Like Patrick Nugent, I am hesitant to identify as epilepsy the malady that
strikes a woman dead in the text I'm dealing with. This is a late medieval
autobiographical narrative (ca. 1400) by a woman who survived the civil war
in Spain and 9 yrs. of imprisonment (from age 9 to 18) and later became a
major (and controversial) figure in the Castilian court. She states at the
beginning of her narrative that she writes so that others will have faith
in the Virgin in times of tribulation, and says that she will tell of the
miracles the Virgin performed for her. Having lost her father (through
execution), the remainder of her family (through the plague in prison) and
her patrimony, she takes refuge with an aunt who was on the winning side of
the war. She prays to the Virgin (300 Ave Marias on her knees each night
over a 30-day period) asking Her to "place in her aunt's heart" the
willingness to help her. The aunt agrees and she is "greatly consoled". But
then some women in her household "change her heart" and "I was so
disconsolate that I lost patience, and she who caused me the greatest
trouble with my lady aunt died in my hands, eating her tongue". She then
tells a dream she had (replete with medieval dream symbolism) that she
interprets as a sign that the Virgin would give her a house of her own.
Most scholars have interpreted the woman's death as an act of murder. This
is, I think, primarily because of the highly negative portrayal of the
author by one of her political enemies in an official court chronicle. This
chronicle is a reworking of a MS chronicle by another author which portrays
her in a more positive light, but is seemingly unknown by most scholars.
The text itself does not support murder. Elsewhere in the text, the king
dies "at the hands" of his brother (i.e., murder), while her own brother
dies "in her hands" (from the plague); the woman dies in, not at, the hands
of the narrator. The placement of the incident between the narrator's
devotions to the Virgin and the dream vision suggests that the death of the
woman who contradicted her (and, by extension, the Virgin who softened the
aunt's heart) was struck down as divine punishment, appropriately eating
the tongue she had used to speak against the narrator. It is thus one of
the miracles the narrator has promised to tell. Those who don't see this as
an act of murder view it as an epileptic attack.
I guess that rather than asking if you know of examples of
epilepsy/seizures as divine punishment, I should ask for examples of
eating/swallowing/biting the tongue as punishment for speaking ill. Any ideas?
Many thanks,
Jane
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Jane E. Connolly
Department of Foreign Languages
University of Miami
Coral Gables, FL 33124
Phone: (305)284-5585
Fax: (305)284-2068
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