Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain ed. by María Morrás, Rebeca Sanmartín Bastida and Yonsoo Kim

To consider the tensions between how religious communities and exemplarity provided additional freedoms for women while, at the same time, placing them under increasingly close scrutiny requires subtle minds, and the collection of essays that María Morrás, Rebeca Sanmartín Bastida, and Yonsoo Kim have assembled proves itself more than up to such a nuanced task. The collection covers four centuries, as well as an array of different themes, disciplines, and critical frameworks, yet manages to prevent a cohesive insight into the larger notions of gender and exemplarity as the essays readily bolster one another.

Morrás's introduction goes beyond providing the cursory summary of the volume, and the editor skillfully weaves the texts together into a cohesive whole, accompanied by a wealth of bibliographical sources. Morrás makes a persuasive case for considering the hagiographical and biographical texts (self-written and otherwise) under the label of "life accounts informed by religious discursive practices" (2). This terminology acknowledges that these works sat at the permeable barrier between sacred and profane spheres and that they constituted transnational textual communities of women. Morrás also argues that these works are better considered within the broader context of exemplarity (which subsumes other ideas like women and gender) that traces back to the Classical and Early Christian periods and that became increasingly important to help exceptional women to navigate the growing tension between the exceptional and common that moved to the forefront in European Christianity during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.

The editors divide the volume into two sections that follow Morrás's introduction. "Rewriting Models" is the first, and it considers how religious exemplars such as Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt are transformed through translations and editing. The second, "Inscribing Models," explores how exemplary authors themselves construct their own authority, both directly and indirectly.

"Rewriting Models" begins with Andrew M. Beresford's "Hagiography, Corporeality, and the Gaze: Sexual/Ascetic Tension in the Vida de santa María egipciaca," Beresford notes how Saint Mary of Egypt moves from harlot to cenobite to hermit. By underscoring how the Spanish Vida differs from its source text, La vie de sainte Marie l'Égyptienne, and the earlier medieval version written by the Palestinian monk Sophronios, Beresford applies a Lacanian reading to the Vida. He argues that Mary of Egypt moves through a naïve phase as a harlot who fails to recognize the distance between self and other that would allow her to see the dangers of her promiscuity. This changes when, after gazing at an image of Mary, she sees herself reflected in the mirror stage and begins to recognize her body as a symbol and subject of social discourse. This triggers a state of abjection, where she wars with her own body in order to obtain a different identity. After spending forty years in the desert, she becomes the antithesis of her earlier self in an inversion of the visual pleasure that defined her as a harlot; this prepares her to ascend as a saintly fixed symbol, attaining Mary-like beatitude as Zosimus and the rest of the characters renew their devotion because of her example. By adopting a Lacanian reading, Beresford pushes beyond critical readings that suggest that Mary attains saintly status by becoming more masculine; rather, it is by her own ability to transform and rewrite her body from natural symbol to divine, thus earning the devotion of Zosmus and his cenobitic community.

In the second essay of the volume, "Under Suspicion: Mary Magdalene in Late Medieval Castile, Virtuous and Illustrious?" Morrás asks why Álvaro de Luna singles out Mary Magdalene for editorial comments in his Libro de las virtuosas e claras mugeres. The critic answers this question by delving into the political context of fifteenth-century Castile, where Christine de Pizan's reworking of Mary Magdalene captured the imagination of Trastamara noblewomen by highlighting her as a trusted counselor of Jesus. Mary Magdalene would thus have been a particularly polemic subject in light of the fact that both Álvaro de Luna and María de Aragón competed to have sway over the latter's nephew, Enrique IV. As a result, Álvaro de Luna had to walk a delicate line between fulfilling the noble request that he participate in the querelle des femmes that favored Mary Magdalene, while also implying that Mary was an exception, rather than a model of what political power women (such as María de Aragón) should be able to wield.

The third essay is "Discernment of Spirits and Spiritual Authority: the Tractatus de vita spirituali and its Afterlife" by Rosa Vidal Doval. The critic examines the translation of St. Vincent Ferrer's Tractatus, commissioned by Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, which omits chapters 14 and 15. These chapters warn of the potential dangers of spiritual visions and provide criteria to avoid them. For Vidal, this omission places spiritual visions firmly within a monastic, communal context where female visionaries must rely on a confessor rather than on individual discernment. The critic observes that this underscores Cisneros's larger aim to submit female mystic visions to the hierarchy of male monasticism.

Next is Pablo Acosta's essay, "Women Prophets for a New World: Angela of Foligno, 'Living Saints,' and the Religious Reform Movement in Cardinal Cisnero's Castile." Acosta considers how Cisnero published a Latin version and then a Castilian translation of the Italian Angela de Foligno's autohagiography. After reconstructing a genealogy of Cisneros's version, Acosta suggests that the text fits within Cisneros's larger interest in promoting beatic literature to support political moves, such as evangelizing North Africa and the Americas. Additionally, Acosta notes that Cisneros maintains the source text's condemnation of sexual impropriety, and underscores that many alumbrados were condemned for impropriety and that it was a present concern for Cisneros.

The fifth essay considers textuality and exemplarity. Jimena Gamba Corradine mines inquisitional records from Seville and Valladolid to create a profile of Protestant Spanish women in "Models of Female Spirituality in Sixteenth-century Spain: Women Accused of Lutheranism." Gamba Corradine notes that, like in the earlier alumbrados movement, women found greater leadership opportunities in Lutheran circles. At the same time, Lutheran women's groups were focused more on intellectual concerns in interpreting doctrine and reading, rather than expressing mystical experiences. These groups offered a form of circumventing the controlling gaze of male confessors, and, but for the inquisition, could have potentially served as a turning point toward greater autonomy for women.

The second half of the volume focuses on how women construct their own authority through exemplary texts. It opens with Ryan Giles's "'No hay quien vele a Alonso:' Imitatio Mariae and the Problem of Conversion in Leonor López de Córdoba's Memorias." The Memorias chronicle the execution of Leonor's father for his loyalty to Pedro I of Castile, Leonor's subsequent imprisonment, and her later freedom. Married and impoverished, she adopts a converso Jewish child, Alonso. The child contracts the plague, which spreads to Leonor's biological children, who perish. Giles notes that the author seems to be imitating the Virgin Mary's conversion of Jewish children in Alfonso X's Cantigas, styling herself as a Marian figure. This is ultimately undermined by the child's contagiousness, suggesting that the child's Jewishness cannot be fully erased, pointing ahead toward the anti-Judaism that beset the conversos.

In "Speaking of Heaven in Conventual Women's Writing (Constanza de Castilla, Teresa de Cartagena, Isabel de Villena, and Teresa de Jesús," Leslie K. Twomey analyzes how Teresa de Jesús and several other fifteenth-century women envisioned Heaven and eternal bliss, underscoring that, by doing so, these women were participating in theology. Teresa de Jesús and Isabel de Villena cast Heaven as a wealthy, opulent place, while Constanza de Castilla and Teresa de Cartagena focused more on the idea of celebration paired with the idea of wine. Twomey notes that the domestic space in particular was a recurrent theme which would have proved particularly appropriate for early modern women's reflections.

The volume closes with "Torn to Pieces: Textual Destruction in Teresa de Jesús's Vida." Here, Christopher van Ginhoven considers Teresa de Jesús's numerous references to physical and textual destruction in her Vida, shedding new light on a motif that other critics have attributed to self-censorship. Van Ginhoven argue that the focus on textual distraction is, rather, symbolically layered. It affirms a freedom from the confessors who have asked her to write her account. In doing this, the text's references to destruction hold up a mirror to the ultimately destructive aims of the power that bind Teresa de Jesús. At the same time, the references to destruction are also an imitation of Christ's own sacrifice, in keeping with Teresa's mystical aims.

While some essays perhaps could have used some additional organizational edits, the collection is a fascinating exploration of the strategies with which women asserted their own agency within medieval and early modern Christianity, as well as how the patriarchy sought to limit this agency. From tracing textual genealogies to close readings, the critics in this volume employ an impressive interdisciplinary array of strategies that makes every contribution a worthwhile, nuanced read as they draw on chronicles, legal documents, autobiographies, exempla, and other genres. The bibliographies are also extensive and an apt foundation for further research. The volume makes a compelling case for a broader consideration of saintly texts; Giles and Morrás underscore how saintly models influenced the broader writing of women in secular contexts. Other texts offer insight into the larger social changes of the era, such as strategies for evangelizing the New World, or the attitudes leading up to the expulsion of 1492 and the oppression of Jewish converts. Additional essays lay the groundwork for what promise to be rich conversations that have been heretofore neglected, whether on Spanish Lutherans or on feminine conceptions of Heaven. In sum, Gender and Exemplarity is an excellent case of what a collected volume should be, and it will appeal to any scholar of premodern Spain.