The Laughter of the Saints: Parodies of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (review)

Ryan Giles's The Laughter of the Saints is a gem of a book. His topic is "Saturnalian religiosity" (4), carnivalesque transgression that seemingly break the rules in order to return to them and to order. The introduction, "Saints and Anti-Saints," shows how the medieval penchant for depicting the duality of saints and anti-saints, of piety and impiety, of levity and seriousness, is a pattern that continues well into the early modern period. Giles acknowledges the work of Bakhtin, but insists that in the texts and traditions he studies there is no conflict or contradiction between the official and popular. Instead, the mixture of sacred and profane, high and low registers, oral and written culture, provides a context in which moral discernment is required of all. The cultural landscape he describes reflects "not only the worldliness or permissive mentality of the [Spanish] frontier clergy, but also the broader tradition of clerical writers frequenting taverns, gambling halls, and brothels—familiarizing themselves with the back alleys as well as the cloisters of medieval Europe" (12).

Chapter 1, "Christ and His Cross," discusses the troba caçurra of the Libro de buen amor. Giles brings together strands of popular songs and traditions, learned texts and exegesis, all suggesting the common practice of treating the cross as a female person embraced by Christ. The Archpriest's "loss" of Cruz parallels the way crusaders "lost" the True Cross in the Holy Land. The troba caçurra thus evokes not only transgressive laughter, but a whole range of cultural practices and information, leaving to the discernment of the readers the task of "forging their own path" (24). The chapter continues with a study of the sixteenth-century Carajicomedia in which "graphic sex scenes are restaged as sacred devotion" (25), parodying the typical "contemplative technique" (26) used for meditating on the Passion. Readers must "visualize obscene imagery" (27) the way devotional texts "urge Christians to meditate on scenes from the Gospel" (27).

Chapter 2, "Holy Men in the Wilderness," sees wilderness as a space that is potentially both sacred and evil. In the Libro de buen amor, the archpriest starts out on his journey through the mountains on the day of San Meder, who had walked a "martyr's pilgrimage" (36), a parallel to the via crucis, and Christ's journey in the desert. The festive contrast is that Christ is cared for by angels whereas the archpriest is "manhandled" (38) by the mountain women. The chapter also deals with the legend of St. Hilarion as transformed in the Carajicomedia "into a wildman lurking in the cemetery, waking the dead with his staff" (51).

Chapter 3, "Virgins and Harlots," reminds us that the stories of female saints allowed for taking pleasure in sexual language and images while at the same time providing religious imagery. Giles discusses the cult of St. Quiteria and the carnivalesque use Juan Ruiz makes of it in the Libro de buen amor when Don Amor curses the saint in a rage against the Lenten season. Quiteria also appears in the Carajicomedia in anti-saint role of seductress. In Celestina, Rojas makes use of the cult of the Magdalene by portraying the old whore as an anti-saint. This combination of the sacred and profane Giles aptly calls "whoredom and Marianism" (71), an "intermingling of spiritual exaltation and worldly debasement" that "sets the stage for the humorous performance of saints in the early Spanish novel" (72).

Chapter 4, "Picaresque Saints," develops further the "official" and "unofficial" use of the cult of saints. St. Martha, the holy hostess, became characterized as the go-between of Christ and the Magdalene, and the Martha cult became the organizing principle for Delicado's narrative in the Lozana andaluza, making Lozana's life "a satirical reconfiguration of hagiographic material" (83). In turn, the Lazarillo satirizes the life of St. John the Baptist, taking the...