Sonnet XIV of the Marques de Santillana and the Waning of the Middle Ages

Abstract

JOHAN HUIZINGA, discussing the secularization of the topoi of religious praise in his study The Waning of the Middle Ages, observes: While religious symbolism represented the realities of nature and history as symbols or emblems of salvation, on the other hand religious metaphors were borrowed to express profane sentiments. [. . .:1 Although we may consider such formulae of adulation empty phrases, they show nonetheless the depreciation of sacred imagery resulting from hackneyed use.. [. ..] The step from familiarity to irreverence is taken when religious terms are applied to erotic relations. . ..] The irreverence of daily religious practice was almost unbound. Choristers, when chanting mass, did not scruple to sing the words of profane songs that had served as a theme for the composition: baisezmoi, rouges nez (pp. 157-59).1 Huizinga's study which refers almost exclusively to demonstrable phenomena from French literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries brings many comparable examples from Spanish literature immediately to mind. After the intensely religious literature of the thirteenth century-Bereceo's Milagros and Alfonso's Cantigas are the highpoints-the fourteenth century ushered in a group of works characterized by, at best, a casual attitude toward the ritual solemnities of the Christian tradition. Although the exact nature of the Libro de buen amor is one of the most hotly debated subjects in medieval Spanish literature,2 to the ordinary reader there is little doubt that from amid some