Introduction

Abstract

When Juan Rodríguez del Padrón placed his visionary Siervo libre de amor (Free(d) servant of love) (c. 1440) on Minerva’s path—“la angosta senda, la qual es la vida contemplativa de no amar” (the narrow path that is the contemplative life of not loving)—he knew that he could count on his audience’s recognition of the multiple literary, mythical, and even liturgical intertexts that he brought into play.¹ Not only is the laborious ascent made under the aegis of the classical goddess of wisdom, it also leads the love-servant to Syndéresis, the apex or “spark” of the human intellect personified.² Late-medieval audiences would have recognized both Minerva and Syndéresis as members of a familiar cadre of metonymically related and specifically feminine tropes representative of man’s higher intellectual faculties and the knowledge those faculties may attain and retain.