SOURCE: "The Razón de amor as Christian Symbolism," Hispanic Review Vol. XX, No. 4, October, 1952, pp. 282-301.

[In the following essay, Jacob presents a detailed account of the Christian symbolism in the Razón de amor, formulating a new interpretation of the poem based on his findings.]

Qui triste tiene su coraçon
benga oyr esta Razon.

So begins a poem of the early thirteenth century which, like the Libro de buen amor, is a composite of familiar themes ranging from idealidad cortesana in that part of it which sometimes separately bears the title Razon de amor, to bufonerìa callejera in the remainder, which comprises the "Denuestos del agua y el vino." Within the popular juglaresco framework of the day a locus amoenus, a damsel, and a gentleman are described; a cantiga de amigo is sung, and a recognition, a separation, a vision, and a dispute are presented, with original connecting narrative. There are in addition some unusual particulars: two vessels in an apple tree, one with wine and the other with water; a bird with a little bell attached, which upsets one vessel into the other; and a curious exchange of gifts between genteel lovers who never before have seen each other.

Little has been written on this poem since R. Menéndez Pidal published the definitive version in the Revue Hispanique, XIII (1905), as a single, unified piece. José Filguera Valverde in his article on the "Lìrica medieval gallega" in the first volume of Historia general de las literaturas hispánicas (1949), … is the first to suggest its possible "alegorismo" in common with the Introduction to Berceo's Milagros; and Leo Spitzer, in Romania, LXXI (1950), has offered a valuable overall reinterpretation stressing the human side. There still remains, however, the possibility of a definite didactic purpose couched in the Christian symbolism familiar to the Middle Ages.

The symbolist, according to C. S. Lewis (The Allegory of Love, 1936), leaves the given to find that which is more real. To the mediaeval mind, a tree standing in a garden and bearing a vessel of red wine would almost certainly suggest the "tree" of the Crucifixion and the blood of Jesus. Modern readers shy from tropology, preferring to see in a tree its simple beauty as a tree, and declaring that the further meaning it is said to conceal exists only in the oversubtle mind of the inquirer. But it is hardly fair to the artists of the Middle Ages to take beauty of form and color as the stimulus and justification of their enterprise. The value of nature, art, and antiquity lay in their didactic theological potential; the facts were nothing until they became symbols, and the most highly trained minds found no created thing too commonplace to illustrate spiritual verity. This way of thinking and writing was carried so far that its intricate results seem to us little more than masterpieces of eager ingenuity. We must however project ourselves back to the earlier age. "Nous sommes donc ici," writes Professor Spitzer of the Razn, "comme dans tant d'œuvres médiévales, en présence d'un plan surnaturel, érigé audessus d'une scène terrestre." Of this much we may be confident; beyond this, the uncertainties of any interpretation of one age by another permit only a range of plausibility. The following is therefore offered as possible, not as conclusive.

The initial clue to the appropriateness of the proposed interpretation is given by Gonzalo de Berceo, whose Introduction to the Milagros de Nuestra Seõra begins in a similar way: "Yo maestro Gonçalvo de Verçeo nomnado / Iendo en romeria caeçi en un prado / Verde e bien sençido, de flores bien poblado,/ Logar cobdiçiadero pora omne cansado." After describing the luxuriance of the flowers, trees and fruits, he removes his cloak, lies down in the cool shade, and listens to the birds. Seeing the fruits, he is reminded of Adam, and proceeds to a tropological interpretation of all other details: "Prendamos lo de dentro, lo de fuera dessemos./Todos quantos vevimos que en piedes andamos,/ … Todos somos romeos que camino andamos / … La nuestra romeria estonz la acabamos/ Quando a paraiso las almas enviamos."

From this point forward, Berceo converts the whole scene into a set of symbols and emblems. The meadow is the Blessed Virgin. Its green color is her decorum; its four fountains the Gospels, inspired by her; the shadows of trees, her prayers for sinners, whether kings or commoners; the trees, her miracles; the birds, the church fathers, prophets, apostles and priests who sing of her; the flowers, her many revealing names.

The poet of La Rioja was using an established didactic technique. Hugh of St. Victor had earlier stated: "Omnis natura Deum loquitur, omnis natura hominem docet, omnis natura rationem parit, et nihil in universitate infecundum est" (Didascalicon de studio legendi, VI, 5), and Vedel and Huizinga confirm that "Toda la Naturaleza no era … sino otro tratado mellizo … de la Sagrada Escritura," and "There is not an object nor an action, however trivial, that is not constantly correlated with Christ or salvation. All thinking tends to religious interpretation of individual things." It remains to apply this method, which is also Berceo's, to the contemporaneous Razon de amor.

The poet's self-introduction, a juglaresco convention of doubtful autobiographical veridity, but part of a convenient framework for the piece, continues:

odra razon acabada,
feyta d'amor e bien rymada.
Un escolar la rrimo
que siempre duenas amo;
mas siempre ouo cryança
en Alemania y en Françia;
moro mucho en Lombardia
pora aprender cortesia.

He takes pride in his poetic accomplishment, the result of having been raised in the several domains of Frederick the Second and in polite society (siempre duenas amo), followed by prolonged residence in Northern Italy for study of cortesia, where he may have caught some of the beginnings of religious and moral poetry which later developed there. Having given the mood of his recitation and his self-introduction, he states the time and place of the first scene:

En el mes d'abril, depues yantar,
estaua so un oliuar.

In a country with a folk tradition of May songs, according to Menéndez Pidal (Estudios literarios, 1946), the month is given as April. May is the full release of Spring, the month of floral festivals; but April is the last month of Lent, when the attitude of the Christian world is one resembling tristeza: penitence. It was to these tristes that the juglar addressed his recital, offering them not gaiety but artistic skill. In its theme, which is now to be developed (Berceo's meollo, not the visible corteza,) it belongs, like Dante's Divine Comedy, to the pre-Easter season.

The poet has already given his only description of the area he now occupies: "estaba so un oliuar." The later fragrant garden does not appear until after he has fallen asleep. The olive tree grows best on sparse rocky ground, and its lanceolate leaves do not offer dense shade. He is still outside the formal garden, in a position where

Entre çimas d'un mançanar
un uaso de plata ui estar;
pleno era d'un claro uino
que era uermeio e fino;
cubierto era de tal mesura
no lo tocas la calentura.

In the whole range of symbolism no emblem is more widespread or has exerted greater influence upon the institutions of mankind than the branch or tree. Its meaning in mediaeval literary gardens is made clear by D. W. Robertson. ["The Doctrine of Charity in Mediaeval Gardens: a Topical Approach through Symbolism and Allegory," Speculum, XXVI (1951)]. Many gardens are little more than groves of trees and still others have a tree as a central feature. To the mediaeval mind, the very important position of the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Biblical narrative, and the symmetry between the tree of the temptation in Eden and the tree of the redemption on Calvary, meant that any literary tree could be considered as an aspect of one of the Biblical trees, or as a transitional growth between the two extremes. The apple tree in particular figures frequently as the tree of life.

The tree under observation, then, may be no other than the symbol of the cross of Christ; and if it is, then the silver vessel on it (silver being the second in the sequence of metals), and its content of fine red wine, are readily identified as the body and blood of Jesus. If this is the end of the Lenten season, the traveller may well elevate his eyes to the symbol of the Crucifixion, and feel within himself that tristeza which the opening line attributes to the listeners. If, in common with Dante's great work, this is intended to be an Easter poem of the redemption of Man, it may be no accident that the traveller has reached this place at this time. It may figure the Jerusalem of the courtier who has changed his ways and makes the typically mediaeval expiatory pilgrimage. This is the more plausible since Grace Frank, in "The Distant Love of Jaufré Rudel," MLN, LVII (1942), and LXIX (1944), showed that a troubadour could sing of the Holy City in the figure of a damsel. Man, for Berceo as for St. Augustine, St. Bernard and Dante, was a stranger and a pilgrim in the world; and so the poetic subject of the Razon de amor, who not inaptly emblematizes Man seeking the New Jerusalem, may tentatively be called the penitent or the pilgrim.

Una duena lo y eua puesto
que era senora del uerto,
que quan su amigo uiniese,
d'a quel uino a beuer le disse.

Mary had given her Son to be crucified for the sins of mankind, and is often referred to under the symbolism of a garden—stemming from the "garden inclosed" of Song of Solomon, iv, 12. When the garden stands for the Church, she is its mistress. But do we dare to attribute an amigo to Mary? The wise Alfonso X, in the sixteenth Cantiga, has Mary say: "—Se me por amiga queres auer, máis rafez,/ tanto que est' ano rezes por mì outra uez / quanto pola outra antano fuste rezar." Mary was the friend of everyone who turned to her with utter devotion; and though the fact is here expressed in terms of love imagery, it is none the less a fact. St. Thomas Aquinas clarifies this sort of difficulty in the Summa Theologica (Pt. I, Q. 1, Art. 10) by saying: "When Scripture speaks of God's arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member but only what is signified by this member, namely, operative power." That the word dueã is used here and doncela a little later, leads Professor Spitzer to infer two ladies; but at this date the words were still synonyms. Berceo in Santa Oria refers to the same four girls in stanza 41 as virgenes, in 45 as donçellas, and in 46 as duenas, and line 1764 of the Cantar de Mio Cid reveals the same: "Estas duenas que aduxiestes, que vos sirven tanto,/ Quierolas casar con de aquestos mios vassallos."

Qui de tal uino ouiesse
en la mana quan comiesse:
e dello ouiesse cada dia,
nuncas mas enfermarya.

The only wine which traditionally has this healing quality is the wine of communion or the eucharist, which is the blood of Jesus. Whoever communicates each morning, having of necessity been previously absolved, will never, according to the poem, fall back into the tristeza or enfermedad of mortal existence.

Arriba del mançanar
otro uaso ui estar;
pleno era d'un agua fryda
que en el mançanar se naçia.
Beuiera d'ela de grado,
mas oui miedo que era encantado.

There is an upper vessel, of a material not named, filled with cool water from the garden spring. The pilgrim fears to drink it. He senses something supernatural about it; and this clue, together with the statement that the water it contains is the same as that of the spring, identifies it clearly as the water of life, which is always described as flowing from the roots of the tree of life in the garden of Paradise, whether in Revelation (xxii.2), in the Vision of Saint Paul (Howard R. Patch, The Other World, 1950), or in the Muslim tradition (La Escala de Mahoma, ed. Muõz Sendino, 1949). Its position in the high spot of the garden; the fact that it is water or perfect purity relative to wine of more material reference; and that this vessel is unnamed, while the lower one is of silver, the second metal; and that it was not placed there by anyone and does not invite direct approach, all point to the symbolic divine Substance, near all but superior to all. This possibility is strengthened by the Vision of St. Paul: "And I entered in further, and saw a tree planted, out of whose roots flowed waters … and the spirit of God rested upon that tree."

The traveller twice again mentioning the discomfort of extreme heat, which may symbolically be a reminder of the burden of mortal existence, or may connote the justice of God which envelops and consumes him inexorably, loosens or lays aside his outer clothing and lies down, bringing the first scene to a close. There has been no other action and no amenity. It is as if the pilgrim had approached, but yet remained outside the garden of his desire, thirsting for that water of life which he perceived above. Dante, too, emerged from the sinister woods and raised his eyes to another symbol of divine source high beyond the shoulder of the mountain and inaccessible to him: "Guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle/ vestite già de' raggi del pianeta,/ che mena dritto altrui per ogni calle."

Before examining the second scene, let us look again at the objects just appraised. Symbols, like words, have fluid and multiple meanings, and recognition of them is not an equivocation; rather, all meanings are necessary if mediaeval thinking is not to remain an enigma.… The scene observed from the olive grove, without in any way losing its paschal significance, can in addition give another perspective, back to the book of Genesis, and show the primitive cause of the Passion. The apple tree with its wine-fruit is now the tree of the temptation, and the fruit is offered by the mistress of the garden of Eden, Eve, to her lover Adam ('Adam' is Hebrew for Man, as a race) in the conviction that he "nuncas mas enfermarya." "In the day ye eat thereof … ye shall be as gods." "… a tree to be desired to make one wise" (Genesis iii.5-6). In early paintings it was often recognizably an apple tree; but any fruit tree in a garden recalled Eden, as we have already observed in the case of Berceo. "Da das Paradies ein Garten ist, kann umgekehrt ein Garten Paradies heissen" (E. R. Curtius, Europöische Literatur …).

The second of the four scenes into which the poem conveniently divides begins

Pleguem a una fuente perenal,
nunca fue omne que vies tall

and it represents the dream-vision of the thirsty penitent; thirsty for water, for reassurance that his quest will be successful, and for salvation, if the pilgrimage is that of this world's mortal journey. He envisions himself in a wonderfully cool, shady, aromatic garden close to an everflowing spring irrigating veriagated flowers and refreshing the atmosphere for a hundred paces around. This is like the second of the three paradises described by Hugh of St. Victor in his De Arca Noe Morali.… The first is that of man's innocence, and in it was the material tree of life; the second is the Church, and of it the tree of life is Christ who gave his life on the cross and gives it daily in the Eucharist. It is here that preparation is made for the paradise of God, whereof the tree is the divine wisdom, fountain of life, and origin of all good. We must not expect, however, since this is symbolical, and is moreover a vision with the consequent blurring of borders, that the dreamer's impressions will be sharply differentiated. It is a dream-fulfilment in terms of his own sense of need.

The locus amoenus, then, is the Christian Church. The water of the spring is baptism. Its purifying, regenerative quality circulates through the Church and makes fruition possible. The thirsty traveller marvels for fourteen verses at the sights and aromas, before taking a sip of the water of life. A single sip is sufficient because the sacrament of baptism is administered only once, and because "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (St. John iv.14). Instantly there is a total transformation in the penitent's attitude. His outreaching to nature and his joyful song

en mi mano prys una flor,
sabet non toda la peyor,
e quis cantar de fin amor

betoken the loss of the separateness and fearfulness which had possessed him when he first saw the vessels, and his present restoration to inner security. It is at this moment that

mas ui uenir una doncela,
pues naçi non ui tan bella:
blanca era e bermeia,
cabelos cortos sobr' ell oreia,

followed by sixteen verses of description not materially distinguishable from that of any mediaeval lady of quality. Like Matelda of the Purgatorio xxviii she sings and gathers flowers as she goes. Her song is a sort of cantiga de amigo based on absence and jealousy, and is not intended to portray her own situation. If it were, the traveller's question "Dezit, la mia senor, si supiestes nunca d'amor?" would already have been answered. Rather, it is an interpolated lyric, bringing the damozel to the forefront of attention while the stranger observes her. Her physical description differs little from the established pattern of real and allegorical women as found in Santa Marìa Egipcìaca, Libro de buen amor, Roman de la rose, and L'Intelligenza. The poet's effort is to present the lady as attractive, according to the norms of the day.

The garden, too, should be viewed as a whole. True, the four flowers near the spring—sage, rose, lily and violet—may all share a flower symbolism, or individually may represent mercy, purity, humility and other virtues, or, as Berceo suggests (Introducción), they may be names of the Virgin. It is not necessary to establish a factual correspondence, because the mediaeval mind built more on suggestiveness. The same is true of the four gifts mentioned later: gloves, coif, coral, and ring; and the one gift from the damozel, the handmade belt. Symbolic value may more probably attach to the numbers four and one than to the specific gifts. The four, on the side of man is a double dichotomy, hence complexity, hence experience or manifestation, while the one, on the side of the representative of Divinity is simplicity, purity, source. The world is in a sense fourfold with its four elements, four seasons, four directions, four qualities, and the four humours of man; while the world beyond is the realm of the One Supreme. The importance of number to the Middle Ages is made clear by Vincent Foster Hopper in Mediaeval Number Symbolism (1938). Symbolic numbers were a part of the Eternal Pattern, and numerical significance was found everywhere.

The presumed penitent approaches the damozel with perfect courtesy ("Yo non fiz aqui como uilano"), invites her to sit down under the tree of peace, beauty, and reconciliation, the olive, and not under the tree of the temptation or of the Passion (the apple tree with its two vessels is not a part of this scene), and without any courtly expressions at all, asks her two simple questions: "Si supiestes nunca d'amor?", which is an echo from the pastorelles, and "Que donas tenedes de la su amor?" With notable caution he is seeking to ascertain whether she is in fact the object of his amor lonh, and whether his gifts have found favor in her sight. She answers the first query with a description by hearsay of her unknown lover: a scholar rather than a knight, accomplished in poetry, well read, musical, of good family, young and rough-bearded (barva punniente); that is, between the full beard of an older man and the mere bozo of a youth. Her answer to the second question has already been touched upon. Most simply, the gifts are worthy of a lady of quality. They, together with the fact that his reserve permits no declaration or advances, help to reveal her as the lady of his highest aspiration, the Queen of Heaven. If he is a pilgrim, his vision will encompass no lesser fulfilment of the devout purpose which has brought him to this place. Since he has made offerings to her in absentia and she has received them, she has thereby accepted as it were the expression of his devotion, and his pilgrimage and penance are favored. Her effusive welcome is typical of that of the shepherd for one sheep recovered and of the Church for one sinner redeemed. Any human being who turns to her in full devotion is in truth "meu amado" and "meo amigo," and with utmost sincerity she may praise God because "agora e tod bien comigo, quant conozco meo amigo."

The modern reader must not for a moment overlook that this interpretation assumes a theological truth to be given in a poetic idiom. It is therefore not unseemly that the expression of Mary's welcoming love for the penitent at the end of his pilgrimage, as he dreams it, should be such a galardón: the kiss and the speechless raptured gazing on the traveller returned, the sinner delivered. The precarious dream world of mediaeval love poetry does not sharply distinguish between lady-worship and Mary-worship; terms suited to the Virgin are applied to ladies, and expressions apt for ladies are sung to the Queen of Heaven. What to us in our day would be a term of insufficient reverence was not held to be so in the day of Berceo and Alfonso.

Further confirmation that the kiss, the greeting, and the ensuing scene are not of necessity erotic (though in the confused borderland of the pilgrim's dream they may be) is found in the fact that in Italy, where the poet had studied cortesìa, Guinicelli was shortly to develop the courtly theme of praise, to the hyperbole that the lady is a creature sent from heaven to reveal here some of the splendor of God's kingdom; and Dante was to transform this donna angelicata, an angel or messenger from heaven, into a guide to heaven. Love of her is love directed to heaven. The poet of the Razon could already have had this imagery in mind; could, indeed, have communicated it to Brunetto Latini during the latter's reported embassy in Spain around 1260. In Brunetto's Tesoretto the poet, alone in a natural setting, meets a noble damsel. She is Nature, second only to God. She gives the poet instruction and reveals to him the wonders of the world. Dante looked upon Brunetto with filial affection, and part of Purgatorio xxviii is reminiscent of the Tesoretto. In it Matelda, already mentioned, a lady of great beauty and grace, singing and gathering flowers in a cool grove, greets the poet (not however with effusive affection), awakens his love, counsels him about his future course, and assists him, preliminary to the vision of Beatrice.

Thus the meeting beneath the olive tree may mark the completion of one stage of the pilgrim's quest, with the acceptance of his gifts and of his devotion, and the launching of another stage under the guidance of the donna angelicata. During the "grant pieça ali estando, / De nuestro amor ementando" the pair may be described by words of St. John of the Cross, commenting his "Allì me enseñó ciencia muy sabrosa" in Cántico espiritual, xxvii: "La ciencia sabrosa que dize aquì que la enseñó es la Teologìa mìstica, que es ciencia secreta de Dios, que llaman los espirituales contemplación; la cual es muy sabrosa, porque es ciencia por amor." This is no earthly love nor earthly garden. The enveloping and elevating atmosphere is rather that described by Hugh of St. Victor: "Amoris plena sunt omnia, et omnia amorem resonant: flores, odor, canticum. Nihil hic est quod animum non subeat, quod cor non penetret, et quod affectum non transigat" (Sermo de assumption Beatae Virginis). The possibility of mystical instruction must be considered here because of partial similarities with subsequent poems: Brunetto's Tesoretto, L'Intelligenza attributed to Dino Compagni, in which the damsel of the early stanzas is revealed to be Intelligence in the 299th; the Documenti d'Amore of Francesco da Barberino, in which Love teaches allegorically without any trace of erotic tendency, and the final cantos of the Purgatorio.

At the conclusion of their meeting (which, it must be remembered, takes place within the pilgrim's dream, and so is cast in the mold of his desire), the damozel begs leave to depart. Her final words, "Bien seguro seyt de mi amor" are not so much a statement as a reassurance, invited by his urgent "Mas de mi amor pensat," which, in view of her answer, is clearest if read as an objective genitive: "mi amor" here means "your love of me," just as in the Poema del Cid, 1206, "Sonando van sus nuevas" means "reports of him are spreading," and in the Caballero Zifar, ed. Wagner (1929), "De cuyo amor?" "Del vuestro," mean "Love of whom?" "Love of you." The penitent's parting request, then, to which she so graciously responds, is "Continue me in your love." In the poem he has made no affectionate advance whatever, but rather by his two careful (if conventional) queries has invited this reassurance of her acceptance of his devotion. If, as this interpretation posits, he is a pilgrim to some shrine of Mary, he wants above all things to know that his penance has earned her approbation, and that she will continue to favor him.

The vision is ended and the penitent is alone. Even in his dream (for he is probably still in fact asleep under the olive tree), he finds, with Ibn Hazm, that separation is the brother of death, a concept which Garcilaso expressed for all time in his first Egloga, 318-323:

Tal es la tenebrosa
noche de tu partir, en que he quedado
de sombra y de temor atormentado,
hasta que muerte el tiempo determine
que a ver el deseado
sol de tu clara vista me encamine,

and which in Herrera's commentary is traced back to Homer.

He seeks refuge, as before, in sleep, and in this dream-within-a-dream constituting the third scene he sees a dove, white as snow on the heights, fly toward the fountain where he lies, then to the tree, then quickly away. The dove is of rich Christian symbolism, and may here be seen, like the damozel, as a messenger and guide. It served this function for Noah preliminary to his release from the ark, and for Berceo's Santa Oria as described in stanzas 26, 30, 37, and 40, to aid in her ascent. The relevant verses are as follows:

37 Guarda esta palonba, todo lo al oluyda;
   Tu ue do ella fuere, non seas deçebida,
   Guiate por nos, fija, ca Christus te conbida.
40 Moujosse la palonba, començo de uolar,
   Suso contra los çielos començo de pujar.
47 Catando la palonba como bien acordada,
   Subio en pos las otras en essa grant posada.

The poet, who prided himself on his learning, could have seen two earlier Spanish poems in which this theme was used or implied; one in Hebrew by Zerahya ben Ishaq Ha-levi (No. 115 in Millás y Vallicrosa's Poesìa sagrada hebraicoespaõla, 2nd edition [1948]): "Vuelve como paloma y al palomar vuela, hasta que logres subir al trono de realeza. Aguas de salud saca para ti de la Fuente de vida, y con tus pies no enturbies sus claras linfas."

The other is in Arabic by Abu-1-Hasan Ali ben Hisn (the first poem in Garcìa Gomez's, Poemas arabigoandaluces, 3rd edition [1946]), and includes the lines: "Nada me turbó más que un pichón que zureaba sobre una rama, entre la isla y el río.… Se recostaba en el ramo del arak como en un trono, escondiendo la garganta en el repliegue del ala. Mas al ver correr mis lágrimas, le asustó mi llanto, e irguiéndose sobre la verde rama, desplegó sus alas y las batïó en su vuelo, llevándose mi corazón. ¿Adónde? No lo sé."

Both Millás, following Peres cited by him, and Lawrence Ecker, in Arabischer, Provenzalischer und Deutscher Minnesang (1934), have shown the considerable interrelation between Northern and Andalusian poetry, little impeded by difference of language. But even within purely Christian antecedents, the dove was an early symbol of soul, and is used as such by Berceo in his "El naufrago salvado," stanza 600:

Vidieron palonbiellas essir de so la mar,
Más blancas que las nieves contral cielo volar:
Credien que eran almas que querie Dios levar
Al sancto paraiso, un glorioso logar.

The dove's entry immediately after the damozel's departure, its flight toward the pilgrim as if in recognition, its avoidance of the fountain of baptism or the water of life as made available to the Christian within the Church, and its immersion in the upper vessel or higher form of the same water, can now be seen as a figure of the soul or angelic essence of the damozel ascending to the Divine Nature, which, as seen by men, is Grace. The effect of this ascent is that the upper vessel overflows into the lower: Divine Grace is poured into the Eucharist. Now, while Grace is self-existent and not accessible to man through his own outreaching, Eucharist is a sacrament established for man—the vessel of wine was placed on the tree for him—and he may grasp it through his own will. Mary, who placed it there (gave her Son to be crucified), has now by her intervention (as the dove) endowed it with mystical efficacy, by commingling with it the divine ("encantado" or mysterious) fluid. The pilgrim, having known "baptism" in the second scene, followed by an intimate "confession," may now approach "communion," the symbol of union which he aspires ultimately to know as immortality, in the unknown region to which the dove has flown.

There remains the fourth and final scene, that of the "Denuestos". In a poem of pure entertainment it would serve to provide contrast, comic relief, and a spirited ending, and the same pattern is followed here by the ajuglarado author. The Archpriest of Hita did the same at a later date, and similar variety was also practiced earlier by the Spanish Muslim poets of the South. According to Schack, "a menudo se advierte esta diversidad en una misma composición, la cual está formada de muchas partes, conteniendo cada una distinto asunto, como si fuesen varias composiciones" (Poesìa y arte de los árabe, 1945). In view of the interrelation between the Arabic and Romance branches of Spanish poetry, mentioned also by Schack, the essential unity of the poem as confirmed by Pidal and Spitzer need not be questioned. But what has a dispute in common with an idyllic or a mystical piece?

As in the earlier cases of the conventional descriptions of damsel and gallant, of a garden, the use of a conventional love song, and the topoi of recognition and separation, the poet employs familiar means to achieve a more exalted end. The details matter less than the impact of the whole. The argument between wine and water is an inverted echo of the colloquy between the pilgrim and the damozel. They, speaking in human terms, symbolize a sacred meaning. Wine and water, sacred symbols in the earlier part, are here humanized. The man and woman, having enjoyed spiritual harmony, are afterwards physically separated; the wine and water having experienced physical commixture, are morally separated. The dramatic technique involved is simply that of Gil and Menga who ludicrously imitate their master and mistress, but get everything topsy turvey.

From the point of view of the dreaming penitent, who has just had a vision of hope and the assurance of Grace, and now overhears, or further dreams, this dispute, it is the caricature or degradation of the most exalted symbols. The damozel has disappeared; the eucharistic wine has become the contrary of the Prince of humility: an arrogant braggart; while the water of Grace and Baptism has become the companion of dirty linen and constituent of mud.

A similar literary technique was to be employed by later authors, notably by Rodrigo Cota in his Diálogo entre el amor y un viejo, and by Torres Naharro in his Addición del diálogo, where in each case the tenor of the work alters and ends on a note more likely to delight the masses than the learned. Torres concludes his skit with a sacrilegious farced version of the Ave maris stella which must have appealed to the devotees of the Boy Bishop revels. It is not unexpected, then, to find a serious piece terminated by some form of jocularity.

The wine-water nightmare occupies the same place in the spiritual history of the penitent at this moment as the ordeal in Grail symbolism and in the society romances. The possibility of parallelism is suggested by two important coincidences between the Razon de amor, the Quest of the Grail, and the quest of Dante in the Divine Comedy. They depend on the aid and inspiration of a woman; and the complete outward vision of the sacred symbol is followed by expulsion from its effective presence. There is a preliminary vision; then the vision is lost and there are trials of endurance: Gawain is pelted out of town, Perceval is expelled from the castle, Dante's way is blocked by wild beasts. And in Canto xxx of the Purgatorio, no sooner has Dante achieved the vision of Beatrice than she offers sharp rebuke, driving him to tears of penance and ultimately to a swoon. In each case there is some sort of trial or testing of the aspirant before he can achieve the final goal. Within this pattern, if, as seems to be the case, it may be applied to our poem, the ordeal of the pilgrim is purely psychological. With the departure of the damozel the luxuriant garden too has seemed to disappear, and the traveller is again in the relative bareness of the first scene, witnessing again the tree of the Passion on Calvary where blood and water issued together from the wound, and the earth did quake and the rocks rent (St. John xix.34; St. Matthew xxvii.51). This is the dramatic picture of the dreamer's state of soul within his dream, brought on by his new loneliness. Or, for the moment he may have slipped into another symbolic realm where water represents the things of God and wine the things of earth, and he envisions the conflict yet to come before his eventual release. There is of course nothing godly about the attitudes taken up by Water in this disputa, but that fact does not upset the water symbolism.

We cannot know how far the poet wished to carry the possible analogies. He has painted a very positive scene, then a messenger to the skies, then a very negative scene, and the reader is left to make what he can of it. In symbolic interpretation there is no fixed factual truth. It is clear, however, to the modern mind, and may have been so to the medieval, that the pilgrim must learn to see in all wine the potential presence of the Lord's body sacrificed for him, and in all water the power and grace of God inherent. "We cannot be enlightened by the Divine rays," wrote Dionysius, as quoted by St. Thomas, "except they be hidden within the covering of many sacred veils." And St. Thomas Aquinas in his comment adds: "What He is not is clearer to us than what He is. Therefore similitudes drawn from things farthest away from God form within us a truer estimate that God is above whatsoever we may say or think of Him" (Summa Theologica, I, Q. i, Art. 9). For Hugh of St. Victor there is also no incompatibility in spiritual things: "Spiritualis autem intelligentia nullam admittit repugnantiam, in qua diversa multa, adversa nulla esse possunt" (Eruditionis didascalicae, VI, iv).

The poet, having given his audience the refreshment of the earlier part of the argument, having carefully avoided the heavy theological humour of the Goliae Dialogus inter Aquam et Vinum (No. 22 in Wright's Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes, 1841), returns to a final summary of his teaching, i.e. "Que entre reir y reir / Bueno es la verdad decir. / Y por esto soy venido" (Diego Sáanchez de Badajoz, Farsa Teologal, Introito). As in the beginning the vessel of wine was first mentioned, and Vino was the first to argue in the disputa, so it is Wine who now announces his true nature and power. "Yo fago al çiego ueyer / y al coxo correr / y al mudo faublar y al enfermo organar," though said as a joke, is nothing other than a repetition of the earlier "Qui de tal uino ouiesse … nuncas mas enfermarya." In stating plainly now that Wine is "el cuerpo de Iesu Cristo," the author confirms our initial symbolism of the tree as Cross and its strange fruit as the crucified body of Jesus. Water, which was superior in the tree, now closes the poem by ascribing to itself the power of baptism, thus confirming the symbolism of the fountain, and indeed the arbitrament of the Day of Judgment:

e dize Dios que los que de agua fueren
  bautizados
fillos de Dios seran clamados,
e llos que de agua non fueren bautizados
fillos de Dios non seran clamados.

The author apparently is thinking of St. Matthew xxv.31: "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." Heaven or Hell, the ultimates in mediaeval experience, depended entirely on Water; that is, on Baptism and Grace, the lower fountain and the upper vessel.

Much more might be said of this little poem and its possible relation to the Platonic, Troubadour, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin traditions; but the immediate purpose is to present the possibility of a symbolic interpretation embodying those transcendent correspondences of which, for the mediaeval mind, the earth and its beauties were shadows.