Cervantes and the Moralists

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles

In La verdad sospechosa young García, recently arrived in Madrid, questions Tristán about women. Tristán in reply divides women into the virtuous and the otherwise; in turn, he makes it plain that he will deal with the otherwise. In an entertaining display of cynical humor Tristán gives to each feminine type a place in the Ptolomaic system. As star differs from star in glory, Tristán maliciously discourses upon the qualities of the «discretas casadas con maridos placenteros, hermosas hijas con madres errantes, cortesanas,» and finally «busconas,» shooting stars. He observes that all set their course by the polar star of money.

Most picaresque authors portraying women choose one of the categories mentioned by Tristán. When dealing with the hampa, or other gente non sancta, authors prefer to present the buscona who, either alone or with an accomplice, serves as bait and entices an unsuspecting male, blinded by concupiscence, to a point where he is easily relieved of his money. Authors frequently treat the episode as farcical with the only passion satisfied being the avariciousness of the buscona. Thus the purpose of the genre shines more brightly: «escarmentar en cabeza ajena» When the buscona appears, she is generally implicated in a farce or intrigue, since her prime activity is of itself neither interesting nor suitable. The professional, however, be she simple ramera, entrepreneur, or alcahueta, is not the most frequent protagonist in Spanish literature.

Some who appear are unforgettable, and one in particular towers over Spanish Renaissance literature. In a realistic self-appraisal Celestina tells Sempronio, «... que soy una vieja qual Dios me hizo, no peor de todas. Viuo de mi oficio, como cada qual oficial del suyo, muy limpiamente. A quien no me quiere no le busco. De mi casa me vienen a sacar, en mi casa me ruegan. Si bien o mal viuo, Dios es el testigo de mi coraçón» (12). Those words «muy limpiamente» and «Dios es el testigo de mi coraçón» puzzle, and we shall return to them in the course of this essay. Celestina certainly has a sense of humor, but here de fending herself from Sempronio, she is quite serious. She served as a partial model for Cervantes when in Rinconete y Cortadillo he began to create the hampa.

The fauna of Seville populated the patio of Monipodio, and one of the most memorable specimens is Pipota. Cervantes expressly indicates her model, Celestina. She is introduced as a vieja Halduda, words used by Rojas to describe Celestina. Like Celestina she is more than a tippler and like her original, she harkens back in parody to the beautiful Collige Rosas Virgo of Ausonius when she encourages young people to enjoy their youth and sexual prowess before it vanishes with age as has hers⁶. Like Celestina she is addressed as «madre» by Gananciosa and Escalanta. Cervantes never states that Pipota was a professional, but he suggests it by the similarities she shared with her model. Cervantes enhances Pipota's comicity with adroit use of contraries. Rojas never presents Celestina as comical; Cervantes's Pipota is comical be cause he wishes to cover a bit of the natural ism inherent in such a character, «si encubriera más lo humano.» Pipota shares another quality with Celestina; she too enjoys a tranquil conscience⁷. She is, according to her lights, a religious person, and it is this mixture of piety with professionalism which produces the beata alcahueta. Celestina, the reverse of

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Pipota, is very much aware of how others judge her, but she rejects their judgment and appeals to God as judge of her conscience.

Even though Cervantes did not cultivate the picaresque genre, when he described the occasional professional prostitute he did so with humor. He rejected the genre because, as Castro (228-35), Riley (107) and Blanco Aguinaga (313-42) point out, it entails a lack of autonomy since the protagonist is destined to sin. He must exemplify the moral lesson of what acts are wrong and to be avoided, «escarmentar en cabeza ajena» Some critics, with less foundation, have attributed Cervantes's reluctance with the picaresque as due to an innate sense of what is proper and decorous in literature, a sense quite consonant with the Counter-Reformation. In any case, it is evident that in the pages of Cervantes quite a few prostitutes do appear. And Cervantes does frequently provoke laughter but without scorn or mordant satire.

In Rinconete y Cortadillo Pipota is an early arrival and soon, three «mozas llenas de desenfado y desvergüenza» enter the patio. Even to the two young pícaros their appearance clearly marks them for what they are, professionals. Escalanta and Gananciosa enter, to be joined later by Juliana la Cariharta weeping and nursing bruises gained in a brawl with her pimp. The scene is a delicious travesty of language and attitudes: prostitutes lamenting having given the flower of their youth to a procurer who exploits and flogs them; prostitutes consoling one another after a lovers' quarrel which resulted in a lashing; one of the ladies going so far as to appropriate the beautiful biblical phrase, «He who loves you will chastise you» (Prov. 3, 12; Heb. 12, 16); prostitutes exclaiming in all seriousness about the monies they had earned; «... que el trabajo y afán con que yo los había ganado, ruego a los cielos que vayan en descuento de mis pecados» (188).

It is a tolerant Cervantes, who never condemns, who presents to us his denizens of the hampa for our entertainment. At the end of the novel Rinconete reflects upon the tenor of life of the members of the cofradía de Monipodio and judges them to be without any real knowledge of right and wrong but even in his reflection he recalls the comical aspects of the characters. Américo Castro attributed this «tono justificativo y defensivo» to Cervantes's necessity of mollifying his critics as well as to his own insecurity (346). Edward T. Aylward has recently argued that the ending is due more to the fact that Cervantes borrowed a great part of the novel. In any case, the author's attitude is certainly indulgent and smiling.

Another novel where the professional appears is El coloquio de los perros. Berganza recounts the corrupt state of justice in Seville, where an aguacil and an escribano employ the ninfa Colindres to shake down unsuspecting foreigners. Colindres would take her client to a rented room where they would suddenly be surprised by the ministers of justice, who, in consideration of a healthy bribe, took the case no further. It is the alguacil and the escribano who eventually end in jail along with Colindres, but as Berganza informs Cipión: «Después supe que el bretón perdió sus escuti y más diez, en que le condenaron las costas; la huésped pagó otro tanto, y la Colindres salió libre por la puerta afuera. Y el mismo día que la soltaron pescó a un marinero, que pagó por el bretón...» (216).

The satire in the recounting is directed to ward everyone but Colindres. Punishment is meted out, yet Colindres goes free and the principle of poetic justice is applied with partiality, not with an even hand. In the earlier novels, El amante liberal, for example, poetic justice was a universal principle and applied with exactitude. What accounts for this later leniency on the part of Cervantes? His scrupulous use of poetic justice in the earlier novels seems similar to the didacticism of the picaresque authors insofar as both apportion punishment for wrongdoing. At first blush, this early type of poetic justice and the picaresque do seem similar. Cervantes favored the principle of poetic justice while he neglected the picaresque genre because the picaresque is a case of logic in reverse. To teach avoidance, pain and punishment is shown, but punishment requires that crime or sin be committed. Poetic justice at least begins with the character and his actions, which should be autonomous and, if wrongful, merit punishment.

No one in Spain at the turn of the seventeenth century failed to be influenced in some fashion by the Counter-Reformation, and Cervantes is no exception. This influence is clear in the earlier novels, where he melded the Aristotelian dicta that poetic truth is of the essence in literature, and that the true end

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of man is the practice of virtue. From the combination of these two principles Cervantes brought forth a picaresque genre in reverse. Original sin and concupiscence were not qualities transmitted by the protagonist's parents as they are in the picaresque novel; rather it is virtue, a quality of the soul, which is transmitted. This is the case of Preciosa, whose virtue is innate. When virtue is not transmitted, it is still held to be the true end of man and it is cultivated, practiced, learned, and pursued, frequently in adversity, as is the case of Ricardo in El amante liberal. Preciosa is able to triumph over circumstances which are a threat to her honor by reason of the virtue inherited from her noble parents. Ricardo learns to dominate and control his passions and is rewarded. This aesthetic theory is not to last for very long. As Cervantes matures, the principle of poetic justice also diminishes in importance or at least becomes more flexible, as it operates in the Quijote in the story of those four lovers, Dorotea, Fernando, Lucinda, and Cardenio, for example. Cervantes opted to make moral truth coincide with poetic truth in the earlier works, but the distinction between them becomes clearer as time passes until he is reluctant to subject poetic truth to moral truth. This aesthetic maturation is accompanied by a new attitude which looks differently on sin and vice in the world. Humorous irony is present along with tolerance, toward some sinners at least, and this attitude is less a matter of aesthetics than a question of the moral evaluation of human conduct.

Cervantes's religion was tinged and shaped by Erasmist doctrines which had gained the sympathy of thoughtful men before Trent. Certainly Cervantes's teachers were products of that era, and he himself seems to favor the attitude of an interior devotio moderna. Yet one cannot look to Erasmus for an explanation of his attitude toward sexual morality⁸. No doubt he observed the real world and decided to keep poetic truth and moral truth distinct, even though they might at times coincide. The question is: whose moral truth?

Sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Spanish authors interested in the passions of men and their function had several sources of study available to them. They could read the mystical and ascetical literature which treated the interplay of the five senses with the passions and the functions of memory, will, and intellect. They could also have read the moralists who dealt extensively with the concepts of love, desire, concupiscence, etc. Even Sannazzaro might have looked to the moralists rather than in the Ethics, as has been suggested; for the moralists were a commentary upon St. Thomas, who in his turn had commented upon Aristotle, and the commentaries are surprisingly extensive and detailed. It is in the eighth and ninth books of the Ethics where Aristotle treats of love, and the moralists commented extensively on these books. If Freud has had such an influence upon modern literature, one should be willing to accord the same eminence to the moralists, the psychologists of the Renaissance and Baroque. Case studies in moral theology have always made interesting reading, in some cases quite lively reading, and for an intellectually curious Spaniard interested in human behavior, it would be difficult not to have some knowledge of the discipline. What is surprising in the case of Cervantes is the breadth of his knowledge.

Cervantes made frequent use of the moralists, as an examination of his works reveals. The moralists examined the nature of passion, its relation to love, and its ability to cloud the judgment. They examined the nature of madness, in order to assess, praise or blame. They examined how merit and punishment depend upon moral acts freely posited with free will. The attitudes adopted by the moralists coincide with a realistic appraisal of human behavior. It is an attitude which harmonizes with the Counter-Reformation view that the true happiness of man is virtue and one of the purposes of literature is enseñar. It is, moreover, an attitude that Cervantes found congenial.

Closely related to moral theology is the body of canon law, Corpus Juris Canonici, which deals with the external relationship between member and church. The moralists and canonists were standard authors in the universities for students of theology. Even students of other disciplines would be familiar with them. The study of law, be it civil or canon, would necessitate references to the standard commentaries.

Casuistry is the usual method by which these disciplines were and are taught. Casuistry may have earned a bad name because of some abuses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it still suffers from the

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attack of Blaise Pascal in his Lettres Provinciales, where he accuses casuists of helping man evade his obligations. But, in reality, casuistry is the case method favored in legal education today. Casuistry is the reasoned application of the law to concrete cases. The casuist determines with all possible exactitude the limitation or bearing of law and principles in particular cases. Casuistry is considered by the church to be a necessary adjunct in determining the morality of human conduct. For the most part casuists have traditionally taken a position that favors the individual in the face of an onerous law or obligation. Their purpose is to help man, not to force him out of the church; their attitude can be characterized not as narrow but as generous and understanding. Perhaps because so much of moral theology and canon law derives from Roman law, which is generous in the interpretation of onerous obligations, to some casuistry seems to aid man to evade his obligations (Davis 1: 1-3).

The influence of the casuists upon the dramatists of the Golden Age, especially Calderón, has been investigated by Hans-Joachim Müller⁹. The theological controversies on the efficacy of grace and human free will in the Golden Age dramatists have been the object of the scholarly attention of Henry W. Sullivan¹⁰. Yet the pervasive influence of the sixteenth -and seventeenth- century moralists has passed almost without comment. Many episodes in Cervantes's works show such striking similarities to the problems taken up by the moralists and casuists that one concludes direct knowledge and use of them as sources by Cervantes. It is the purpose of this essay to investigate these similarities, principally in the Quijote and the Novelas ejemplares. Los trabajos de Persiles y Segismunda also evinces an influence but will wait for a later detailed analysis.

As we have seen, Cervantes is indulgent toward the professional prostitute. Why this indulgence, when traditional sexual morality as it was proclaimed and preached tended to be strict, censorious and monolithic, as it was in the manner of Guzmán de Alfarache? In addition to the dictates of his own temperament, Cervantes would have found a basis for tolerant indulgence of professional prostitutes in the moralists and casuists. Unlike the preacher, the moralist most frequently deals with individual rights and wrongs after the (hypothetical) commission of a sin or an act of dubious morality. Moralists, for example, agreed that prostitution was immoral behavior, but they debated whether it could be tolerated so as to avoid a greater evil. In doing so, they conferred upon its practitioners a status which other delinquents did not enjoy.

They put the case where a man might agree with a prostitute upon a price and, after having enjoyed her favor, refuse to pay. Moralists saw the transaction as sinful, but also as a contract, and a contract implies rights and obligations. In the case at hand, one party to the contract changed the terms after performance, which they held was clearly wrong in both civil and natural law. Thus, they held that the prostitute in such a case was due the fruits of her labor, the agreed price.

Spanish moralists seem perplexed by the problems presented by prostitution. It was clearly immoral yet they are loath to condemn it absolutely, for as some of them testify, the example of Rome, where prostitution was tolerated by «many wise and holy» popes, gave them pause (Salmanticensis 101-02)¹¹.

One of the best known and most influential Spanish moralists of the sixteenth century was Martín de Azpilcueta, called Doctor Navarrus. In his Enchiridion, a manual for confessors, he gives ample space to the question of whether the agreed price is due to the defrauded prostitute. He gives all the names who have treated the question, weighs their arguments, and finally gives his own opinion and arguments. After admitting that all theologians agreed that a prostitute was entitled to keep her wages and was obligated neither to give them back nor to restitution, he tackles the question of the agreed price withheld by a client. Azpilcueta, in the face of so man y theologians who held that the woman was entitled to the sum, is unable to dismiss their arguments out of hand. He begins with great subtlety to make distinctions and finally allows her to ask and demand the price agreed upon, not because it was compensation for a sinful act, but because of her needs and necessities.

Azpilcueta is uncomfortable with the common holding of the moralists, and his reasoning seems a bit tortuous, but others were not at all uncomfortable with this common teaching, and some of their reasoning is just as remarkable. Juan de Azor, S.J., insists that the price is due, not because of a sinful act, but because the woman rented her body for the use and pleasure of another and the rent, so to speak, is due.

Some moralists viewed professional prostitutes quite differently from other sinners; their professionalism somehow conferred upon them a special status and rights denied to an «amateur». Juan de Azor questions whether a woman who has had sexual relations with a man may later ask the price agreed upon. He notes the argument of some authorities that since the act was evil she should not benefit from it, and that these authorities would concede the right to demand payment only to a professional prostitute.

Azor aligns himself with those who would allow any woman that right. Well known moralists considered the professional in a class apart with rights other women did not have. They further based their argument upon civil law, which allowed the demand of an agreed price.

Cervantes, too, granted the professional rights which he never extended to other erring women. Listen to Juliana la Cariharta wailing in the patio of Monipodio: «...me envió a pedir con Cabrillas, su trianel, treinta reales, y no le envié más de veinticuatro, que el trabajo y afán con que yo les había ganado, ruego yo a los cielos que vaya en descuento de mis pecados» (188). As the professional was entitled to her wages, she might show, as did Celestina, her professional pride: «... que soy una vieja qual Dios me hizo... viuo de mi oficio, como cada qual oficial del suyo muy limpiamente.» (101).

Cervantes frequently writes of the marriage contract and clandestine marriage, where he closely parallels the moralists' teaching, as he does when he deals with sexual morality. The story of the four lovers from Andalucía -Fernando, Dorotea, Cardenio, and Luscinda- is an example of just such a case study. Before the Council of Trent (1545-1564), marriages could be contracted with only the two parties mutually exchanging their marriage vows. After that council, marriage, to be valid, required the presence of three witnesses, one of whom was a priest (Denzigernn 1797-1817). There had been difficulties in ascertaining the truth of opposing allegations in such cases. Were they really married? Were there sincere promises on both parts?

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Was there any proof? Can either one of them marry again if no one can establish the existence of valid promises? If one of the parties lies because later he or she wishes to marry someone else, how can bigamy be prevented? Questions such as these bedeviled the ecclesiastical tribunals and led to change in the valid form of celebrating marriage. The difficulties, of course, were precisely the elements which appealed to a novelist.

It was because of the difficulty in establishing the proof of these marriages that reasonable men rejected them. Francisco Márquez Villanueva considers Cervantes's employment of the clandestine marriage an indication of a peculiar attitude, a mixture of the revolutionary and the traditional toward marriage (67). He quotes Castro with seeming approval to the effect that the use of this novelistic device evidences Cervantes's belief that marriage was a spontaneous union made before God without necessity of intermediaries. He also imputes either hypocrisy or a lack of logic to the stance of Erasmus regarding such marriages, since Erasmus had inveighed against unnecessary ceremonies and then acquiesced in the requirement of a priest and other witnesses. This, of course, is to miss the point that marriage is a contract and an important one in society, and thus needs to be witnessed. It is, in addition, a sacrament and has a role to play in the community of believers. Abuses could not be tolerated.

And these abuses had been noted early. In the Siete Partidas, Fourth Part, Title Three, it is stated: «Aman, e sospechan los omes, que las mas de las cosas que son fechas en encubierto que no son tan buenas, como las otras que se fazen paladinamente... cuando los fazen encubiertamente e sin testigos, de guisa que se non puedan prouar.» The change in the marriage form mandated by the Council of Trent was due to abuses noted by generations. The acquiescence even before Trent by Erasmus to a witnessed marriage must be seen as more than a conflict between spontaneous, free unions and unnecessary ceremonies.

The Council of Trent was over in January 1564, and in July of the same year Philip II issued a Real Cédula which was the «placet» or «pase regia» giving juridical force to the decrees of Trent¹². But the custom of clandestine marriages was too embedded in Spanish culture. Moralists and canonists are renowned for their championing of the individual's rights and, in the process, for their ability to make distinctions of great subtlety which at times approach the unreal. In Spain, while they ex pounded the discipline of Trent, they allowed the «desposorio» to supplant the proscribed clandestine marriage.

The «desposorios» were mutual promises of intent to marry. Las Siete Partidas recognized two types: «de presente» and «de futuro». The moralists declared the «desposorios de presente» to have greater effect if they were followed by sexual intercourse, for then they were considered to be a valid marriage. The «desposorios de futuro» obligated both parties to fulfill their promise so that neither was free to marry another person. The distinction, in the best Scholastic tradition, between «de presente» and a clandestine marriage is so tenuous that initially it seems to be nonexistent. The position was consistent with the thinking of both society, which considered marriage more in the sense of an alliance between two families than the culmination of romance, and the canonists, who considered the essence of the sacrament to be a mutual contract of each party giving itself to he or her for the purpose of intercourse ordered toward procreation. Given that the contracting parties effect the sacrament by their mutual promise and consummate the contract when they follow it by intercourse, the canonists were consistent in seeing the «desposorio» followed by intercourse as having the necessary elements to effect the sacrament.

The near-tragic love between Princess Antonomasia and Don Clavijo recounted by Countess Trifaldi fits the scheme of «desposorio de presente» followed by intercourse (2,38). Clavijo had entered her chamber «de bajo del título de verdadero esposo». When the Picar General, the competent judicial authority, investigates the case, Antonomasia corroborates the written evidence adduced of

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her promise, and since Clavijo had already claimed her as his wife, the Vicar Genera «sentenció en favor de don Clavijo, y se la entregó por su legítima esposa...» (2,39). No marriage ceremony is mentioned, because they were man and wife. The countess obviously knew her canon law.

Ordinarily, marriages are solemnized in a church before a priest and several witnesses. This is called marriage in facie ecclesiae. Or, as the inimitable dueña Doña Rodríguez put it to Don Quijote, «... nos casó en paz y en haz [faz] de la santa madre Iglesia católica romana...» (2,48). Before Trent, there were several categories of clandestine marriages, and the meaning of the term can signify the following: 1) a marriage with no other witnesses than the two contracting parties; 2) a marriage made in the presence of a witness or witnesses but not in facie ecclesiae; 3) a marriage contracted without the usual proclamation of banns, the «amonestaciones» or «proclamas», which must be announced on three preceding feast days (usually Sundays).

All three categories find their way into novelistic episodes of Cervantes. At times he is at pains to make clear that a marriage took place before Trent, at other times he leaves the episode undated. But he always carefully observes the canonical requirements. Secret arrangements, secret promises of marriage, and secret marriages offer greater intrigue and interest to both author and reader than an ordinary marriage.

An example is found at the end of La fuerza de la sangre, where the priest marries Leocadia and Rodolfo. The marriage belongs to the third group of clandestine marriages.

In La española inglesa Ricaredo and Isabela are a case of the «desposorio de futuro» with the consequent obligations. Thus, when Isabela is about to make profession in a religious order, Ricaredo appears and claims her as his own, a title which she recognizes. In Las dos doncellas there is a doubt whether there is a clandestine marriage between Rafael and Leonora, with a subsequent public celebration of what was already a marriage or merely a promise of marriage. Rodríguez-Arango Díaz is inclined to see it as a clandestine marriage later publicly solemnized (766-67).

The moralists considered hypothetical cases similar to that of Fernando and Dorotea in the Quijote. For example they investigate the case where a man feigns a promise of marriage in order to seduce a woman. If she surrenders to him, to what is he obligated? Fray Antonio de Córdoba puts it thus:

Thus Fernando, sincere or not, will be obligated either to marry Dorotea or to give her a dowry or its equivalent, whether she wishes to marry him or not. The excusing factor would be a great social difference between the two. Upon this, all moralists agree.

It would seem that Fernando has a way out of his promise to Dorotea, but Cervantes has strewn his way with circumstances which prevent his alleging differences in rank, even were he disposed to do so. Fernando as the second son of a duke, would not inherit the title. The title itself is one of the «títulos de

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grandeza» like duke, count, or marquis. Further, it is repeated constantly that Dorotea is of extremely rich parents.

Thus the difference of station is not too great, especially since the parents are coming to be considered caballeros. They could be come so by obtaining the ejecutoria de nobleza which they could receive in return for a substantial deposit in the royal treasury (Bustamante 312).

There could be no presumption that Dorotea «fingió ser engañada» since she had lectured Fernando about the possible negative effects of the marriage. And, as she recounts, she gave herself to him freely, attracted as much by his «gentileza» as by his tearful entreaties. But her surrender was conditioned upon his promise to be her husband. The promise was given, and she accepted it, and since they both had the intention of consummating their marriage, they were man and wife. Dorotea did have a witness, however, to her clandestine marriage. «Llamé a mi criada, para que en la tierra acompañase a los testigos del cielo» (160). Dorotea refers to herself as his wife. «... que soy tu verdadera y legítima esposa...» (216). This is the second type of clandestine marriage mentioned above. In any event, the difficulty is not with Dorotea but with Fernando.

What if Fernando was not serious in his promise? Azpilcueta put it: «... que si le prometió de casarse con ella, hora lo prometiese de veras, hora fingidamente con ánimo de la engañar, es obligado a complir lo que le prometió, ansí en el fuero de la conciencia como en el exterior, y mucho más si le jura....» A description that fits Fernando like a glove.

Sincere or not in his promise, Fernando is not free to enter into a marriage with Luscinda; he is, in fact, either already married or, if he had lied to Dorotea he is obligated to marry her. Despite the doubt the reader might have about the sincerity of Fernando in making his promise to Dorotea it does seem that Cardenio considered it to be a sincere promise for he mentions that Fernando «esperaba ocasión de descubrirse a su salvo, temoroso de lo que el Duque su padre haría cuando supiese su disparate» (1,24).

Luscinda tells Cardenio that she would take her life rather than live with Fernando as his wife, but her father, «llevado de la ventaja que él piensa que don Fernando nos hace», forces her to marry. The very fact that force is involved means that in the eyes of the church the marriage contract is null, since force is a dire impediment to a contract and to marriage as well.

Fernando's infatuation was, at the beginning, a sensual love. It is an example of emotion and concupiscence since, after satisfying his desire, he lost interest in seeing Dorotea. In the story of the intertwining affairs of Cardenio, Fernando, Dorotea, and Luscinda frequent mention is made of concupiscence. Cardenio in his account of the events mentions that Fernando had disappeared after enjoying Dorotea. «Sucedió, pues, que, como el amor en los mozos, por la mayor parte, no lo es, sino apetito, el cual, como tiene por último fin el deleite, en llegando a alcanzarle se acaba (y ha de volver atrás aquello que parecía amor, porque no puede pasar a delante del término que le puso naturaleza, el cual término no lo puso a lo que es verdadero amor), quiero decir que así como don Fernando gozó a la labradora, se le aplacaron sus deseos y se resfriaron sus ahincos...» (1,24).

Commenting on these words, Márquez Villanueva speaks of Cervantes's «desprecio del apetito.» Márquez suspects that the roots of this scorn are Neoplatonism and orthodoxy and affirms that Cervantes «no concede validez artística a ningún amor deshonesto» (63 64). This is surely to urge too much and to overlook Rinconete y Cortadillo, as well as El casamiento engañoso.

While concupiscence could lead to sin, it could also be exploited for worthy ends. In the scene of reconciliation, Dorotea throws herself at the feet of Fernando and declares both her love and her understanding that she is his lawful wife. The priest intervenes and tells Fernando that only death can separate

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Luscinda from Cardenio, and «... en los casos inremediables era suma cordura, forzándose y venciéndose a sí mismo, mostrar un generoso pecho... que pusiese los ojos ansímismo en la beldad de Dorotea...» (1,36). Beauty and virtue were able to make equal those of different stations in life. Finally the priest adds that «... cuando se cumplen las fuertes leyes del gusto, como en ello no intervenga pecado, no debe de ser culpado el que las sigue» (218) -an obvious reference to Fernando's weakness for, or pursuit of, women and his disposition to allow his appetites to rule him. Márquez has stated that the priest took little part in this reconciliation of Fernando and Dorotea «... sin que el Cura (de ideas como sabemos, bastante rígidas) que allí está presente haga más que compartir unas lágrimas enternecidas con los demás circunstantes» (68). It is difficult to take these words as objective commentary. But that aside, the priest is merely following the advice given to confessors, should they confront the same case. Since it would be difficult to oblige Fernando were he to deny his intention of marriage, the priest appeals to a mixture of idealism (generosity, self-conquest) and his attraction for women. Shrewd and not narrow minded, the priest sheds no tears.

The moralists were not so straight-laced as some have thought¹⁴. They have their principles and are of an Aristotelian logical cast of mind, but they are not against pleasure as such. In fact, in some cases they quite approve of it, since it is of divine origin. Azpilcueta permitted a good deal of liberty to engaged couples.

If one reads carefully the lines of this citation and considers the subdued, objective attitude of the author, it is difficult to think of such men as against pleasure or even trying to put difficulties in the way of any who, in their eyes, licitly indulged in it.

Cervantes and the moralists were aware of the initial fierce assault of the passions on the soul. These initial movements of passion are the movements of concupiscence, the movements of the sensual appetites toward fulfillment and satisfaction. These initial strings are so strong that they are unable to be resisted, only felt. Since there is no consent to these strings there is no guilt.

In La Gitanilla Andrés, accused of theft, suffers a blow from a soldier and instinctively throws himself on the man and buries his sword in the soldier's body. The authorities charge Andrés with the crime, but not Cervantes for no real punishment is meted out. Andrés, despite his killing the soldier, receives the reward of Preciosa in marriage. Killing in such circumstances is not a license given to the aristocracy but an instinctive reaction not under the control of Andrés.

Cervantes enunciated more comically else where that «los primeros movimientos no son en manos de los hombres» (1,30). Don Quijote, after the source of the horrendous nocturnal noises is discovered to come from fulling mills, drubs Sancho for mocking him. Quijote exculpates himself with the observation, «perdona lo pasado, pues eres discreto y sabes que los primeros movimientos no son en mano del hombre...» (1,20). Later Sancho will try and persuade Don Quijote to marry Princess Micomicona, averring that he had never seen Dulcinea, again provoking his anger and receiving the apology that «los primeros movimientos no son en manos de los hombres» (1,30).

Passion and pleasure are directed toward a good end by Cervantes in Las dos doncellas. Marco Antonio, like Fernando, used sighs, tears, and finally the promise to wed Teodosia as a means of conquering her. The difference is that Marco Antonio was truly in love with Teodosia, and he considered himself to be her lawful husband. «Lo que con Teodosia me pasó, fue alcanzar el fruto que ella pudo darme, y yo quise que me diese, con fe y seguro de ser su esposo, como lo soy» (242). Later Teodosia suffers an attack of jealousy which clouds her judgment and self-control, but her love for Marco Antonio prevails and passion is again subject to reason. Marco Antonio and

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Teodosia were also considered to be married by virtue of a binding promise of marriage followed by intercourse.

Medina asks whether free will can coexist with passion and gives two possibilities. First, there is the case where passion completely absorbs or destroys free will, as in the first movements of vehement passion, or the case of the insane and others deprived of free will. In most cases, however, free will co-exists along with passion. Cardenio comes to mind as an example of one intermittently insane.

Implicit in the above is the fact that passion can disturb man's faculties, and the relation ship is explored further in another section of the treatise. Strong emotion is rarely under control in the first instant. Fear is difficult to control and, according to Don Quijote, it has an effect upon the physical organism. About to attack flocks of sheep, despite Sancho's pleas, he informs Sancho that his senses play him false when he sees sheep and not armies in battle array. «El miedo que tienes -dijo don Quijote- te hace, Sancho, que ni veas ni oyas a derechas; porque uno de los efectos del miedo es turbar los sentidos y hacer que las cosas no parezcan lo que son...» (1, 18). Intense emotion can cloud not only the senses but also the intellect. Of all emotions love is perhaps the most obvious, and Quijote observes that «... el amor y la afición con facilidad ciegan los ojos del entendimiento...» (2, 19). Medina also treats this phenomenon of a strong passion clouding the intellect when he discusses how madmen are bereft of liberty.

The basic Scholastic psychological schema is presented here. The exterior corporeal five senses supply information to the common sense, an interior sense which combines the information and forms an image, the phantasm, upon which the agent intellect will work and abstract the form or essence and thus understand. Cervantes, if he does not explain this relationship as extensively as Medina, at least does not depart from him in his idea that passion affects sensory perception, judgment, and free will.

The interest of the moralist and the jurist in madness and insanity is due to the fact that both must assess guilt. If either free will or judgment is impaired when a human being acts there can be a question of mitigated guilt or no guilt at all. Medina would not classify Don Quijote as a madman or even as a loco or crazy man; he would consider Quijote capable of guilt and merit, since he can act freely.

Cervantes did not follow the moralists only in their mutual interest in the less noble aspects of human behavior. Where vice and temptation abound there is the possibility of virtue. One of the themes which runs through El amante liberal, La gitanilla, and La ilustre fregona is the relationship of chastity to love. Preciosa and Leonisa have in common a certain self-confidence and pride. Both see an intimate connection between their self-worth and their chastity, virginity being the symbol of the virtue. Preciosa tells Cristinica, «... que la mujer que se determina ser honrada, entre un ejército de soldados lo puede ser» (11). Leonisa rejects all mention of love from Ricardo while both are in captivity, lest he conclude that her worth is less for lack of freedom, «... porque no quiero que piense que es de tan pocos quilates mi valor que ha de hacer con él la cautividad lo que la libertad no pudo...» (67). Virtue for both women consists in an exercise of the will and is positive, not the mere absence of sin. Innocence would

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not allow him to be deceived as was Dorotea.

Preciosa is explicit: virginity, while physical, is symbolic of something more spiritual. «Una sola joya tengo, que la estimo en más de la vida, que es la de mi entereza y virginidad, y no la tengo de vender a precio de promesas ni dádivas, porque, en fin, será vendida... Flores la de la virginidad... no la habeis de llevar sino atada con las ligaduras y lazos de matrimonio» (16). The insistence upon virginity was in accord with Catholic teaching, which considered virginity to be a special virtue, a species under the genus of chastity¹⁵.

Preciosa is, of course, more worldly-wise than Leonisa and quite aware of the nature of infatuation, as opposed to love. She knows that violent urges of passion and appetite seek only sensual satisfaction and hold the will in subjugation until one wakes in an «infierno de pesadumbres» (16). These «ímpetus amorosos corren a rienda suelta hasta que encuentran con la razón o el desengaño,» and since they hold the will in thrall, they are necessary, instinctive movements and stirrings, not free. Preciosa rejects the idea that love can exist where there is no freedom. She states that although the gypsies have handed her over to Andrés, it is her will which dictates all arrangements and understandings¹⁶. Leonisa, too, forbade Ricardo to make any mention of his pretensions as long as both were not completely free, thus associating the idea of true love with freedom.

The necessity of freedom for love is very Aristotelian and is the main theme of the Grisóstomo and Marcela episode where the theory of love is clearly Aristotelian as it is in La Gitanilla, El amante liberal, and La ilustre fregona. Otis Green covered the at tempt to harmonize Neoplatonic thought with Aristotelianism (307-30)¹⁷. Cervantes did not always favor the Aristotelian theory; in La española inglesa, for example, he favors a more Neoplatonic approach. In passing, it is interesting to note that several moralists did harmonize both theories, as far as the two schools admit of harmonization.

The philosophical and theological controversies with the Lutherans and Calvinists, along with the intramural controversies between the Molinists and the Bañists, focused on free will. The idea was widespread and certainly not new that passions or the concupiscible appetites, while not evil, are not free (i.e., they are instinctive) and have to be governed by intellect and will. Leonisa is at tracted to Cornelio because he is handsome, as Andrés is smitten by Preciosa because she is beautiful, but in neither case is it a question of love. After some time Andrés and Preciosa through constant conversation and dealings, come to know each other better, and she ad mires his courtesy and good judgment and bit by bit comes to love him. For his part, Andrés purified his love and admires more than beauty in Preciosa. Granted that this description of the love process can be found in one form or another in León Hebreo or Cristóbal Fonseca, whom Cervantes mentions as authorities in his prologue to the Quijote.

The amorous experience portrayed in some of the Novelas ejemplares can be found in a more schematic form in those moralists who discuss the nature of love. La Galatea, and La española inglesa are novelistic treatises based on Neoplatonic concepts. La Gitanilla and El amante liberal emphasize conduct rather than the nature of love. Ethos and praxis characterize them, and they are closer to the moralists' doctrine than to León Hebreo. The same to a less degree, hold true for La ilustre fregona.

It is unlikely that one reading of any one particular author would suffice to give Cervantes all of his ideas about love. His detailed knowledge of other doctrines of the moralists indicate that he read many of them and most probably read what they had written on the subject of love as well. The basic outline of the amorous process in his novels follows the outline of a moralist such as Bartolomé de Medina in his treatise on love.

The process begins with the attraction exercised by physical appearance. Attracted to Preciosa's beauty, Andrés erroneously as suming that his emotional turmoil is love, seeks to be loved in return. There must be a stage of purification wherein the initial at traction, sensual in nature, is raised to a higher level. Ricardo shows at the end of El amante liberal that he has achieved this higher plane when he seeks to do the will of Leonisa and not follow his own inclinations. This is the definition of amor amicitiae. Tomás in La ilustre fregona tells Lope that his love for Costanza, which began with his contemplation of her physical beauty, is already on a higher plane¹⁸. Of the three, Ricardo achieves the highest level, for he seeks nothing for himself.

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All three protagonists begin experiencing an attraction to feminine beauty, and they soon desire the reward of requited love. Thus, they point up the classic distinction between amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae. The three desire a good for themselves, a return of the love which each shows toward beloved. Ricardo alone finishes by desiring for Leonisa the good which he presumes her to desire, Cornelio.

Medina traces a similar process (369). The viewer of beauty is smitten and finds it difficult to rid himself of his emotion. He quotes Theophrastus and other authorities but finds their descriptions lacking in Scholastic accuracy. Love, for him, is a desire of the soul which quickly enters and slowly leaves. This sudden inclination is sometimes a desire to possess and enjoy the beautiful. It is an inclination and an enjoyment of that which pleases and de fights. This is the amor concupiscentiae which engenders hope of eventual possession.

Tomás, enamored of Costanza, attributes the causes of his love to «destino,» which is unknowable, and to «elección con claro discurso» (202). The initial impulse is under the rule of reason and is a matter of deliberate choice. The instinctive reaction to sensory information is not a matter of choice as in the attraction to the beautiful. But once inclinations and appetites are under the control of reason, one must accept or reject these inclinations (Medina 368-69). Cervantes takes pains to show the antagonists of his heroes and heroines as characters whose passions and appetites are not completely under the control of reason, who satisfy these appetites choosing that which is morally reprehensible. Preciosa and Andrés, for example, have as antagonists both the gypsy tribe with its crude, licentious understanding of love and marriage, and la Carducha, led by sensuality until it turns to hate. Leonisa faces the Turks and their unbridled passions, illustrated by their attraction to «dos muchachos hermosísimos» an attraction which for Cervantes is unnatural. Costanza is opposed to the «gallegas»,, the maids who laid siege to Avendaño.

The heroines, Preciosa and Leonisa, do not fall in love immediately. Preciosa, initially well disposed toward Andrés, later makes a deliberate choice; Leonisa, initially poorly disposed toward Ricardo, later comes to appreciate his finer qualities and begins to love him. But there are other characters who represent the danger of following the passions and not subjecting them to reason. Two extreme cases are Claudia Jerónima, who in a fit of jealousy kills her lover, and Grisóstomo, who in despair kills himself. Both fail to grasp reality and misconstrue it. Claudia is tempestuous by nature and testifies to being subject to «atropellados deseos» (2, 60). Vicente had promised to be her husband, and when she heard that he was to marry another, she shot him before he could speak a word to deny the false rumor. In her case, love has suddenly turned to hatred.

The novelist attempts to describe such cases with verisimilitude; the moralist seeks to understand how such events are possible and the answer, based on Aristotelian Thomistic psychology, will perhaps satisfy few, but the moralists did attempt an explanation. Love, a generic term, is the motion of any appetite, form, entelechy (Medina 370). When dealing with the tendency of an appetite, it is sensual love, amor sensitivus; when dealing with will or intellect seeking its proper object, it is amor intellectualis. While love is a certain passion of the soul, it is not the only motive or cause of action in man, who will act out of love or some other passion or out of ignorance. These movements are partly intellectual and partly sensual, and they can affect the judgment which in turn mistakes its real good, which is truth, the object of the intellect (201). A simple example is the desire to possess: a thief desires gold, anyone's gold. Since his passion is not controlled by reason, he sees gold as a good for himself, but he considers himself only a subject of desires to be fulfilled and this narrow view is to mistake the truth. He is also a social being and his nature requires that he live in harmony with others to achieve his true good. He fails to view his human nature and all its relationships. He is in error and chooses a false good for he has a narrow view of his own nature.

The relationship of hate and love also intrigued the moralists. In general they called the movement of any faculty spiritual or sensitive toward the object of its desire love; they tended to see hate being born from love. One who kills hates and a suicide such as Grisóstomo is a case of desperation arising out of sensual love which causes an error of judgment as to what his true good really is. He embraced the partial good, death, since it relieved him of his suffering, and insofar as it

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brought relief, was a good (Medina 372). This, however unsatisfying for the modern reader, is at least a realistic appraisal of the passons and recognition that love can be the cause of death as well as of euphoria.

Cervantes is punctilious in observing and having his characters observe other exigencies of canon law. Often there are references to the pronouncements of the banns of marriage or «amonestaciones» as in El casamiento engañoso, where the reading of the banns is foreshortened to three consecutive days (278). The fact that they were not announced on three consecutive Sundays as prescribed made the discovery of Estefania's deception and her identity much less likely. In La ilustre fregona a dispensation is sought from the impediment of affinity, i.e., kinship, for the marriage of two cousins (221). Elsewhere I have dealt with this preoccupation of Cervantes in the story of the Captive¹⁹. The Captive, it will be remembered, has not married Zoraida, since she is not baptized, even though she might well be described as a catechumen. She could not be baptized in Algiers, since there were no parishes nor parish priests, both necessary for solemn reception of the sacrament according to the canonists. An exception would have been made if she were in danger of death, which is not the case. Thus, the Captive and his fiancée wait until they arrive at the parish of the Captive. Again, Cervantes follows the prescriptions of both canonists and moralists, who prescribe the conditions for the reception of the sacraments. The marriage of a baptized Catholic to an infidel was invalid²⁰.

The story of the Captive brings much autobiographical material from Cervantes's own captivity. And the moralists had something to say about the frequent occurrence of Christians held in captivity by Moslems. Discussing the morality of slaves fleeing their masters or of helping slaves escape when captive in Islamic lands, Azpilcueta makes a few interesting distinctions. The matter is more complicated than one might imagine. Escape is allowed only if the slave is a Christian who has been unjustly taken. If he is captive as the result of a «just war», he must wait for ransom unless there is an attempt to convert him; then he is justified in escaping in order to protect a good of a higher order, his Christian faith²¹. The key phrase, «guerra justa,» since it justifies flight, would undoubtedly be subject to many and differing interpretations. The Captive, Pérez de Viedma, had no qualms about escaping even though a prisoner of war, nor, of course, did Cervantes, who had been unjustly captured.

In the same section Azpilcueta asks about those who help prisoners to flee, first those imprisoned for debt and then common criminals. When Don Quijote decides to liberate the galley salves, he may well be following not only his conscience but also the well known authority of Doctor Navarrus. In the Galatea we encounter Timbrio, who seems to have walked out of a moralist's case book (2,647-650). He was accused and sentenced for a crime he did not commit. Silerio finds him in the province of Barcelona, accused of being a «salteador/bandolero» and aids him to escape, is wounded, jailed in turn, and sentenced to die. Timbrio, meanwhile, has taken sanctuary in a church, and offers to take Silerio's place but is dissuaded from doing so by priests. Silerio is in jail when the town is attacked by Turks on a raiding expedition and is able to escape. All of this is perfectly in tune with Azpilcueta's doctrine on escape.

The many editions of the works of the canonists casuists and moralists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries testify to their large reading public, if not their popularity. Given the close relationship between moral theology and canon law and the fact that many a Spanish lawyer of those years held his degree in utroque jure, these moral

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treatises served as texts for more than students of theology. Their works were known by the educated laity as well. Consider the familiarity Cervantes shows with the phraseology of Canon Law when he cites the formulistic beginning of a canon from Gratian's Decretals which dealt with laying violent hands on a cleric (2,19). It is unlikely that he had the text before his eyes when he wrote those words. Consider also how the words seem to come unbidden to the narrator when he mentions that Sancho, not invited to dine by Don Juan and Don Jerónimo as was his master, stayed behind: « ... quedóse Sancho con la olla con mero mixto imperio» (2,59). «Mero y mixto imperio» are subtle disjunctive concepts dealing with jurisdiction. Cervantes changes the meaning of «mero», and the resultant play on words would occur only to one versed in distinctions of law.

The similarities, many and striking, between the episodes in Cervantes and the «casos» of only the few moralists (who tended to repeat one another) presented here argue that Cervantes did employ the moralists as a resource. This is consonant with the wide intellectual interests of Cervantes and his eclectic approach to religious themes. But it also suggests that he had a much wider and more formal intellectual formation than has been customarily attributed to him. This in turn makes one wonder where and when he might have acquired this familiarity with both law and moral theology.

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Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 73, Number 4, December 1990