Lengua y religión en la Castilla del siglo XIII : la Biblia E6/E8 y sus glosas

The investigation focuses on the prologues and glosses of the Castilian biblical versions contained in manuscript Escorial I.I.6 (Bible E6, 13th century) and Escorial I.I.8 (Bible E8, 14th century) from a contextualised exegetical perspective. The Bible E6 is the largest and the oldest translation of the Latin Vulgate to Castilian Romance. The two codices seem to be related because of their complementarity: E8 contains from Leviticus to Psalms and E6 contains from Proverbs to Revelation. E8 may be an uncompleted copy, linguistically updated, of a first volume of E6 that may have been lost. The tradition represented by E6/E8 stands out for referring to a Latin critical and textual basis that was the result of the integration to one of the multiple editions of the Paris Vulgate (12th century) of contributions from the manuscripts of the Hispanic tradition of the Latin Bible (Toletanus, Cavensis, Legionensis 2).  The first part of the thesis (chapters 1-4) introduces the Castilian translations of Judeo-Christian Scriptures of the 13th-15th centuries and describes the two versions as far as their critical, textual and linguistic characteristics are concerned. Moreover, it presents a hypothesis about the milieu from where the version arose, by relating it to Bishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada of Toledo and Bishop Juan de Soria of Burgos, and to Prince Felipe and Prince Sancho, sons of King Ferdinand III and future archbishops of Seville and Toledo. These considerations are followed by a historical and literary contextualization of the medieval tradition of glossing the Bible, by the description of the corpus and by a historical contextualization of the socio-political dynamics of the 13th century, encompassing the reigns of Ferdinand III (r. 1217-1252) and Alphonse X (r. 1252-1284), during the Reconquista and the consequent integration to Castile and León of significant minorities of Muslims and Jews. A special attention is dedicated to the beginnings of the problematics of the status of converted Jews and to the strategies of construction of the legitimacy of the dynastic authority through their artistic, literary and historiographic manifestations. Codex E6 as well gives evidence of an intent of contributing to the justification of monarchical power; such a preoccupation was shared also by the main representatives of the historiography of the time of Ferdinand III, the bishops Lucas de Tuy, Juan de Soria and Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of the Hispanic Church. As a matter of fact a few miniatures contained in the manuscript represent the sovereign by depicting him around the model of biblical King Solomon. Within this general overview the Castilian language and the Catholic religion exerted the function of axes for the articulation of a national identity of cultural nature around a coherent and long-term project called to deal with the diversified cultural characterizations of the population of the kingdom.  The second part of the investigation (chapters 5-8) focuses on the prologues to the biblical books and on the almost 500 glosses that accompany the text, with a special concern for the identification and transcription of the original sources. This material is then analysed from a contextualised exegetical perspective in order to determine its relationship with the problematics that were present in the society of Castile and León during its process of expansion and definition, where religion played an indisputable socialising role. This kind of approach constitutes the original contribution of this research to the advancement of knowledge of Medieval Castilian Bibles and their function within the wider social, religious, historical and political context that was surrounding the endeavour of translating the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures.     As far as the glosses are concerned, almost 300 are located in the New Testament –significantly concentrated in the Pauline epistles that deal with the relationship between Christians of Greek and Jewish origin (1-2 Corinthians, Galatians)– around 100 are in the Psalms and the remaining ones in the other books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Their main sources are the Historia Scholastica of Peter Comestor (12th century) for E8, the Collectanea of Peter Lombard (12th century) for the New Testament of E6, the Postillae of Hugh of Saint-Cher (around 1230) for Ezekiel in E6 and a few Hispanic rabbinic commentaries from the 11th-12th centuries for the Palms of E8. Some of the glosses of the Psalter may be the result of a work of harmonisation between those rabbinic texts and may allow as well an indirect access to the exegetical endeavour of Rabbi Moses ha-Cohen ben Giktilla (11th century) from Córdoba, which has mainly been lost today in its Hebrew and Arabic originals. The glosses and prologues of E6 and E8 give evidence of an aware intent of selection and edition.  The themes that are tackled by the glosses show a consistent relationship with the exigencies of the politics of the kings of Castile and León and with issues that were affecting the life of the Church. More specifically, the translation might have been directed to the formation of clergy in order to provide not only religious instruction to the Catholic people, but also a tool for the catechism of converted Jews, while promoting their reception into the wider social Christian community. The glosses provide as well tools for the preaching activity oriented to strive against the influence of the Albigenses and other heterodox movements that had small centres in the kingdom. As a matter of fact, both theology and the Castilian legislation held as a reference the idea of the imminent conversion of the Jews to Christ –inherited from Saint Paul and Saint Augustin– to be realised near the end of times. Therefore, this version of the Scriptures very well fits as part of an aware theological and socio-political process oriented towards the long-term. The realisation of a Bible in Romance was also coherent with the remarkable increase of the proportion of documents in Castilian issued by the Royal Chancellery during the reign of Ferdinand III, if compared to Latin (from 7% to 60%), which reached its full development during the reign of Alphonse X. Such an endeavour corresponded as well to the preoccupations of the Church that since IV Lateran Council (1215) had been adopting radical measures in order to improve the insufficient level of preparation of the clergy. Within this perspective, the tradition represented by E6 and E8 stands out as a witness of the theological, ecclesiastical, social and political dynamics of Castile and León during the 13th century.

Keyphrases: Biblia Escorial I.I.6, Biblia Escorial I.I.8, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada