1. Gonzalo de Berceo, Obras completas I-V, ed. Brian Dutton, 5 vols. (London,
1967-1981), 3: 124, hereafter cited as Signos with stanza number. My translation here and
throughout attempts to preserve something of the original rhythm, remain faithful to the sense of
the
original and, when close literality is impossible, find equivalent expressions in Modern English.
[The complete works are now available online at Obras completas de Gonzalo de
Berceo ("Obras completas de Gonzalo de Berceo, primer poeta culto conocido de la
Literatura Española (s.XIII); se incluye, además, vocabulario completo,
bibliografía, transcripción") Ed. note, September 12, 2003.]
2. James W. Marchand, "Gonzalo de Berceo's 'De los signos que
aparesçerán
ante del juiçio.'" Hispanic Review 45 (1977), 283-295, at p. 292.
3. Palladius Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus. Opus agriculturae. De Veterinaria
Medicina.
De Insitione, ed. Robert H. Rodgers (Leipzig, 1975), Opus agriculturae, 1.6.13, at p.
11.
4. Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, Obra de agricultura, ed. José Urbano
Martínez Carreras, Biblioteca de autores españoles 235 (Madrid, 1970), p. 15.
5.Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, 20th ed. (Madrid, 1984),
s.v.
púrpura. Hereafter, DRAE.
6. Arturo M. Ramoneda, ed. Signos que aparecerán antes del juicio final.
Duelo
de la virgen. Martirio de San Lorenzo (Madrid, 1980), pp. 307-308. See also Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary, 5th ed. (Springfield, Mass., 1945), s.v. samite.
7. José L. Pensado, "Los 'Signa Judicii' en Berceo." Archivum (Oviedo,
Spain) 10 (1960), 229-270, at p. 251. Such fear was for the good of each soul, as is clear from
stanza 4: "Por esso lo escripso :: el varón acordado, / que se tema el pueblo :: que ande
desvïado, / mejore en costumnes, :: faga a Dios pagado, / que non sea de Christo :: estonz
desemparado" (That's why this upright man put it down in writing / That God's people, gone
astray
might come to fear the Lord / Change their evil ways, seek to please their God, / That in the end
they not be abandoned by Christ Jesus). This issue of arousing fear and thus piety in the audience
of
the signs traditions is treated in James R. Sprouse's "An Alternate Medieval Apocalyptic
Tradition:
The Fifteen Signs Before the Day of Judgment in Scholastic Commentary and Middle English
Popular Sermon" (unpublished essay, 1993).
8. They grow to three meters. See Oleg Polunin, Flowers of Europe (London,
1969),
pp. 56-57.
9.The New American Bible (New York, 1970).
10. Pensado speculates that fojas, 'leaves' of verse d might
have been corrupted
along
the way from figos 'figs', which would render the verse a mere biblical echo. Such
speculation is unnecessary, however, and encourages the error especially regrettable, with regard
to Berceo's imagery of attributing too much influence to scripture. Even if fojas were a
scribal error for figos, when one considers the widespread cultivation of the fig in many
parts
of Spain (Alonso de Herrera's 1513 Obra de agricultura dedicates six
page 76
pages to instructions on its care [78r-80v]), one must
concede a
local frame of reference for this image.
11. The abusive stepmother is a commonplace in the Middle Ages. For example: "Assi
como la muger viuda que ha fijos & casa con otro marido que tiene fijos alos vnos es madre
& alos otros madrastra - & grand diferençia es entra los fijos & antenados,
ca
los fijos con grand affecion et diligentemente son criados & los antenados con negligencia et
muchas vezes con aborrescimiento se tractan" in Victoria A. Burrus and Harriet Goldberg, eds.
Esopete ystoriado (Toulouse, 1488) (Madison, 1990), p. 9. My translation: Just as the
widow who has children and marries another man who has children is mother to some and to the
others is stepmother - and there is a great difference between her children and her stepchildren,
because she rears her children with great affection and diligence, while her stepchildren are treated
with negligence and often with abuse.
12. Such as that which is suggested in Erasmo Buceta, "Un dato para los
Milagros
de Berceo," Revista de Filología Española 9 (1922),
400-402.
13. Palladius Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus, Obra de agricultura: Traducida y
comentada
en 1385 por Ferrer Sayol, ed. Thomas M. Capuano (Madison, Wisconsin, 1990), p. 18. See
also Alonso de Herrera's 1513 Obra de agricultura, where tapia walls are rejected
as
enclosures for gardens because they need to be repaired every year (fol. 99r).
14. See the many citations given from other poems and treatises on the signs in William
W.
Heist, The Fifteen Signs Before Doomsday (East Lansing, Michigan, 1952), pp. 2-20,
24-28,
80-88, and passim.
14a.
My translation of the word maleta is probably in error here, and I am grateful to J.
Roldán for pointing out my error in an email comment to the editor. Joan Corominas had
already warned against the anachronistic appeal of maleta in the first edition of his
Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana ([Berne: Francke,
1954], 3: 205b lines 24-37). However, the warning came to late, for the meaning "valija"
("suitcase") had already been registered in the Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish
by Boggs, Kasten, Keniston and Richardson (Chapel Hill, 1946), and the error ("maleta") was
repeated in the translation by Clemente Canales Toro of Signos del juicio final (Santiago
de Chile: Universitaria, 1955), p. 89, and again (maleta glossed as "fardel") in Brian Dutton's
notes to his edition of the same text (Obras completas III: El duelo de la Virgen. Los himnos.
Los loores de Nuestra Señora. Los signos del juicio final
[London: Tamesis, 1975], p.
133). Even if maleta is translated as "sin" or "transgression," however, the stanza seems
not without a distinct touch of humour, or perhaps picturesqueness, in the image of each dead
person hearing the call, arising out of his/her coffin, and running to the judgment. (Note by T.C.,
August 2000--Ed.)
15. "In spite of an occasional humorous touch in deference to his audience, the supreme
artistry of this, Spain's first named author, comes through." Marchand, "Gonzalo de Berceo's," p.
295.
16. Juan Luis Alborg, Historia de la literatura española, 4 vols. 2nd ed.
(Madrid, 1986) 1: 117, 125-126.
17. Dutton, Signos 3: 139.
18. Dutton, Signos 3: 142.
19. Dutton, Signos 3: 140. "The fish on the third day will stand upon the waves.
/
They will make a great bellowing toward heaven. / All birds gathered together will cry out and
beat
their wings / And indeed all the other beasts will make a resounding lament." I thank David
Christiansen for help with this translation.
20. See the hemistichs "faciendo gran ieiunio" from Berceo's poem La vida de Santo
Domingo de Silos, in Obras completas IV, ed. Dutton, Obras, 4: 397c; "e faze
un
grant gemito" from his poem La vida de San Millán de la Cogolla, ed. Dutton, 1:
229c; and "como la devién far" from Milagros de Nuestra Señora, ed. Dutton,
2:
398c. For this section I have benefited from the use of a copy of the computer-generated
concordance to the works of Berceo created by Professor Dutton some years ago. Since no
page 77
concordance has been published to date, this print-out has
been
an invaluable tool for which I have long been most grateful to Professor Dutton.
21. For this meaning of condessada see Joan Corominas, Diccionario
crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana, 4 vols. (Berne, 1954), 2: 125b
(line
57)-126a (line 15).
22. Diego Gutiérrez de Salinas, Discursos del pan y del vino del niño
Jesús, a summary of which ("Sumario," 203r-217r) is bound with Libro de
agricultura by Gabriel Alonso de Herrera (Pamplona, 1605); see folio 216v, column a, lines
7-8.
23. For a discussion of the term merino see Ramoneda, Signos, p. 292.
24.DRAE s.v. pescozada gives this meaning. Corominas 3: 756a lines
21-22
cites the meaning "bofetada" ("slap in the face") from Nebrija.
25. "La correspondencia artística entre 'De los signos que aparecerán . . .'
de
Berceo y la escultura del siglo XIII," Hispania 71:4 (1988), 738-742 at p. 741.
26. Pensado cannot decide how to interpret this verse, and with good reason. First he
suggests that Berceo is referring to the briefness of his poem, since a merienda is a brief
meal
("...ha de ser ligero y rápido como el de una merienda"). Then he detects a note of humor
in
the verse, since the poem is not exactly a delicious, easy to swallow dish (". . . no es un plato de
gusto, suave y de buen paladar . . ."). Finally he suggests that both readings might need to be
rejected, leaving the hemistich as a simple Latinism (". . . dejando el sintagma en un simple
latinismo:
'tenga que bien merienda' = 'crea que ha de merecer bien.'"). The syntax of the hemistich is indeed
problematic, and deriving merienda from mereo, merui "to deserve,
merit" besides yielding the quite plausible meaning "He who wishes to hear it, consider himself
well
deserving" may lead to an explanation of why the subjunctive form tenga precedes the
clause
marker que (no such sequence is found in any other subjunctive clause containing
tener in Berceo's work), and how the adverb bien came to modify a supposed noun
such as merienda. See Pensado, p. 245.
27. Clemente Canales Torre, trans., Signos del juicio final by Gonzalo de Berceo
(Santiago de Chile, 1955), p. 85: "Quien las quisiere oír tendrá buena merienda."
28. Brian Dutton, ed., Los milagros de Nuestra Señora, in Obras
completas II (London, 1971), p. 12: " . . . parece lógico suponer que las obras
marianas
de Berceo formaban parte del culto de la Virgen, sobre todo para el entretenimiento e
instrucción de los peregrinos que llegaban al monasterio, los mismos indicados en la copla
500 de los Milagros" (My translation: It seems logical to assume that Berceo's Marian
works formed a part of the ritual associated with the Virgen, especially in the sense of
entertainment
and instruction for the pilgrims that arrived at the monastery, the same
page
78
pilgrims mentioned in stanza 500 of the Milagros). For yet another
hypothesis
concerning the performative context of Berceo's Sacrificio de la misa, see my "The
Seasonal
Laborer: Audience and Actor in the Works of Gonzalo de Berceo" Corónica 14:1 (1985),
15-22.
29. Marchand, "Gonzalo de Berceo's," p. 295.
30. For a negative appraisal of this poem see Arturo M. Ramoneda, ed., Signos que
aparecerán antes del juicio final. Duelo de la virgen. Martirio de San Lorenzo
(Madrid,
1980), p. 28.
31. Clemente Canales Toro, trans., Signos del juicio final (Santiago de Chile,
1955).
