Abject pilgrimage and healing in Jaume Roig’s Spill

Abstract

In the Spill o Llibre de les dones, the fifteenth-century writer and physician from Valencia, Jaume Roig, uses the motif of pilgrimage to attack earthly women, particularly women healers. Roig undermines the salutary function of medieval pilgrimage in order to expose mundane women in their effort to harm male pilgrims. Since men cannot rely on earthly women, they must seek a healing encounter with the Virgin, whose salutary ministrations always are constant and efficacious. Roig’s assault on women through pilgrimage further relates to larger social attempts to marginalize traditional women healers from legitimate salutary practice, since he aims to dissuade male readers from seeking women’s healing services in everyday society.