Was Miguel de Cervantes a Closet Theologian?

“I now repeat,” replied Don Quixote, “what I have said many times before, that the majority of people in this world believe that knights-errant have never existed, and I hold that unless Heaven miraculously convinces them of the truth—that there were and that there are—any labor that I may undertake for that purpose must be in vain, as experience has so often shown me. So, I shall not stop now to deliver you from the error that you hold in common with the multitude. What I intend to do is pray to Heaven to deliver you from it and to make you see how beneficial and necessary knights-errant were to the world in past ages and how useful they would be today if they were in fashion. But now the sins of mankind—sloth, idleness, gluttony, and luxury—are triumphant.”

-Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote II.18

It comes as no surprise to anyone to hear that Cervantes’ masterful Don Quixote is a multi-layered work. At once a parody of chivalrous romances and a critique of the emerging bourgeois world, Don Quixote is so stratified as to provoke wonder. However, to my own very limited knowledge, no-one has so far pointed out the parallels between the Manchegan knight’s delusions and the doctrines of the Calvinistic churches—which, by 1615, were well known, even in Spain.

Consider the passage above, with its obvious similarities to Calvin’s observations on total depravity and irresistible grace. For Calvin, there could be no reception of the Gospel without a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. This doctrine was propounded in marked contrast to the Thomistic model of naturally available knowledge of God. Interestingly, in context the above statement of Don Quixote serves as evidence of his insanity. As Don Lorenzo observes after having heard this comment, “[H]e is a gallant madman.” Could it be that one aspect of Don Quixote is an assessment of early Calvinism? I should like to think so, and I suspect that no-one will bother to stop me.

Obviously Cervantes’ greatest novel is a fascinating work; how much more intricate does it become, though, if a satire of Calvinism is thrown in gratis? Consider, for example, that the Calvinists posited presbyterianism as the original Christianity, a hypothesis which many would consider akin to Don Quixote’s insistent belief in the literal existence of the knights-errant. Additionally, there is the devotion of Don Quixote to his books of chivalry: books which he accepts at face value, books which he considers imbued with an absolute authority which trumps all others.

And then there is the episode of the windmills. Ah, how tantalizing it is to imagine a seventeenth-century Roman Catholic author lampooning Calvinism with this scene! But the most touching aspect of the whole portrayal is the wistfulness with which Cervantes regards his knight’s illusions.