The willing reader of Duarte's Leal conselheiro

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the reading practices advocated by Dom Duarte of Portugal in his Leal conselheiro, taking as a starting point their inclusion in a contemporary translation of John Cassian's Conferences. I argue that Duarte's theory of will, explained earlier in the Leal conselheiro and drawn largely from Cassian, underlies the rejection of “fixed intentions” in his hermeneutics. For both Duarte and Cassian, correct interpretation requires that the conflict between spirit and flesh in the will take place, but Duarte's perfect will is subjected to reason, whereas Cassian's is subjected to grace. From here, I argue that Duarte's privileging of experience in moral pedagogy both ties him to ascetic thought and distances him from it. Duarte's reliance on personal and familial exemplarity and avoidance of fictional exempla is modeled on what Douglas Burton-Christie has called the “desert hermeneutic,” in which experience (praxis) and interpretation form a constructive circle, and his adaptation of the desert ideal provides his moral pedagogy with a complex spiritual psychology. His exaltation of reason, however, roots both his ethics and his hermeneutics firmly in the palace, not the monastery.