Visualizing Violence in post-1492 Castilian Meditative and Mystical Treatises

Medieval imaginative meditation on the Passion required devotees to visualize the narrative scenes of Jesus’ tortures as though they were present, so close as to be spattered with blood drops as Jesus fumbled the cross. These memorable scenes were intended to activate the devotees’ sense of compassion, with the Virgin Mary as the model for grieving over every wound. While such gory meditation was the most popular spiritual technique taught in Latin and in the vernacular from the 11th century across nearly all of Europe, remarkably almost no record of Passion devotions remains from the central peninsular kingdom of Castile (Robinson, _Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile_, 2103). Medieval Castilian spirituality instead focused on the “reconquest” of territory from Muslim kings and as a result on a Marian spirituality that elevated the Virgin as “la conquistadora” (Remensnyder, _La Conquistadora_, 2014). In fact, the first prose treatise written in Castilian teaching affective meditation on Jesus’ Life and Passion, Archbishop Prejano’s _Lucero de la vida cristiana_, was first published in 1493 – that is to say, it appeared a decade after the establishment of the Inquisition to root out judaizing converts and in the immediate wake of 1492’s seismic shift to an imperial Catholicism due to the Expulsion of the Jews, the reconquest of Granada, and Columbus’ voyage.

Not only did Prejano’s text become a bestseller, but other authors quickly followed on its success in two unusual developments of the genre. Two authors developed a new approach called “Passion of Two,” in which readers were directed to spend half of every scenario meditating on Mary’s embodied pain in addition to that of Jesus (anonymous _Fasciculus myrrhe_, 1511; Tenerio and Escobar’s _Passio duorum_, 1526). In addition, authors such as Francisco de Osuna (_Abecedarios espirituales_, 1528-40) and Bernadino de Laredo (_Subida del Monte Síon_, 1535) developed a new mystical technique of “recogimiento” (recollection), incorporating lengthy narratives of the Passion directly into the mystical guides instead of assuming their readers were already familiar with it. All of these treatises were printed repeatedly for decades and were shipped to the New World, indicating their general popularity.

My argument is this: in the Castilian Passion texts composed during the first decades of an Inquisition whose primary remit was to police converts who might potentially revert to their earlier Jewish practices, the authors scripted for their readers meditations centering on violent anger and physical anguish, rather than compassionate sorrow. Specifically, Castilian Christians imported the pan-European anti-Semitic discourse that viewed anger and hatred as central characteristics of an essentialized, violent Jewish nature, yet extended the scenarios of their rage to include malicious violence against not only Jesus but also Mary. Starting with the second of the Passion narratives published in Castilian, Andres de Li’s _Thesoro de la passion_ of 1494, Castilian authors strengthened the traditional anti-Semitic descriptors of Jewish evilness, animality, perversity, and blindness by adding extensive reference to a range of negative emotions ranging from anger to malice to fury to envy, leading to actions they overwhelmingly characterized as cruel. Thus Catholics made the stereotype of Jewish irrationality “real” by depicting Jews as profoundly emotional, an attitude shaping Jewish violence at every moment of the Passion narrative - then they turned this violence against the Virgin. For example, Li relished in particular the insult “Jewish dog,” evoking both medieval authors who had used this particular insult for Jews who were particularly dismissive of Mary and those who strongly associated dogs with the vice of anger (Resnick, “Good Dog/Bad Dog,” _Enarratio_ 2013). For Li to call the Jewish torturers of Jesus dogs was also to identify their fury as the foundation for their vicious actions against Mary in particular. According to Li, angry dogs repeatedly struck at Mary as she attempted to follow alongside her son in his last days, a violent action not described in the most popular Latin Lives of Christ – while Jews were regularly considered violent, this association was usually either in relation to their putative torture of Jesus or more contemporaneous accusations that Jews insulted or struck images of the Virgin (Nirenberg, _Communities of Violence_, 1996; Bale, _Feeling Persecuted_, 2010). After Li, however, every other meditative work published in the Castilian vernacular represented Jews as actually hitting Mary, knocking her down and stunning her, often with Jesus present to witness the violence which becomes part and parcel of his pain.

The anti-Semitic rendering of Jews as violent against women by the authors of Castilian meditation texts definitively shaped mystical experience in sixteenth century Spain. The most direct reflection of the meditation texts’ emphasis on Jewish violence against Mary are found in the weekly sermons given by the visionary Juana de la Cruz at her convent, during which Jesus putatively spoke through her enraptured body re-narrating biblical episodes (recorded in the manuscript _El Conorte_, first quarter of the 16th century). The Holy Week sermons include scenes in which Jews beat both Jesus and Mary when he fell with the cross, and again attacked Mary at the foot of the cross (sermons 17, 18). Juana’s audience would have heard these details as the authoritative record of events according to the Son of God, not merely as recommendations modeling possible meditation topics; in other words, Jewish violence against Mary would have seemed to her audience of nuns and visiting ecclesiastical and political dignitaries to have been factually confirmed by Jesus as part of the scriptural record. It is thus not surprising that a decade later Francisco de Osuna would recommend as part of his tripartite recollection mystical technique (_Primer abecdario espiritual_, 1528) that his readers not only imagine Jesus crowned with thorns on the cross, but also Mary. In other words, the Jews, blamed for all the tortures to Jesus, were also held responsible for Mary’s crucifixion by aspiring mystics in sixteenth century Castile. Mystical practice was thus not divorced from Castilian anti-Semitism, but rather reinforced it.