• 'Leyenda muy sabrosa':The Poetics of Flavor and the Translation of Taste in Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora and its Latin Source
Abstract

This article examines Gonzalo de Berceo's translation, poetization, and invention of various uses of the sense of taste in the Milagros de Nuestra Señora vis-à-vis its Latin source text. While Berceo's Milagros is generally a more flavorful creation than its source, modern translations have sometimes diminished the prominence of taste in service of rendering the miracles more palatable to modern audiences. In Berceo's original mester de clerecía collection, however, the poet describes a variety of physical objects and intangible qualities as delicious, sweet, tasteless, or bitter. The Latin miracles of the Thott manuscript are regarded as a close relative of Berceo's original source. In the Latin work, flavor is not absent, but it is far from a featured image or trope. The Latin uses flavor for a reduced field of descriptions, but it tends to employ those limited categories frequently. Music and affective relationships are repeatedly described as sweet in the Latin, while lamentations are recurrently described as bitter. Berceo, in contrast, uses flavor more frequently overall and in a broader variety of fields. The poet does not, for the most part, simply translate gustatory descriptions directly from the Latin, but rather deploys flavor innovatively. Berceo uses the sense of taste in sophisticated ways, often combining synesthesia with other rhetorical and poetic devices. Analyzing how flavor functions in the work illuminates this sensorial aspect of the collection's rhetoric and paves the way for further examinations across the Bercean and mester de clerecía corpora.

[End Page 85]

Metaphors of flavor are part of our daily lives and in ways that we might not register consciously. How often do we describe as sweet or bitter things that we cannot taste with our tongues: bitter rejection or sweet success, for example? Gustatory descriptions, whether literal references to food or synesthetic metaphors for physical or emotional sensations, are a typical aspect of literary expression from the ancient world forward. The fact that such expressions occur in a particular piece of literature does not necessarily tell us anything about the work itself, but the ways in which an author uses (or does not use) flavor can provide much insight. On the formal level, the deployment of flavor can tell us about the stylistics of a certain work or corpus; on the ideological level, the themes that are described through the sense of taste provide glimpses into the values expressed in that same work or corpus. The current article focuses on a well-studied work of mester de clerecía poetry, Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora, which can serve as a point of departure for further studies of other works of mester de clerecía poetry. The article examines Berceo's translation, poetization, and invention of particular uses of the sense of taste vis-à-vis its Latin source text in order to begin to understand what is novel in Berceo's expression and what is simply inherited. While Berceo's Milagros is generally a more flavorful creation than its source, modern translations have sometimes diminished the prominence of flavor in the collection in service of rendering the miracles more palatable to modern audiences. A variety of physical objects and intangible qualities are described as delicious, sweet, tasteless, or bitter within this work, and examining this reality illuminates various aspects of the poem's rhetoric.

Food is a growing area of analysis within medieval Iberian studies, and there has been a modest amount of work focused specifically on mester [End Page 86] de clerecía poetry. Martha Daas has carried out a broad overview of food in medieval Iberian literature in "Food for the Soul: Feasting and Fasting in the Spanish Middle Ages," and mester de clerecía poetry features prominently in Daas's study. There have been articles that focus on particular aspects of food and drink in early mester de clerecía poetry, such as Pablo Ancos's article "Viñas, vides, uvas y vino en los poemas en cuaderna vía del siglo XIII." In terms of focus on food in early works of mester de clerecía poetry, there have been two articles to date: Gloria Beatriz Chicote's study "La metáfora alimenticia en los Milagros de Nuestra Señora de Gonzalo de Berceo" and my recent article entitled "Tropes of Taste: The Poetics of Food and Flavor in the Libro de Apolonio."1 These treatments serve as important points of departure for the current study.

Food has the capacity both to sustain and to delight. Although food's nutritional value is its most elemental feature, the sensations it evokes through flavor and aroma are its most poetic qualities. This being the case, metaphors of flavor and aroma figure prominently in literature. The sense of taste appears frequently in biblical texts, often metaphorically and synesthetically to refer to intangible qualities, and medieval religious literature inherits such uses. Many scholars have examined the place of flavor in medieval literature, and a prominent example is Mary Carruthers's article "Sweetness," which examines the ubiquity of language related to pleasant tastes as a positive metaphorical descriptor throughout medieval literature. Rachel Fulton has similarly examined theological aspects of the representation of flavor in "'Taste and see that the Lord is sweet' (Ps. 33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West." In relation to mester de clerecía literature, there has been a modest amount of work on flavor and its related quality, aroma. Emily Francomano has examined taste in a later manifestation of cuaderna vía poetry in the article "'Este manjar es dulçe': Sweet Synaesthesia in the Libro de buen amor." Closer yet to the subject of this article, Joaquín Artiles has examined Berceo's use of the sensorial through synesthesia [End Page 87] in his book Los recursos literarios de Berceo, and more recently Víctor Rodríguez-Pereira has examined aromas, as well as other sensorial inputs, in "Sabrosa olor: The Role of Olfaction and Smells in Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Senora." The senses are how we perceive all artistic creations, and so the portrayal of senses as an important element or even the focus of art (literary, visual, musical, etc.) should be of no surprise. The comparative prominence or frequency of the portrayal of a sense, in this case taste, is a topic that can be revealing of a particular artistic endeavor. The mester de clerecía is an expansive enough corpus to provide a fertile ground for the examination of artistic and ideological uses of flavor.2

A detailed analysis of taste across the entire corpus of mester de clerecía poetry would be too large a study for a single article; however, an examination of Berceo's Milagros is a manageable endeavor. Carrying out a comparative study of the work with its Latin source text allows us to detect affinities and differences and can serve as a point of departure for broader examinations across the corpus, whether broadly or narrowly defined.3

A Literary Palate

In order to discover what can be learned from examining flavor in Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros, we first need to put forth the ways that the sense of taste is expressed in the work and its source. An overview of the vocabulary and phrases used both by Berceo and by the anonymous Latin miracles of the Thott manuscript, a version of which is thought to have been Berceo's source for his Milagros, sets the stage for the most basic comparison between them, a numerical one. But the number and frequency of expressions [End Page 88] of flavor can only tell us so much. The subsequent sections of the article explore each of the five most common categories of flavor usage in the two miracle collections. The first and most obvious category is flavor used literally to describe food, although this is ironically one of least frequent ways that the works employ the sense of taste. The rest of the uses are synesthetic in nature in that they describe non-edible entities. The most prominent of these, the second category to be examined, is the invocation of flavor to describe sounds, and particularly music. A third category of flavor usage is the way that the works tie taste to information or knowledge. This use of taste to describe intangibles ideas (information communicated either orally or textually) is similar to the next usage, which is the deployment of flavor to describe the intangible qualities of affective relationships. This fourth category is particularly relevant comparatively as there are surprising differences between the ways that the two works describe emotional relationships through flavor. The fifth and final usage to be examined focuses on a particular category of taste itself, namely unpleasant or bland flavors. The portrayal of bitterness or flavorlessness tells the readers about the poet's positioning relative to his material. Within each of these sections, the article begins by examining the Milagros and then goes on to analyze the same category within the Latin miracles of the Thott manuscript. Each section ends with a discussion of the findings for that particular usage of flavor.

The matter of translation is an important aspect of the current study, not only because Berceo is to some extent translating (linguistically and culturally) Latin prose texts into Romance verse, but also because of the ways that modern scholars and audiences translate and understand the Milagros in the twenty-first century. There are very few times in which Berceo translates flavor references from the Latin directly; more frequently, the poet adopts certain categories of flavor use and then deploys them in narrative contexts different from those found in the Latin source. Because the language of this article is English, and because there are academic translations in English of both works under consideration, I have provided modern translations for all quotations from the Castilian and the Latin. For the Milagros, I use the Richard Terry Mount and Annette Grant Cash translation; [End Page 89] for the Latin miracles of the Thott manuscript, I use the Patricia Timmons and Robert Boenig translation.4

Any discussion of flavor in these poems and their sources must be clear about what will be considered for the purpose of this study. Surveying the Milagros, the most common references to flavors take the form of nouns (sweetness, bitterness), adjectives (delicious, sweet), adverbs (bitterly, tastefully), and certain idiomatic phrasal constructions related to deliciousness (or lack thereof). Many of these expressions have their equivalents in the Latin source text, although some do not. Berceo portrays the sense of taste frequently and in a variety of ways in the miracle collection. The most basic way that the poet does this is to use variations on the term sabor/savor (flavor): desabrido (flavorless), saborgado (delighted by taste), sabrido (flavorful), sabroso (flavorful), and sabrosamientre (deliciously). Berceo uses these terms twenty-eight times throughout the collection. The poet also employs more specific flavors and the most common are related to sweetness, with terms such as dulces/dulz/dulze/dulzes (sweet), dulzores (sweetnesses), and dulzemente (sweetly); such terms are used nineteen times.5 Bitterness appears twice in the Milagros with the terms amargo (bitter) and armargura (bitterness). These uses, together with a single use of the phrase "sin sal" ("unpardonable"; 237c; 57) to refer to something as flavorless [End Page 90] (or negative, more generally), brings the total references of flavor to forty-nine.6

In the Thott manuscript, the references to flavor total twelve, or about a quarter of the overall occurrences in the Milagros. Not only are there far fewer references to flavor, but there is also less variety in their use. There are no references in the Latin to the most generally positive flavor, tastiness or deliciousness, nor to the action of tasting. Terms such as ESCULENTUS (delicious, edible), GUSTUM (taste), GUSTUS (tasting), SAPIDUS (savory or flavorful), and SAPOR (flavor) are absent, and all existing references denote the specific flavors of either sweetness or bitterness. While the Latin's usage of sweetness (nine occurrences) is less than half of Berceo's (nineteen occurrences), the opposite is true of bitterness. While neither collection references bitterness frequently, it occurs twice as often in the Latin (four times) as it does in Berceo (twice). On this most basic level, Berceo's use of flavor surpasses in frequency and variety that which is found in the Latin miracle collection, with the noted caveat for bitterness.

The Flavor of Food

While observations about the frequency with which these works use flavor are revealing, many more insights can be gained by examining the specific ways in which Berceo and the Latin author use flavor. The first category to be examined in this regard is perhaps the most obvious one: flavor used in the two works to modify actual food. Turning first to the Milagros, there are abundant references to food in this Marian miracle collection: ranging from fruit, to breads, to wines, and even to meat and fish. Because of this, the assumption might be that flavor would appear frequently in relation to food. The opposite is actually the case. There are only two explicit occurrences of flavor in reference to comestible items, and these appear in [End Page 91] the collection's allegorical introduction; there are, however, several other instances in which flavor is closely tied to situations involving food or in which flavor modifies edibles indirectly via a rhetorical device. Even when flavor explicitly references comestible items, these uses of flavor qua flavor appear in rhetorically complex usage.

The first mention of the flavor of food in the Milagros occurs early in the allegorical introduction:

El fructo de los árbores     era dulz e sabrido,si don Adám oviesse     de tal fructo comido,de tan mala manera     non serié decibido,ni tomarién tal danno     Eva nin so marido.

(15)

The fruit of the trees was sweet and delicious;if Adam had eaten such fruit,he would not have been so badly deceived.Neither Eve nor her husband would have suffered such harm!

(23)

On the literal level, Berceo describes the fruit of the trees as sweet and delicious, while on the figurative level (which is elaborated later in the allegorical introduction), these trees of flavorful fruit represent the miracles of the Virgin. Here, however, the reference to sweet and delicious fruit in the first line is used as a point of departure to reference the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil from the biblical Genesis.

The second mention of sweetness that explicitly refers to a food item in the Milagros is one that is combined with other, metaphorical or synesthetic uses of flavor:

Los árbores que facen     sombra dulz e donosason los santos miraclos     que faz la Glorïosa,ca son mucho más dulzes     que azúcar sabrosa,la que dan al enfermo     en la cuita raviosa.

(25)

The trees that make sweet and blessed shade are the holy miracles that the Glorious One performs, [End Page 92] for they are much sweeter than the delicious sugar given to the sick in their delirious suffering.

(24)

The edible substance explicitly referenced is sugar, which is described as both sweet and flavorful, but the comparison is to both the shade of the allegorical trees and the miracles of the Virgin that are being likened to this sugar. From these references, it is clear that even when Berceo uses flavor to refer to comestible items, he also uses it in rhetorical service to poetic description.

Another stanza of Berceo's Milagros stands out for its unique combination of abundant comestible and olfactory references and its use of poetic devices. It occurs near the end of "Milagro 12: El prior de san Salvador y el sacristán Uberto." When the deceased prior appears to Uberto the sexton to tell him of his post-mortem fate, he explains that although he originally had been assigned to a place of suffering, the Virgin interceded and led him to a new resting place:

¡Grado a la Gloriosa     que es de gracia plena!fuera só del lazerio,     essido só de pena;caí en dulz vergel     cerca de dulz colmena,do nunqua veré mengua     de yantar nin de cena.

(298)

Thanks be to the Glorious One who is full of grace!I am free from misery, I have come out of suffering;I fell into a sweet garden near a sweet beehive,where I will see no lack of dinner or supper.

(66)

This stanza not only stands out for its flavor references, but also for its reference to heaven as a place where people are not lacking the principal meals of the day. The use of sweetness in the third verse is rhetorically complex, as the adjective dulz is repeated within each hemistich, and each time it evinces the technique of synecdoche. While the more common use of this poetic device is "the part for the whole," a less common usage is "the whole for the part." Here the sweetness of the garden or orchard in the first instance is clearly an attribute of one of its constituent components, the fruit, and likewise the sweetness of the beehive in the second instance is [End Page 93] clearly in reference to the honey. In this example of Berceo's use of flavor, as in the other two previously examined, we can interpret the use of sweetness as a reference to edible substances, but this time through the poetic device of synecdoche.

Berceo does not use flavor to describe food frequently, but when he does, he uses flavor in rhetorically complex ways. But this begs the question of whether these uses are Berceo's inventions, or if they are simply inheritances from the Latin source text. Although food vocabulary appears to a limited extent in the miracles of the Thott manuscript, the Latin text never uses flavor references to qualify actual food or within the context of food consumption or preparation.7 In other words, all references to taste in the Latin are synesthetic in nature.8 The instances in which Berceo uses flavor to describe food in the Milagros discussed are not present in the Latin, and therefor are not translations, but rather inventions within Berceo's poetization.

The references to the flavor discussed above are the only ones in Berceo's Milagros that modify food directly or indirectly, but there are many other examples in which Berceo uses gustatory adjectives to modify non-edible entities, i.e. he uses them synesthetically. A use of synesthesia in poetry can be quite explicit by way of using an adjective exclusively associated with one sense to modify a different type of sensory perception. Both Berceo and the Latin text make use of this straightforward type of synesthesia when they describe music (a sound/aural input) as sweet (a taste). Synesthesia can also be rather subtle by way of using an adjective that is more commonly used to describe a different sensory input or by using a sensory [End Page 94] adjective that is only partially "mismatched" with its referent in some way.9 Such is the case when Berceo describes the fragrance of a flower as "delicious" (an example that will be analyzed in due turn); while "delicious" is most often used to describe flavors, it can be used to describe aromas, although usually of edible substances rather than flowers. Synesthesia can take many forms, and Berceo and his Latin source text use this poetic device to relate flavor to other sensations, including sound, touch, and smell.10 These synesthetic uses are analyzed within their respective categories in the subsequent four sections.

Sweet Music

One of the most frequent synesthetic uses of flavor in the works under consideration is to modify sound, and particularly music. In the Milagros, Berceo connects sound to sweetness on five different occasions. Beginning with the introductory allegory, the poet describes sounds generally or music specifically as sweet. Early on, Berceo relates that he, as the pilgrim narrator, "odí sonos de aves, dulces e modulados" ("I heard sweet, modulated bird songs"; 7b; 22). Later in the introduction, the allegorical significance of those sweet sounds is explained:

Las aves que organan     entre essos fructales,que han las dulzes vozes,     dizen cantos leales, [End Page 95] estos son Agustino,     Gregorio, otros tales,quantos que escrivieron     los sos fechos reales.

(26)

The birds that sing in those fruit trees,that have sweet voices and sing devout songs,they are Augustine, Gregory, and others,who wrote about Her true deeds.

(24)

Here Berceo describes the voices of the birds as sweet, another clear example of gustatory-auditory synesthesia, but the resonances are multilayered as the sweetness allegorically refers to the writings of Marian theologians as well. We will return to this example later in the article in relation to gustatory descriptions of written information or knowledge.

The use of sweetness to describe music or delightful sounds is not confined to the allegorical introduction. In "Milagro 22: El romero naufragado," the poet tells his audience that those who experienced the miracle gave thanks in the following way: "el «Te Deum» cantaron,/desend «Salve Regina» dulzement la finaron" ("they chanted the 'Te Deum,'/then they finished sweetly with 'Salve Regina'"; 615cd; 113). In the last miracle of the collection, the Virgin Mary herself tells the sinful protagonist, Teófilo, that his prayerful petitions have been accompanied by sweetness: "leváronlas los ángeles cantando dulzes sones" ("the angels carried them singing sweet sounds"; 857d; 141). And later in the same miracle narrative, the witnesses to the miracle sing "Salve Regina": "e otros cantos dulzes de son e de dictado" ("and other songs sweet of sound and word"; 892d; 145). The sweetness of sounds and particularly music occurs throughout Berceo's Marian miracle collection.

Turning to the Latin source text, there are some similarities in the author's use of sweetness to describe music; however, there are fewer occurrences of such use in the Latin miracles of the Thott manuscript than in the mester de clerecía version. The two uses of gustatory-auditory synesthesia are very similar to one another and refer to the same type of music. In the Latin equivalent of Berceo's "Milagro 12: El prior de san Salvador y el sacristán [End Page 96] Uberto," the members of the monastic community sing the "dulcissimas horas" ("most sweet hours"; 154; 39).11 Later in the equivalent of Berceo's "Milagro 21: De cómo una Abbadesa fue prennada et por su conbento fue acusada et después por la virgen Librada," the anonymous author of the Latin miracles relates that the pregnant abbess also "persolvebat et horas dulciori quo poterat affectu decantabat" ("very sweetly chanted the hours by which she was able to move her"; 162; 49).

Comparing the mester de clerecía poem to its Latin source, we find differences in both the number of instances of gustatory-aural synesthesia, as well as in the variety of images. The Milagros contains five references and the Latin source only two, but it is perhaps more important to note that while in the Milagros, birds, theologians, witnesses to the miracles, and angels are all portrayed as singing sweetly, the only times that that the Latin invokes "flavorful" music is in reference to monastics singing the canonical hours. None of the examples of sweet sounds in the Milagros are direct translations of the two instances in the Latin, and so Berceo's individual depictions of the sweetness of sound are original contributions, even though the broad category of gustatory-aural synesthesia had been used twice in the Latin source.

Using flavor to describe sound and specifically music is a obvious use of synesthesia (not a subtle one), as it directly uses a trait of one sense (taste) to modify a quality of another (hearing). Such straightforward images of gustatory synesthesia in reference to other sensory inputs (beyond sound) do not occur in the Latin miracles; however, they do appear to a limited extent in Berceo's Milagros. After hearing, touch is the next most common sense to be described with flavorful terminology and it appears twice in the Milagros. In the allegorical introduction, Berceo describes a pleasant temperature as sweet: "las sombras de los árbores de temprados savores" ("the [End Page 97] shade of the trees of soothing aromas"; 5b; 21).12 Another type of synesthesia, the gustatory-olfactory variety, is present in one place in the Milagros. In "Milagro 3: El clérigo y la flor," at the very moment the miracle occurs, a smell of sanctity fills the air. Berceo relates that "inchié toda la plaza de sabrosa olor" ("it filled the entire place with a wonderful fragrance"; 112c; 37).13 The Mount and Cash translation removes the reference to taste by rendering "sabrosa" as "wonderful," effectively deleting the synesthesia. In summary, Berceo's Milagros employs gustatory descriptions with the senses of touch and smell in the ways that the Latin source text does not.

The Flavor of Knowledge

The examples of synesthesia discussed up to this point have been direct in nature as they have explicitly involved two senses. In particular, they have been gustatory descriptors that modify qualities directly related to one of the other four senses (particularly sound, but to a lesser degree touch and smell). The rest of the synesthetic uses of flavor in the poem and its Latin source text are less straightforward in nature. While they continue to use taste descriptors, these instances of synesthesia refer to entities or qualities not specifically associated with a physical sense. One of the most frequently used of this type of synesthesia modifies information or knowledge, communicated either orally or in writing.

In the Milagros, this type of synesthesia occurs seven times. Its first appearance [End Page 98] is in the allegorical introduction in an instance that has already been discussed in terms of gustatory synesthesia used with sounds. In the introductory allegory, we are told that the "dulzes vozes" ("sweet voices") of the birds in the meadow metaphorically refer to what theologians have written about the Virgin: "quantos que escrivieron los sos fechos reales" ("who wrote about Her true deeds"; 26b, d; 24). This connection of sweetness to a written text is repeated toward the end of the collection. In "Milagro 22: El romero naufragado," Berceo describes the act of narrating the selfsame miracle, first orally and then in writing, as "sabrosa":

Contaron el miraclo     de la Madre gloriosa,cómo livró al omne     de la mar periglosa,dizién todos que fuera     una estranna cosa,fizieron end escripto,     leyenda muy sabrosa.

(617)

They told of the miracle of the Glorious Mother,how She freed the man from the perilous sea;they all said it was a wonderous thing,they had a delightful story written about it.

(113)

The oral telling of the miracle itself and its subsequent recording in written form is described as a delicious story. Here the Mount and Cash edition translates "sabrosa" as "delightful"; however, a more literal translation would be "delicious," as this would preserve the gustatory reference of the original. Again, we see that Berceo is able to communicate information or knowledge as sweet, including knowledge that ends up in written form.

Berceo more frequently describes information that remains on the level of oral dissemination as similarly tasty. The remaining five references to such information or knowledge are of this kind. The rendering of oral communication as sweet or delicious is always in connection to saintly beings, either as the source or the receiver of the information, and sometimes both. The variety of information that Berceo relates in this fashion include communication between the angel Gabriel and the Virgen (53ab; 29), between the Virgin and a devotee (134; 41), between Christ and St. Peter (173; 48), [End Page 99] the Virgin's oral pronouncement of a verdict (206; 52), and the desired response from a prayer to Mary (391cd; 82). Berceo uses flavorful descriptors in formulating both written and oral communication, especially of the miraculous, saintly, or heavenly kind, effectively grouping both in the same semantic field.

Although the use of sweetness or deliciousness to describe information, communicated orally or in writing, is a frequent use of flavor in Berceo's Milagros, good flavor is never used in such a way in Latin miracles of the Thott manuscript. Berceo does not rely on his Latin source whatsoever in this particular use of flavor, but rather fashions this use from his own poetic learning and imagination.

Sweet Love

While Berceo describes information and knowledge in writing and in speech as having a pleasant taste, a category of flavor use that is more evenly distributed between the Milagros and the Latin source text is that of affectivity, especially emotional or loving relationships. In the Milagros, Berceo uses flavor to describe affectivity six times. It is perhaps no surprise that the Virgin Mary should be described as sweet in a miracle collection devoted to her. What is perhaps more surprising is that the Virgin is only referred to as being sweet individually once in the Milagros. According to Berceo, no other woman has been born who is "tan dulz nin tan uviada" ("so sweet or so helpful"; 871d; 142). The more frequent use of sweetness is in reference to Christ, albeit in relation to his virginal mother, and there are three such occurrences. Berceo describes Christ as a son who is "dulze e tan cumplido" ("sweet and so perfect"; 524b; 101). He is the Virgin's "dulz compannía" ("Sweet Companion"; 649c; 116), as well as "su dulz creatura" ("her Sweet Infant"; 715d; 124). Another use of sweetness describes loving action between the Virgen and Christ: "el que tenié la Madre dulzement abrazado" ("Whom the Mother sweetly embraced"; 692b; 121). There is one other type of use of flavor in the Milagros to describe an affective relationship, but a broader heavenly one. In "Milagro 9: El clérigo simple," Berceo [End Page 100] tells his audience that when the protagonist died in office, "fue la alma a gloria a la dulz cofradría" ("The soul went to Heaven, to the sweet society"; 234d; 56). Here the sweetness relates to the company of the saints, but also refers to a location of this "brotherhood," in other words, heaven. There is yet another reference to an aspect of heaven described as delicious, but it does not have the affective quality that the examples above have. At the end of "Milagro 23: El mercader fiado," Berceo asks that the archdeacon who originally wrote down the miracle in Latin be rewarded with "paraíso e folganza sabrosa" ("paradise and delightful rest"; 702d; 122). Again, the Mount and Cash edition translates "sabrosa" here as "delightful," and this lessens the gustatory nuance of the original.

The Latin source text for the Milagros also deploys flavor to describe affective relationships. The Latin uses taste six times in this way, and half of them unsurprisingly refer to Mary herself. She is called "dulcissima Mater" ("most sweet Mother"; 149; 34), as well as "Virgo dulcissima" ("most sweet virgin"; 161; 47). In the Latin equivalent of Berceo's "Milagro 20: El monje embriagado," the narrative voice tells the audience that the protagonist reacts to the miracle "in fervorem dulcedinis ipsius gloriose matris Domini" ("in the fervor of the sweetness of that glorious Mother of the Lord"; 161; 48).

The three remaining occurrences of sweet affectivity in the Latin appear within the same miracle tale, the source for Berceo's "Milagro 21: De cómo una Abbadesa fue prennada et por su conbento fue acusada et después por la virgen Librada." Two of the instances in the Latin refer to Christ's sweetness, which we have seen to be a usage that is also present in Berceo's Milagros. The Latin references Christ's sweetness twice in relation to his mother: "a dulcissimo Filio meo" ("by my most sweet Son"; 163; 50) and "dulcissimi Filii sui" ("of her most sweet son"; 164; 51). The other reference to sweetness in this same miracle is an opening analogy that focuses on the reciprocity in the caring relationship between divine miracle workers and the people for whom they intercede. This relationship is likened to the relationship between a doctor and a patient, and the Latin communicates that, precisely because the healing is effective, the doctor is sought with more [End Page 101] vigor and "dulcius diligitur" ("loved the more sweetly"; 162; 48). In these three examples, the affective relationship is described as sweet, whether it is directly between Christ and the Virgin or between divine miracle workers and their faithful through the doctor and patient metaphor.

Both miracle collections employ sweetness to describe affective relationships, but only once in the same narrative scene. Berceo refers to the Christ child as sweet in "Milagro 21: De cómo una Abbadesa fue prennada et por su conbento fue acusada et después por la virgen librada." The Latin also does this, although Berceo puts the phrase in the abbess's tearful petition, while the Latin puts the phrase in the Virgin's miraculous response. In all other cases Berceo uses flavor of this type in scenes that are altogether different from those in the Latin. While both collections use flavor to describe emotional relationships, Berceo almost always deploys them in locations that differ from his source.

Bitterness and Flavorlessness

In the previous categories, we have examined how Berceo and the author of the Latin Thott miracles describe food, music, information, or affective relationships as delicious or sweet. In the last category of analysis, we turn to negative gustatory descriptions. Although some examples of bitter or flavorless entities have been examined within previous categories, reviewing all references to disagreeable flavors together gives us some telling insights into their comparative uses. Bitterness, the flavor that could be seen as opposite of sweetness, appears only twice in Berceo's Marian miracle collection. It first occurs in "Milagro 18: Cristo y los judíos de Toledo" and is another example of Berceo's use of synecdoche. The reference is to "un amargo majuelo" ("a bitter vine sprout"; 420c; 87), and although vine sprouts are technically edible (they are sometimes used as silage for livestock more than for human consumption), the reference is more logically to the bitterness of the grapes that would be produced by the shoot. Berceo's use of the image of a "bitter vine sprout" is metaphorical in nature and is virulently antisemitic as it refers to the Jewish population of the city of Tole [End Page 102] do.14 While the image of the bitter vine sprout is not present in the Latin, the prejudice certainly is, as the broad contours of the antisemitic tale are the same in both collections.

Berceo's second use of bitterness refers to communication rather than a physical object. In the final miracle of the collection, "Milagro 25: De cómo Teófilo fizo carta con el diablo de su ánima et después fue convertido e salvo," the apostate protagonist prays so incessantly to the Virgin that she tells him "harta só de tu pleito, dasme grand amargura" ("I am fed up with your cause, you cause me great bitterness"; 823c; p. 137). In this case, the information (the verbal petition or prayer) is not described as sweet or delicious, as has been the case in other instances. In this example, the constant petition produces the opposite effect, bitterness.

Bitterness is only one disagreeable taste in Berceo's poetic toolbox. Another way the poet uses negative gustatory description is by portraying something as simply void of taste. Flavorlessness is communicated twice in the collection, albeit by different means. The most straightforward way is through the term "desabrido" or "flavorless." This occurs, as we have already seen, in a clear instance of synesthesia connecting the sensations of taste and touch. In "Milagro 17: La iglesia de la Gloriosa profanada," one of the men guilty of the church's profanation is punished by having to carry the sword, the instrument of his wicked deed, strapped tightly to his back with a "correó desabrido" ("harsh strap"; 407d; 84). Again, Mount and Cash translate "desabrido" into idiomatic English as "harsh" although a more literal rendition would be "flavorless." Regardless, the strap clearly causes discomfort, and Berceo uses flavorlessness to communicate this poetically.

Another instance of Berceo's use of flavorlessness occurs in "Milagro 10: Los dos hermanos." One of the characters of this miracle has many bad habits, among them the sin of greed, which Berceo describes in the following [End Page 103] way: "entre las otras mannas avié una sin sal," ("among his vices, he had one that is unpardonable"; 237c; 57). Here the Mount and Cash edition renders "sin sal" as "unpardonable," although a literal translation would be "without salt," or perhaps more idiomatically, "flavorless." Both these more literal translations would maintain the connection to food and flavor, although the effect would be somewhat stilted in English. Again, the translation renders the basic meaning, but erases an aspect of Berceo's style.

The Latin miracles of the Thott manuscript use bad flavors slightly more frequently than does Brceo in the Milagros. Bitterness appears four times, three of which refer directly to lamentations: "amara suspiria" ("bitter sighs"; 163; 49); "amaris lacrimis" ("bitter tears"; 170; 59); and "amare lugendo" ("grieving bitterly"; 172; 61). The only use of bitterness in the Latin miracles not referring explicitly to mournfulness is to a written text. In what is the equivalent of Berceo's "Milagro 25: De cómo Teófilo fizo carta con el diablo de su ánima et después fue convertido e salvo," the Latin refers to the contract for the protagonist's soul as the "amarissime abnegacionis conscriptum cirographum" ("most bitter written charter of negation"; 172; 62). The Latin describes this particularly damning document as bitter, which Berceo does not do in his version of the miracle. In the context of the Latin miracle, however, the text is connected to mournfulness as the bitter charter causes the protagonist, Teófilo, to lament. Seen this way, all the references to bitterness refer directly or indirectly to lamentations or mournfulness.

The comparative analysis of disagreeable tastes, specifically flavorlessness and bitterness, across the Milagros and its Latin source can provide some insight into poetic expression and translation. Berceo uses disagreeable flavor infrequently and somewhat randomly. It would be difficult to say that there was a tendency to use bad flavors to describe any particular entity. However, some of the categories of pleasant flavors (deliciousness and sweetness) are also included in their negative versions (flavorlessness and bitterness). For example, Berceo can and does describe information as either delicious (as in the very delicious retelling of the miracle tale in "Milagro 22: El romero naufragado") or as bitter (as in the bitterness of Teófilo's constant petitions in "Milagro 25: De cómo Teófilo fizo carta con el diablo [End Page 104] de su ánima et después fue convertido e salvo"). In summary, the Latin source text deploys bitterness more frequently, and as we have seen, it uses the sensation consistently to describe aspects of lamentations.

Throughout this article, we have seen flavor used in a variety of ways in these two Marian miracle collections, and we can now come to some general conclusions. To characterize the broad differences between the mester de clerecía poem and its Latin source text, we have examined five categories of use: flavor to describe food, music, information, and affective relationships, as well as the deployment of disagreeable flavors (bitterness and lack of flavor). Flavor is not absent from the Latin miracles of the Thott manuscript, but it is infrequent, appearing only twelve times in the entire collection. The Latin text employs flavor for a reduced field of descriptions, but it tends to employ those limited categories repeatedly. Music and affective relationships are often described as sweet, and lamentations are frequently described as bitter in the Latin miracles of the Thott manuscript. In contrast, Berceo uses flavor more frequently overall and in a broader variety of ways. Berceo maintains two of the categories of flavor descriptions found in his Latin source (music and affective relationships), but he does not, for the most part, translate those occurrences directly. In other words, both the Latin miracles and Berceo's Milagros describe music and affective relationships as sweet, but they almost never do so in the same narrative moment. Berceo also eliminates all references to lamentations as bitter in his poetization of the Latin miracles. There are several ways in which Berceo deploys flavor in ways not found in the Latin collection of miracles: in descriptions of food, in other types of synesthesia beyond the gustatory-aural type, and to describe positive information as sweet or delicious. In addition, this essay has provided evidence that Berceo uses flavor in ways that are quite rhetorically sophisticated, often combining synesthesia with other rhetorical and poetic devices. Berceo, in his use of the Latin source material, does not start with a flavorless batter, but the poet mixes in additional rhetorical spice to create a poetic concoction that is synesthetically dulce and sabrosa. [End Page 105]

Matthew Desing
University of Texas at El Paso

Works Cited

Ancos-García, Pablo. Transmisión y recepción primarias de la poesía del mester de clerecía. U de València, 2012.
———. "Viñas, vides, uvas y vino en los poemas en cuaderna vía del siglo XIII." Lemir, vol. 21, 2017, pp. 261-80.
Arizaleta, Amaia. Les clercs au palais: chancellerie et écriture du pouvoir royal (Castille, 1157-1230). SEMH-Sorbonne, 2010.
Artiles, Joaquín. Los recursos literarios de Berceo. Gredos, 1968.
Berceo, Gonzalo de. Milagros de Nuestra Señora. Edited by Brian Dutton, 2nd ed., Obras Completas 2, Tamesis, 1980.
———. Miracles of Our Lady. Translated by Richard Terry Mount and Annette Grant Cash, U of Kentucky Press, 1997.
Carruthers, Mary. "Sweetness." Speculum, vol. 81, no. 4, 2006, pp. 999-1013.
Chicote, Gloria Beatriz. "La metáfora alimenticia en los Milagros de Nuestra Señora de Gonzalo de Berceo." Studia hispanica medievalia III: actas de las IV jornadas internacionales de literatura española medieval, U Católica Argentina, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, -- medieval [ital], U católica Argentina, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1995, pp. 51-58. 1995, pp. 51-58.
Daas, Martha. "Food for the Soul: Feasting and Fasting in the Spanish Middle Ages." eHumanista, vol. 25, 2013, pp. 65-74.
Desing, Matthew V. "Tropes of Taste: The Poetics of Food and Flavor in the Libro de Apolonio." Romance Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 3, 2020, pp. 149-64.
Ferrer, José. "Berceo: Milagros de Nuestra Señora (Aspectos de su estilo)." Hispania, vol. 33, no. 1, 1950, pp. 46-50.
Francomano, Emily C. "'Este manjar es dulçe': Sweet Synaesthesia in the Libro de buen amor." eHumanista, vol. 25, 2013, pp. 127-44.
Fulton, Rachel. "'Taste and See that the Lord is Sweet' (Ps. 33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West." The Journal of Religion, vol. 86, no. 2, Apr. 2006, pp. 169-204.
Gómez Moreno, Ángel. "Comida y bebida en el Libro de buen amor." Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica y Transatlántica, vol. 95-96, 2022, pp. 7-20.
Miaja de la Peña, María Teresa. "'Con la mucha vïanda mucho vino bevido': la comida y la bebida en el Libro de buen amor." Rumbos del hispanismo en el umbral del Cincuentenario de la AIH, edited by Patrizia Botta, et al., vol. 2, Bagatto Libri, 2012, pp. 96-105.
Rodríguez-Pereira, Víctor. "Sabrosa olor: The Role of Olfaction and Smells in Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Senora." Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Literatures and Cultures, 1200-1750, edited by Ryan D. Giles and Steven W. Agschal, U of Toronto P, 2018, pp. 31-44.
Timmons, Patricia, and Robert Boenig. Gonzalo de Berceo and the Latin Miracles of the Virgin: A Translation and a Study. Ashgate, 2012.
Uría Maqua, Isabel. Panorama crítico del mester de clerecía. Castalia, 2000.
Weiss, Julian. The Mester de Clerecía: Intellectuals and Ideologies in Thirteenth-Century Castile. Tamesis, 2006.

Footnotes

1. There has been more scholarship on food in the Libro de buen amor than on food in the thirteenth-century works of mester de clerecía poetry. Articles on food in the Libro de buen amor include those of María Teresa Miaja de la Peña and Ángel Gómez Moreno (among others).

2. While more restrictive definitions of mester de clerecía poetry would limit the term to stanzaic poetry in cuaderna vía (rhymed quatrains of alexandrine verses) from the first half of the thirteenth century, more expansive definitions extend the category to other learned (and to some extent religious) poetry in a variety of meters from the thirteenth through the fourteenth, and to some limited extent beyond.

3. Several book-length studies on mester de clerecía poetry have been published in recent decades, including: Weiss's The "Mester de Clerecía"; Arizaleta's Les clercs au palais; Ancos-García's Transmisión y recepción primarias; and Uría Maqua's Panorama crítico del mester de clerecía.

4. In some of the cases in which flavor references appear in the medieval works, the modern English translators have opted to eliminate the denotation of taste, presumably in service of rendering the text in idiomatic English. While this is an entirely understandable and valid approach, the gustatory aspect of the original is lost in such a rendering. Shades of meaning can be erased or potentially enhanced in the process of translation, and one may see both of these phenomena at work at different points in the current study. Particularly striking instances will be discussed as they arise in the course of the argumentation.

5. José Ferrer has catalogued a few of these references to sweetness in his analysis of adjectives in Berceo's Milagros: "Este [Berceo] tiene preferencia por aquellos calificativos, índices de dulzura—lo hemos adelantado ya al hablar sobre el músico que hay en el autor de los Loores. Podemos destacar entre las formas lingüísticas a que nos referimos: dulces voces; Jesús, dulz creatura; dulz mandado; cantos dulces; dulz vergel." ("He [Berceo] has a preference for such qualifiers, indications of sweetness—we have already gotten ahead of ourselves by talking about the musician that there is in the author of the Loores. We can underline among the linguistic forms to which we are referring: sweet voices; Jesus, sweet creature; sweet precept; sweet songs; sweet garden"; 49; my trans.).

6. Direct quotations from Berceo's Milagros come from the Dutton edition and are designated by stanza number. The English translations come from the previously cited edition by Mount and Cash and are designated by page number. This particular case is one in which Mount and Cash have opted for a less direct translation of "sin sal" as "unpardonable," rather than a more literal "without salt." This case will be analyzed further in the section on unpleasant flavors.

7. An example of food appearing without an accompanying reference to flavor occurs in the Latin equivalent of Berceo's "Milagro 21: De cómo una Abbadesa fue prennada et por su conbento fue acusada et después por la virgen Librada." In the Latin, the pregnancy of the abbess is discovered, in part, due to the food that she eats.

8. Some of the typical synesthetic uses of flavor in the Latin text include the description of the canonical hours as sweet (such as occurs in the Latin equivalent of Berceo's "Milagro 12: El prior de san Salvador y el sacristán Uberto"), or tears as bitter (as occurs in the Latin equivalent of Berceo's "Milagro 25: De cómo Teófilo fizo carta con el diablo de su ánima et después fue convertido e salvo." These examples will be discussed within their respective categories.

9. Francomano's previously cited article contains a detailed discussion of the various uses of synesthesia. Although Francomano engages with synesthesia that occurs among the physical senses, the article is particularly interested in synesthesia between the physical senses and spiritual ones.

10. The perception of synesthesia is also culturally defined. If the meaning of an adjective becomes so commonly associated with a sensation (even if it was not the sense originally or primarily associated with that adjective), it may lose its rhetorical quality. Artiles comments on a related aspect of the cultural conditioning of synesthesia, the change in perception over time: "Pero advirtamos que la sinestesia, como la metáfora, después de un largo uso, llega a desgastarse y perder eficacia. Una vez desgastada y lexicalizada, casi que no es sinestesia. Pero eso, ante estos textos, no podemos perder de vista que, desde Berceo, han pasado ya siete siglos." ("But we note that a particular use of synesthesia, like a metaphor, becomes worn out and loses potency with time. Once worn down and lexicalized, it is almost no longer synesthesia. But regarding these texts, we ought not lose sight that seven centuries have passed since Berceo's time"; 158; my trans.).

11. All direct quotations from the Latin and their English translations come from the previously mentioned edition by Timmons and Boenig. The page numbers provided are for the Latin first, followed by the English.

12. Here, the Mount and Cash translation maintains the synesthesia of the expression but transfers it from gustatory-tactile to olfactory-tactile. Later in the collection, in "Milagro 17: La iglesia de la Gloriosa profanada," as part of the punishment for profaning Mary's church, one of the guilty knights is forced to carry the offending sword "cinto a la carona, correó desabrido" ("girded to his flesh with a harsh strap"; 407d; 84). Again, the Mount and Cash translation removes the gustatory reference ("desabrido" as "flavorless"), in order to render it as more idiomatic English with the term "harsh" (this example will be discussed further in the section on bitterness and flavorlessness). Both choices in translation are valid ones, but they do remove the exact effect of Berceo's original use of synesthesia.

13. This is the titular example from the previously cited article by Rodríguez-Pereira. While the article centers on olfactory references, it also contains a discussion of Berceo's treatment of the physical senses broadly, as well as the various types of synesthesia, although most specifically ones that involve olfaction, such as this gustatory-olfactory one.

14. Apart from the references to bitterness mentioned above, there are three other references to food and flavor in Berceo's version of the miracle that are not present in the Latin: "yantares" ("meal"; 425c; 87); "yantar mala" ("bad meal"; 429b; 88); and "savor" ("pleasure"; 428c; 88). Again, in this last instance a more precise translation of "savor" would be "flavor," although the resulting phrase would be somewhat stilted in English.

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