Se nas pedras faz feguras parecer... Consideraciones sobre iconografí­a mariana y figuras poéticas en las Cantigas de Santa Marí­a de Alfonso X

Abstract

Marian iconography has been reflected in medieval Hispanic poetry in many ways, ranging from verses that describe the Virgin and her attributes to theological and mariological concepts expressed plastically by means of rhetorical forms. For example, the garden and the flowers as Holy Mary’s personal ornaments and symbols, or the image of light through a crystal or a glass window in the scenes of the Annunciation –with rich pictorial evidence throughout medieval art–, are present in poetry as symbolic descriptions of various extensions and genre, and, on the other hand, as Marian advocations or mariological tópoi as well (Ave/Eva, Flos, Hortus, Radix-Virga, Regina, Stella). Therefore, this paper proposes a general survey and a comparitive study on some of these procedures, focusing on King Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa Maria. In this sense, rhetorical figures, as tools that bridge the gap between the pictorial and the poetic, lead the reading towards a symbolic interpretation provided by the figuration or typologia, as postulated by Erich Auerbach for medieval textuality. Ultimately, the sacred value of Marian images (an inheritance of Byzantine iconic art) is represented also in the miracles of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a masterpiece that shows a strong influence of the iconodulic doctrine.