Memoria y Civilización (Nov 2018)
Born in the Ages of Calderón: Lucina, Diana and the Moon, the Lunar Goddesses of Birth in the Spanish Golden Age
Abstract
The moon has been considered to be the driving force of natural rhythms of reproduction, female life cycles and birth. The Greco-Roman lunar goddesses of birth Diana, Luna and Lucina, in correlation with the moon, represent different phases and times of procreation and are still present in Spanish Early Modern testimonies of time. Different aspects of the goddesses’ and the moon’s influence on procreation are presented from an interdisciplinary point of view by gathering and analyzing evidence in: Alonso Carranza’s legal treatise Disputatio de vera humani partus naturalis et legitimi designatione, the moral treatise of Juan Pérez de Montalbán Ejemplos morales, humanos y divinos, a medical treatise of doctor Francisco Núñez Tratado sobre el uso de mujeres, poetry and theater, letters of the Emperor Leopold I, Juan Pérez de Moya, Fernando de Herrera, and others. The goddesses’ ambiguity serves as an expression of indetermination about procreation, which mankind tries to determine.
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