What Leonor López Left Unsaid

Abstract

Thanatology — the study of death — finds fertile ground for research in the Middle Ages given the precariousness of life due to war, disease, and the rudimentary knowledge of medicine. Much more than the counting and recounting of dead knights, and women and children who die during childbirth, the focus on the details of death in a wealth of genres, from epics and chronicles, to autobiographies and spiritual accounts is very revealing of the expectations, emotions and symbolic values of death and dying. The Memorias of Leonor López (b. 1362 or 1363) is a compellingly enigmatic document written by a politically influential author. The paradoxical conflation of autobiography and memoir in her historical writing about the murder of Pedro I of Castile and León by his half- brother Enrique II de Trastámara (known as The Fratricide), is a narrative of war, trauma, and death, and their consequences — but also, surprisingly, of transcendence. Leonor — Castile’s first memorialist and first female prose writer — was incarcerated at the age of eight, spending eight years as a prisoner because of Enrique’s perfidy against Pedro, with whose family she was aligned. Enrique was the first King of Castile and León from the House of Trastámara. He became king in 1369 by murdering his half-brother Pedro (known as both The Just or the Cruel, depending on the opinion of political allies or foes). After numerous rebellions and battles as king, he was involved in the Fernandine Wars and the Hundred Years’ War. Leonor chronicles the gruesome deaths of her relatives, a fate which only she and her problematic husband survived. After her traumatic losses as a prisoner of war, however, Leonor gains notable political power, rising to become the Queen Regent of Catalina de Lancaster. The postscript to this position is both tumultuous and unexpected.