SOURCE: Foster, David William. “Sonnet XIV of the Marqués de Santillana and the Waning of the Middle Ages.” Hispania 50, no. 3 (September 1967): 442-46.

In the following essay, Foster views Santillana's use of religious imagery in a secular poem as reflective of a larger movement toward secularization in fifteenth-century Spain.

Johan Huizinga, discussing the secularization of the topoi of religious praise in his study The Waning of the Middle Ages, observes:

While religious symbolism represented the realities of nature and history as symbols or emblems of salvation, on the other hand religious metaphors were borrowed to express profane sentiments. […]

Although we may consider such formulae of adulation empty phrases, they show nonetheless the depreciation of sacred imagery resulting from hackneyed use. […]

The step from familiarity to irreverence is taken when religious terms are applied to erotic relations. […]

The irreverence of daily religious practice was almost unbound. Choristers, when chanting...