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SINCE 1963, Peter E. Russell's pivotal study on the centrality of magic in the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea has enabled scholars to analyze how Fernando de Rojas' uses magic.1 Testimony to the importance of Russell's study surfaces in three recent studies treating magic in Celestina-- Dorothy Severin's (1993 and 1995 [revised 1997]), Patrizia Botta's (1994), and Olga Lucia Valbuena's (1994)-as all three take note of Russell's work.2 The springboard for this study, however, is an earlier one, The Evolution of the Go-Between in Spanish Literature through the Sixteenth Century (1966),3 by Michael J. Ruggerio who purports to define "witch," "sorceress" and "demoniac" precisely, thereby giving "La Celestina and Celestina, as a major character creation, a more defined and definite form than that which critics have given them to date" (1). Rojas' main innovation to the character of the alcahueta, asserts Ruggerio, is the addition of witchcraft: "Celestina in her turn has established a lasting tradition in which the alcahueta and witch are irremediably joined" (3).4
In brief, using reliable authorities (Rossell Hope Robbins, Henry Charles Lea, Antonio de Torquemada, and Fray Martin de Castanega), Ruggerio distills a definition inconsistent with his presuppositions and so discards it to assert that Celestina is a "witch." He does not examine Celestina's idiolect. Ruggerio's conclusion motivated Russell, in a revised version of his original analysis, to observe: "Creo que no tiene razon Ruggerio al decir (p. 53) que se llama a Celestina no solo 'hechicera' sino tambien `bruja.' La unica bruja mencionada en el texto es Dona Claudina y la distincion puede ser importante" (272n14).5
The distinction is important, if for no other reason, because Rojas maintains it. This study proposes that for Rojas, in consonance with prevailing, popular literature, the terms "bruja" and "hechicera" signaled substantially separate entities, whereas in official literature, manuals on witchcraft written by and for professionals-jurisconsults, canonists, theologians, judges, etc.-, the distinction was blurred and, in fact, obliterated. The evidence in Celestina-that Rojas used only the term "hechicera" to refer to his hag, although he was remarkably aware of the term "bruja,"-suggests deliberateness. This view may not find favor today as consulting a modern English or Spanish dictionary will attest that neither English nor Spanish differentiates the two entities. Today, then, the terms...