Lady Wisdom My Brother: Reading Sapientia in Medieval Castile

Abstract

The feminine personification of Wisdom in the Books of Solomon has long fascinated scholars, in large part due to the apparent incon-gruence of a powerful female figure in texts that are pillars of patriarchal wisdom.¹ It appears to have given thirteenth-century Castilian readers and translators pause as well. Despite the authority and conventionality of the biblical personification of Wisdom, Solomon’s “Lady” Wisdom was not translated with ease into Castilian versions of biblical wisdom literature, where she undergoes significant transformations. Surprisingly, given the poetic and liturgical influence of the feminine personification of Wisdom, “Lady” Wisdom often vanishes from sight, and instead, the male figure of Saber or “Sir” Wisdom, embodies the human and divine wisdom that Solomon, now filtered through Castilian vernacular authorial voices, imparts. These instances of masculine lexical preference are particularly intriguing, because the biblical wisdom books are so deeply preoccupied with gender relations, and, within the context of this anxiety, the sage’s erotic relationship with Wisdom is of central importance. The choices made by the translators demonstrate that translating and glossing are often intertwined processes and that, in many cases, the medieval Castilian romancers were resisting readers of the feminine personification of Wisdom.