“Carne dela su carne & huesos delos sus huesos”: the cannibal mother and the bodily identity in "Castigos del rey don Sancho IV"

Abstract

In a passage of Castigos del rey don Sancho IV the author takes up from Flavius Josephus’ War of the Jews the story of Miriam, the mother who kills and eats her baby during the siege of Jerusalem. In Sancho IV the treatment of this story is part of a moral treatise concerning the Ten Commandments. That one of “honor thy parents” gives rise to a digression about the unconditional nature of paternal love that, significantly, is based on a comparison between the father/son and mother/son bonds using a physiological explanation. The physiological “rationalization” presented in this text “de-monsterizes” the cannibal mother, since her behavior ultimately moves away from the contra naturam.