AMOR HEREOS: UNDERSTANDING LOVE AS SICKNESS IN FERNANDO DE ROJAS' LA CELESTINA

One of the most evident features of Fernando de Rojas' La Celestina is its omnipresent ambiguity. This does not involve merely literary convention or play, but has much broader implications: the conflicts between the opposing poles are so deep that they undermine the work's entire meaning. Because La Celestina is a clear example of medieval syncretism of social, "scientific," and literary elements, there are a large number of possible interpretations. This article focuses on the possibility of explaining the story's tragic resolution from the viewpoint of medicine. It discusses one of the typically medieval aspects of La Celestina: the understanding of love as pathology ( amor hereos), to which the hero is supposed to succumb and which is supposed to be the main cause of his death. The description of Calisto's illness, including the causes, symptoms, methods of treatment, and the consequences of unsuccessful treatment, relies upon medieval medical works, especially Lilium medicinae by Bernardo Gordoni and El Sumario de medicina by Rojas' contemporary Francisco Lopez de Villalobos; these works combine medical knowledge from Classical Antiquity and Arabic tradition. Within the context of La Celestina, the role of the procuress, also mentioned in these medical manuals, is especially important; the power of this character in Rojas' novel is so great that it overpowers all other characters, including both lovers, aft er whom the novel was first named. Surprisingly, the main features of amor hereos match the role and discourse of a lover in courtly literature: in both cases, the main characters come from the ranks of nobility; they fall in love at first sight, idealize the beloved woman, fall ill because of their unfulfi lled (sexual) desire for the woman, and may even die. Although both scholarly and literary texts create the idea that this illness occupied the entire representational world, the discussions merely list "theoretical" records on the illness, its causes, and its consequences; however, there are no medical reports on any concrete cases of amor hereos. Th erefore, the assumption legitimately arises that this illness was not part of social practice and ideology at all, and was thus merely a set of scholarly and literary conventions.