Rojas's "Celestina and Claudina": In Search of a Witch

Abstract

SINCE 1963, Peter E. Russell's pivotal study on the centrality of magic in the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea has enabled scholars to analyze how Fernando de Rojas' uses magic.1 Testimony to the importance of Russell's study surfaces in three recent studies treating magic in Celestina-- Dorothy Severin's (1993 and 1995 [revised 1997]), Patrizia Botta's (1994), and Olga Lucia Valbuena's (1994)-as all three take note of Russell's work.2 The springboard for this study, however, is an earlier one, The Evolution of the Go-Between in Spanish Literature through the Sixteenth Century (1966),3 by Michael J. Ruggerio who purports to define witch, sorceress and demoniac precisely, thereby giving and Celestina, as a major character creation, a more defined and definite form than that which critics have given them to date (1). Rojas' main innovation to the character of the alcahueta, asserts Ruggerio, is the addition of witchcraft: Celestina in her turn has established a lasting tradition in which the alcahueta and witch are irremediably joined (3).4 In brief, using reliable authorities (Rossell Hope Robbins, Henry Charles Lea, Antonio de Torquemada, and Fray Martin de Castanega), Ruggerio distills a definition inconsistent with his presuppositions and so discards it to assert that is a witch. He does not examine Celestina's idiolect. Ruggerio's conclusion motivated Russell, in a revised version of his original analysis, to observe: Creo que no tiene razon Ruggerio al decir (p. 53) que se llama a no solo 'hechicera' sino tambien `bruja.' La unica mencionada en el texto es Dona Claudina y la distincion puede ser importante (272n14).5 The distinction is important, if for no other reason, because Rojas maintains it. This study proposes that for Rojas, in consonance with prevailing, popular literature, the terms bruja and hechicera signaled substantially separate entities, whereas in official literature, manuals on witchcraft written by and for professionals-jurisconsults, canonists, theologians, judges, etc.-, the distinction was blurred and, in fact, obliterated. The evidence in Celestina-that Rojas used only the term hechicera to refer to his hag, although he was remarkably aware of the term bruja,-suggests deliberateness. This view may not find favor today as consulting a modern English or Spanish dictionary will attest that neither English nor Spanish differentiates the two entities. Today, then, the terms are essentially synonymous. Rojas, and a portion of his cultural milieu, as this examination contends, did not hold this perspective.6 Ruggerio's approach to the problem remains pertinent. Hence, besides examining modern-day authorities and authorities contemporaneous to Rojas, this analysis will consider Rojas' own usage. For sake of concision, concerning modern-day authorities, Jeffrey Burton Russell's observations in Witchcraft in the Middle Ages will suffice as they clarify the issue in accordance with the next group of sources examined. This group, geographically and temporally closer to Rojas, again uses Ruggerio's selection as a starting point. To Antonio de Torquemada's Jardin de flores curiosas and Fray Martin de Castanega's Tratado de las supersticiones y hechicerias, the former popular literature and the latter official, the following may be added: official works-Malleus Maleficarum (c. 1487) by Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, Pedro Ciruelo's Reprouacion de las supersticiones y hechizerias (1530), Jean Bodin's De la Demonomanie des Sorciers (1580), and finally, George Gyfford's A Discourse of the Subtill Practises of Deuilles by Witches and Sorcerers (1587); popular works-Sebastian de Covarrubias' Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espanola, and Cervantes' Coloquio de los perros. Finally, a brief discussion of pact considers two manifestations of the same hag who resemble Celestina, one found in don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor and the other in the anonymous Esopete ystoriado. …