IN recent decades, critics have found that Francisco Delicado's Retrato de la Lozana Andaluza (1528) exploits the conventions of hagiographic writing. Ronald Surtz, for example, has called attention to parallels in the lives of reformed prostitutes like SS. Mary of Egypt, Pelagia, and Thais (288). (1) The narrator of the Lozana Andaluza parodies these traditions by recording the life of an incorrigible whore who, after traveling across the Mediterranean, comes to practice her trade in Rome, escapes the Eternal City prior to its sacking in 1527, and finally takes refuge from the world on the remote island of Lipari. Of particular interest is mamotreto 47, describing apparitions of St. Mary Magdalene in the author's hometown of Pena de Martos, sale en ella la cabelluda, que quiere decir que alli munchas veces aparecio la Madalena (398). (2) Gemma Delicado Puerto has shown how this episode relates Lozana's portrait to the popular image of the Magdalene as a patron saint of cosmeticians and sex workers. She finds that the narrative not only parodies the legends of holy harlots in a general sense, but specifically targets attributes of the beata peccatrix from the Gospel. (3) What has yet to be explained is the meaning of the holy woman most explicitly linked with the protagonist of Delicado's novel. An unidentified saint named is invoked three times as a healer who prostitutes herself to customers free of charge (mamotretos 23, 50-51). In the first scene, Lozana comes to the aid of a canon, who, seeing her at the door, exclaims: [??]Cuerpo de mi!, es mas habile, a mi ver, que Santa Nefija, la que daba su cuerpo por limosna (284). (4) He no doubt noticed that her nose and forehead were scarred by syphilis, the same sickness that appears to have ravaged his body. Lozana insists that the canon avoid the tortures of physicians and instead trust in her loving care, deja hacer a mi, que es miembro que quiere halagos y caricias, y no crueldad de medico (286). In a later episode, a gentleman named Trujillo claims to be suffering from venereal disease and suggests to Lozana that los tocos y el tacto es el que sana que asi lo dijo Santa Nefija, la que murio de amor suave (412). After Trujillo turns the tables on the visitor and becomes her sexual healer, quierolo ver por sanar, she expresses regret at having performed her services pro bono, como que fuera yo Santa Nefija, que daba a todos de cabalgar en limosna (412, 414). In each case, characters allude to erotic charity, in keeping with a convention that can be traced back to the pasos de caridat of Trotaconventos in the fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor (c. 1322d). In a note to his edition of the Lozana Andaluza, Francisco Damiani identifies Nefija as a Hispanic derivative of Nafissa, the name of a mock saint who will be later called on as a protectora de las cortesanas in Pietro Aretino's Ragionamenti (108). Damiani and other editors of Delicado, however, have not considered that the Italian name functions as a pun on the euphemism for female genitalia, una fissa, and more importantly refers to a facetious legend derived from connotations of the real Muslim holy woman, Sayyida Nafisa. (5) One of the earliest European sources for information about this saint can be found in the Della descrittione dell'Africa, written in the 1520s by Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wassan), a Muslim from Granada had been taken captive at sea and converted in Rome. Not published until almost thirty years later, this book includes a description of early sixteenth-century veneration of Nafisa in Cairo. (6) On the one hand, Leo Africanus praises the saintly miracle-worker for her chastity and nobility, and on the other condemns Egyptian profit-mongers and superstitious devotees for turning her sumptuous shrine into a cursed place: La citta vecchia detta Misrulhettich [...] quivi e quella famosa sepoltura della santa femina tanto da i Mahumettani riverita chiamata santa Nafissa [. …
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Apr 14, 2023
Joshua Birk 
Open Access