The eschatological afterlife and the soul’s immortality in Berceo’s “El prior y el sacristán”

Abstract

Abstract This study proposes that Gonzalo de Berceo’s “El prior y el sacristán”, the twelfth miracle in the collection known as Milagros de Nuestra Señora, is a rejection of heretical beliefs based on interpretations of Aristotelian thought, which flourished throughout Europe in the thirtheenth century. These ideas, for example, questioned the immortality of the soul as proposed by rationalists thinkers who were heavily influenced by Aristotelian philosophy in an interpretation following Averroes’s commentaries, which started being translated into Latin in the first half of the thirtheenth century. Aristotelian ideas, particularly those derived from the libri naturales, were condemned as early as 1210 and 1215, when the Iberian origin of some of their protagonists were explicitly addressed by Parisian ecclesiastical authorities. Berceo’s response, based on Augustinian ideas on the soul’s life after death, is an indication of the Iberian participation in a broader discourse against Aristotelianism. Thus, “El prior y el sacristán” situates Berceo’s work in the larger European context of the thirtheenth century. Finally, Berceo’s main point of departure for his response is found in eschatology, which he elaborates following Julian of Toledo’s Prognosticon futuri saeculi (c. 688).