Death in Fifteenth-Century Castile: Ideologies of the Elites (review)

The subject of death and its perception, the rituals both secular and religious surrounding it, and the artistic elaborations on the topic have been the focus of numerous studies, especially in the past few decades. Perhaps such a trend falls within the field of influence of what Paul Freedman and Gabrielle Spiegel saw as a consequence within American medieval historiography of a "postmodern agenda," which determined from the 1970s onward an emphasis on the marginal and particularly on the grotesque (Freedman and Spiegel, 699, see note 73 to same page).¹ Laura Vivanco's study is not within American medievalism proper, does not concern herself exclusively with historical sources, and specifically distances itself from the macabre and the grotesque (23). A theoretical framework, which postmodernism has given to most of those other studies referred to by Freedman and Spiegel, would have been here a welcome structuring device for what is otherwise an exhaustive collection of quotations from various sources on different aspects surrounding death in the fifteenth century.

The book is divided into three chapters, "Types of Death," "The Afterlife," and "The Bereaved," framed by an introduction and a conclusion. Vivanco's focus is on the differences and possible conflicts arising from views and attitudes of oradores and defensores. Each chapter provides a wealth of materials for each estate. The strength of this book is precisely the number of sources brought together under specific rubrics, confirmed by the impressive bibliography (particularly for the primary sources). Beyond the extraordinary labor of compilation, for which the author should be commended, the book, however, does not fully justify its being presented as a unified work—aside from suffering from a series of minor problems as well.

In the Introduction, Vivanco reviews all the literature produced on the subject of death—with emphasis on the work of historians—for the Middle Ages in general, and for Spain in particular. The author also focuses on particular regions and with different source materials, argued as a response to Johan Huizinga's suturing of the theme of death and the fifteenth century as part of his argument on the waning epoch. Vivanco surveys such literature arguing that it was first produced under the influence of Huizinga, but later took on the task, as numerous historians felt the need to nuance and, at times, to contradict Huzinga—of emphasizing continuity in the practices and attitude towards death both before and after the fifteenth century.Vivanco cites primary and secondary sources that support and contest a particular emphasis on death in the fifteenth-century (1–7), to support these claims. The author goes on to explain that the subject has been the focus of general studies, as well as of specific topics, and cites those devoted to medieval Castile: three different wide-ranging studies on death in late-medieval Castile, along with a series of more specialized works on topics such as the deaths of kings. Beyond these historical approaches, only some of which consider literature as source material, Vivanco provides a review of critical works devoted to death in art and literature, focusing on pieces such as the Danzas de la muerte and the Ars moriendi, along with the privileged focus on a play such as Celestina or even on a particular character, such as Leriano in Cárcel de amor (8–10). After this, it is hard to take Vivanco's word when she claims that "there is still a need for a study that focuses on a single century and uses evidence provided by literary and other written sources" (10). Hence, my first general concern: Vivanco writes that she has "attempted to demonstrate the extent to which literature was indeed informed by contemporary ideas and practice" (a needless demonstration, for who thinks of literature as divorced from its context), and, "in so doing, I have not analysed death in literature in terms of its psychological and plot functions" (22). If Vivanco's original contribution to the study of attitudes concerning death in fifteenth-century...