Bawds, Midwifery, and the Evil Eye in Golden Age Spanish Literature and Medicine

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the alcahueta or bawd, the evil eye, and midwifery in the early modern Spanish cultural imaginary. The evil eye, though an ancient belief, received renewed attention in theological and medical texts, including midwifery manuals, from the late fifteenth until the mid-sixteenth century, coinciding with the popularity of texts such as La Celestina featuring bawds. This article explores cultural debates regarding whether the evil eye was a natural phenomenon caused by corrupted bodily fluids emanating from post-menopausal women, or a result of witchcraft. Midwifery manuals list the evil eye as one of the principal dangers to newborns and give advice regarding how to prevent it, perhaps implicitly providing another justification for women’s gradual exclusion from midwifery in the early modern period. Fictional texts portray the bawd as engaging in women’s healing practices such as midwifery and newborn care, and as casting and curing the evil eye. I argue that the literary archetype of the bawd-midwife reflects academic disagreements that alternatively portray the evil eye as a physical illness, superstitious nonsense, or the result of witchcraft. As such, the bawd becomes a focal point for expressing anxiety over perceived decadence and decline, often tied to witchcraft. By tracing the evil eye through the characterization of bawds, we can perceive subtle indications of ambiguity regarding women’s magical and medical practices that question whether their influence comes from the devil or from women’s inherently malevolent nature.

1. Introduction

Although belief in the evil eye has existed in the Mediterranean since antiquity, the subject garnered renewed attention in Spain from the fifteenth to mid-sixteenth century with the publication of monographs that attempted to apply the tools of galenic theory to explain the phenomenon through the tenets of humoral theory. These works often attributed the evil eye to women’s excess bodily fluids that would build up and emit from the eyes. This theory gained traction for a time but never entirely won out, since some dismissed the phenomenon as superstition or witchcraft. Since most accused witches were female, this explanation also drew on negative stereotypes of women. At around the same time, the alcahueta, a bawd or procuress often involved in the underworld of prostitution who assists male characters in seducing female characters became a popular literary subject. Curiously, these characters are often described as casting and curing the evil eye and practicing midwifery at a time when midwives and other female healers were subjected to greater regulatory control. Literary bawds reflect medical and theological debates regarding whether women’s infectious propensity stems from natural causes or superstitious practices.

Monographs on the evil eye began to appear in vernacular languages in the fifteenth century. The first in Spanish was Enrique de Villena’s Tratado de aojamiento o fascinología (1420). Villena was a nobleman interested in the esoteric and natural sciences rather than a physician or academic and a controversial figure whose library was examined by the Inquisition. His work was criticized by contemporaries for relying on popular belief and experience rather than academic knowledge, and by twentieth-century literary critics for his supposedly superstitious approach (see Sanz Hermida 2001, p. 25). A number of academic treatises on the topic soon followed, in both Latin and Spanish.1 Latin treatises such as Antonio de Cartagena’s Libellus de Fascinatione were intended for the use of physicians, while vernacular texts reached a broader audience. Alfonso Fernández de Madrigal, known as ‘el Tostado,’ dedicated his Libro de las cinco paradoxas (Fernández de Madrigal [1437] 2001) to Queen Mary of Castille. El Tostado uses a discussion of the medicinal properties of Moses’ bronze snake to reflect on vision and the evil eye. Academic treatises on the evil eye utilized humoral theory to explain how the evil eye could occur naturally through fluid imbalance. After the mid-sixteenth century, the evil eye ceased to be the focus of scholarly monographs and was increasingly attributed to witchcraft rather than humoral forces (Sanz Hermida 2001, p. 16). Academic interest in the evil eye continued to appear in medical texts even after it ceased to be the subject of scholarly monographs. Among these were midwifery manuals, which began to appear in the vernacular in the sixteenth century, including the Libro del arte de las comadres (Carbón [1541] 1995) and Libro del parto humano (Francisco Nuñez de Coria [1580] 1638), which construe the evil eye as especially threatening to newborns and fetuses.

As examined throughout this study, what all these diverse sources have in common is a focus on women as inherently prone to causing the evil eye and women’s nature as inherently destabilizing. Literary representations associate the evil eye with marginalized female figures like the alcahueta or bawd such as Trotaconventos of the Libro de buen amor (1330), and her successors La Celestina (1499) and La Lozana andaluza (1528).2 As Joseph Snow demonstrates with reference to La Celestina, older women such as bawds became the subject of increased vitriol as the Medieval period drew to a close, which he attributes to fear of aggressive female sexuality epitomized in the vagina dentata trope and the marginalization of widows from public life. As Snow attests, “lo que había sido la sabiduría y el gran conocimiento de la vieja ahora amenazaba al hombre” [what had been the wisdom and great understanding of the old woman now threatened men] especially her supposed mastery of “el mal de ojo que le permitía rastrear las almas de los hombres y conocer sus más íntimos secretos” [the evil eye which allowed her to explore the soul of men and understand their most intimate secrets] (Snow 2010, p. 117). Intriguingly, fictional bawds practice medicine during a period of cultural transition in which midwives and others were being systematically excluded from professional medical practice in favor of university-educated male doctors, a process that began in the fourteenth century.3 Medical texts, written by male physicians, portray female healers as incompetent or even malevolent so that, as Salmón and Cabré demonstrate, by the mid-sixteenth century “women, who had played the role of experts, were reduced from the double status of potential healers and producers of illness to just the latter” (Salmón and Cabré 1998, p. 69). The interstices of medical, theological, and literary texts reflect debates over whether the evil eye is a naturally occurring illness, superstitious nonsense, or malevolent witchcraft that creates contradictory attitudes towards the evil eye in early modern Spanish culture. On one hand, physicians wrote academic treatises seeking to establish their expertise over the malady as a physical illness while simultaneously dismissing the belief as superstition or witchcraft when situated in the domain of women’s healing. Such paradoxical depictions fit a pattern delineated by Paloma Moral de Calatrava, who asserts that cultural attitudes “toward a treatment varied according to the sex of the person who prescribed it, … [physician authors of medical treatises] assume that procedures administered by women were based exclusively on magic and superstition while recipes and treatments prescribed by men in medical manuals were always in complete accordance with rational Galenic theory” even when these procedures were identical (Moral de Calatrava 2007, p. 207). As we will see, the literary bawd as aojadora reflects this dismissive attitude toward women’s medicine.

The bawd is a complex literary figure. Bawds such as Lozana and Celestina primarily profit from their role as procuresses, but also sell medicines, serve as midwives, and provide postnatal care, tying the evil eye to the domain of gynecology. While the role of prostitution in these texts has received critical attention, the bawd as healer remains understudied.4 This article explores discursive attacks on bawd-midwives through the lens of the evil eye within the tenets of humoral theory in which the eye was an orifice that could carry humors from one body to another and in the context of the rise of anti-superstitious literature during the Counter-Reformation. On a symbolic level, the midwife and the bawd both concern themselves with the opening and closing of the body and its orifices. The midwife assists the parturient woman during labor, while the bawd, as a procuress, helps men gain access to the female body for monetary gain. Early modern literary texts employ euphemisms and wordplay to construct a symbolic fungibility of orifices in which the eye could stand in metaphorically for the vagina (Velasco 2021, p. 149). This same erotic discourse pertains to the eye in early modern Spanish texts featuring bawds. In her control over the eye and erotic gaze, the bawd regulates access to the female body. Although different texts offer conflicting opinions regarding whether the evil eye is natural or unnatural, or whether it must be cast intentionally or can occur without malice, and authors sometimes vacillate between different opinions even within the same text, they rely on the same misogynist tropes. The bawd serves as a focal point for fear that older sexually mature women will subvert patriarchal control over women’s sexuality. Whether the evil eye was explained as naturally occurring humoral excess or witchcraft, the bawd embodied the causal agent, making her a destabilizing figure.

To demonstrate how fictionalized bawds as sources of the evil eye reflect debates over the status of women’s medicine, I first examine early modern cultural beliefs about the evil eye and its relationship to women’s bodily fluids. Older women were seen as particularly prone to casting the evil eye, especially if they had been lascivious in their youth. While outlining medical beliefs that explain the evil eye as a result of women’s humoral makeup, I examine how midwifery manuals echo cultural debates over the place of the midwife in gynecological and postnatal care and the potential danger to newborns posed by the evil eye. Subsequently, I examine fictionalized representations of the bawd as a midwife and a potential source of and cure for the evil eye. Tracing the thread of the evil eye through bawdy fiction allows us to perceive how shifting cultural attitudes toward female healers subtend these literary representations as midwives came under increasing scrutiny for potential witchcraft.

2. The Evil Eye, the Bawd, and the Midwife

Both the causes of and cures for the evil eye are closely tied to cultural beliefs about fertility, procreation, maternity, and women’s sexuality. Belief in the evil eye was intimately connected to the female menstrual cycle. Early modern medicine, grounded in humoral theory, posited that health resulted from a proper balance of the four humors (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood), and the female menses supposedly released excess humors. The male body could be kept in balance through the regulation of diet, exercise, and rest, but the inferior female body could not, therefore, necessitating monthly fluid release.5 Thus, menses were waste products containing poisonous vapors; if the monthly flow was disrupted and fluids were retained, this could create a dangerous imbalance and humors could escape through other orifices, such as the eyes. Consequently, a menstruating woman could cast the evil eye (Sanz Hermida 1990, p. 963; Salmón and Cabré 1998, p. 63). As Fray Martín de Castañega (1511–1551), a Franciscan friar and inquisitor who was commissioned by the bishop of Calahorra to write a treatise on witchcraft, explains in Tratado de las supersticiones y hechicerías y de la posibilidad y remedio dellas (Castañega [1529] 1994), the female body expels impurities and

lo que es mas gruesso, expele y hecha por las partes inferiores que naturaleza para ello proveyó y señaló; y lo que no es tan gruesso por las ventanas naturales, como por la boca, por las narizes y por las orejas … y lo que es muy mas sotil expele por las vidrieras de los ojos, y assi salen por los ojos como unos rayos, las impuridades e suziedades mas sotiles del cuerpo e quanto mas sotiles, tanto son mas penetrantes e mas inficionan.

(Castañega [1529] 1994, p. 34)

[What is thickest is expelled by the lower parts that nature has provided and designated for this; and what is not so thick through the natural windows, such as the mouth, through the nose and ears … and what is very thin is expelled through the windows of the eyes and so the thinnest impurities and filth of the body issues forth from the eyes like rays, and are the most penetrating and most infectious.]

Castañega, even in a text denouncing witchcraft, asserts that the evil eye occurs naturally due to humoral imbalance. As his explanation indicates, the early modern ontology of the body construed both bodily fluids and orifices as fungible. Excess humors could be converted to blood, as when the menses supposedly transformed into breast milk during pregnancy, and blockage of one orifice could cause fluids to escape from another.6 As Salmón and Cabré explain, while the evil eye was not exclusively caused by women, “fascination was thought to be produced by a harmful power that women naturally possessed: a power whose origin was thought to be in either the potential or actual venomousness of women’s bodies, based on the noxiousness of the menses” (Salmón and Cabré 1998, p. 61). These excess humors that naturally built up in women’s bodies could infect others through the gaze.

Midwifery manuals repeat many of the same concepts regarding the evil eye as medical and theological texts. Francisco Nuñez de Coria asserts in his chapter on the evil eye (“Del aojo y su cura” [On the evil eye and its cure]) that a pregnant woman can even pose a threat to her own fetus since “el apetito de la preñada inficiona a la criatura en el cuerpo” [the pregnant woman’s appetite infects the creature within her body] (Nuñez de Coria [1580] 1638, p. 165). Nuñez de Coria admits that many doctors question whether the evil eye is an illness rather than superstition but affirms a humoral cause that originates from the corrupted humors of menstruating women. He explains that “pasión del cuerpo parece en la mujer que padece su costumbre, pues claramente ofende con el vapor maligno de la sangre menstrual que sale por los ojos, a la criatura, o niño que está mirando” [it appears to be a bodily passion in the woman who suffers from her cycle, since clearly, she offends with the malignant vapor of menstrual blood that comes from the eyes, to the creature or baby that she looks at] (Nuñez de Coria [1580] 1638, p. 167). As Encarnación Juárez Almendros demonstrates, early modern culture depicted women as inherently disordered, such that medical texts reflect an “idea of a dangerous female that can infect and destroy people” (Juárez Almendros 2017, p. 26).

Early modern Spain ascribed the casting of the evil eye principally to older women who, with the onset of menopause, had lost the ability to naturally expel excess fluids from the body. These fluids would fester, become dangerously volatile, and could slip out through the eyes. As Fray Martín de Castañega explains, “esta inficion y ponçoña tienen mas unas que otras, y en especial las viejas que han dexado de purgar sus flores a sus tiempos por la naturaleza ordenados, porque entonces purgan mas por los ojos … y por esto devrian de tener este aviso: que nunca mirassen ahito e de cerca a los ojos de los niños tiernos ni en tal tiempo los besassen en la boca” [some have this infection and poison more than others, especially old women who have stopped purging their flowers at the naturally ordered time because then they purge more through their eyes … and for this reason, they should be advised never to look straight on and closely in the eyes of tender children nor at that time of life to kiss them on the mouth] (Castañega [1529] 1994, p. 35). Therefore, midwifery manuals, such as El libro del arte de las comadres (Damián Carbón), counsel that the midwife should not allow older women into the delivery room unless they are the mother or other close relative of the parturient woman, because of the danger they pose to the newborn (Carbón [1541] 1995, p. 70). On the other hand, many midwives were themselves older women who might cast the evil eye. As Encarnación Juárez Almendros demonstrates, older women were subject to particularly virulent vilification. Since women’s primary social duty was procreation, post-menopausal women served no purpose to society and were conceptualized as a pernicious influence on younger women and babies (Juárez Almendros 2017, p. 6–12). Juárez Almendros asserts that marginalizing discourse increased throughout the sixteenth century as it “corresponds to a fervent need in the male imagination to sustain the logocentric system at a time when the Spanish empire and traditional values started to show clear signs of disintegration (Juárez Almendros 2017, p. 12). Paradoxically, “while older women (viejas, dueñas) were invisible and functionless in the historical reality they are pervasive figures in early modern Spanish literature” (Juárez Almendros 2017, p. 12), becoming a focal point for expressing anxiety over perceived decadence and decline.

Furthermore, the evil eye was culturally linked to female sexual deviance, and older women who had been lascivious in their youth were particularly prone to casting the evil eye. Prostitution was connected to healing in early modern Spain since, until the prohibition of prostitution in 1623, brothels were often run by ‘mothers’ who, as Francisco López Muñoz asserts, frequently provided love spells, and perhaps cast and cured the evil eye. These brothels were also known as boticas [apothecaries] and not only offered the services of prostitutes but also operated as centers for the distribution of herbal medicines, especially for women’s issues (López Muñoz 2017, p. 344). Prostitutes were thought to produce the evil eye due to the semen left in their bodies through excessive sexual activity that produced festering humors (Idoyaga Molina and Gancedo 2014, p. 79). Therefore, older women such as the bawds discussed subsequently who had been sexually deviant in youth were predisposed to the evil eye. Consequently, the literary bawd—an older woman, female healer, an active or former prostitute, who served as procuress in many literary texts—was an archetypical source of the evil eye.

As we have seen, midwives and other older women were frequently accused of casting the evil eye on newborn babies, a concern perhaps stemming from the vulnerability of newborns in an era in which approximately a quarter of babies did not survive the first year. According to humoral theory, babies’ fragile bodies are especially susceptible to imbalance. As Castañega explains, when a woman is menstruating “si en tal tiempo mirasse ahito e de cerca a los ojos de algún niño tierno y delicado, le imprimiría aquellos rayos ponçoñosos y le destemplaria el cuerpo de tal manera que no pudiesse abrir los ojos ni tener la cabeça derecha sobre sus hombros” [if at such a time she looks straight on and from close range into the eyes of a tender and delicate child, they will be imprinted by those poisonous rays and the body will be so imbalanced that the child will not be able to open its eyes or to hold its held up off its shoulders] (Castañega [1529] 1994, p. 35). As María Elena Sánchez Ortega explains, since many childhood illnesses seemed sudden and inexplicable, the evil eye was frequently blamed when newborn infants failed to thrive (Sánchez Ortega 2004, p. 476).7 For example, in El diablo cojuelo (Luis Vélez de Guevara) the protagonist Don Cleofás shows an old woman, la Rufina María, a procession including the king and the newborn prince. Upon seeing the baby, Rufina exclaims “Dios le bendiga … y mi ojo no le haga mal” [May God bless him … so my eye does not harm him] indicating her awareness that an older woman’s gaze could unintentionally cast the evil eye (Vélez de Guevara [1641] 2004, p. 242). Thus, medical treatises justified the marginalization of women from medical practice in part due to the perception that midwives could pose a danger to newborns.

Midwifery manuals also urged patients not to trust female healers with anything other than the tasks doctors found unsavory. Carbón, for example, asserts that the midwife is necessary because “el Médico o Doctor no lo puede hacer [parto] por ser cosas feas” [the physician or doctor cannot do it [childbirth] because it is an ugly thing] (Carbón [1541] 1995, p. 31). However, he also cautions parents not to allow the midwife to provide postnatal care, warning “suelen los niños tener diversas enfermedades de las cuales acostumbran morir por culpa de sus padres y madres, porque en lugar de pedir el consejo al médico, lo demandan a la comadre” [children tend to suffer from various ailments from which they are accustomed to die, which is the parents’ fault because instead of asking for advice from the doctor, they take it from the midwife] (Carbón [1541] 1995, p. 112). In Carbón’s estimation, the midwife should only be allowed to perform the delivery.

Regulation of academic medicine such as licensing laws excluded women and other unauthorized healers and stigmatized their involvement in other domains of healing such as folk medicine and religious healing. Nonetheless, in practice, early modern patients often engaged in medical pluralism to combine academic, folk, and religious treatments. Remedies for the evil eye include practices considered superstitious such as diversion of the gaze through amulets and talismans, often shaped like hands or eyes, and other items analogously similar to eyes. For example, one domestic remedy manual instructs mothers to form an eye shape out of bread, dip it in wine, and wash the baby’s eyes to prevent the casting of the evil eye (Recetas Experimentadas Para Diversas Cosas 2019, 91v). The Libro del parto humano instructs parents to “dezir al oydo del niño los nombres de los Reyes Magos, o escrivirlos, y ponerlos al niño por nomina … o tomar el padre y la madre al niño, y llevarlo a la Iglesia un Viernes de las Quatro Temporas, y luego el Sabado rezarle el Evangelio de la Dominica, y ponsersele al cuello escrito” [whisper in the child’s ear the name of the Three Kings, or to write them, or to make the child their namesake … or, the father and mother taking the child should bring it to the Church on a Friday of the Ember Days, and then on Saturday to pray the gospel and put it in writing at the child’s neck] (Nuñez de Coria [1580] 1638, p. 167). Religious healing belonged to the domain of female healers, who would make the sign of the cross, ensalmar (pray or chant religious incantations over the patient) and use religious objects such as rosaries. Such practices came under heightened scrutiny throughout the early modern period. Theologians cautioned that the sick should avoid uneducated folk healers, instead leaving religious practices to priests and church officials (Velasco 2021, p. 139). Similarly, el Tostado warns against female folk healing, saying “ellas dizen palabras muy disconvenientes e fazen çerimonias sin fructo, por las quales piensan los ansí aojados sanar. E esto es muy malo e de aborresçer … de todos los cathólicos que verdaderamente aman a Dios” [They say inappropriate words and make pointless ceremonies, with which they think they will cure those who suffer from the evil eye. And this is very bad and should be abhorred by all Catholics who truly love God] (Fernández de Madrigal [1437] 2001, p. 312). Nonetheless, as Michael Solomon asserts, although such practices were condemned by the ecclesiastic authorities and practitioners sentenced to public penance, “the bishops taking confessions openly acknowledged that many had been cured by these treatments.” (Solomon 1997, p. 150). Thus, though women’s religious healing was officially discouraged and misuse of liturgy or the “names of God, the Virgin Mary and the Saints” was prosecuted by the Inquisition, their services continued to be popular (Sánchez Ortega 1991, p. 59). In this sense, the midwife-bawd inverts the image of the ideal midwife described in El libro del arte de la comadre. Damián Carbón states that the midwife should be “honrada y casta” [honorable and chaste] and “buena cristiana” [a good Christian] who will eschew “cosas de sortilegios, supersticiones, agüeros, y cosas semejantes” [witchcraft, superstition, divination, and similar things] (Carbón [1541] 1995, p. 34). The bawd, in contrast, is often described as engaging in the sort of superstitious practices condemned by Carbón. Thus, representations of malevolent bawd-midwives can be read as warnings about the devious nature of female healers intended to steer patients toward academic medical practitioners.

The bawd was also tied to the evil eye through the influence she exerts over other women’s sexuality. Early modern Spain employed various synonyms for the evil eye such as aojar and fascinar (to fascinate), from the Latin fascinare (to bewitch or enchant). The medieval bestiary tradition associated fascination with serpents, who could cast a spell from their eyes that rendered their prey unable to move or resist. The bestiary tradition and texts on the evil eye such as El Tostado’s explain that the basilisk, an enormous snake that could kill with the poisonous vapors emanating from its gaze, was “pestífera en sí, e, por ende, non pueden aver basilisco que non aoje” [noxious by nature, and thus, there cannot be a basilisk which does not cast the evil eye] (Fernández de Madrigal [1437] 2001, p. 303). Since the biblical tale of Adam and Eve, women (and the devil) have been associated with snakes. The cultural linking of basilisks, the evil eye, and women are found across genres in fictional and didactic texts, reinforcing the cultural stereotype that women’s innate humoral imbalance causes contagion. As we shall see, the bawd is tied to the evil eye and to love magic, having the power to bend the will of others, a crucial element of love magic, one of the most common forms of magic and one that was almost exclusively tied to female practitioners (Sánchez Ortega 1991). Women, especially beautiful women, were also particularly susceptible to the evil eye since they provoked envy in other women and supposedly had delicate blood as did babies (Velasco 2021, p. 138; Sanz Hermida 2001, p. 964). While the bawd was a malevolent figure, male clients sought her out precisely because she controlled occult forces and sexual desire.

3. The Literary Bawd

The bawd’s association with the evil eye goes back to the first literary manifestation in Spanish of this archetype that has roots in classical and Semitic literature: Trotaconventos of El libro de buen amor (Juan Ruiz [1330] 1988), which describes the amorous adventures of the Archpriest of Hita.8 After a series of failed seduction attempts, the Archpriest receives advice from the personification of love, Don Amor, who recommends that he employ a go-between to assist him in gaining access to young women. Among the qualities the bawd should possess according to Don Amor is to be a partera (midwife) who “mal de ojo hará a la moza, causará su ceguera” [will cast the evil eye on the maiden, causing blindness] (Ruiz [1330] 1988, p. 200). This example demonstrates the cultural linking of the midwife, the evil eye, and the bawd. In this literary imaginary, the midwife has special access to the secrets and bodies of women and possesses the ability to fascinate women, blinding them to the consequences that seduction poses to their honor.

The bawd’s most iconic iteration in early modern Spain is La Celestina (Fernando de Rojas [1499] 2007).9 The original published version, the Comedia de Calisto y Melibea, contained sixteen acts; according to Rojas, he expanded upon a first act written by another author. Subsequently published as the Tragedia de Calisto y Melibea (c. 1502) in an expanded version of twenty-one acts, the work became a best-seller throughout Europe. Though the bawd Celestina is not the protagonist, her characterization so captivated readers that the work became known as La Celestina. In this work, the nobleman Calisto, on the advice of his servant Sempronio, seeks the assistance of an old bawd, Celestina, to facilitate his seduction of the maiden Melibea. Celestina is a former prostitute who in her old age traffics in the sexuality of lower-class prostitutes and exploits Calisto financially. Celestina is deeply embedded in the world of clandestine prostitution at a time when the Salamanca brothel had recently opened in 1497 (see Lacarra 1993). Celestina shares many of the trades practiced by other bawds, including midwifery, hymen-mending, preparing cosmetics and herbal medicines, and predicting the future with “hava morisca” [Moorish beans], which were frequently used in love magic (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 116; Sánchez Ortega 1991, p. 62). Pármeno, who is the son of Celestina’s former colleague Claudina and who lived in Celestina’s house as a youth, gives an extensive and detailed list of Celestina’s magical and medical supplies. He states that “fazíase física de niños” [she practiced as a doctor to children], providing postnatal care, and owns the tools of midwifery such as “piedra del nido del águila” [stones from the eagle’s nest], a stone with mineral deposits within it used as an aid in labor, and engages in love magic since she “tenía para remediar amores y para se querer bien” [had supplies to remedy love problems and cause [clients] love one another well] (Rojas [1499] 2007, pp. 113–16). Melibea’s maid Lucrecia also knows Celestina, and confirms that she “conoce mucho en yiervas, cura niños, y aun algunos la llaman la vieja lapidaria” [knows much about herbs, cures children, and some even call her the old lapidary], a form of healing using stones (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 155). Pármeno also gives a detailed description of Celestina’s hymen-mending, explaining that “esto de los virgos, unos fazía de bexiga y otros curava de punto” [this thing of hymens, some she made with a bladder and others she worked in stitch] and that she has “agujas delgadas de pelligeros y hilos de seda encerados, y colgadas allí rayzes de hojaplasma y fuste sanguino, cebolla alabarrana y cepacavallo. Hazía con esto maravillas: que quando vino por aquí el embaxador francés, tres vezes vendió por virgen una criada que tenía” [thin tanning needles and waxed silk thread, and she hung there roots of hojaplasma, fuste sanguino, squill and horsetail. With this she worked wonders, so that when the French ambassador came here, she sold a maid she had three times as a virgin] (Rojas [1499] 2007, pp. 115–116). Celestina masters the bawd’s arts and as we shall see many of these same elements are an integral part of later depictions.

Celestina is an archetype upon whom later characterizations bawds draw, but she does not explicitly cast the evil eye. James F. Burke and Jacobo Sanz Hermida both argue that the topos of the evil eye subtends the narrative of La Celestina (Burke 2000, pp. 33–48; Sanz Hermida 1990). As Sanz Hermida explains, “Rojas deja entrever la capacidad aojadora que posee Celestina, capacidad que le permite hechizar a Melibea e inculcarle un amor loco por Calisto” [Rojas allows the reader to glimpse the capacity to cast the evil eye that Celestina possesses, and which allows her to enchant Melibea and instill in her an irrational desire for Calisto] (Sanz Hermida 1990, p. 31). Throughout the novel, Celestina brags of her ability to fascinate; when Calisto’s servant Sempronio proposes that they work together to assist Calisto in seducing Melibea for material gain, Celestina brags, “para mí basta mescer el ojo” [I only need to cast my gaze] (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 109). This common expression means ‘I understand what you said’ yet Sanz Hermida, an expert on academic treatises on the evil eye, insists that this and other phrases related to sight “hay que intepretar como uno de los tipos de aojamiento que tradicionalmente se solían describir” [must be interpreted as one of the types of evil eye that was traditionally described] (Sanz Hermida 1990, p. 29). The evil eye is explicitly mentioned in La Celestina only once, during a dispute between Celestina and the servant Sempronio over the division of profits, when she describes him as “tirando a páxaros y aojando páxaras a las ventanas” [taking aim at birds and fascinating female birds at the window] (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 175). The feminine gendering of pájaras conjures up Cupid’s bow, casting Sempronio as seducing beautiful women who, as mentioned previously, were especially susceptible to the evil eye. Whether due to fascination, verbal manipulation, or a demonic spell, after a visit from Celestina Melibea becomes enamored of Calisto, losing her virginity and eventually committing suicide after his death.

Throughout the text, Celestina’s seductive interventions are couched in medical terms. Michael Solomon notes that Celestina mirrors the language of medical treatises but “what is clearly suggested in Celestina is that unauthorized practitioners, despite their ability to speak like physicians and administer drugs like an apothecary, are so intrinsically flawed that their therapy can only result in pain and destruction” (Solomon 1997, pp. 171–2) in this case, leading to the deaths of Celestina, Calisto, and Melibea. Solomon concludes that Rojas’ message is that female healers will “mislead the male patient for their own profit rather than cure his disease” (Solomon 1997, p. 172). Celestina is undoubtedly manipulative, yet her medical discourse is also part of the work’s profoundly comical ironic wordplay. When Celestina first learns of Calisto’s desire, she declares “me alegro destas nuevas, como los cirujanos de los descalabrados; e como aquéllos dañan en los principios las llagas y encarecen el prometimiento de la salud, assí entiendo yo fazer a Calisto” [I am glad of this news, as when surgeons hear of head wounds; and like them who at the beginning hurt the wounds and raise the price of the promise of health, so I intend to do to Calisto] (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 110). This joke reflects negative stereotypes of doctors as causing pain, critiques Celestina’s greed, and foreshadows Calisto’s death after a fall from a ladder. In act ten, Celestina describes herself as a “médico” [doctor] in an extended series of dysphemisms related to medicine that allow Melibea to discuss her “mal” [illness] without explicitly expressing sexual desire. As Louise O. Vasvári demonstrates, Celestina’s medical discourse, especially Calisto’s toothache, is replete with erotic subtext whose obscene meaning would be immediately recognizable to readers and characters, even the sheltered maiden Melibea (Vasvári 2009, p. 172). For example, Celestina asks for “licencia” [license] to give her advice, Melibea interprets this as a request for payment, then states “¿de licencia tienes tú necessidad para me dar salud? ¿Quál medico jamás pidió tal seguro para curar al paciente?” [Do you need a license to give me health? What doctor ever asked for such assurance to cure the patient?], perhaps invoking a double-entendre regarding the licensing regulations imposed on female practitioners at the time. Melibea’s couching of her desire for Calisto in terms of physical suffering as a bodily “passión” [passion/ailment] adds titillating erotic subtext to this and other scenes that allow the reader to imagine Melibea’s body and desire (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 243).

A major point of critical debate regarding La Celestina is whether Melibea’s seduction results from diabolical magic, or whether Celestina’s powers of persuasion convince Melibea to act on a pre-existing attraction to Calisto. At the end of his enumeration of Celestina’s magical and medicinal trades, Pármeno dismissively asserts, “todo era burla y mentira” [it was all deceit and lies] (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 116).10 Pármeno should know, since his mother was a witch who “siete dientes quitó a un ahorcado” [took seven teeth from a hanged person] and frequented cemeteries at night “buscando aparejos para nuestro oficio” [looking for supplies for our occupation] (Rojas [1499] 2007, p 199). The teeth of a hanged criminal were a common ingredient in demonic witchcraft (Alberola 2010, p. 287). In this recollection, Celestina also downplays her talents, stating that when working with Claudina “yo tenía harta buena fama, más que agora” [I had much good renown, more than now] while “los mesmos diablos la havían miedo” [even the devils themselves were afraid] of Claudina (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 199). Nonetheless, in act three, Celestina explicitly conjures the devil (“triste Plutón”), drawing letters in animal blood and using snake oil to enchant the “hilado” [skein] that she will sell to Melibea, who will be “enredada” [ensnared] and experience “fuerte amor de Calisto” [strong love for Calisto] concluding that in “mi hilado, … creo te llevo ya embuelto” [my skein … I believe I bear you bound up] (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 149). The skein serves as a pretext to enter Melibea’s house, where Celestina once again speaks to the devil in an aside in which she calls him “hermano” [brother] (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 163). Julio Caro Baroja (1972) demonstrated that Celestina’s materials match those found in historical documents from witchcraft trials while Modesto Laza Palacios (1958) elucidated the overlap between Celestina’s herbs and herbal medical texts. Indeed, as Moral de Calatrava attests, it is impossible to delineate between magic and medicine in this period, since even academic medicinal texts utilized elements deemed magical when employed by women (Moral de Calatrava 2007, p. 229). Another consideration is the distinction between hechicería and brujería, both of which in English translate to witchcraft, but the first of which implies white magic versus the black magic of brujas. While the term hechicera is more frequently applied to Celestina, bruja also appears and she clearly invokes the devil. Therefore, the question is whether Melibea is bewitched by Celestina’s spell or won over by her persuasive tongue. María Rosa Lida de Malkiel (1962) articulated a persuasive argument against witchcraft based on factors such as Melibea’s psychological transformation, Celestina’s ability to win over other characters without magic, the lack of forward movement of the plot in the scenes that discuss magic, Parmeno’s dismissal of her witchcraft, and Melibea’s proclamation that she fell in love at first sight when in the tenth act she describes Calisto as “aquel señor cuya vista me cativó” [that gentleman whose gaze captivated me] and she has only seen Calisto in the opening scene before he engaged Celestina (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 239). In 1978 Peter Russell laid out an influential argument for magic (philocaptio), arguing that it was an integral part of the plot and denouement (Russell 1978). Alan Deyermond (1977) detailed how the devil’s influence passes through objects such as the skein and the cordon, thus explaining how the spell can have effect after Celestina’s death. Dorothy Severin asserts that “witchcraft, sorcery, and bawdry empower Celestina in her society” (Severin 1993, p. 12). However, Jean Dangler (2001) questioned this assertion, instead proposing that Rojas uses Celestina’s witchcraft to denigrate women healers as part of their marginalization by “those who held the means to establish regulatory norms” (Dangler 2001, p. 89). The theme of demonic magic is expanded in the Tragicomedia, adding asides in which Celestina speaks to the devil and allusions to witchcraft, and elaborating on the characterization of Claudina. Moreover, Pármeno’s statement that Celestina’s magic is “burla y mentira” appears in the first act, which Rojas claims not to have written. Therefore, one might conclude that Rojas and the author of Act One may have differed in their stance. In my opinion, Melibea’s promise to give Calisto a “galardón,” in the opening scene, her declaration that she fell in love with him at first sight, and the continuation of the sexual relationship for a month after Celestina’s death place the thesis that Melibea is seduced solely through magic in doubt. As E. Michael Gerli (2011) demonstrates, “it is Celestina herself who offers us the best example of the disavowal of the very powers that she publicly advertises” since her use of creo (I believe) indicates doubt that the devil has entered the skein and through her uncertainty that the spell will work in her musings. Joseph Snow (1999) also attributes Melibea’s seduction to Celestina’s astute psychological manipulation. The fact that this debate has continued for nearly a century indicates at the very least that there is room for doubt that the sole reason Celestina is able to win over Melibea is demonic witchcraft. Whatever the case, Celestina is clearly a malevolent figure and later bawds share her ability to manipulate or bewitch other women.

Celestina’s characterization captivated the interest of readers in Spain and across Europe. While Trotaconventos lays out the basic characteristics of the bawd, Celestina is more developed. The prototype set down by La Celestina of the bawd as midwife, witch, and caster of the evil eye appears repeatedly in later fiction. The bawd’s essential function is to seduce women on behalf of men, indicating that perhaps her ability to exert fascination and the susceptibility of beautiful women to it subtends the mentions of the evil eye in these texts. Golden Age Spanish bawds share certain trades such as go-betweens, prostitutes, vendors of cosmetics, and much more. However, there is also variance in her characterization as she moves between being a minor character or protagonist. As Eva Lara Alberola states, the celestinesque bawd archetype became so well established that “solo con pincelar dos o tres caractrísticas podían identificarse estos personajes” (2010, p. 126). Bawds personify negative stereotypes of older women as malevolent and destabilizing yet are also intriguing characters.

Las coplas de las comadres (Rodrigo de Reinosa, late fifteenth or early sixteenth century) explicitly links the evil eye with both midwifery and the bawd.11 The term comadre in late medieval and early modern Spanish could mean midwife, other birth attendants, or simply mean old woman or gossip, and most of Reinosa’s comadres are unnamed. In the Coplas de la parida, a thematically related poem that prefaces the Coplas de las comadres, a midwife who is an “amiga e vecina” [friend and neighbor] assists a woman in labor (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 196). The midwife utilizes many techniques recommended by midwifery manuals: massaging her with oils, praying, using pepper to make the woman sneeze to speed labor, employing herbal medicines, and reassuring her when she complains of pain. This midwife is also a bawd. When the parturient woman complains “soy cerrada” [I am closed], the midwife replies “[¡]no digáis que sois cerrada, avés sido enamorada e demás tres parida! Avés sido corrompida de niña de doze años” [Don’t say you are closed up! You have been a kept woman and even given birth three times! You were corrupted as a child of twelve”] (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 199). The midwife knows the woman’s secrets and assists her in covering up sexual deviance. When the woman complains that her husband does not buy her cosmetics or clothing, the midwife replies “dad con él en Cornualla” [send him to Cornwall], a play on words with cuernos [horns] that recommends the woman make him a cuckold. The parturient woman goes on to complain that her husband does not satisfy her sexually since he sleeps all night “e yo me quería sacudir” [and I want to be shaken] (Reinosa [1500] 2010, pp. 200–1). The woman’s confessions that she has other lovers who “tráenme … arrebol/de la tienda sin yo ir” [bring me … cosmetics from the store without my going] as she is giving birth suggest that the husband may not be the father, thus implicating the midwife in concealing sexual deviance (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 201).

Las coplas de las comadres presents a series of bawds who gossip and discuss various women’s issues such as how to cover up affairs, repair lost virginity, and much more. The burlesque conversation ends with a banquet in which the neighborhood women bring a potluck to celebrate a jueves de las comadres or potluck with the new mother in which the midwife, other birth attendants, and friends celebrate the birth. The various comadres practice midwifery and the numerous other trades linked to Celestina. Reinosa explains in the dedication that his poem satirizes “ciertas comadres, no tocando en las buenas, salvo digo de las malas” [certain comadres, not including the good ones, but only speaking of the bad ones], thus emphasizing the dichotomy between the ideal conduct laid out in midwifery manuals and the bawd (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 201). The women lodge similar complaints about their husbands to the parturient woman of the Coplas de la parida, asserting that they are sexually unfulfilled, and therefore, take lovers who give them gifts. They reveal that they were initiated into sexual deviance by bawds. One asserts “Isabel, la [alcahueta] de mi tía, ella fue alcahueta mía y dos vezes fui preñada” [Isabel, my aunt’s [bawd], she was my bawd and I was pregnant twice] prior to marriage (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 209). This unnamed comadre then goes on to reveal that she aborted the fetuses using “agua de esparto” [esparto grass water] and buried them to cover her loss of chastity (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 209). When she married, the “partera” [midwife] repaired her hymen “con aguja e hilo” [with needle and thread], as Celestina does (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 209). As these examples demonstrate, Reinosa’s verse feeds on misogynist tropes of women’s inherently lustful nature to portray a gynocentric conspiracy to facilitate and conceal sexual depravity in which midwives and other older women are complicit.

Among the many comadres are two named characters who exemplify bawdy characteristics. The first of these is Sancha, “la ospitalera” [hospital worker], an occupation that, as Juárez Almendros explains, was “usually held in the period by retired prostitutes” (Juárez Almendros 2017, p. 96). Sancha is a “trotaconventos,” described as a former prostitute (“puta”) and now “es muy fina alcahueta de hombres más de dozientos” [is a very skilled bawd to more than two hundred men] and who gains entry to women’s houses because she sells them sweets] (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 218). Sancha’s characterization as a bawd in the tradition of Trotaconventos who, like Celestina, uses other trades to infiltrate women’s space and is connected to healing domains demonstrates how the bawd archetype coalesced in late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth-century Spain. After Sancha, Reinosa describes in great detail another comadre, Mari García, who is skilled in a great many celestinesque trades such as midwifery, preparing love potions, and restoring maidenheads. She is “una vieja con conjuros” [an old woman with incantations] who has been “emplumada” [covered with feathers]– a punishment for witchcraft– and is “gran bruxa y hechizera, alcahueta encantadera” [a great sorceress and witch, and a bawd enchantress] (Reinosa [1500] 2010, pp. 220–1). Like Celestina, Mari García is a former prostitute. Mari García “ha andado al partido, después ha sido ramera” [went into the sex trade, and then has been a whore] and has a “cara acuchillada” [a cut face], a punishment for clandestine prostitution (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 221).12 Mari García too has been an ospitalera (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 221). Like Celestina, she repairs maidenheads (“faze virgos de mil suertes” [she falsifies hymens in a thousand ways]), prepares herbal medicines and sells “hilado” [skeins] and other items to enter women’s houses (Reinosa [1500] 2010, pp. 221–2). She uses the same hymen-mending techniques as Celestina, by either filling pouches with blood that will be inserted in the woman’s genitals prior to sex, sewing up the genitals with “agujas” [needles], employs the same herbs as Celestina (“cepacavallo” and “fuste sanguino”) and possesses many of the same magical ingredients, including “siete dientes de ahorcados” [seven teeth from hanged men] like Celestina’s comadre Claudina (Reinosa [1500] 2010, pp. 223, 227). Among Mari García’s healing skills is detection of the evil eye. Reinosa explains that “sabe bien sanar aojados, echa azeite con tres dedos, el escodillo con viedos, por ver de qué están tocados” [she is skilled in healing the evil eye by sprinkling oil with three fingers into the bowl to discern and see what is affecting them] (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 228). Mari García casts oil into a recipient of water and discerns from the patterns that form on the surface whether the patient is afflicted by the evil eye. As María Helena Sánchez Ortega explains, in this common test for evil eye, if the oil sinks or mixes into the water, the patient is suffering from the evil eye (Sánchez Ortega 2004, p. 463). The same test could be performed with wax, and as Sánchez Ortega asserts, this sort of test would have been the most common method of discerning the presence of the evil eye (Sánchez Ortega 2004, p. 473). Moreover, Mari García “sabe sanar criaturas” [knows how to cure babies] (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 232); in other words, she provides healing services post-partum. The similarity between this figure and other bawds, especially Celestina and Lozana (discussed below), is striking. Celestina, Lozana and Mari García are all tied to midwifery, prostitution, hymen repair, and the medical care of children. The bawd is thus the nexus between prostitutes and pregnant women who is sought out for her ability to manipulate others, but whose influence is malignant.

As Carbón and others warn, babies are vulnerable targets for malevolent older women, who might give them the evil eye, whether inadvertently or deliberately. At the end of Las coplas de las comadres, as the women gather around the post-partum mother and ply her with food, one exclaims “¡Ay, guárdelo la Trinidad, mi ojo no le haga mal! Comadre, mucho le guardad, e muchas cosas le echad por mal de ojo o por ál. Guárdeoslo Sant Antón y por él nunca os enojen, por esso echalde un texón e unas barvas de cabrón, comadre, que no vos lo aojen” [Oh, may the Trinity protect him, so my eye may not do him harm! Comadre, keep him safe from things that may cause the evil eye. May San Anton guard him for you, and for may you not be made angry by others on account of him, comadre, for this reason use a badger [paw] and some billy goat whiskers so that he will not get the evil eye” (Reinosa [1500] 2010, p. 250).13 Celestina also possesses “pie de texón” [badger’s paw], though what use she puts it to is not explained (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 116). Here, the comadre who is speaking expresses concern that she could inadvertently cast the evil eye on the newborn and reinforces the role of anger in provoking the evil eye.

The Coplas de las comadres accuses the bawd-midwife of assisting women in many types of deviant sexual behavior, such as covering up affairs and repairing hymens. Las coplas de las comadres weaves together the domains of midwifery, prostitution, and the evil eye. Through the trope of the bawd as midwife, especially through the portrayal of Mari García, Reinosa highlights the subversive potential of female healers and portrays older women as assisting younger ones in concealing sexual deviance that threatens the patriarchal order. Even though it is a deeply misogynist text that accuses women of duplicity and debauchery and portrays the comadres as a potential cause of harm to the newborn, this text reaffirms women’s sovereignty over the realm of childbirth and newborn care.

La Lozana andaluza (Francisco Delicado [1528] 2003), the fictionalized biography of a Spanish prostitute who travels to Rome, further explores the connection between the bawd and the evil eye. Lozana, like Celestina and her predecessors, exhibits the bawd’s essential functions such as casting love spells and providing medical care including gynecology and pre- and postnatal care. Unlike Celestina, Lozana is an active prostitute in Rome prior to the sack of the city in 1527 when prostitution was legal though taxed. In addition to selling her own body, Lozana procures prostitutes and courtesans for male clients. While Lozana is not explicitly described as a midwife, she performs tasks associated with midwifery such as healing a courtesan who has just given birth and is suffering from mal de madre, a blanket term referring to women’s gynecological issues, in this case, postpartum complications (Delicado [1528] 2003, pp. 286–87). In another scene, she visits a woman who has just given birth, hoping to purchase the afterbirth. When asked why she is at the house, Lozana replies “soy venida aquí, que su nuera d’esta señora está de parto, y querría hacer que, como eche las pares, me las vendan, para poner aquí a la vellutera y dale ha cualque cosa para ayuda a criar la criatura” [I have come here because this woman’s daughter-in-law is giving birth and once she has expelled the afterbirth, I want her to sell it to me so that I can give it to a silk-maker in return for some help to bring up the baby] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 293). Although Lozana states that she will trade the afterbirth to a silk-maker, midwives were frequently accused of making magic potions and amulets using the afterbirth, to which were attributed various powers such as bringing good fortune and helping with labor. It is worth noting that Celestina possesses “mantillo de niño” among her medical ingredients, which Patrizia Botta defines as “the portion of the amniotic sac wrapped around the head of some newly-born” (Rojas [1499] 2007, p. 115; Botta 2017, p. 213). Accusations of witchcraft leveled against midwives relied in part on superstitions about the magical uses of the placenta, umbilical cord, and amniotic sac, which midwives were accused of surreptitiously stealing during childbirth (Beltrán Muñoz 2014, p. 70). Lozana is not the midwife in this birth scene; she states of the pares or afterbirth that “la misma partera me las traerá,” [the midwife herself will bring it to me] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 294). The author responds, “a ella y a vos habían de encorozar” [you and she together should be condemned to wear the cone] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 294). In other words, the author suggests that Lozana will use the afterbirth in magic, for which she should be punished by the Inquisition (wearing the conical coroza was a punishment for heresies such as witchcraft). She later drops swaddling clothes that she is hiding, which the fictionalized author accuses her of stealing (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 295). Lozana is most likely using these ingredients to prepare the love potions and medicines with which she supplements her earnings from prostitution. In this same scene, Lozana also reveals that she is helping the new mother in her attempts to breastfeed, stating that her nipples have not emerged, for which Lozana will give her a puppy that will suckle to bring her milk down (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 295). Though Lozana is not a midwife, she demonstrates the gynecological knowledge associated with midwifery and connects the objects associated with the trade to witchcraft.

Lozana engages in magical practices throughout the text, such as helping women to become pregnant, preparing love potions, and casting and curing the evil eye. However, she states on several occasions that she is a charlatan, not a witch. In one scene, Lozana’s fellow prostitute Divicia asks her about her spells, stating “decís las palabras en algarabía, y el plomo con el cerco en la tierra, y el orinal y la clara del huevo, y dais el corazón de la gallina con agujas y otras cosas semejantes” [you say the words in gibberish, trace circles on the ground with lead, cast divinations with egg whites, and stick pins into the heart of a hen and similar things] (Delicado [1528] 2003, pp. 427–28). Lozana replies “a las bobas se da a entender estas cosas, por comerme yo la gallina… [y es] todo mentira” [I allow silly women to believe such things so I can eat the chicken… [and it is] all a lie] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 428). In other words, Lozana puts on a show speaking in esoteric gibberish, using ingredients associated with witchcraft, but her magic is merely a deception to extract money from credulous victims.

In another scene, Lozana and the fictionalized author discuss her role as a healer, specifically of the evil eye. The author comes to Lozana requesting medicine for a friend but then berates her for propagating superstitious beliefs. Delicado wrote at least one medical treatise (El modo de adoperare el legno de India, on the treatment of syphilis with guaiac wood), and in this scene, his fictionalized counterpart takes the position of academic physicians who dismiss women’s healing. At the beginning of the discussion, Lozana states that she is menstruating, asserting “a mí me ha venido mi camisa” [my monthly time is on me] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 380). This allusion to menstruation immediately precedes the topic of the evil eye, implicitly underscoring the causal connection to women’s bodily fluids. Lozana describes medical knowledge including gynecological treatment for “mal de madre,” and curing intestinal worms, alongside witchcraft and esoteric arts like palm reading and telling the future (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 381). She continues, “sé ensalmar y encomendar y santiguar cuando alguno está aojado, que una vieja me vezó, que era saludadera y buena como yo” [I know how to heal with prayer and lay on my hands and make the sign of the cross when someone is enthralled by the evil eye, since an old woman taught me who was a folk healer and prostitute like me] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 381).14 This description reveals that healing the evil eye was the domain of older women, and reaffirms Lozana’s role in casting and curing the evil eye. The author dismissively states “decís que hay aojados; esto quiero que os quitéis de la fantasia porque no hay ojo malo” [you say the evil eye exists; I want to disabuse you of that fantasy because there is no evil eye] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 382). Despite this assertion, he then gives an example of a baby who is afflicted with the evil eye when an old woman visiting the mother praises the baby enviously, after which the child becomes unwell. He states that “no era mal ojo, mas mala lengua (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 382). Lozana appears to concede the author’s point that the evil eye is not real, admitting that “para ganar de comer, tengo de decir que sé muncho más que no sé” [in order to earn enough to eat, I have to say that I know many things that I do not know] and thus resorts to trickery to extract money from her clients, a statement that aligns with her earlier conversation with Divicia (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 382). Nonetheless, throughout the narrative, she prepares medicines and cures other characters. Moreover, the fictionalized author comes to her for medicine, thereby implicitly affirming her skill. Male medical authorities such as Delicado attempted to repress and marginalize women’s healing, yet such contradictory depictions of female healers indicate their popularity as well as the social reality that due to the high cost of professional physicians, many patients preferred the services of folk healers.

The fictionalized author’s condemnation of Lozana’s therapeutic practices is complicated by derisive depictions of doctors in other scenes. As Michael Solomon affirms, even as legislation mandated the licensing of medical practitioners, serving to marginalize women and others from medical practice, the inefficient doctor as a literary trope emerged in the sixteenth century (Solomon 1997, p. 154). In La Lozana andaluza, Lozana visits the courtesan Madona Clarina who has commissioned her to prepare tooth powder and eye medicine, where she encounters a surgeon and physician among Clarina’s clients. The two eagerly beg Lozana to share knowledge, begging her “¿hay curas? ¿hay curas? ¡Danos parte!” [Are their cures? Are there cures? Share them with us!] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 451). The physician then complains that Lozana has usurped his clientele, stating “me habéis llevado de las manos más de seis personas que yo curaba que, como no les duelen las plagas con lo que vos les habéis dicho no vienen a nosotros, y nosotros, si no duelen las heridas, metemos con que duelen y escuezgan porque vean que sabemos algo cuando les quitamos aquel dolor” [you have taken from my hands more than six people I was curing that, since their afflictions no longer hurt with what you have told them, they don’t come to us, and we, if their wounds do not hurt them, we put something in to hurt and sting so that they will see that we know something when we take that pain away] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 453). Here, the physician cynically reveals that doctors deliberately cause their patients pain to then alleviate it, echoing Celestina’s jest to Sempronio, while Lozana’s methods appear to be more effective. Indeed, Lozana labels their medicines “ungüentos de albéitares” [ointments of veterinarians] (Delicado [1528] 2003, p. 453). Thus, Delicado’s text, like many representations of the bawd, is deeply ambiguous. While male authors criticize female healers, they sometimes present them as competent and in the case of Lozana and Celestina, their practices demonstrate knowledge of academic medical theory. As Michael Solomon suggests, “perhaps the greatest impediment to controlling unauthorized practitioners was that university-trained and licensed physicians had no monopoly on curing disease and easing pain, nor were they able to demonstrate consistently that their skills were more efficacious than those of other healers” (Solomon 1997, p. 155). Academic medicine was often painful, did not always work, there were not enough physicians to meet the needs of all patients, and doctors were significantly more expensive so many patients continued to prefer folk healers. These satirical portrayals of doctors may express frustration with a system that did not function for many, but they are not portrayed as malevolent to the degree that bawd healers were.

The bawd as a literary archetype proliferated throughout Spain’s Golden Age following the immense popularity of La Celestina, with the publication of numerous continuations such as La segunda Celestina, La hija de Celestina, and novels such as La Lozana andaluza that feature celestinesque characters. The cultural changes wrought by the Counter-Reformation included reformist movements to close municipal brothels, begun by the Jesuits, that culminated with the 1623 prohibition of prostitution under Philip IV. Moreover, anti-superstitious texts of the sixteenth century increasingly attributed the evil eye to witchcraft rather than natural causes (Sanz Hermida 1990, p. 958). The ambiguous status of the evil eye can be observed in the first Spanish dictionary Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Covarrubias [1611] 2006), which concludes its definition of aojar by stating that “esto es superstición, y burla, y solo se ha traido para curiosidad, y no para que se le dé credito” [this is superstition and trickery and I have described it here out of curiosity and not so that it may be credited] (Covarrubias [1611] 2006, fol 53r). However, Covarrubias then states that doctors affirm that “la mujer que está con su regla suele empañar el espejo, mirandose a él, y esta podría hazer daño al niño” [the woman who has her period tends to cloud a mirror when she looks at it, and this can do harm to children] (Covarrubias [1611] 2006, fol 53r). Covarrubias vacillates between dismissal and humoral explanations yet also gives references to classical sources, a detailed list of remedies including herbal medicines and elements considered superstitious such as amulets, and medical explanations revealing often contradictory attitude towards the evil eye that resulted from the diffusion of knowledge across medical, theological, and fictional sources that often disagreed on fundamental questions. Likewise, midwives were increasingly regulated, and they often came under scrutiny for superstitious practices (Alberola 2010, p. 80). Not all magic incurred the scrutiny of the Inquisition, which pursued heresy (such as misuse of religious concepts in religious healing) and collusion with the devil, and the fanatical witch-hunts that took place elsewhere in Europe did not reach Spain, though there were some scattered examples in Navarre and the Basque Country, such as the 1609 Logroño witch trials. Though stigmatized, the inquisitorial records studied by Alberola, Sánchez Ortega and others indicate that the sort of love magic practiced by bawds did not lack for clientele.

As female healers were increasingly ostracized from medical practice, medical and theological texts expressed suspicion that midwives might cause the evil eye and engage in practices related to witchcraft. The influential treatise on witchcraft Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches, 1486–7) accuses midwives of being in league with the devil, stating that “midwife sorceresses kill the fetuses in the womb and cause miscarriages, and when they do not do this, they offer the newborns to demons” or eat them (Sprenger [1486] 2009, p. 211). Sprenger asserts that the evil eye is always caused by witchcraft and insists that “midwife sorceresses kill fetuses in the mother’s womb in various ways” and “offer the babies to the demons when they do not kill the fetuses” and accuses midwives of bawdy behavior such as offering women up as sexual partners for demons (Sprenger [1486] 2009, p. 314). The Malleus Maleficarum was not used by the Inquisition but gained influence in secular courts in the sixteenth century, contributing to the witch craze in Europe. While Spain had fewer witch hunts, as Aurelia Martín Casares (1999) affirms, “la llamada caza de brujas descreditó para siempre a las curanderas, de manera que los hombres empezaron a invadir el último bastión de las sanadoras: la obstetricia” [the so-called witch hunt forever discredited women folkhealers, such that men began to invade the last bastion of female healing: obstetrics], first textually through the publication of midwifery manuals that purported to instruct midwives, then through licensing and regulation, and ultimately through the replacement of midwives, at least in elite birthing chambers, with male doctors.15 In La pícara Justina (Francisco López de Úbeda), the fictionalized autobiography of a prostitute, Justina encounters a morisca witch who alludes to “las matronas (que así llamaba a las brujas)” [midwives (for this is how she referred to witches)] (López de Úbeda [1605] 2010, p. 357). The morisca’s statement reflects a broader cultural equivalence between midwifery and potential witchcraft. The same sentiment is found in the adage cited by Enrique García Santo Tomás, “cuanto mejor es la bruja, mejor es la matrona” [the better the witch, the better the midwife] (Santo Tomás 2018, p. 286). Bawd-midwives connected to the evil eye and love magic appear in two plays by Spain’s most famous early modern playwright, Félix Lope de Vega. In contrast to Lozana’s trickery, Lope de Vega’s bawds perform diabolical magic, reflecting the increased inquisitorial scrutiny of women’s superstitious practices that arose from Counter-reformation ideology. Nonetheless, these texts also express some ambiguity regarding whether magical power comes from demonic forces or women’s malevolent nature.

In the play El caballero de Olmedo (c. 1620), for example, a bawd named Fabia facilitates the noble Alonso’s seduction of his love interest, Inés. Alonso first sees Inés dressed as a labradora or lower-class laborer, but he is smitten by love (or at least desire) and discovers her true identity as a noble maiden. In the opening lines, Alonso states, “de los espíritus vivos de unos ojos procedió este amor” [this love sprang from the active spirits of some eyes] (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, p. 161) and explains, “llegó mi amor basilisco” with “veneno ardiente/que procedió de su vista” [my love arrived like a basilisk … [with] burning poison that proceeds from her eyes] (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, p. 164). Fabia replies “aojado estás” [you have the evil eye] (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, p. 162). Alonso knows of Fabia’s reputation as a bawd and “peregrino dotor/y para enfermos de amor/Hipócrates celestial” [itinerant doctor and heavenly Hippocrates for those who are lovesick], and therefore, employs her services as a go-between (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, p. 162). When Fabia delivers a love letter to Inés under the pretext of selling cosmetics, she mixes the paper up with her spells, described as “papeles …/de alcanfor y solimán./Aquí secretos están… para nuestra enfermedad ordinaria” [papers … of camphor and sublimate./Here are secrets … for our ordinary illness] of love (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, p. 174). Fabia conveys Inés’ reply, thus expediting the love affair. After a series of dramatic events including telling her father that she wishes to become a nun to avoid marriage to Rodrigo, the suitor her father favors, upon which Fabia is employed as her singing instructor, Inés eventually confesses to her father that she loves Alonso and is given permission to marry her beloved; however, unbeknownst to them, Alonso has already been murdered by Rodrigo. In this instance, Alonso’s fascination with Inés drives his pursuit of her despite her other suitor. The bawd arranges the love affair in such a way that it can eventually win social acceptance; however, the tale ends tragically with Alonso’s murder by Rodrigo.

Lope de Vega portrays the evil eye as part of a pattern of demonic witchcraft in which Fabia uses love magic to enchant Inés. Fabia tells Alonso’s servant Tello that “una muela ha menester/del salteador que ahorcaron” [we need a tooth from the bandit who was hung] for the love spell, echoing Claudina and Mari García (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, p. 175). Tello asserts that Fabia is a familiar of the devil, stating “enseñada estás a hablar al diablo” [you are accustomed to speaking with the devil] and compares her to infamous witches, saying “no supo Circe, Medea,/ni Hécate, lo que ella sabe” (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, pp. 176, 209). When Inés declares her love for Alonso, Fabia exclaims in an aside, “¡Oh, qué bravo efeto hicieron los hechizos y conjuros!” [oh, what great effects were wrought by my spells and conjuring!] (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, p. 210). Alonso is well aware of Fabia’s devious nature and reputation as a witch yet employs her services anyway. Various characters refer to Fabia’s deceptive nature, as when Alonso attributes the vision of a mysterious shadow that foretells his death to “embustes de Fabia” [deceits of Fabia] (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, p. 220). Nonetheless, Alonso and Inés rely on her for assistance in facilitating their affair. On the other hand, Alonso tells his servant Tello, “no creo en hechicerías,/que todas son vanidades: quien concierta voluntades, son méritos y porfías” [I do not believe in magic spells, it is all vanity: what sways the will is merit and endeavor] (Lope de Vega [1620] 1963, p. 216). Magic figures prominently in Fabia’s characterization, but is not crucial to the plot since the seduction could be achieved through persuasion given that Inés is already in love with Alonso. In this text, Fabia’s role as a healer is not elaborated in as much detail as her earlier models. Her love spells are described in general terms, but the extensive lists of herbs and lore that are part of the characterization of Celestina, Mari García and Lozana are absent. Aojamiento serves as a discursive trope that initiates the action, but the bawd is not fleshed out as a healer.

Another bawd who controls the evil eye is Gerarda in Lope de Vega’s five-act play La Dorotea (Lope de Vega [1632] 1969).16 In this work, Gerarda, a friend of Dorotea’s mother, persuades the beautiful young woman to break off her relationship with the destitute poet Fernando who has been her lover for five years to commence a more profitable liaison with the wealthy Bela. Dorotea, knowing Gerarda’s objective, initially resists and insists that she will remain faithful to her beloved Fernando. Her mother Teodora demands that Dorotea give Gerarda an audience. Teodora praises Gerarda’s abilities, exclaiming, “¿qué niño no ha curado de ojo? ¿Qué criatura no se ha logrado, si ella bendice las primeras mantillas? ¿Qué oraciones no sabe? ¿Qué remedios como los suyos para nuestros achaques? ¿Qué hierba no conoce? ¿Qué opilación no quita? ¿A qué partos secretos no la llaman?” [what child has she not cured of the evil eye? What baby has not thrived if she blesses the receiving blanket? What prayers does she not know? What remedies equal hers for our maladies? What herbs does she not know? What fluid retention can she not alleviate? To what secret childbirths has she not been called?] (Lope de Vega [1632] 1969, p. 28). This description indicates that Gerarda cures evil eye, provides newborn care, engages in religious and herbal healing, and is a midwife, tying together once again the domains of midwifery and the evil eye. Moreover, the reference to secret births suggests that Gerarda is acting as midwife to prostitutes and/or unmarried women who would need to keep the birth concealed. Dorotea does not share Teodora’s positive attitude, and accuses Gerarda of being a malevolent witch, asserting, “Añade a las hierbas que conoce las habas que ejercita; y en vez de las bendiciones, los conjuros que sabe. Pues si hablas en el mal de ojo, ten por cierto que son más los que contenta que los que quita” [she adds to the herbs she knows the beans she tosses, and instead of blessings, the spells that she knows, and if you are speaking of the evil eye, be certain that there are more that she has cast than she has cured] (Lope de Vega [1632] 1969, p. 28). Gerarda, like Celestina, uses habas to foretell the future, possibly for love magic, knows spells, and Dorotea criticizes her for inflicting the evil eye. Later descriptions of Gerarda reveal that she is known for providing a medicinal brew that causes abortion (“jarabe famoso para desopilar a una preñadad dentro de nueve meses sin que lo entiendan en su casa” [a renowned syrup to relieve fluid retention in a pregnant woman within nine months and without them knowing in her house]) and for repairing maidenheads (“remendar doncellas”) though how she does so is not spelled out (Lope de Vega [1632] 1969, pp. 93, 282). Dorotea attempts suicide to avoid being unfaithful by swallowing a diamond ring from Fernando but nevertheless falls victim to Gerarda’s machinations, accepting Bela as her lover while her mother and Gerarda profit from the relationship. Fernando, meanwhile, goes off with his ex-lover Marfisa. Here, again the bawd is a complex compendium of midwife, prostitute and healer who uses her honeyed tongue and fascinating eye to facilitate access to women’s sexuality but, as with Fabia, the extensive descriptions of specific medicinal herbs and detailed descriptions of remedies are absent. Moreover, Gerarda states that “bien se puede atraer la voluntad con hierbas y piedras naturalmente” [one can attract the will with herbs and stones naturally] (Lope de Vega [1632] 1969, p. 312). In other words, while she is a witch, there are other means by which she could accomplish similar ends naturally.

I end with a final example from Miguel de Cervantes that illustrates the contradictory positioning of the bawd-midwife with respect to magic. The Coloquio de los perros, one of Cervantes’ Novelas ejemplares (1613), narrates a conversation between two dogs, Berganza and Cipión. This tale, which showcases Cervantes’ literary skill by parodying the various genres of Golden Age Spain such as the pastoral and the picaresque, is embedded in the “Casamiento engañoso” at the end of which Campuzano enters the hospital to cure his syphilis and overhears the dogs’ conversation. In this conversation, Berganza tells Cipión about an encounter with the witch Cañizares who tells Berganza that he and Cipión are the children of another witch, la Montiela. A third and more powerful witch, la Camacha, serves as a midwife during Montiela’s labor. According to Cañizares, Camacha looked at Montiela with envy, thus causing the fetuses to be born as dogs, a curious combination of belief in the evil eye caused by envy and early modern tales of monstrous births of half-human half-animal beings. Berganza recounts how Cañizares attempts to turn him back into a human by consulting her devilish master Cabrón for possible cures. To do this, she covers herself, otherwise naked, in a magical ointment and awaits a vision. Cañizares works as a hospitalera, and as a midwife, echoing the characterization of Sancha and Mari García in Las coplas de las comadres. In this scene, Cañizares freely admits that she is a witch, stating “bruja soy, no te lo niego” [I am a witch, I do not deny it] (Cervantes [1613] 2001, fol. 262v) but questions cultural constructions of the witch as harmful to children and in league with the devil. She states that the ointment “con que las brujas nos untamos es compuesto de jugos de yerbas en todo estremo fríos, y no es, como dice el vulgo, hecho con la sangre de los niños que ahogamos. Aquí pudieras también preguntarme qué gusto o provecho saca el demonio de hacernos matar las criaturas tiernas, pues sabe que, estando bautizadas, como inocentes y sin pecado, se van al cielo, y él recibe pena particular con cada alma cristiana que se le escapa” [with which witches anoint themselves is made of the juice of herbs that possess extremely cold [humoral] properties, and is not as the vulgar allege, made with the blood of babies that we drown. Here you might also ask me what pleasure or profit the devil receives from making us kill tender babies since as we know, being baptized and innocent and without sin, they go to heaven, and he receives particular pain from every Christian soul that escapes him] (Cervantes [1613] 2001, fol 263r). Cañizares then goes on to assert that witches practice their craft for the pure pleasure of sin, but her discourse is highly ambiguous, reflecting cultural debates over whether the activities of witches are indeed diabolical, or merely superstition or charlatanism. In the end, her conjuring fails and Berganza leaves without further answers than the riddle she had related to him before her attempted summoning of the demon, which foretells that he and his brother would return to their true human form when they see “derribar los soberbios levantados,/y alzar a los humildes abatidos” [the arrogant taken down and the downcast humble lifted up] (Cervantes [1613] 2001, fol. 261v). Montiela, Cañizares and Camacha all embody the stereotype of the bawd-midwife. Camacha casts a form of evil eye on the twin babies she delivers, turning them into dogs, but even within this tale of a witches’ coven, Cervantes sows ambiguity about whether witchcraft is demonic or simply another manifestation of women’s deceitful nature. Berganza ends the tale still a dog yet hopes one day to return to human form.

4. Conclusions

The bawd is nearly omnipresent in medieval and Golden Age Spanish literature. As we have seen, this figure reflects cultural attitudes about female sexuality and women’s healing. Although bawds are diverse, many share certain fundamental characteristics such as practicing love magic, midwifery, casting and curing evil eye, and involvement in prostitution. Tracing the interstices of academic texts and fictional portrayals, we can observe that the evil eye is not a central element of the plot in any of these texts, but rather marks the bawd as a destabilizing influence. Efforts to integrate belief in the evil eye into academic medicine were never fully accepted, and texts on the topic present contradictory arguments that disagree on points such as whether intentionality was required. Similarly, some treatises on magic, such as Castañega’s argue that the phenomenon is natural while Sprenger insists it is witchcraft. Such debates over the status of the evil eye undergird the depiction of the bawd’s love magic. Textual representations of bawds who cast and cure the evil eye range from portraying them as charlatans to demonic familiars, reflecting contemporary debates over the evil eye that alternatively portray it as superstitious nonsense, a naturally occurring disease, or witchcraft. As we have seen, authors like Delicado attribute magic to women’s deception, whereas in other texts certain characters question whether the bawd’s magic is real or charlatanism. Lope de Vega’s Gerarda and Cervantes’ Cañizares subtly undermine belief in diabolical witchcraft through the words of the witch herself. These complicated and contradictory representations form part of the marginalization of women from medical practice. Though male medical professionals asserted greater expertise than uneducated female practitioners, in practice, midwives continued to be a necessary part of the social fabric since even as elite women increasingly turned to academic doctors and male birth attendants, less affluent women would have continued to rely on midwives even after the shift toward male control of the elite birth chamber. Thus, midwives, though marginalized from professional medicine, continued to be an essential part of the social and literary fabric. Though literary depictions vary widely, the bawd embodies negative stereotypes regarding women’s deviance that were utilized to marginalize women healers and cast suspicion on their healing abilities as potential witchcraft yet also exhibit ambiguity over whether this power comes from the devil or from women’s inherently destabilizing nature.