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  • Scent of the Vision: Odoriferous Rewards in Fermoso cuento de una santa enperatrís que ovo en Roma & de su castidat
  • Heather L. Downey

The fourteenth-century manuscript, Escorial h–I–13, is a collection of nine hagiographic-chivalresque tales, all protagonized by a female heroine who triumphs over great persecution.1 The first five works are explicit hagiographies while the last four are romances but, despite this transition from religious saints’ lives to secular romances, the nine pieces exhibit a significant unity. Their pro-feminist tone (Spaccarelli 46) and general plot structure (Maier and Spaccarelli 21) serve as common threads.2 [End Page 259]

The collection is further unified by the similar ways in which the women suffer their trials.3 The ideals set forth by the saints in the first tales are enacted by the earth-bound women who follow, setting up a model for the manuscript’s female audience.4 As the reader enters the second half of the manuscript, finding lives more similar to her own, she is nonetheless reminded of the absolute holiness to which she should attain. Although she could easily hold up each of the romance heroines as a chaste and saintly model, the holiness for which she should strive (and its subsequent rewards) is most powerfully portrayed for her in the penultimate romance, Fermoso cuento de una santa enperatrís que ovo en Roma & de su castidat (hereafter Santa enperatrís).5

The last three narratives of the manuscript –in order, Otas de Roma, Santa enperatrís, and Carlos Maynes– share a common plot, the not unfamiliar [End Page 260] tale of a saintly empress falsely accused of adultery. While the goodness and chastity of all three heroines merit salvation from their trials there is a clear distinction between the levels of holiness manifested in each story.6 Carlos Maynes, the least spiritual of the three, abounds with references to religious ritual, but the relational aspect of religion (a certain friendship between the empress and God or Mary) is missing along with any miracle as are found in all the other works of the manuscript; instead of heavenly aid, the empress Sevilla is assisted by the very human Barroquer.7 In Otas de Roma Florencia’s plight takes a more religious and magical tone. The empress is saved from being raped through a magical stone she was given and which she later uses to cure the lepers. The structure of her magical release, however, lacks the focus of a heavenly intervention that is found in Santa enperatrís.

Making Santa enperatrís distinct from the other two is the use of a vision of the Virgin Mary which identifies the saintliness of the Empress, a vision around which the sum of the work revolves. The Virgin appears to the Empress as she is at her lowest point, both to rescue her and to announce that her suffering is no more. In that same encounter, she is rewarded with the enchanted herb, the plant and its power directly transferred to the Empress. In contrast, Florencia, although spared from rape by her magical object, endures further trials before her life is turned around. For the Empress, the vision is the consummate pivot point, an event and reward which “permite señalar su cercanía a la tradición hagiográfica desarrollada inicialmente en el códice” (Zubillaga CXLVI).

The vision-event serves as an axis around which the entire story revolves, clearly dividing the narration in two –the first part of the Empress’s life [End Page 261] shows how she effectively earns the otherworldly second half of her life, “viviendo y muriendo en olor de santidad” (González, “Una santa” 164).8 The impact of the vision is easily observed and below I will outline how other vision/sight elements likewise affirm the saintliness of the Empress. When considering this sainthood of the Empress, however, one who dies with the odor of sanctity, we must probe beyond the figurative poetry of the expression and it is in this search for literal scent in the tale that we discover a panoply of olfactory holiness. Smell is found loosely paralleling its “superior” scent, sight, but...

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