The Aesthetics of Melancholia: Medical and Spiritual Diseases in Medieval Iberia by Luis F. López González (review)

Reviewed by: The Aesthetics of Melancholia: Medical and Spiritual Diseases in Medieval Iberia by Luis F. López González Heather Bamford Keywords Luís F. López González, Heather Bamford Melancholia, Medieval Medicine, Early Modern Medicine, Humanism, Don Juan Manuel, El Libro De Buen Amor, Cantigas De Santa MarÍa, El Conde Lucanor lópez gonzález, luis f. The Aesthetics of Melancholia: Medical and Spiritual Diseases in Medieval Iberia. Oxford UP, 2022, 272 pp. In this erudite book, Luis F. López González examines the condition of melancholia in medieval Toledo and elsewhere in Spain through engrossing analyses of thirteenth-and fourteenth-century classics of Spanish literature. Of chief interest to López González is how changes in representations and treatments of the condition of melancholia evinced the transition from a theocentric to a humanistic worldview in the Iberian Peninsula. Authors of medieval technical and scientific treatises on melancholy proposed that psychosomatic illnesses stemmed from malfunctions of the body's biochemical composition, rather than moral corruption, demonic influence, or magic. The author's close analysis of medieval Spanish literature suggests that melancholy affected both religious and nonreligious people in the secular world. López González's consideration of texts written in Hebrew, Spanish, Latin, and Arabic, such as writings by al-Zahrawi al-Ansari, a pioneer of modern surgery, underscores the complexity of multiconfessional medieval Iberia's intellectual culture. The Aesthetics of Melancholy contains an introduction and nine chapters organized into four parts: 1. Melancholia and Madness, 2. Rabies and Hydrophobia, 3. Lovesickness or Amor Hereos, and 4. Acedia and Mystical End Page 383 Lovesickness. Together, the chapters analyze the many institutions and systems of belief and thought from which melancholy is born and understood, as represented in literature. The first two chapters treat the psychophysiological process by which melancholic vapors resulting from the burning of black bile were thought to impair the brain, causing irrational fears, manias, and delusions that led to death. López González examines these themes in two cantigas from Alfonso X's Cantigas de Santa María and two exemplary tales from Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor. Chapter 3 examines the canine behavior and fear of water (hydrophobia) of six rabid melancholics in the Cantigas de Santa María, who are saved by the Virgin Mary's grace. Chapter 4 returns to Conde Lucanor to read Exemplum 47 with attention to the "mora," treating this female protagonist's rabid melancholy as a somatic, rather than a moral, ailment. Chapters 5 and 6, which comprise Part 3, trace the tradition of lovesickness in the Cantigas de Santa María and the Libro de buen amor (hereafter Libro), respectively. López González argues that the Cantigas evidence how dysthymia (long-lasing depression) and anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure in pleasurable things) brought on by the physical, mental, and spiritual causes and effects of lovesickness, can result in spiritual damnation and death. On the other hand, the Libro's protagonist is a melancholic genius whose humoral complexion and astral influence predispose him to amor hereos (love melancholy). The fourth and final section of the book examines religious melancholy, or acedia, in the Cantigas and the Libro (Chapters 7 and 8, respectively). There, the author argues that both works were written as therapy to counter the treacherous attacks of acedia. Though this ailment was originally thought to affect only those practicing a contemplative life in the desert, it was later known to afflict nonreligious people living secular, normal—or relatively normal—lives. The subject of the ninth and final chapter is Cantiga 188, which relates how a maiden's lovesickness for the Virgin inspires her to withdraw from the world to live in mystical union with Mary. Several statements of the book's main thesis and purpose appear in the introduction. They propose a pathway to an Iberian humanism by arguing that medieval medical treatises' discussions of melancholy constituted the bulk of the Renaissance understanding of the condition. The author underscores the debt that Renaissance authors owed to their medieval predecessors, whose content, form, and character types, among other elements, served as models. López González's defense of...