Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 78-11(E), Section: A.

Adviser: Rolena Adorno.

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My dissertation, "Limites del conocimiento y cultura claustral en el Libro de Alexandre," analyzes the concept of knowledge in the 13 th-century Castilian poem known as Libro de Alexandre (circa 1220). I use philological and literary analysis as well as historical approaches. I argue that the Libro de Alexandre emphasizes pride as a sin caused by overwrought intellectual curiosity and, therefore, as a didactic work, reflects on the limits of human knowledge. I posit that the Alexandre is as a reaction, rooted in Christian doctrine, against a heterodox Aristotelianism that flourished in the Iberian Peninsula in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. That tension in the text is portrayed by the representation of Alexander the Great, who is depicted as an inquisitive monarch, educated by Aristotle himself, and determined to reveal the secrets of nature through investigations into natural philosophy. I consider the Alexandre to be, therefore, a didactic work that warns against the perils of intellectual overreaching.

The heterodox Aristotelianism, against which the Alexandre reacts, had an impact in the Peninsula, thanks to the translations from Arabic into Latin and the vernacular, in which Iberian Jewish scholars played a key role. To bring into focus these Aristotelian heterodoxies in Iberia, I examine De altera vita by the regular canon Lucas de Tuy, who warned against two strands of Aristotelianism. The first was constituted by philosophers devoted to teaching, who also were accused of pride. The second was composed of natural philosophers whom Lucas accused of heresy, inasmuch as they rejected a literal interpretation of Scripture and privileged philosophy over doctrine as the path to wisdom. These natural philosophers were often laymen who disguised themselves as monks, secular clerics, and Jewish scholars. Relying on the authority of the Church Fathers, Lucas de Tuy reacted against these movements and condemned them. At the core of Lucas's work as well as that of the anonymous Alexandre lies the problem of the limits of knowledge and the consequences of its transgression.

In this context, I argue that the Libro de Alexandre is a cloistral-inspired response to the natural philosophy and heretical movements of northern Iberia. This reaction took place in accordance with the Lateran reforms (1215) whose main purpose was to educate the clergy and combat heresy. I take cloistral as a term that can be applied both to monks as well as to regular canons, because both religious communities lived in a cloister under a rule that modeled their communal religious life. At the same time, these monks and canons actively participated in secular society.

My overarching argument is that the Alexandre reveals a permeability of institutions, a community of learning, and a cultural and literary exchange among monks, regular canons, courtiers, university professors, and secular priests. As pertinent example of this complex cultural exchange in Castile, I consider Gonzalo de Berceo, and also the works of the thirteenth-century mester de clerecia. I conclude that these exchanges shaped the Libro de Alexandre and that they took place on a "cloistral road" originating in Catalonia and crossing the Iberian Peninsula, passing through the region of Palencia, where, I argue, the Alexandre was probably composed. Palencia was a crossroads between the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, and it was an important locus of Catalan beginning in the twelfth century. This route of transference and exchange can also explain the existence of the two extant versions of the Libro de Alexandre, one in Castilian and the other one in Leonese. These versions, very different from one another, can be understood as texts aiming at two audiences, one of which could have been the Leonese natural philosophers, and the other, the Castilian heretics. Thus, instead of seeing the Libro de Alexandre as an isolated work, I have sought to place it against a broader horizon that takes account of its own malleability in Castilian and Leonese traditions, its didactic purposes and the audience it sought to reach, and in which the ascent of Alexander into the skies and his descent in the ocean become the iconic example of the trials and treacheries of the human quest for knowledge.