Don Quixote and Catholicism by Michael McGrath;

Author:Michael McGrath;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The Anthropological Vision of Don Quixote

Among the many important changes enacted by the Council of Trent was its illumination of a Catholic Christian anthropological view of the human person. This vision does not consist of empirical studies but rather a Christocentric understanding of humanity in relation to God, as the Creator, and what He reveals Man and Woman to be. The Book of Genesis, for example, reveals that God created humanity in His image and likeness. In its treatment of Original Sin, the Council of Trent understood Adam to be a prototype of humanity whose disobedience in the Garden of Eden supersedes his individualism and illustrates concupiscence.1 Church tradition has upheld the belief that rationality and volition are two traits of humanity that make it most like God, as these characteristics endow humanity with a sense of morality. As such, humanity also possesses inherent dignity, the core and catalyst of which is conscience. Observable behavior can inform an anthropological study of humanity, but only by focusing on its relationship with God can a deeper and more meaningful vision be developed. In this chapter, I examine Cervantes’s vision of humanity vis-à-vis an anthropological reading of Don Quixote based on how the knight’s adventures may be interpreted according to three principles of Catholic social teaching: 1) the inviolable dignity of every human person; 2) the essential centrality of community; and 3) the significance of human action (Sachs 9).2

The foundation of the Renaissance Church’s belief in the inviolable dignity of every person is the imago Dei, the theological doctrine that God created human beings in His likeness and image.3 The degree to which the imago Dei can be a catalyst of the soul’s transformation is proportionate to the disposition of the intellect, i.e., knowledge of the self and of God. Devotional practices such as Ignatian contemplation and Erasmus’s “philosophy of Christ” cultivated a deeper and more personal relationship with God. The layered nuances of Christianity during Cervantes’s lifetime, as illustrated by the doctrine of the imago Dei, make it problematic to label a person definitively as Erasmian or anti-Erasmian, especially an author like Cervantes, whose engagement with Catholicism’s multivalent tradition is deep-rooted in Don Quixote.

Lest we elevate Don Quixote as a paragon of charity and good will, the knight’s desire to right the wrongs in the world is a consequence of his esthetic admiration for the books of chivalry, and not, as Allen writes, an ethical consideration (Don Quixote 97). Nevertheless, Don Quixote, in pursuit of fame as the heroes from his books of chivalry, seeks to uphold the ideals of social justice and the dignity of the human person like the knights from his books of chivalry, who achieve their fame by promoting the common good when, for example, they go to the aid of a king or queen whose kingdom is under attack or free someone who is imprisoned unjustly. The moral value of the knight’s actions is questionable, however, because the ends are personal fame. Dominican friar Ambrosius Catharinus (1484–1553), while addressing the Council of Trent, reiterated St.

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