vices" (Zinn 232).
Contemplation and its mnemonic techniques, previously restricted
to a religious elite, were made available to the laity. The Franciscans in
particular adopted die craft to contemplate visually -diat is, silently-
on the life of Christ. They relished the pictorial qualities of monastic
meditation that coincided in many respects with the old memorial sys-
tem described in the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, or
Rhetorica nova, as it was known.19 Besides recommending the construc-
tion of architectural sites, real or imaginary, in which to place the
contents to be remembered, both monastic meditation and the Ad
Herennium advise that these contents be imagines agentes; diat is, shock-
ing, active images, widi a theatrical quality to trigger recollection.
Vernacular humanists practiced contemplation, die craft associated
witii literary composition, as a recollectivejourney through other texts
or places stored in memory to retrieve subjects and to create original
compositions (the two meanings of the word inventio [Latin invenire: to
find and to invent]). An early instance is Enrique de Villena's transla-
tion of, and commentary on, Virgil's Aeneid. I contend in El espejo y el
piélago diat Villena's glosa is, in fact, the romance of a Christian hero,
typified by Aeneas. The hero's trips -the motif of die journey— allow
Villena to revisit all his memorial sites and translate them into a
Castilian Aneid adapted to the needs of his aristocratic friends and
patrons.
Contemplation is also the iisus scribendi that Seres identifies in one
of the first and defining sentimental fictions, Don Pedro de Portugal's
19 The Victorine canons revitalized its use to help the memorizing of sermons. See
Jean-Philippe Antoine, "Mémoire, lieux et invention spatiale". For its incidence in the
Iberian Peninsula, see Faulhaber "Rhetoric in Medieval Catalonia". Enrique de Villena
translated the Ad Herennium into Castilian around 1428 at the request of some noblemen.
This translation is now lost.
Sátira de infelice e felice vida (its Castilian version appeared after 1453).
Serés cleverly analyzes the work as an andiology of classicist common-
places, drawn from a translation of the author/protagonist's program
of study.20 It includes the expected auctores: Virgil, Ovid, Boethius,
Dante, Boccaccio, etc., common to university and noble libraries.
However, I disagree with Seres that Don Pedro's mythological erudi-
tion -or that of any other vernacular humanist for that matter- indi-
cates "modernity", which I take to mean humanistic influence. The use
of mythological images is just another memorial -that is, visual- pro-
cedure of "die craft of thought", as Beryl Smalley's always useful study
on the English "classicizing" friars demonstrates. It is still important to
underscore Serés's suggestion diat the appetite for translations of the
classics in fifteenth-century Iberia and die emergence of die sentimen-
tal genre are closely connected.
The pictorial qualities of contemplation also found plastic expres-
sion in Iberian retablos.^ Their structure was more or less formalized
by 1360. Judith Berg Sobré describes diem:
[A] central post ... wider and higher than the odiers ... domi-
nated by a large image, sometimes sculpted but more often
painted, depicting the saint to whom the altarpiece was dedi-
cated. Above this effigy was often a painting of Christ on the
cross. Flanking these images were additional posts that pictured
scenes from the life of die principal saint, sometimes combined
with episodes from the childhood and martyrdom of Christ. ...
The banco corresponds in position of die Italian predella. It
too was divided symmetrically, the center frequently ... occu-
pied by the eucharistie image of die dead Christ in his tomb,
with die balance occupied by images of saints, scenes of Christ's
Passion, or occasionally additional narrative episodes dealing
with the principal saint. Large retables sometimes also had a
sotabanco, or narrow strip below the banco, embellished widi
prophets or other figures in small roundels, widi decorative
20 It is interesting to note that the term "tractatus", associated with some of the sen-
timental fictions, is derived from tractare, a medieval Latin word for composing by "acts
of remembering, mnemonic activities which pull in or "draw" (Carruthers, The Craft of
Thought 70).
-' Testimonies describe actual performances, very theatrical, in which the preacher
used the aitai pieces as visuals (Fernando J. Bouza Alvarez, Comunicación, conocimiento y
memoria en ?a España de los siglos XVl y XVII).
gilded quatrefoils, or, particularly in Castile, widi an inscrip-

tion naming the donors. (6-7)
Not all the images in a retablo had the same quality. Sobré identi-
fies two types, symbolic and narrative. The former, generally die saint's
central effigy, Christ's crucifixion, and the eucharistie images of the
banco, were to be contemplated, while die episodes depicting the life
of the saint or Christ were to serve as instruction (Behind the Altar Table
167, 188).
Paul Crossley maintains that altars and their altarpieces generated
"meditational centres, what might be called sequential patterns of
thought, triggers for die ordered exercise of intellection and memory"
(cited in Williamson 371). Retablos possess a narrative dimension as
well, in the sense that they require a mnemotechnical perambulation
about the different panels, which demands a form of temporal pro-
gression.22 The viewing of an altarpiece is a mental walk dirough sym-
bolic images and biblical or hagiographie "places"; diat is, standard
stories narrated in images placed, as in Trecento Italian art, in "a se-
ries of sites spatially ordered" (Antoine 1458). The practice relies on
memories evoked by signs that trigger doctrinal or dieological points
or narrative images of ethical or heroic Christian behavior. Contem-
plation is the craft that builds up these mental constructions.
The revival of die contemplative craft at the court of the Cadiolic
Monarchs is evidenced by the success of the versified lives of Christ,
including the one composed by San Pedro. Their narrative technique
is analogous to that of retablos: a memorial journey through biblical
sources, or "sites", delayed by moments of emotional contemplation
that produce imaginative reconstructions of highly symbolic scenes. As
Whinnom noted, San Pedro's Passion trovada uses amply the command
contempla and its visual equivalents mira and ve ("Supposed Sources"
278-79). Most interesting for my argument, Saenger observes that diese
terms were used in aristocratic vernacular texts as synonyms for pri-
vate silent reading ("Silent Reading"407), which stresses the icono-
graphie role assigned to die reading of diese lives and contradicts die
idea that San Pedro's Pasión was initially meant to be performed in
"-This position lias been argued byJ. -P. Antoine for Italian pictorial art: "the change-
able perspectives ofTrecento painting reflect a mnemotechnical perambulation about the
picture-space" (1458-1459) and Carruthers adds that "in order to grasp the perspective
of these Trecento pictures, however, one must 'walk about' in them - and that necessitates
a form of temporal progression" (The Craft ofThought 354 ? 7. In spite of the obvious sty-
listic differences, the same memorial perambulation applies to the viewing of a retablo.
public. As Saenger points out, the new privacy afforded by silent read-
ing stimulated a revival of the antique genre of erotic art ("Silent Read-
ing 412). Viewed in diis light, regardless of subsequent developments,
we may assume diat Ea pasión was supposed to be read in private by the
lovely nun to whom it is addressed, with obvious erotic undertones diat
would receive full-blown narrative structure in Cárcel P
Contemplative reading and inventive techniques can explain the
sudden, gruesome descriptions of Christ's torments and horrific de-
tails both in San Pedro's Pasión and the visual arts of the Isabelline
period, while until this date, artists exhibited "an aversion to the more
graphic and brutal aspects of the Saviour's Passion".24 The violence
displayed in diese images does not (or, at least is not intended to)
reflect a morbid inclination but instead points to a new religious sen-
sibility based on die old technique of using strange images to aid rec-
ollection. To the dismay of moralists, licentious scenes are as memorable
as die spilling of Christ's blood -the always best-selling duet of sex and
violence— and by the end of the fifteenth century, thanks to the new
privacy afforded by silent reading, "artists decorated books of hours
widi increasingly suggestive erotic scenes, often ostensibly depicting
the vices for which penance was required but consciously intended to
excite the voyeur of the book" (Saenger, "Books ofHours" 156).25 Cárcel's
parodie nature and highly emotional tone fit well within the param-
eters of this type of visual reading.
Cárcel's contemplative structure

Cárcel's narrative structure is strikingly similar to an altarpiece. It opens
widi an allegory that gives the work its title. The narrator, named el
Auctor (the Author), is returning home through the Sierra Morena
after the summer's fighting. In die middle of a wilderness, he encoun-
ters a fearsome knight, dressed in skins, who carries on his left arm a
-3 Dorothy Severin traced the parallels between La pasión and other European medi-
eval dramas ('"La Passion trobada' de Diego de San Pedro y sus relaciones con el drama
medieval"). See also Whinnom and Seveí ins introduction to Vol. 3 of San Pedro's Obras
completas .
-4 Cynthia Robinson "Looking for the Crucifixion II. Passion Problems in Late-
Medieval Iberia", personal e-mail
25 Saenger indicated that "erotic scenes developed particularly as frontispieces to Book
IX of the French translation ofValerius Maximus, Facta and dicta memorabilia" ("Books of
Hours" 156), a manuscript frequently listed in the inventories of Castilian noble libraries.
steel shield and in his right a striking stone carving representing a

beautiful woman radiating fire. The flames drag a prisoner who begs
the Auctor to help him. The narrator confronts die ferocious warrior
and learns that his name is Deseo, chief officer of Love. He keeps away
hope with his shield; the beauty of die stone image causes afflictions;
and with them both, he burns lives. He is taking a captive to die in the
prison of love. The pair disappears, and the Auctor spends a sleepless
night.
The following morning, he sees the prison on a mountain peak.
He climbs to the tower, enters, and sees die prisoner ceaselessly burn-
ing in a chair of fire, subjected to all kinds of torture. Two weeping
ladies wait on the wretched figure, crowning him with metal spikes.
Aldiough the tableau takes place in complete darkness, the Auctor is
able to see with the help of an intense light emanating from the
prisoner's heart. He is Leriano, son of the Duke Guersio and die Duchess
Coieria of Macedonia and in love with Princess Laureola, daughter of
King Gaulo. The prisoner proceeds to explain die meaning of die odd
scene to the narrator.
This love allegory, as explained by Leriano, is very similar to the
devotional image of the Man of Sorrows and corresponds to the sym-
bolic central post in an altarpiece. It is flanked by narrative panels in
which Leriano asks the Auctor for help in winning over Laureola's heart,
an epistolary exchange between Laureola and Leriano, and the false
accusations, duels, and assaults. There is also a secondary allegory in
which the Auctor, widi a battalion of "Contentamiento y Esperança y
Descanso y Plazer y Alegría y Holgança" [Content and Hope and Ease
and Pleasure and Mirth and Bliss]26 puts up a fight to liberate Leriano
from his jailers, which is highly reminiscent of a psychomachia.27
Laureola refuses to return his love and Cárcel ends widi Leriano on
his deadibed, delivering an elaborate defense ofwomen and ingesting
Laureola's letters, torn into pieces, in a glass of water. Much has been
written about diis last scene.28 I side with Whinnom in believing diat
26 1 cite both from Parrilla' s edition (29) and Whinnom's translation (29).
-' Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories ofthe Viñues and Vices, documents the motifofthe
triumph of the virtues as a variation on the theme of Patientia led bv Job in Psychomachia
(15)'„
-8 Interpretations range from suicide to martyrdom, including punishment of a
sinner and an act ofrevenge. See Chorpenning "Consumption", Gerii "Leriano's libation",
Ynduráin "Las cartas de Laureola", Leonardo Funes and Carmen de la Linde "Cartas
bebidas por Leriano", Marina Brownlee, The Severed Word, Harriett Goldberg "Cannibal-
the resemblances between Leriano's deadi and the deadi of Christ
cannot be ignored.29 Whinnom also points out Severin's parallels be-
tween the lament of Leriano's modier and die laments of die Virgin in
San Pedro's earlier Passion trovada ("From the Lamentations") and states
diat "with all the early Franciscans the Passio Christi and Compassio Mariae
are inextricably intertwined" ("Supposed Sources" 278). Leriano's last
scene, therefore, along with his mother's lament, are equivalent to the
eucharistie image that most altarpieces place in the center of die banco,
while the gallery of virtuous women in his deathbed speech corre-
sponds to the images of prophets that adorn the sotabanco and support
the dieological edifice of the religio amorL·. The function of this narra-
tive structure, as in an altarpiece, is simultaneously celebrating a
contrafacta Eucharist and venerating a courtly hero.30
The initial love allegory, as Whinnom explains, is an old and versa-
tile rhetorical device. First of all, San Pedro conveys his ideas on die
psychology of love through a plastic representation that appealed to
contemporary Castilian taste, as the success of Dante and Iñigo López
de Mendoza's love allegories indicates. It provides a useful language
for understanding and appreciating the discourse of love and sets the
tone for the whole story, indicating that die work is meant to be sol-
emn and artistic. Finally, die blurred line between die world of ideas in
the initial "perfect" allegory that the narrator sets in Spain and the
world of events diat take place in Macedonia, widi which die allegorical
episodes interfere, gives die whole Cárcel de amor a dream atmosphere.31
Whinnom's fine sensibility clearly perceived die allegory's produc-
tive role. The description of the prison of love is an old rhetorical
ornament called ekphrasis, which describes a work of art or architec-
ture, imagined or real, in order to "paint ideas" in the public's mind. It
possesses the quality of brexritas that holds within itself an abundance,
or copia; diat is, the possibility to be expanded into multiple interpre-
tations. Carruthers explains how ekphrasis was used in Scriptural ex-
ism in Iberian Narrative", Alexander Parker Tlie Philosophy ofLove, and Ian Michael "Span-
ish Literature and Learning".
-9 I agree with Whinnom that the most likely sources for the episode, which are an
interpretive key for the whole work, are the Crucifixion, Ezekiel, the Mass, and the artes
moriendi (Whinnom "Cardona, the Crucifixion, and Leriano's Last Drink").
30I am rephrasing Williamson on the function of the altar on which the Iberian,
English, and Italian altarpieces sit: "The function of the altar is simulaneously a site for the
celebration of the Eucharist and for the veneration of saints" (372)
31See Whinnom's introduction to his edition of Cárcel de amor in Vol. II of San Pedro's
Obras completas, 49-52.
egesis to paint in one's mind die Heavenly City and how diis activity
was commonly associated widi die creative act of making a temple of
the heart. In die early thirteendi century, Geoffrey Vinsauf, following
this inventive model, described in his Poetria nova "how a poet should
set to work on die model of an architect" (The Medieval Crafl ofMemory
6). However, from the beginning, the church fathers were fully aware
of the craft's inherent dangers and frequendy cautioned against "mental
painting for immoral purposes" (The Craft of Thought 134), an activity
diat the advent of silent, private reading in the later Middle Ages did
nothing but encourage.
San Pedro's allegory, as Barbara E. Kurtz aptly noted (136), is
closer in design to religious treatments of figurative edifices men-
tioned in the Scriptures than to the secular French precursors first
postulated by Post. In a parody of scholarly exegesis that stresses its
most noticeable danger, San Pedro paints the prison building and ex-
pands die ekphrasis into his own interpretation, or literary creation,
by making the prisoner Leriano explain die meaning of its compo-
nents and the shocking images located in it -the imagines agentes- to
the apprehensive narrator.32 The prison is built on die foundation of
Leriano's faith and supported by four pillars: Understanding, Reason,
Memory, and Will. Love consulted with them before casting Leriano's
sentence, and they unanimously gave their consent to his suffering
and eventual death. The prison guards are Misery and Indifference;
the dark stair that leads to the chamber is Anguish. Desire first opens
the door to all sadness and strips newcomers of their weapons, Relief,
Hope, and Contentment; die second doorman is Torment. The burn-
ing chair is Leriano's Zeal, and the two ladies-in-waiting are Yearning
and Passion.
The ekphrasis of the building and its allegorical interpretation
meshes devotional themes, the mocking of Christ, an Imago pietatis
(Christ crowned with thorns surrounded by the symbols of his king-
ship), and Christ being crucified by the virtues, an iconographie tradi-
tion that appears primarily in Northern manuscript illumination and
that shows the angels as instruments of God's will.33
32Leriano explains the odd scene in the same way biblical exegetes explain the spiri-
tual sense. See, for instance, Jerome's spiritual interpretation on Ezekiel's heavenly city
(mentioned in Carruthers, The Crafl of Thought 33-34).
33William Hood notes that "of the twenty-five known representations ofthis subject
[Christ being crucified by the virtues], which belongs primarily to the genre of manuscript
illumination, only two are Italian" (Fra Angelico at San Marco 319, nn 18 and 19).
Like the central symbolic images of a retable, the ekphrasis in the

love allegory not only paints an image in the reader's heart but, more
important, functions as an "architecture for diinking", a cognitive image
crafted by San Pedro to recall other texts on which to build die narra-
tion of Leriano and Laureola's unhappy love affair.
The allegory and its ekphrasis appear in a clearly contemplative
setting. In meditation, the initial stage, preliminary to invention - or
prayer, is always characterized by a restless, anxious mood. It is the
compunctio cordis, a self-induced state first outlined by Augustine diat
consists of instigating a hair-raising fear by remembering one's sins or
imagining one's own death (Carrudiers, The Crafl of Thought 96). This
strong feeling of apprehensiveness is die first step to induce recollec-
tion of sins and meditative prayer, a prerequisite for invention. It is
precisely the Auctoris state of mind when he first encounters the pris-
oner Leriano being dragged by Desire to the prison of love. The pas-
sage is worth citing:
Allí comencé a maldezir mi ventura; allí desesperava de toda
esperança; allí esperava mi perdimiento; allí en medio de mi
tribulación nunca me pesó de lo hecho, porque es mejor perder
haziendo virtud que ganar dexándola de hazer; y assi estuve
toda la noche en tristes y trabajosas contenplaciones; y quando
ya la lunbre del día descubrió los canpos, vi cerca de mí, en lo
más alto de la sierra, una torre de altura tan grande que me
parecía llegar al cielo; era hecha por tal artificio, que de la
estrañeza della comencé a maravillarme. (6)
Notice diat the Auctoris distress happens in the silence of the night, die
time most appropriate for meditation, which he spends engaged in
painstaking ruminations. As Carruthers indicates, "lying prostrate and
weeping 'in silence' became a standard posture in die Middle Ages for
all kinds of invention" (The Craft, of Thought 175). Immediately after-
ward, the Auctor finds -one of die meanings of inventio- illumination
with the arrival of dawn. He sees die allegorical prison of love and
notes its craft ("artificio") and its oddity ("estrañeza"). It is a literary
pictura made ofshocking images -the imagines ageiües- wiüiin a background
place -die casde- that helps him to develop die narrative. As Carrudiers
remarks, "The notion diat acts of composing began widi acts of seeing, of
vision, is common in monastic praxis" (The Craft ofThought 169).
When Leriano elucidates the meaning of his torments to the af-
flicted Auctor, he asks him to calm down, "torna en ti tu reposo" and
"sosiega tu juizio" (6), using technical terms which correspond to die
Latin quies. These terms connect directly widi the circumstances in

which the meditation takes place: a calm body and mind in die quiet
hours of die night, when daily problems seem to vanish, allowing con-
sciousness to grasp human experience through representation. The
process recalls die beginning of anodier meditation, Boethius's en-
counter with lady Philosophy in the Consolation, a textbook for univer-
sity students that San Pedro knew thoroughly and a volume that
frequently appears in the inventories of Castilian nobles' libraries.34
Obviously, it recalls Dante's Commedia as well, frequently cited as one
of San Pedro's inspirations, which shares with Boethius and odier mo-
nastic meditations its inventive techniques.
Deseo also addresses the Auctor at die beginning of the work as
"caminante", indicating the compositional, spatial movement of medi-
tation as a walk about memorial places. Throughout the romance the
Auctor emotionally reflects on his role in telling a story lived by ofhers,
like someone moving along the scenes or sites of Leriano's life as if
along the panels of an altarpiece. Louise M. Haywood has noticed that
the typical narrative of sentimental romance bears some resemblance
to a martyr's life, which points to a link between hagiography and
romance ("What's in a Name?" 287). Hagiography is yet anodier genre
of monastic meditation in which the saint's journey toward holiness is
interspersed with constructive visions.
The obvious similarities between Cárcel and a retablo do not neces-
sarily imply that San Pedro had a particular altarpiece or even die
compositional structure of an altarpiece in mind while drafting Cárcel,
even though later pieces like Juan de Padilla's Retablo de la pasión (ca.
1500) substantiate such a conceptual practice; its meditation begins
widi contemplation of a painting of the suffering Christ diat Padilla
describes in die prologue (Cátedra, Poesía de pasión 307). The affini-
ties, radier, stem from a contemplative tradition shared by both the
Salamanca-trained San Pedro and the Castilian upper nobility to whom
the work is addressed. This ancient tradition -which Gerii restricts to
its "penitential" side and I prefer to call contemplative, because it re-
fers to the core discipline oí lectio, the act of "reading as fhinking" for
investigating ethical issues35- knits die web of indirect stimuli diat Alan
34The prologue to the Desprecio defortuna reveals that San Pedro is well acquainted with
Boethius. It was dedicated to his patron, Juan Téllez-Girón, who in his old age devoted
his life to charity and reading the Consolation .
35See Brian Stock, "Reading, Writing, and the Self: Petrarch and His Forerunners"
and "Reading, Ethics, and the Literary Imagination". As William Hodapp indicates, the
meditation on the life of Christ was based on lectio divina (246).
Deyermond presumes for die sentimental genre: Augustine's Confes-

sions, Peter Abelard's Historia calamitatimi, and Boediius's Consolation.56
The role of rhetoric
The love allegory is meant to engage emotions. Quintilian recom-

mended the use of visiones to persuade, which led Chorpenning to
interpret Cárcel as an oration in defense of the propositio fhat a woman's
honor prevails over die life ofher lover ("Rhetoric and Feminism in
die Cárcel de amor"). Retracting an earlier opinion, I agree with Haywood
("Apuntes" 1 7) diat Cárcel offers litde evidence to defend Chorpenning's
division of it.37 Most likely, die devotional aim of affective contempla-
tion -which affects personal experience and dierefore coincides with
die ethical intention customarily assigned to literary works in the later
Middle Ages- misled those critics, like myself, looking for traces of
humanism in Cárcel's rhetoric into reading diat devotional aim as a
propositio. 38
The undeniable persuasive intent in Cárcel can be also attributed
to its memorial nature as a vision or meditation. Carrudiers explains
that intention is an emotional attitude that "colors" each memory so
tiiat it can be retrieved and placed next to odier memories to provide
"sets of patterns or foundations upon which to construct any number
of additional collations and concordances of material" (The Craft of
Thought 16). Intention is, dien, an affective movement of the mind,
similar to creative tension, that since Augustine has been called char-
ity (The Craft of Thought 15). Cárcel distorts Christian charity into the
perfect love for a woman diat befits those who worship at the altar of
the religio amoris. It is an emotion that retrieves the psychology of
courdy love and repositions it into a rhetorical architecture for fhink-
ing -die casde- that is expanded into a narration.
36 Alan Deyermond, "Estudio preliminar", in Cárcel de amor, xii-xiii.

3' See Joseph F. Chorpenning, "Rhetoric and Feminism in the Cárcel de amor". I
supported Chorpenning's position in "Las cartas de la Cárcel de amor" . Other critics
pointed out Cárcel's didactic intention as well, for instance Anna Krause, Bruno Damiani,
and Esther Torrego.
38 For the moral aim ofall literary woks, see Judson Boyce Allen The Ethical Poetic of
the Later Middle Ages . For intention as a scholarly exegetical and compositional category,
see Minnis, Medieval Theories ofAuthorship, and Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and
Translation. I analyze the role of intention in vernacular literary creation in "Translation,
Authority, and Authorship" and El espejo y el piélago .
Emotion also colors every memorial site —allegories, letters, duels,

the defense ofwomen, and die modier's lament- into ajourney dirough
a mock Passion Utat is supposed to stimulate devotion. Peter Dunn
perceives very clearly its creative role in Cárcel:
[T]he feelings operate in very diverse ways: by determining
the motive for action; by creating a pattern in the character's
inner life which is then set in some kind of relation with the
world outside; as grounds for evaluating the actions of odiers;
as terms in the conceptual structure of the narrative. ("Narra-
tor as Character" 187)
The presence of feelings is most obvious in the letters. Aldiough I
obviously dissent from Haywood on the point of Cárcel's epistolary
form, it is true diat the letters give die narration a certain coherence
"como un contar de experiencias vitales del narrador" ("Apuntes" 17).
They manipulate the reader's feelings into accepting the work's
propositio, but having refined the aim of die propositio into rhetorical
coloring and devotional intention, they perform a further emotional
and structural role. Along widi the use of the allegorical vision, diey
are part of the praxis of meditation, which focuses on verbal orna-
ment, a technique inherited from Roman rhetoric, as a way of signal-
ing a mood. San Pedro deploys in them the techniques oí cancionero
lyric poetry, in particular die parallel positioning of contrasting con-
cepts, which Roman Jakobson compares to "dynamic cutting" in film
montage, "a type of cutting which ... uses die juxtaposition of con-
trasting shots or sequences to generate in the mind of the spectator
ideas diat diese constituent shots or sequences by diemselves do not
carry" ("Poetry of Grammar" 93).39 The letters resort to similar visual
techniques to construct a mental architecture of courtiy love. In addi-
tion, diey provide a clever solution to the problem of narrating die
characters' direct speech, which as eidier soliloquy or dialogue, is a
characteristic of Franciscan preaching in die Meditationes vitae Christi,40
an insight into bofh Leriano and Laureola's minds.
In sum, the emotional intention of its allegory and letters give
Cárcel the rhetorical color that builds an affective meditation. It tells
a very personal experience not of divine love but of "self-thwarting
39For the specific functioning of this technique in the letters, see my "Las cartas de
la Cárcel de amor".
40Dorothy Severin indicates that San Pedro uses 973 stanzas of dialogue in his Pasión
travada.
libidinal desire".41 As Severin remarks, "If a moral is being drawn, it is

that profane love leads to the sort of martydom which condemns the
soul to Hell" ("Sentimental Genre" 313).
The role of the Auctor and contemplative authorship

Analizing Cárcel as an emotional meditation on Leriano's sufferings
leads me to die thorny problem of the Auctor and the pretense of auto-
biography. His triple role as audior, narrator and as a character who
mediates between Leriano and Laureola poses numerous critical prob-
lems. James Mandrell calls attention to the Auctoris unreliability in spite
of the fact that he narrates with an authorial voice, but Haywood
("Apuntes") warns against Cárcel's illusion of conflating the historical
San Pedro with the character. She sides widi Alfonso Rey's proposal to
split die Auctoris role into "character witness" and "omniscient narra-
tor" as an epistolary strategy both to narrate, as an actor, his own
experiences and to evaluate them. Esther Torrego considers Cárcel a
literary oration but still underscores the novelty of the Auctor as San
Pedro's narrative tool to overcome the contradictory effects of fiction
and explicit moral teaching.42 I contend diat Cárcel depicts a visionary
experience, very likely that of die alcaide de los donceles, the patron who
petitioned San Pedro to compose the work or, at least, if not Diego
Hernandes's own vision, at least one with which he and the "otros
cavalleros cortesanos" mentioned in die prologue could easily iden-
tify.
Once again, a painting will illustrate my point. The donors'depiction
within die work that diey commission is characteristic of die late-me-
dieval pictorial art and reflects a prayer-book mentality. Monarchs
customarily appear in retablos, as personal visions of dieir personal de-
votions as in the case of the Flemish patrons studied by Harbison. For
instance, Fernando de Antequera, king of Aragón, kneels in prayer
with Sancho Rojas, archbishop of Toledo, at die feet of the Virgin and
41See Eugene Vance's definition ofcourtly poetry as "an expression ofan equilibrium
in conflicting desires in which satisfaction is an impossibility ... an aristocratic sign game
that expresses pragmatically (rather than logically) a curious but subtle relationship of
redundancy between nonsense in poetic language and self-thwarting libidinal desire"
(Marvelous Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Middle Ages 86-87).
42"Los aciertos de la Cárcel son inseparables del uso de este ardid narrativo sin el cual
difícilmente hubiera superado Diego de San Pedro los efectos contradictorios de la ficción
y de la explícita enseñanza moral" (331).
child in one of the diree main posts of a large, multipaneled altarpiece
now at El Prado.45 Isabel and Fernando, accompanied by dieir chil-
dren, Juan and Isabel, appear in a side panel, praying and staring at
the miracle of the Eucharist depicted in the central post of the retablo
of the Capilla de los Corporales [Chapel of the Corporals] in the
colegiata de Daroca (Zaragoza) (Yarza Luaces 79).
This practice was not restricted to the monarchy. The portrait of
the supposed Duque del Infantado is part of an altarpiece, and mem-
bers of the clergy and die wealthy classes also appear depicted in dieir
devotions. There are two panels of particular interest for my argu-
ment, since they represent Mary's fifth sorrow, most commonly known
later on as a Piedad: Fernando Gallego's Piedad, of uncertain date and
now at El Prado, and Bartolomé Bermejo's Pietà (1490) at die cadie-
dral of Barcelona. The subject was a feast, newly established by die
Church in 1423, as Mary's Seven Sorrows, or die Seven Swords or
Knives, as a series matched to her Seven Joys. Diego de San Pedro was
one of the first Spanish poets to treat die subject in "Las siete angustias
de Nuestra Señora", a poem included in Amalle and Lucenda. It was
probably composed independendy soon after the Pasión trovada from
which the author seems to have selected several engaging stanzas and
completed diem widi new material (Whinnom, Diego de San Pedro 55-61 ).
Fernando Gallego's Piedad depicts the tradititional group of Vir-
gin and dead son and, kneeling to dieir left, die two donors, a woman
and a man who utters the initial words of Psalm 50, "Miserere mei
domine". Note diat the psalm verbalizes the compunctio cordis diat ini-
tiates any meditation. In this case, it is the greatest of the penitential
psalms, one believed to have been written by David after sinning widi
Bathsheba (Yarza Luaces 151).
The Pietà, that Archdeacon Lluis Desplà, Canon of the Barcelona
Cathedral, commissions Bartolomé Bermejo to paint for his private
oratory is different. The painting was finished in 1490, so Bermejo
was working on it around the same time as San Pedro was composing
Cárcel. 44 Desplà, a cultivated individual who frequented latinist circles
and collected Roman antiquities, exhibits a taste as refined as the ver-
nacular humanists who constitute die readership of sentimental fic-
tions. Although there is no evidence that Desplà actually read any of
43For the political implications of Fernando de Antequera's Marian devotion, see

Angus MacKay 956.
44All the information about the Pietà Desplà comes from Joan Molina i Figueras and
John F. Moffit.
diem, his choice of iconography may demonstrate die artistic conse-

quences of die prayer-book mentality that he shared with Castilian
gentry and bring into focus apparent inconsistencies in Cárcel.
Bermejo's large panel depicts "a grief-torn Mary lamenting over
the stiffly rigid, gruesomely bloodied, body of her martyred son".
Desplà kneels on the right, and "at die Virgin's right hand is St. Jerome,
seemingly searching dirough his Vulgate translation of die Bible for
consolation and inspiration" (Moffit 72-73). Molina i Figueras explains
that the scene is a highly intellectualized meditation, a representation
of a private devotional act:
[Desplà] imagina, contempla y, finalmente, revive el dramático
episodio de la Pasión a través del texto que está leyendo de
San Jerónimo. Con su profunda sapiencia, el eximio doctor
explica al arcediano barcelonés el sentido y significado de
aquello que contempla con los ojos de su imaginación. Nada
extraño hay en ello. Recordemos al respecto que buena parte
de la sociedad del Cuatrocientos consideró las Epístolas de santo
como un medio ideal para comprender muchas de las sentencias
de las Escrituras. (143)
In diis very private meditation, Desplà's presence at the Calvary is
more than a mere convention. It reveals a common late-medieval
meditational praxis diat blurs the lines between the contemplated site
or place and die contemplator's personal experience, what Michael
Camille, analyzing the glorious visions of Gothic art, calls die "spec-
tacular interpénétration of image and viewer" that is lost with the
arrival of Renaissance perspective (Glorious Visions 180-81).
Moffit also explains diat the scene is set against die landscape of
Catalunya, which becomes Calvary dirough typological transference,
die same mechanism that converts Desplà into St. Francis at Monte
Alverna (75).The old method of figurai reading expounded die events
narrated in the Old Testament as foreshadowings, or types, of the
New, but in affective piety, exegetical similitude is expanded into a
timeless and intimate identification with Christ fhrough emotional
remembrance. Moffit quotes St. Francis's Fioretti, the popular four-
teenüi-century hagiographie andiology, where Monte Alverna becomes
die landscape of Christ's last hours "because diere die Passion of our
Lord Jesus Christ was to be renewed through love and pity in the soul of
St. Francis" (74) [my emphasis].
Given Cárcel's parodie character, it is not too farfetched to apply
the mechanism of typological transference to its landscape and narra-
tor. Notice diat Desplà's transference into St. Francis and, consequendy,
Catalonia's into Mount Verna and die Calvary, are made possible by
feelings of love and pity; that is, the compunctio cordis that initiates
each act of meditation and diat Gallego's Piedad portrays in the words
of die Psalmist, "miserere mei, Domine", articulated by the male do-
nor. Emotions, then, trigger memories and color each of fhem in a
movement toward die building of a personal vision.
At the beginning of Cárcel, the Auctor is returning home through
die Sierra Morena when the sight of Deseo dragging Leriano fright-
ens him to deadi and moves him to compassion. He spends a sleepless
night in despair before he finds the castie of love, die Sierra Morena
now transformed into an allegorical Holy Land, where he contem-
plates die symbolic elements of Leriano's Passion, and later into a fic-
tional Macedonia, a name reminiscent of chilvalric romance but also
hagiography. The Auctor, for his part, becomes any courtly witness who
contemplates die torments brought about by the power of feminine
beauty.
Santiago Tejerina-Canal found die key to Cárcel's structural unity
in the motif of tyranny and noticed diat the idea of die prison is ever-
present in the work, a dieme which can be better understood from a
devotional angle. The combined images of fierce Deseo and Leriano,
portrayed as the Man of Sorrows, remind die beholder of past infatu-
ations -the Auctor acknowledges that he had been able to understand
die imagery in the past when he was in love45- encourage him to show
compassion as in Gallego's Piedad, and emotionally participate in a
scene that illustrates die eternal trudi of the power of physical desire
over man.46
The transference of Cárcel's narrator into its donor begins by ex-
ploiting the topica of the exordium. Analyzing princely patronage and
the economy of dedication, cultural historian Roger Chartier explains
that the dedication to the Prince -or, in Cárcel's case, to the alcaide de
los donceles— does not simply represent an exchange between author
and patron; "it is also a figure by means of which die prince seems
himself praised as the primordial inspiration and the first author of
the book that is being presented to him, as if the writer or the scholar
45"La moralidad de todas estas figuras me ha plazido saber, puesto diversas vezes las
vi, mas como no las pueda ver sino coracón cativo, quando le tenia tal conoscíalas, y agora
que estava libre dubdávalas" (12).
46The prison theme also permeates Juan Ruiz's book oferotic adventures, asserted
in the initial prayer asking God to deliver him from jail and ease his miseries.
were offering him a work that was in fact his own (Forms and Meanings
42). This economy was explained in precise scholastic terms by Enrique
de Villena in his dedication of die translation of, and commentary on,
Virgil's Aeneid to the king of Navarra (1427). Juan II is praised as the
"causa potísima ynsçitativa", or causa efficiens that brought about the
work. Less scholarly in his terminology but still abiding by the same
topics of the exordium, San Pedro secures his patron's benevolence by
transferring to Don Diego Hernandes both the responsibility for the
work ("verdad es que en la presente obra no tengo tanto cargo, pues
me puse en ella más por necesidad de obedecer que por voluntar de
escribir") and its final audiorship ("acordé endereçarla a vuestra merced
porque la favorezca como señor y la emiende como discreto" [3]). The
aristocratie readership is enlarged to die circle of Hernandes's friends
by the mention of Doña Isabel de las Casas, modier of San Pedro's
benefactor Juan Téllez-Girón, whose cousin was married to Diego
Hernandes.4'
The convention is carried on in the narrative. Diego Hernandes is
not only co-creator of Cárcel as instigator and editor, but he appears
wiüiin the work as Auctor just as Archdeacon Desplà appears at die
right hand of Mary in a very intimate vision that is nonetheless painted
by Bartolomé Bermejo. The story the Auctor tells is a courtier's expe-
rience of love.
In addition, Diego Hernandes's visionary presence in Cárcel -or
that of any nobleman by affective identification- makes the Auctor char-
acter more apt for his narrative role. His political status as a member
of die Spanish nobility grants him easy access to the court in Macedonia.
The Auctor declares that very soon after he arrived at the court of
Suria, he was as esteemed as any of the "mancebos cortesanos de los
principales que allí veía" and has no problem whatsoever spending
time alone with Princess Laureola, telling her about "las cosas
maravillosas de España" (13). Even if it was not entirely implausible
for a courdy poet like San Pedro, the easy familiarity with die Surian
courtiers and their princess seems more fitting to members of the
aristocracy like Diego Hernandes and his friends.
The fact that the Auctor misreads Laureola indicates diat this medi-
tation was written at the request of a man and for the benefit of his
male friends. Cárcel's Auctor/donor experiences die confusion of any
passionate lover who faces feminine irrationality and capriciousness:
41 For a thorough overview of San Pedro's biography and connections, see Pari ilia's
introduction to her edition of Cárcel de amor.
Tanta confusión me ponían las cosas de Laureola, que quando

pensava que más la entendía, menos sabía de su voluntad;
quando tenía más esperança, me dava mayor desvío; quando
estava seguro, me ponía mayores miedos; sus desatinos cegavan
mi conocimiento. (22)
In spite of die moribund Leriano's gallant praise of women, his con-
ventional reasons cannot overcome the feelings of puzzlement and
extreme anxiety that Laureola's indecisiveness in granting her fa-
vors creates throughout the work.43 The Auctor summarizes that
emotion early on with an ellegant parallel clause redolent of
cancionero lyrics: "en el recibir la carta me satisfizo; en el fin de su
habla me desesperó" (22).
Parrilla notes diat die sentimental fictions by Flores and San Pedro
initiate a clear tendency to request an active participation from dieir
readers. Conversely, those readers demand:
[Verosimilitud y congruencia de lo que se cuenta, sea cual sea
la complejidad de la fábula, lo que se determina en principio
por medio de la figura y función de un narrador, que no siempre
será, como en las primeras ficciones, el protagonista de la
historia de amor sino un testigo veraz de los hechos que cuenta.
("La ficción sentimental" 23)
I agree but wish to stress that the participation in Cárcel of male court-
iers, already familiar with the effects of love, occurs by typological
transference and emotional involvement.49 This participation occurs
somehow outside time, in a "dream atmosphere", which is diegetically
expressed by a narrative pace linked to the Auctoris subjective concept
of time.50
Furthermore, the reader's participation has a productive rhetori-
cal aim. Originating in the dedication's captatio benevolentiae, it anchors
the narrative in reality, much as the historical setting of Peñafiel and
48For a highly enlightening analysis of male anxieties at the Isabelline court, see
Weissberger's groundbreaking study Isabel Rides. To explain why "courtly elevation of
women is not profeminist" she cites Alcum Blamires, The Casefor Women in Medieval Cul-
ture; for the Spanish debate, Weiss "¿Qué demandamos de las mujeres?" (211. note 9).
49Louise Haywood perceives the Auctor's emotional transference when she states that
"al encontrarse en el marco desconocido de Macedonia, el narrador experimenta su
identidad como ajena a otra" (Apuntes" 19).
30 "[E]I narrador maneja el tiempo cronológico en función del ritmo: se detiene o
acelera, no conforme a La realidad objetiva de lo sucedido, sino subjetivamente" (Torrego 337)
"la guerra del año pasado" -a place and event clearly related to San
Pedro's benefactor Juan Tellez-Girón and his circle- to build a generic
vision of masculine courtly love articulated as religious passion. As in
some Flemish visions painted by Van Eyck "descriptive data were rear-
ranged ... so that they illustrate not earthly existence but what he
considered supernatural trudi" and artists go "to extraordinary lengths
to portray [subjects] in natural terms, to conceive of an imaginary but
eternal reality in perfectly understandable ways" (Harbison, "Realism
and Symbolism in Early Flemish Painting" 589).
Moffit views the "union of realism oí essential, or singularly char-
acterizing, detail and an often highly stylized overall design and pat-
terned setting" as "even now, one of die hallmarks of Spanish artistic
vision" (71). This generalization is too sweeping for accuracy but it
certainly describes the contemplative method at work in the monastic
genre of visions (Boethius, Dante) and the sentimental romances in-
spired by its craft.Dl
The concept of authorship as social practice is dierefore implied
in the craft of contemplation and affective piety. Yet the concept can
also be explored from another rhetorical angle since Cárcel, itself a
meditation, is meant to encourage furtiier contemplation.
Cárcel's inventive power

Fernando Bonza, following the studies of Peter Burke, identifies three
forms of communication in Early Modern Europe: the oral and die
iconic-visual were the only options available to die majority, while the
written mode was limited to a literate minority who also shared the
oral and iconic-visual modes (Del escribano 26-27).
Diego de San Pedro belonged to the literate minority. Antonio
Cortijo Ocaña observes that, likeJuan de Flores, San Pedro was among
die men of letters and bureaucrats at the service of literate noblemen
at the Isabelline court (La. evolución, genérica 1 64). Cárcel's success among
die nobility and younger women, die latter indirecdy substantiated by
Luis Vives's indictment, but also among Salamancan schoolmen, such
as Fernando de Rojas who owned a copy, may be attributed to its ap-
peal to any of the three modes. Leriano's consumption of Laureola's
'' For the method at work in other vernacular visions, see Enric Dolz-Ferrer, "Siervo libre
de amor: entre la alegoría y la anagogia", which, building on Gerli's inclusion ofSiervo in the
penitential tradition, identifies its Franciscan affiliation as an Itinerarium mentis adDeum.
letters will illustrate my point. Critics have been righdy puzzled by its
irreverent tone as a sacramental communion. Joseph F. Chorpenning,
so well versed in biblical studies, found a link between the scene and
Ezekiel's "eating of the precious scrolls, which he found as sweet as
honey", but E. Michael Gerii objected that this precedent "could not
have been widely known" (cit. in Whinnom, "Cardona, the Crufixion"
212). I agree fhat the reference would have gone unnoticed among
courtly readers but wonder if a more subtle irony was addressed to
readers from more professional settings. In scholastic circles, die link
between remembering and digesting was commonplace. Carrudiers
mentions "the motif, found in both Ezequiel and John's Apocalypse,
of the visionary 'eating die book' as a prelude to a vision of heaven,
[and] Ezequiel also became ill ... when he experienced his visions"
(The Craft of Thought 180). Read in this context, Leriano's consump-
tion of Laureola's letters could be a dramatized literalization for read-
ers themselves tearfully consuming San Pedro's work as a prelude to
their own meditations. The sweetness of the letters, in spite of their
poisonous content, hints at its memorial nature as "food for diought",
the old monastic metaphor of invention, and as pleasant poetic activ-
ity: "cellula quae meminit est cellula deliciarum".52
The consumption of the letters is a parodie performance of the
Eucharist as a literary creation that begins with the rumination on
other texts. The literate minority took San Pedro's cue. We know at
least of one certain meditation —Nicolás Nunez's continuation oí Cárcel
de amor- and very likely Roja's Celestina, whose "contemplative" writ-
ing techniques have been hinted at by Peter E. Russell as a "floresta de
filosophos".53 San Pedro and Rojas share the misogynist bias diat bonds
university students as a social group, relating women to irrational ani-
mals in dieir works.54 In that sense, Cárcel may bejust another illustra-
tion of Pedro de Torrellas's injunction in his Maldezir de mujeres that,
"He who loving well pursues ladies destroys himself, for women pur-
sue those who flee from them and flee from those who pursue diem;
they do not love for being loved, nor do they reward services; rather,
52 From line 1 972 of Geoffrey ofVinsauf 's Poetria nova, cited in Carruthers, The Crafl
ofThought 304 ? 9 1 .
33Sevei in also states that, "It is the self-parodv in the [sentimental] genre that makes
possible the Celestina and the later evolution of the novel ("Sentimental Genre" 314).
34See Ruth Mazo Karras's study From Boys to Men for misogyny as a university ritual
bonding rite (67-108). For the Isabelline court, Weissberger's Isabel Rules, particularly
chapter 5 on Luis de Lucena.
34Sol Miguel-PrendesLa corànica 32.2, 2004
they are all ungrateful, they distribute their rewards ruled only by
obstinacy" (cited in Weissberger, Isabel Rules 1 45-46).55
However, Cárcel's wide appeal may explain why, aldiough intended
as a private meditation, it could have been read and discussed pub-
licly. Roger Chartier has demonstrated that "the practice of reading
aloud, for others or oneself, should not be attributed to an inability to
read with the eyes alone..., but to a cultural convention diat power-
fully associated text and voice, reading, declamation, and listening";
that "oralized reading persisted into the modern period when silent
reading had already become an ordinary practice for educated read-
ers" and diat in "Golden Age Castile, leer and oír, ver and escucha r were
quasi-synonymous, and reading aloud was the implied reading of very
different genres" (Form1; and Meanings 16). The practice of communal
reading was common at nobiliary courts, and Cárcel's altarpiece struc-
ture could very well have encouraged a quasi-liturgical performance.
Whinnom, once more, suggested a link with the Mass as a possible
source ("Cardona, the Crucifixion" 213), but among courtiers, the
contrafacta Eucharist performed die celebration of their code of ethics,
"the kind of superior sense and sensibility diat the aristocracy used to
set itself apart from and legitimize its dominance over die lower classes"
(Weissberger, "The Politics" 320). Although already a commonplace of
medieval studies, recalling the classic formulation of courtly love is
appropriate here, as it encompasses the devotion of any nobleman
who prays at the altar of this religio amoris: love as a moral, ennobling
principle; love as an end in itself; and the supremacy of die loved one
over the lover. The performance of the Eucharist of courtly love bonds
refined men within die courdy milieu in the same way diat the perfor-
mance of misogynist invention sets apart university students as a dis-
tinct group.
If Cárcel is just anodier instance of misogynist discourse, how to
explain its supposed success among women? Does such success support
Nicholas Round's speculation that Queen Isabel and, presumably many
" Another type of meditation, this time following the religious thread is suggested in
Whinnom's posthumous article. Whinnom indicated that Juan de Cardonas Tratado no-
table de amor (1545-1547) found the inspiration to [emphasize the parallel between the death
of Cisterno and that of Christ] in San Pedro's account of Leriano's end ("Cardona, the
Crucifixion" 211). Furthermore, Antonio Cortijo indicates that "en esta última década
veremos la aparición del Tratado de amores, La Repetición de amores, La continuación de la Cárcel
de amor de Núñez y la Celestina, que suponen la aparición de un fenómeno inusitado de
interreLiciones literal Las y réplicas y contrarréplicas que merece ser estudiado" (La evolución
genéiica 165).
a female reader in Isabel's court, "read as a man" (cited in Weissberger,

"Politics" 321-22)? A different answer may be extracted from Cárcel's
inventional power as a meditation. As a reading that ladies could have
mulled over repeatedly in private, it may have given them "the op-
portunity to 'read as a woman'". According to later testimony, some of
them memorized the letters and used them to gain "the same kind of
awareness Laureola gained ... [to resist] die manipulativeness of courdy
lovers" (Weissberger, "Politics" 322). In fact, those ladies were follow-
ing the craft of thought by committing texts to memory for their
spiritual advancement. San Pedro's rejection of his successful romance
in his old age of such a because "no tuvo en leerse calma" undoubtedly
hints at the polemical meditations that it encouraged. And I wonder if
the objection of the moralists had to do with die content of such works
—Vives scorns diem as nonsense— or with die fact diat diey were read in
privacy, where women could think about diem widiout male guidance.
Some conclusions
We may conclude that die social nature of Cárcel's authorship is im-

plied in the craft of meditation and the sentimental label attached to it
is a direct consequence of the double function of its contemplative
technique as reading practice and rhetorical inventio, memorial pil-
grimage and translation. Inventive reading denotes walking through
memory places -the panels of an altarpiece, biblical stories, other ro-
mances, any other text. Images are not an aid to understanding words;
"Words and images are together two 'ways' of the same mental activ-
ity" (Carrudiers, The Craft of Thought 142), and literary invention en-
tails "painting with words"P
The inventories of noble libraries, beginning wi di Cotarelo y Mori's
imagined library for Enrique de Villena, provide a useful list of the
memorial places diat fifteenth-century Iberian readers perambulated.
This reading method was common to university-trained lawyers and
clergy as well as literate aristocrats. It was also available to a wider
audience, not hilly acquainted widi the technologies of reading and
writing, through liturgy and affective private devotion in die oral and
iconic-visual languages. All these groups— diose who relied on die oral
56 For the labyrinth asjourney and instances of love edifices in sentimental romances,
see Olga Tudorica Impey, "Contraria en la Triste deleylación" .
and iconic-visual modes of communication and die literate circles who
also mastered die written mode — shared a prayer-book mentality.
The craft of thought always relies on emotions, meant to engage
memory work and affect personal experience. Therefore strong feel-
ings, such as weeping, restlessness and fear, are not identified with
feminine moods but as the necessary first stages of an active mind
engaged in recollection and creative composition. The emphasis on
rhetorical craft is a way of coloring memories and signaling mood to
guide the individual as a pilgrim through a visual padi. The promi-
nence that sentimental fictions assign to feelings can be seen as a con-
sequence of the prayer-book mentality that stresses emotional
identification with the text/image contemplated, which I analyze as a
form of social authorship.
Critics more adept at contemporary literary criticism prefer to
address Cárcel's Auctoris dual role from a metafictive perspective. E.
Michael Gerii states that metafiction erases die boundary between re-
ality and fiction ("Metafiction" 59), and Lisa Voigt, building on Gerli's
influential study, adds diat it invites the reader to participate in the
meaning of the text and incorporate it as personal experience dirough
an etiiical reading (132). Their insights precisely describe what a late-
medieval individual would call a meditation. In this sense, Voigt's in-
terpretation of Cárcel as an allegory of the narrative process in its
double side of reading and writing - the dual nature of contemplative
inventio— is totally accurate.
Although Weissberger's article on the patriarchal bias of die senti-
mental label reflects a general change in the critical attitude toward
this type of fiction, a gendered implication in some of the method-
ological approaches or in the lack of them remains. First, contempla-
tive reading practices and their social authors are studied mainly
among nuns, because we still vestigially associate feelings and devo-
tion with women while reason and humanism belong to the masculine
sphere.57 Second, studies on the readership of sentimental fictions search
to identity its female audience. Parrilla documents a few exceptional
instances for Cárcel and hypothesizes die loss of manuscript copies and
moral censorship as causes for its absence from women's inventories
("La ficción sentimental y sus lectores" 22). Parilla has very sound rea-
"' Sor Isabel de Villena, a chiefexample ofa literate female with a prayer-book men-
tality, has lately received close attention. See Lesley K. Twomey, "Sor Isabel de Villena";
Montserrat Piera, "Writing, A uctoritas and Canon Formation"; along with Albert-Guillem
Hauf i Vails pioneering studies (introduction to his edition of Isabel de Villena's Vita Christi).
sons, but Cárcel, is explicitly addressed to a male audience. It bonds

male courtiers and schoolmen and sets diem apart from die irratio-
nality and fickleness of die female sex in a quasi-liturgical performance
of masculinity. Cárcel represents, as Weissberger noted ("Politics"), a
powerful ideological document of the Isabelline court and an instance
of the male anxiety that she so eloquendy analyzes in Isabel Rules.
Weissberger also analyzed Melchor de Santa Cruz's story of the
lady who refused a gentleman's letter because it was plagiarized from
Cárcel as feminine resistance to masculine values ("Politics" 322), and I
added earlier that the new-found feminine awareness was the logical
consequence of die spiritual transformation implied in contemplative
reading. I also speculated diat Vives's injunction against Cárcel might
result not so much from its nonsensical content but from the possibil-
ity of women's reading it in private. The Archpriest ofTalavera's much-
quoted anecdote about the contents of women's cofres -"canciones,
dezires, coplas, cartas de enamoradas, e muchas otras locuras" (cited
in Lawrance, "The Spread of Lay Literacy" 79)- reveals masculine
unease about their secret spaces. The fact that some women inherited
Cárcel from their husbands' libraries (Parrilla, "La ficción" 22) could
suggest that it taught those husbands about the evils of womanhood
and was expected to warn their wives, who could read it under close
supervision. If so, Vives's banning oí Cárcel from young women's read-
ing lists would be equivalent to the objection bandied against indi-
vidual reading and interpretation of Scriptures. It amounts to the
difference between ordered liturgical service, conducted by a male
celebrant, and uncontrolled private devotion in a woman's private re-
treat.
Cárcel signals a new sensibility, not, I diink, a humanist affinity but

rather a religious fervor that prepares the way for die inception of the
devotio moderna and the mystic writings of die following century. Blas-
phemy, Whinnom reminds us, is still a form of familiarity with the
divine, and Gabriel Llompart notes diat late-medieval blasphemies
are the result of a contemplative tide that spills over its epicenter (La
pintura medieval mallorquína. 108). The loving contemplation of each
part of Christ's body produces a series of parallel blasphemies known
as dismemberments ("Blasfemias yjuramentos cristológicos en la Baja
Edad Media catalana" 151-53) just as the contemplation of the Man
of Sorrows leads San Pedro to fashion his courdy hero.
One final speculation: I wonder if die visual nature of recollection
could explain the differences among sentimental fictions. Those in-
tended for the court would relv on the oral and iconic-visual modes of
communication, while romances addressed to a more learned reader-

ship would stress die written sites of their shared school training, cit-
ing auctoritates barely remembered, often misquoted, sometimes
invented, which often sound to our modern ears like a pedantic
"trasunto de lecturas" (Seres 22). Cárcel de amor was a best-seller be-
cause it could appeal to learned and illiterate alike.
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Reimagining Diego de San Pedro's Readers at Work: Cárcel de

La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and

Published by La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures,

For additional information about this article

La corónica 32.2 (Spring, 2004): 7-44

court.1 I shall consider the cultural context of Castilian literary and

The "prayer-book" mentality

and child surrounded by smaller panels impossible to identify (Yarza

8 See the latest formulation in Parrilla: "En lo que tiene de cuestionamiento y

"paralitúrgicas", such as Alonso del Campo's/4wío de la Pasión or some

10Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436-1517) became Isabel's confessor in 1492 and

One of Cárcel's most obvious characteristics is die importance of

undertaken by sentimental heroes are a product of the prayer-book

The rhetorical craft of contemplation

gilded quatrefoils, or, particularly in Castile, widi an inscrip-

Cárcel's contemplative structure

steel shield and in his right a striking stone carving representing a

Like the central symbolic images of a retable, the ekphrasis in the

Latin quies. These terms connect directly widi the circumstances in

Deyermond presumes for die sentimental genre: Augustine's Confes-

The role of rhetoric

The love allegory is meant to engage emotions. Quintilian recom-

36 Alan Deyermond, "Estudio preliminar", in Cárcel de amor, xii-xiii.

Emotion also colors every memorial site —allegories, letters, duels,

libidinal desire".41 As Severin remarks, "If a moral is being drawn, it is

The role of the Auctor and contemplative authorship

43For the political implications of Fernando de Antequera's Marian devotion, see

diem, his choice of iconography may demonstrate die artistic conse-

Tanta confusión me ponían las cosas de Laureola, que quando

Cárcel's inventive power

a female reader in Isabel's court, "read as a man" (cited in Weissberger,

We may conclude that die social nature of Cárcel's authorship is im-

sons, but Cárcel, is explicitly addressed to a male audience. It bonds

Cárcel signals a new sensibility, not, I diink, a humanist affinity but

communication, while romances addressed to a more learned reader-

Funes, Leonardo, and Carmen de la Linde. "Cartas bebidas por Leriano:

Impey, Olga Tudorica. "Contraria en la Triste deleytación: materia fun-

Michael, Ian. "Spanish Literature and Learning to 1474". Spain: A

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