AN OLD SPANISH TALE FROM ADD. MS. 14040, flf ... - British Library

(1783-1850) from 'a French officer married to the last surviving heir ofthe family';
Thomas Thorpe was often his agent. Both Thorpe's and Rich's Spanish books were
auctioned by Evans on 2 March and 4 July 1826 respectively. The connection between
Thorpe, Rodd and the Iriarte collection is documented on 5 June 1826 when Thorpe
sold Rodd 117 volumes from Iriarte's library which eventually passed via Richard Heber
to the Bodleian. Thus, although the history ofthe ownership of Add. 14040 is far from
complete, it seems unlikely that the manuscript was in the Biblioteca Real as late as 1836,
the date of publication of Torres Amat's catalogue.
Our text is called exenplo in the rubric which heads it, and indeed it displays the
mixture of the didactic and the grotesquely sensational which characterizes one current
within the exempluni genre. The plot may be summarized as follows. In Damascus during
the reign of the fictional Emperor Sixtus, a noble lady Climegia and her daughter
Climesta fall on hard times through the profligacy of their husband and father. The
daughter, aged twenty (her age is given only in the rubric), is a worldling, proud ofher
beauty. The women initially heed the exhortations of the hermit Patri^io against losing
their souls for the sake of worldly gains. The hermit reinforces his admonitions with a
brkfexemplum: Falsehood asked Truth where she might find her. Truth replied that if
Falsehood found her, she should keep hold of her, as if she let her go she would never
have her back.
Mother, however, is advised by evil persons that the world will bring them all they
need if she 'rocks' herself and her daughter. She accordingly buys two cradles, to no
avail. A woman neighbour (the Devil in disguise) disabuses them: this 'rocking' is a
euphemism for prostitution. They persevere in a life of vice despite Patri^io's warnings.
Eventually Climesta is caught inflagrante and sentenced to be burned. On her way to the
stake she asks to speak to her mother: when she draws near, the daughter bites off her
tongue and puts her eyes out. Asked why, she says it is because she has been ruined by
her mother's ill advice and failure to give her good counsel.
Climesta's grotesque punishment ofher mother is an example of a tale found in many
didactic texts.^ Probably the oldest version known is in the Greek Aesop :^^ a boy steals
a book from a schoolmate as a joke. His mother laughs at his prank, which encourages
him to go on to worse crimes. Eventually he is sentenced to be hanged; on the way to
the scaffold, under pretence of whispering to his mother, he bites off her ear (see fig. i).
He explains his action by saying that her indulgence was the cause of all his crimes: had
she punished him at his first offence, he says, he would never have come to such a pass.
The Aesopic text seems not to have entered Latin circles until Rinuccio d'Arezzo's
1448 translation. The version in Pseudo-Boethius, De disciplina scolarium, dated circa
1240, was known earher, and more widely, to the Latins: several manuscripts have
English and French glosses, suggesting that they were used for teaching grammar.^^
There Lucretius, son of Zeno,^^ wastes the advantages of good birth, talent and
patrimony on prostitutes. His father stands by ('patre poenam deferente'). The youth
turns to crime to pay his debts, and is saved from crucifixion because his father bribes
the authorities. Finally father can pay no more. On the way to execution the son bites
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