
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Sacred Spaces and Places: Constructing the Virgin Mary in Hispanic Literature
- Liturgy and Place
- 1 A Feast of Miracles: Foreign Places, Foreign Spaces in Hispanic Miracle Collections
- Places of Growth and Irrigation
- 2 Hortus conclusus? Virginity and Fruitful Space in Gonzalo de Berceo’s Los Milagros de Nuestra Señora
- 3 Holding and Reflecting the Water of Life in Gonzalo de Berceo’s ‘fuent’: Wellsprings and Fountains as a Figure of the Virgin
- 4 Fountains and their Architecture: Situating Fountains in the Poetry of the Marqués de Santillana and Other Fifteenth-century Poets
- Places of Entry and Exit
- 5 The Temple Gate, the Lions’ Den, and the Furnace: Liminal Spaces in Gonzalo de Berceo’s Marian Poetry
- 6 The Sacred Temple, the Tabernacle, and the Reliquary in the Poetry of Pedro de Santa Fé, Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Juan Tallante, and Other Late Medieval Poets
- 7 Home is where the Heart is: Christ’s Dwelling Place from Gonzalo de Berceo’s Loores de Nuestra Señora to the Vita Christi of Isabel de Villena
- Spaces of Protection
- 8 Mary as a Strong Defence: The Protective Space of the Virgin from Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria to Jaume Roig’s Siege Engine
- 9 ‘Más olías que ambargris’: Perfumed Spaces of the Virgin in Fray Ambrosio Montesino’s Poetry
- Afterword
- Appendix: Peninsular Hymns to the Virgin
- Bibliography
- Index of Places as Marian Figures
- Index of Objects and Containers
- Index of Plants, Medicinal Substances and Perfumes
- General Index
9 - ‘Más olías que ambargris’: Perfumed Spaces of the Virgin in Fray Ambrosio Montesino’s Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 August 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Sacred Spaces and Places: Constructing the Virgin Mary in Hispanic Literature
- Liturgy and Place
- 1 A Feast of Miracles: Foreign Places, Foreign Spaces in Hispanic Miracle Collections
- Places of Growth and Irrigation
- 2 Hortus conclusus? Virginity and Fruitful Space in Gonzalo de Berceo’s Los Milagros de Nuestra Señora
- 3 Holding and Reflecting the Water of Life in Gonzalo de Berceo’s ‘fuent’: Wellsprings and Fountains as a Figure of the Virgin
- 4 Fountains and their Architecture: Situating Fountains in the Poetry of the Marqués de Santillana and Other Fifteenth-century Poets
- Places of Entry and Exit
- 5 The Temple Gate, the Lions’ Den, and the Furnace: Liminal Spaces in Gonzalo de Berceo’s Marian Poetry
- 6 The Sacred Temple, the Tabernacle, and the Reliquary in the Poetry of Pedro de Santa Fé, Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Juan Tallante, and Other Late Medieval Poets
- 7 Home is where the Heart is: Christ’s Dwelling Place from Gonzalo de Berceo’s Loores de Nuestra Señora to the Vita Christi of Isabel de Villena
- Spaces of Protection
- 8 Mary as a Strong Defence: The Protective Space of the Virgin from Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria to Jaume Roig’s Siege Engine
- 9 ‘Más olías que ambargris’: Perfumed Spaces of the Virgin in Fray Ambrosio Montesino’s Poetry
- Afterword
- Appendix: Peninsular Hymns to the Virgin
- Bibliography
- Index of Places as Marian Figures
- Index of Objects and Containers
- Index of Plants, Medicinal Substances and Perfumes
- General Index
Summary
Perfume created a purified space, allowing the divine and the human to commune. In the Jerusalem Temple, perfume signalled God's presence and, in the Old Testament, Wisdom, a semi-deity, evokes incense in her self-eulogy: ‘like the smoke of incense in the tent’ (Ecclus. 24.21). In Byzantium, burning incense ‘indicated the descent of divine grace’. Perfumes recalled paradise, since, according to medieval writers, India lay close to Eden and spices came from India. In this chapter, I look more fully at the sweet air occasioned by perfumes, showing how perfumed spaces act as symbols of the Virgin.
I focus first on Gonzalo de Berceo and Juan Gil de Zamora, showing how understanding perfume's attributes increases modern-day comprehension of the Virgin. After examining their poems, I discuss some of the principal aspects of medieval perfumes, for perfumes like ambergris created an exotic, evocative space. I then examine fray Ambrosio Montesino's poetry.
Perfumes in Early Marian Poetry
Because it is impossible to fully understand how perfumed plants adorn the verses of late medieval poets without acknowledging their use in earlier poems, I first examine Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros and Loores to show how perfumes evoke the Virgin's essence.
The prologue to the Milagros constructs a ‘logar cobdiciaduero’, redolent with scents, where a person may take his ease. Berceo highlights the fragrance of flowers, since they give off scent, ‘olor’, and are sweet-smelling, ‘olientes’: ‘davan olor sovejo las flores bien olientes’. He returns to scent two stanzas later:
podrié vivir el omne con aquellos olores.
Nunqa trobé en sieglo, logar tan deleitoso,
nin sombra tan temprada nin olor tan sabroso.
The scent Berceo mentions is a source of comfort to the weary pilgrim, so powerful that it can restore man to new life in Christ (2 Tim. 1.1), and so intense that it can almost be tasted: ‘sabroso’, delicious, sweet-tasting, or flavoursome. Its restorative powers are for the end of time: ‘those who did good will come forth to life’ (John 5.29). Scent is so intrinsic to Berceo's sense of the sacred that I return to this stanza, after examining scented plants in the Milagros litany.
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- The Sacred Space of the Virgin Mary in Medieval Hispanic Literaturefrom Gonzalo de Berceo to Ambrosio Montesino, pp. 327 - 376Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019