Poesía de Pasión en la Edad Media. El "Cancionero de Pero Gómez de Ferrol" (review)

334ReviewsLa coránica 31.2, 2003 Cátedra, Pedro M. Poesía de Pasión en la Edad Media. El "Cancionero de Pero Gómez de Ferrol". Salamanca: Seminario de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas (SEMYR), 2001. 501 pp. ISBN 84-920305-8-5 The first of the Publicaciones del SEMYR, this is a bravado performance by Pedro Cátedra, albeit one for a very specialized audience, even by the standards of Medieval Hispanists. Cátedra does not just edit Pero Gómez de Ferrol's poem on Christ's final Passion, "Sancta Pasión" (SP), and Gómez de Ferrol's other poetry in Salamanca MS 2139 (Dutton sigla SA4), a "Glosa del 'Ave Maria'", a "Glosa del 'Padre Nuestro'" and "Sobre los ángeles". He also gives us as appendices (447-62) the texts of other hitherto unknown religious works, the poetic "Dicho del que se confiesa" which heads the SA4 collection, and a prose "Sermón de la Pasión" found in an Escorial manuscript among the sermons of St. Vincent Ferrer. The latter is of particular interest as a source of the ending of the longer manuscript version of Diego de San Pedro's Pasión trobada (PT), the best-known Passion poem of the Isabelline age. Also embedded in the text of Cátedra's long studies of this Passion literature is another unknown work, "Pasión de la Real Academia de la Historia" or PA (318-20). Cátedra devotes the longest section (15-187) to a dual edition of Gómez de Ferrol's poetry with a palaeographic version on the left-hand page and a punctuated reading version on the right-hand page. Another long chapter is dedicated to "Antecedentes, lecturas, recepción y temas pasionales" (191298 ), and for those like myselfwho are already steeped in the Spanish Passion tradition there is a fascinating chapter on "La Santa Pasion de Gómez de Ferrol y las Pasiones castellanas" (299-444). An excellent bibliography (46388 ) and a comprehensive index (489-99) complement the book. Thank goodness for the latter, since even an old hand like myself can easily get lost in the field of abbreviations of poetic works, especially the 'new' ones (there is a list of abbreviations on page 14). Nonetheless, it is by no means clear to me which of the three Escorial manuscripts listed in the index is the source of the "Sermón de la Pasión" edited in the appendix without a source reference . In the chapter on antecedents, Cátedra rounds up the usual suspects and adds a good number of new ones to the list. So besides the Meditationes Vitae Christi (MVC) of the fourteenth century, we hear of the fifteenth-century Spanish manuscript translation attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (BNMadrid MS 9526); printed versions of this text are better-known. A comparison between the extensio episode (the stretching of Christ's limbs on La COKoNtCA 31.2 (Spring, 2003): 334-36 Reviews335 the cross before it is lifted into an upright position) of the MVC and the Dialogas beatae Mariae et Anselmi de passione Domini and the extensio in San Pedro's PT yields the conclusion that the detail of the nailing of the feet after the cross is raised in PT must be indebted to the Infancia Salvatoris (IS), available in a Spanish version in a unique Burgos incunable of ca. 1493 (also attributed erroneously to St. Bernard), but which abounded in manuscripts in the monasteries and convents of the times. Eiximenis used this text for his Vida de Jesucrist (VJ) edited by Hernando de Talavera in an unique incunable and studied by Albert Hauf. We are warned not to confuse this text with the similarly-named and prohibited apochryphal Gospel of Christ. Are you still with me? If so you may be a member of the very small niche market for whom this book will be a joy, if at times a difficult read. Other texts with which the reader may or may not be familiar include St. Bonaventure's Lignum Vitae, Jacob of Milan's Stimulus amoris, Suso's Horologium, Ubertino da Casale's Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu. There is also a section...