Chapter Nine

The Politics of Salvation in El Greco's Escorial Paintings and Cervantes's

LaNumancia

E. C. Graf

Wherein I' ll catch the conscience of the King. -Shakespeare, Hamlet (2.2.605)

El Greco's earliest paintings in Spain and Cervantes's early drama La Nu­mancia are complex, anxious meditations on the theological and political status of Philip II. Each posits Clu·ist as a problematic exemplar for ea1thy kings. El Greco's pmtrait of Philip II-known as the Allegory of the Holy League ( ca.1579) (figure 9.1 )-depicts the awe of the leaders of Spain, Rome, and Venice upon their victory at the Battle of Lepanto (1571 ). Never­theless, with the flames of a great hellmouth burning the carpet at Philip II's heels, the painter has clearly placed the monarch in a predicament. Cer­vantes's La Numancia ( ca.15 80) displays a similar nexus of moral and politi­cal tension via a series of sacrificial episodes that ends with the Roman general Scipio caught between salvation and damnation. Scipio was one of the era's princely archetypes, so the play's finale, in which he pleads for glory beneath a tower from which the last Numantian leaps to his death, metonymically represents Philip II as both cause and witness of a national sacrifice. On one hand, keeping in mind political philosophy, Neoplatonic ontology, and the newly professionalized status of early modern painters allows us to reinterpret the symbols, structures, and colors of El Greco's Allegory and three other works: The Healing of the Blind Man (ca. 1577-1578), The Disrobing of Christ (1577-1579), and The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice (1 580- 1583) (figure 9.2). On the other hand, attending to the religious elements of Cervantes's La Numancia allows us to understand it as

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a lesson about the tragic sacrifice of an innocent boy: a Christian warning against the abuse of power. Events from the second half of the sixteenth century can explain the obsession with the princely soul in these contempora­neous works. Nevertheless, centered as they are on iconic images of the kneeling prince, the best way to envision how they were actually meant to function is as schematic projections of a kind of moral penance as old as the Book of Jonah.

Studies ofEl Greco have paid insufficient attention to the political impli­cations of his paintings, especially those executed upon his arrival in Spain around 1576. 1 Critics focus on style, accept without comment his oeuvre ' s religiosity, and interpret his tensions with patrons in exclusively aesthetic terms: his elongated figures balk at Spanish naturalism or his cluttered pro­grams buck Tridentine decorum. Studies of Cervantes have yet to fully take into account the Pauline sequence of violence, vision, and conversion that structures much of his work. 2 This is because Cervantes routinely secularizes his religious allusions; 3 the materialist role assigned to him in literary history fmther forecloses theological considerations. 4 At first glance, even an early play like La Numancia exhibits little religious content. The impression given by Cervantes is the opposite ofEl Greco: the inventor of the modern novel­earthly, ironical, complex-is like today's academic; the Cretan hagiogra­pher- celestial, serious, primitive-remains a fanatic. But the techniques and pmposes of religious and secular works from the Spanish Renaissance are mutually informative. El Greco ' s hagiographies have political implica­tions; Cervantes's perspectivism has theological origins. 5

El Greco and Cervantes spent significant intervals in cities brimming with political theorizing: Venice, Rome, Toledo, Madrid. El Greco's allusion to Constantine-a profoundly transitional figme for Eusebius, Augustine, and imperial and papal polemicists tlu·oughout the medieval and Renaissance periods-and Cervantes's use of Scipio--a fundamental exemplar for Cice­ro, Augustine, Petrarch, Erasmus, Machiavelli, and several generations of Spanish thinkers-make the Allegory and La Numancia political meditations of the first order. As such, they reflect concern over the expansion of the Habsburg Empire, fast approaching a kind of global apotheosis. Between the abdication of Charles V in 1556 and El Greco's completion of the Saint Maurice in 1583, Philip II, relying heavily on Spanish troops, subjected the Low Countries to the iron-fisted rule of the Duke of Alba, crushed the Moris­co uprising near Granada, scattered Turkish naval power in the Mediterra­nean, took the last steps toward dominating America in the Yucatan and Chile, established an outpost at Manila in the Philippines, and annexed the entire Portuguese Empire from Brazil to Nagasaki. El Greco's and Cer­vantes's early works accord well with the anxious insistence by late theologi­cal humanists, such as Erasmus, More, Vives, Ribadeneira, and Quevedo, that kings should imitate Christ above all the other exemplars; but they

The Politics of Salvation 179

Figure 9.1. El Greco. Allegory of the Holy League. Real Monasterio del Escorial Madrid. Source: The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY '

cannot be held apart from the harsh warnings by passionate, regicidal Monar­chomachs, such as Beze, Mornay, Mariana, and Bellarmine, of grave conse­quences if they do not. 6

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Figure 9.2. El Greco. The Martyrdom of St. Maurice. Real Monasterio del Escori· al, Madrid. Source: The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

The Politics of Salvation

EL GRECO'S PERSPECTIVISM: LINES OF SIGHT, RED ROBES, AND SWORDPLAY

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To see how El Greco's Allegory functions theologically and politically in conjunction with The Healing of the Blind, The Disrobing, and the Saint Maurice, it is important to grasp his dual Neoplatonic foundations. 7 Original­ly from Crete, El Greco moved to Venice and adapted his icon painting to Italian art. As Florensky notes, the icon painter in the Greek Orthodox world was always both philosopher-"philosophizing with his brush"-and theolo­gian- "what the words of the sermon are for the ear, so the icons are for the eye."S The goal: atiiculate Christian ontology through a graphic fusion of Plato and Paul, a kind of salvific intersection between the Cave Allegory in book seven of The Republic and the conversion of Saul in Acts 6.8-9.22. In each tradition the key metaphors are vision and light: in Plato, a vision of the metaphysical light of knowledge emanating from beyond the darkness of this-world ignorance; in Paul, a vision of the divine light of heaven revealing Clu·ist' s truth as the way to transcend violence. 9 This syncretic philosophy also underwrote El Greco's training among the colorists and mannerists of Italy. The late fifteenth-century burst of Neoplatonic thought in cities like Florence, Venice, and Rome owed to Byzantines like Pletho, who, fleeing the Turkish offensive, brought their ideas west. Inspired by Pletho, Ficino­whose major legacy is his Theologia platonica [Platonic Theology ]-profes­sionalized humanist scholarship at Florence. Vasari undetiook a remarkably similar project with respect to painting in 1560-80, precisely when El Greco was in Venice and Rome before leaving for Spain. Vasari's academic reor­ientation of the profession emphasized ati as an abstract and theoretical en­terprise. 10

El Greco's clem·est statement of the philosophical sophistication of his art is The Healing of the Blind series (ca. 1567- 1578). In all three versions, Christ performs a highly symbolic miracle (Mark 8.22-26) while Plato ges­ticulates in amazement to the right, and all this in the context of a meditation on Renaissance painting's major teclmical advance-Donatello and Masac­cio's achievement of depth and perspective via the vanishing point. In accord with humanism's teleological fusion of Platonism and Christianity, whereby Christian piety is seen as the culmination of ancient philosophy, The Healing of the Blind echoes knowledge-as-vision in The Republic and anticipates saintliness-as-vision in Acts and Ephesians. Politics appear in the Parma version, which situates the Baths of Diocletian at its vanishing point. 11 Built in memory of Diocletian by his ally Maximian, the monument recalls their slaughter of Christians during AD 284-305. Proclaimed semi-divine rulers (Augusti) by the Roman army, these tyrants' attempt to restore pagan tradi­tions exemplifies the depravity of classical Caesarism. Inevitable here is also an allusion to Constantine, who, after his vision of the Cross before the Battle

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of the Milvian Bridge, ended the Diocletianic Persecution by mandating religious tolerance via the Edict of Milan in AD 313. The meaning of the Parma version of The Healing of the Blind, then, evolves out of the political and moral statements intrinsic to the reference to Diocletian as the vanishing context of Christ's ew-e for human blindness. This helps us understand the philosophical implications of all three paintings: Does the viewer grasp the Christian perspective? Is he cured of his own violent capacity for pagan blindness? Is he an enlightened Christian like Paul/Constantine or still an ignorant brute like Saul/Diocletian?

This brings us to the relation between The Healing of the Blind and the Allegory. Above all each draws attention to the lines of sight of central figw-es contextualized by Pauline contrasts between Diocletian and Constan­tine. The Allegory itself is an amalgam of themes found in three important precw-sor paintings: the Emperor's conversion before the Battle of the Mil­vian Bridge (AD 312) in Raphael and Romano 's The Apparition of the Cross to Constantine (1519- 1525); the dragon's menacing mouth in Titian's Saint Margaret (ca. 1565-1570); the tripartite universe capped by a celestial hier­archy in the Allegory of the Christian Knight on the front panel of the Mod­ena Triptych (ca. 1567), attributed to El Greco himself. 12 These elements are then arranged as per Philippians 2. 10: ut in nomine Iesu omne genujlectatur caelestium et terrestrium et infernorum [that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the emih]. 13 Blunt's 1939 study revealed .the Allegory's pmirayal of the members of the Holy League victorious at Lepanto: counterclockwise, the red-gloved Pope Pius V with a golden cope, Don Juan of Austria as a classical soldier holding a black sword, and the ermine-cloaked Doge of Venice in the foreground. 14 On its sw-face, then, the Allegory celebrates the crusading imperialism of Habsbw-g Spain. The hellmouth is like the Islamic crescent threatening to engulf the Mediterranean in a pincer action from Vienna to Granada, and like Saint Margaret, Philip II will need a sword to fight his way out. But this besieged program means that, unlike Constantine, Philip II gazes diagonally at Don Juan of Austria's sword instead of up at the IRS insignia commanding the attention of nearly everyone else. 15 This contrast interrogates Habsbw-g im­perialism. Fmihermore, whereas Philip II's black attire links him to the in­strument of war at which he stares, the red attire of the attending clergy gradually draws a viewer's eye toward the red-robed figw-e gesticulating wildly toward the sky in the background just above its pommel. Is Philip II really analogous to Constantine? Can any militant leader truly visualize the significance of Christ? The blood-red brilliance of The Disrobing, which El Greco executed simultaneously for the vestry of the Cathedral of Toledo, unveils dissent: sacerdotium must reorient regnum away from the sword of Caesarism toward the example of Christ.

The Politics of Salvation 183

Keeping in mind the sword's ambivalence in the Allegory, we turn to the Saint Maurice. This massive composition represents the moment in El Gre­co's career when he came most close to gaining royal patronage. It was destined for a chapel in Philip Il's palatial monastery at El Escorial, where it still resides today along with the Allegory. But Philip II would never contract El Greco again. As Sigi.ienza, the first historian of the Escorial, reports, the Saint Maurice "no le content6 a S.M." [did not please His Majesty].16 This rejection has long puzzled ati historians. Reasons given include: the anach­ronistic pmiraits of Spaniards violated the decorum of an altarpiece; the proportions of the painting were not those specified for the chapel; or the colors or elongated figures offended the monarch's conservative tastes. Scholars have failed to grasp the degree to which the Saint Maurice simulta­neously criticizes Philip II's policies in Northern Europe and Southern Spain. To begin with, the painting leverages the same Diocletianic Persecution al­luded to in The Healing of the Blind and the Allegory. This time, however, El Greco turns ambivalence into something more subversive. According to leg­end, Maurice was the leader of the The ban Legion that refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods and so was decimated by the Roman cavalry: "The soldiers of Christ were therefore surrounded by the soldiers of the devil, struck down by murderous hands, trampled by horses' hooves, and consecrated to Clu·ist as his precious martyrs." 17 His status as a victim of imperial monarchy long made Maurice a naturally dissenting figure against the militarism of the Holy Roman Empire. 18 But El Greco's manipulations of anaclu·onism and symbol­ic detail take patiicularly harsh aim at his latest patron.

Philip II commissioned the Saint Maurice in honor of his ajly Emanuele Filibetio, the Duke of Savoy, victor at the Battle of Saint Quentin. 19 Six­teenth-century figures accompany the legion at different stages of its decima­tion in the foreground, middle ground, and background, referencing the Spanish occupation of territories in Holland, Belgium, and northern France. 20 With Filiberto in the foreground is Alessandro Farnese, Prince of Parma and Governor of the Low Countries; in the middle ground is Don Juan of Austria, who died as Regent in 1578. In the background a damning twist echoes the monument to Diocletian in the depths of the Healing of the Blind: El Greco has placed the Duke of Alba on horseback next to the legion being rounded up for slaughter. Spaniards, then, especially the Duke of Alba-already infa­mous for his brutal repr~ssion of Protestant rebels-are shown behaving like the Roman cavalry decimating Christian matiyrs. But the most subversive aspects of the Saint Maurice are its swords, which recall the main symbol of the Allegory. In the far right foreground holding a giant red banner-the color linking the Allegory and The Disrobing- the figure identified as Saint Exuperius displays a sheathed Arabic sword modeled after that of Boabdil the last Sultan of Granada. 21 This Arabic sword is again prominently dis~ played in the middle ground, where it contrasts with the Spanish rapier raised

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overhead by a pagan threatening the Christian legionnaires with a back­handed stroke. Thus, in symbolic terms the painting again figures Spaniards as agents of the Diocletianic persecution, but instead of Nmihern European Protestants opposite the Duke of Alba, the Theban Legion is now clearly identified with the victims of the theater of war in Southern Spain-the Moriscos. Descendants of the Moors who chose to conveti to Christianity rather than face expulsion by the Catholic Kings, the Moriscos revolted around Christmas 1568. The Alpujarras War, which lasted into the summer of 1570, has been described by Kamen as "the most brutal war to be fought on European soil during that century." 22 Domenikos Theotok6polous under­stood the covert potential of "Maurice"-from the Greek mauros, meaning "Moor." He imposed his own iconography on this saint to signal what he considered the moral and political contradiction of the day. 23

Other facts support this interpretation. First, we know El Greco appeared before the Toledo Inquisition in 1582 as a translator for an Athenian Greek accused of being a crypto-Muslim. 24 This is precisely during his second year working on the Saint Maurice. The accused was absolved, but the painting reveals the philosophical artist-turned-translator reacting strongly to the para­noid authoritarianism of his adopted country. This also helps explain the bitter back-and-forth between Philip II and El Greco over its cost and its deadline for completion. 25 The replacement piece, however, is the best proof we have that El Greco intended to challenge more than just his patron's aesthetic sensibilities. Cincinnato's Saint Maurice (1583-1584) leaves the general hagiographical critique of military aggression against Christians un­touched, but the contemporary figures alluding to the Habsburg presence in the Low Countries are elided. More importantly, the symbolic play between the sheathed Moorish blades and the raised Spanish rapier is replaced by a single Roman double-bladed gladius. Cincinnato concluded from El Greco's experience that it was not his place to judge his royal patron.

The Healing of the Blind, the Allegory, The Disrobing, and the Saint Maurice are a constellation of paintings that question the moral limits of Habsburg authority. Indeed, they are a kind of iconographic sequence that functions according to its own intetiextual visual logic. 26 The Healing of the Blind series establishes a Neoplatonic understanding of Christian teleology, in one case even situating the Diocletianic Persecution at its vanishing point. The Allegory literally holds Philip Il's feet to the fire of a hellmouth, ques­tioning his imperialist policy by contrasting his earthly military focus with the skyward gaze of Constantine. The Disrobing fmiher challenges said poli­cy through an anachronistic substitution of roles, making Spaniards the new minions of Pilate and Caesar who carry out the Crucifixion. Finally, the metaphorical swordplay of Saint Maurice specifies the Moriscos of Southern Spain as the victims whose repression most undercuts Eusebian triumphal ism with Augustinian doubt.

The Politics of Salvation 185

LA NUMANCIA: ADVICE TO HABSBURGS AND SACRIFICIAL THEORY

Criticism of Cervantes's La Numancia tends to identify the Numantians with victims of the imperialistic expansion of the Spanish nation state. The Roman siege of Iberian Celts elicits parallels with sixteenth-century events: Philip II's annexation of Potiugal; 27 the Duke of Alba's aggressive actions in the Low Countries; 28 the conquest of the Americas; 29 the defeat of the Moris­cos;30 the Inquisition's persecution of the descendants of converted Jews, known as conversos. 31 This last interpretation is particularly compelling due to parallels between the self-destruction of the Numantians and the Jewish suicide at the Masada. 32 I would add that the details of the heroic examples of Jewish nationalism in the books of Maccabees are strikingly similar to the collective sacrifice Cervantes potirays in La Numancia, lending fmiher sup­port to the play as a complaint against religious and ethnic persecution. Recent scholarship has grounded dissenting interpretations of the play in even more historical specificity: the conflict between the militant Alba and moderate Eboli factions at the couti of Philip JI; 33 the Inquisition's burning of Spanish Protestants upon Philip II's coronation in 1559;34 the wave of theatrical criticism regarding the Portuguese succession crisis that character­ized productions by the likes of Lobo Lasso, Virues, and Cueva.3s Moreover, staging a clash between civilizations inevitably evokes ambivalence toward the victors, fostering a sense that the law of the rise and fall of empires applies to the present as well. For this La Numancia very likely draws on anti-epic aspects of Ercilla 's Araucana, 36 and classical exanwles of epic doubt in Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Virgil, and especially Lucan. 37

I argue the plausibility of these critical takes on the play relates to its basic Eucharistic design. As A valle-Arce indicated, La Numancia can be read as an endorsement of Spanish Empire conditioned by a call for religious refmm. 38 Indeed, the play's religious symbolism is precisely what undercuts its potential for epic affirmation. A handful of critics have attended to La Numancia's religiosity: Casalduero noted a formal refrain in the opposition caidallevantamiento [fall/rise]39 and Whitby underscored the fundamental impotiance of the sacrifice theme. 40 Subsequently, Stroud pointed to La Nu­mancia's structural dependence on the autos sacrameniales [sacramental acts], brief allegorical plays performed during Corpus Christi festivals, 41 and Stiegler focused on the final' act's allusions to the biblical Apocalypse in the allegorical figures War, Famine, and Plague. 42 I add here that the fourth rider of the Apocalypse, associated with both Death and Christ, can be conflated onto the roles of Bariato, who leaps to his death, and the allegorical figure Fame, who proclaims his moral victory. These thematic and structural as­pects of the play, which echo those of an auto dafe with its apocalyptic signs and its pyramidal positioning of sacrificial victims, 43 indicate theological

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inspiration as well as moral and political anxiety. To comprehend this ~n~ie­ty, we must first visualize the play 's metahistorical evolution of the Chnst~an Eucharist. La Numancia performs this transcendental gesture by movmg back and forth across the wall between Romans and Numantians, staging quasi-religious, pagan, and incomplete ceremonies, in preparation for a final exemplary sacrifice that will ultimately serve as an auto sacramental for Philip II and Spain more generally. .

The major event of La Numancia's first act is Scipio's ?ar~ng~e a~amst the moral laxity of his h·oops. His terms are pagan, but hts atm ts vtctory through a restoration of purity and piety. At the end o~the general's ~pee~h, Marius leads the army in a climactic oath. The effect ts solemn and ntuahs­tic, incorporating the viewing audience into a collect.iv~ e~do~sement of the militant sermon. This is the Roman world before Chnsttan mstght. The form and the collective will are present; the peaceful purpose is lacking:

Mario: Vosotros levantad las diestras manos en sefial que aprobais el voto mio. So ldado I : Todo lo que habeis dicho confirmamos. Soldado 2: Y lo juramos todos. Todos: Sijuramos. 44

[Marius: All of you raise your right hands with me now as a sign that you a ll approve of my vow. 1st Soldier: A ll that you have said we hereby confirm. 2nd Soldier: And we all swear to it. All: Yes, our oaths are firm.]

The second act is constructed around two major Numantian rituals, now more religious than militant, but still fragmented from a Christian persp~c­tive. Numantian leaders as well as anonymous citizens first turn to offictal priests in search of a sacrificial solution to thei.r p.redicame~t: "Tambien primero encargo que se haga I a Jupiter solene sacnficto, I de qmen podremos esperar la paga I harto mayor que nuestro beneficio" [Also, I urge first solemn sacrifice be made to Jupiter, whose great advice more than for our benefit should suffice];4S "yo con todo el pueblo me prefiero I hacer de lo q~e Jupiter mas gusta, I que son los sacrificios y oblaciones" [I, alon~ wtth everyone, do prefer to do that of which Jupiter most appr?ves: whtch are sacrifices and oblations] . 46 Cervantes gives Levitican stage dtrecttons regard­ing their plans to sacrifice a ram:

... salen dos numantinos vestidos como sacerdotes antiguos, y han de traer [asido] de los cuernos en medio un carnero grande, coronado de oliva Y otro con unjarro de agua, y otros dos con dos jarros de vino, y otro con otrafuente de plata con un poco de incienso, y otros conjitego y lena . ..

The Politics of Salvation

[ ... enter two Numantians robed as ancient priests, and they should bring held by its horns between them a large ram, crowned with olive branches, and another priest with a vase of water, and two more with two vases of wine, and another with a silver dish with a small amount of incense, and others with torches and firewood . .. ]. 47

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As in the oath given by the Roman army, the presence of the entire Numan­tian caste gives the scene universal scope. Once again, however, the public is made complicit in the essentially vengeful and egocentric nature of a still primitive celebration. The head priest explains the goals of the sacrificial act:

Y ansi como te bafio y ensangriento este cuchillo en esta sangre pura con alma limpia y limpio pensamiento, ans i Ia tierra de Numancia dura se bafie con Ia sangre de romanos y aun los sirva tambien de sepoltura. 48

[Thus, as I bathe you in blood and do pour on you, knife, this blood most sacred and pure, do I, clean in both heart and mind, implore that the land ofNumantia, hard and sure, should bathe itself with the blood of Romans, rising to kill them and their graves secure.]

At least now there is a substitute, a literal scapegoat for the enemy against whom violence is urged. Underscoring this advance, but also pointing up the elusiveness of the final step in the metahistorical dissolution of the sacrificial instinct, Cervantes freezes the action and has a demon rob the t:am from the Numantian priests, who remain unaware of the diabolical interference. This peculiar choreography foregrounds the lingering blindness of the pagan worldview, which has yet to hit upon the Christian substitution of the sinful self for the hated other. Hence, the confused, yet suggestive reaction of the second priest to a logic that he cannot comprehend: "Mas (,quien me ha arrebatado de las manos I la victima? (,Que es esto, dioses santos? I (,Que prodigios son estos tan insanos?" [But who steals thus the victim from my hands? What is this sacred gods? What glorious miracles are these, so clearly insane?]49

After this aborted ceremony, the shaman Marquinus takes the stage. In a dark, primitive, exotic parocjy of what we have just witnessed, Marquinus attempts the ultimate act of priestly magic: the resuscitation of a corpse. Again, we note ironic hints at a Eucharistic perfection that remains post­poned: instead of the imperial god Jupiter, the ceremony now focuses on a "mozo tierno" [tender lad] ; 50 the violence of Marquinus 's supplications is directed at a fellow Numantian instead of a sacrificial substitute for Romans: "Pues yo hare que con tu pena avives I y tengas el hablarme a buena suetie. I

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Pues eres de los mios, no te esquives I de hablarme, respondenne. Mira, advierte I que, si callas, hare que con tu mengua I sueltes la atada y enojada lengua" [Well, I will ensure you're reborn in pain and that you find speaking to me great joy. For you're one of mine, so do not refrain from speaking to me, responding. Come, boy, know that if you're silent, I'll take a whack at your anger, unleash your tongue-tied lack];51 the corpse's first words high­light the self-directed lesson that remains to be learned: "Cese la furia del rigor violento I tuyo, Marquino" [Cease and desist from this furious violence of yours, Marquinus ]; 52 finally, although his motives fall shmt, Marquinus anticipates the ultimate sacrifice: "jOh, tristes signos, signos desdichados! I Si esto ha de suceder del pueblo amigo, I primero que mirar tal desventura, I mi vida acabe en esta sepoltura. [Arr6jase Marquino en !a sepoltura]" [Oh, tragic signs, signs of such disaster! If this will be the fate of my own race, then rather than witness our sad disgrace, let my life end neath this alabaster (Marquinus hurls himself into the sepulcher) ].53 Even the prophecy given by the corpse rings with Christian irony: "No llevanin romanos la vitoria I de la fuerte Numancia, ni ella menos I tendni de el enemigo triunfo o gloria, I amigos y enemigos siendo buenos" [Romans will not carry forth the victory over fierce Numantia, but nor will she thereby have her own triumph or glory; friends and enemies are both good indeed ].54

The remainder of the play is replete with examples of the innocent suffer­ing of secondary characters inside Numantia, in pmticular women and chil­dren. This agonizing purity prevails in the second half of the third act, but only after the Numantians descend to the depths of moral depravity. The leader Theogenes gives the fateful order:

Y para entretener por algun hora Ia hambre que ya roe nuestros gUesos hare is descuartizar luego a Ia bora esos tristes romanos que est{m presos, y sin del chico al grande hacer mejora, repartase entre todos, que con esos sera nuestra comida celebrada por Espana, crUel, necesitada. 55

[So as to relax awhile the hunger that at our bones already gnaws and mills, you shall at the given time dismember these sad Romans that we hold captive still , and without preference to old or younger, divide them amongst all of us you will. With them we'll have our celebrated feast necessitated by Spain, our cruel beast.]

This quasi-Christian "celebrated meal" is ironic because it echoes the canni­balism which Romans often suspected to be the essence of Christian ritual.

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The Numantians ' perversion of the Last Supper is doubly horrific because they already know their own deaths are inevitable. Theogenes has already decided on mass suicide. Less about sustenance than revenge, "cruel" more than "necessitated," this is also an indiscriminate cannibalism, which makes all Numantians complicit ("sin del chico al grande hacer mejora"). Here is the play's low point, contrasting with the trend toward self-abnegation that characterizes the remainder of its Eucharistic allusions.

After the reference to cannibalism, a series of Numantian commoners­Lira, Marandro, Leonicio, and others- begin to displace pagan ritual with more Christian approximations. The motive and the object of sacrifice ch~nge radically: love replaces revenge and the self replaces the other. This shift, by which a desire for victory over the enemy is transformed into a desire to alleviate the suffering of fellow human beings, even at the cost of one's own life, marks these sacrifices with a new logic. Underscoring this shift is a turn from solemn epic hendecasyllables to more popular octosyllab­ic quatrains. Marandro, for example, vows to unde1take a futile mission on behalf of the starving Lira: "Yo me ofrezco de saltar I el foso y el muro fuerte, I y entrar por la misma mue1te I para Ia tuya escusar" [I give myself to jump the moat and cross the mighty Roman wall, to go straight for my death and fall, that your own life might yet go on ].56 Lira responds to his self­abnegating gesture with her own version: "mas impmta tu vida I que Ia mia" [your life's much more important than my own] Y Given that, with or with­out bread, Lira and the rest will succumb, Marandro 's act represents a differ­ent type of sacrifice, devoid of residual hope for victory, revenge, or even escape. In keeping with this new mode, the third act concludes with ove1t references to the Christian Eucharist. A starving child begs its m.other for "un pedazo de pan" [a piece of bread], 58 and she, in turn, can only offer him "la sangre pura" [my pure blood].59 This same mother then sums up the play' s pacifistic turn with a tautology that rejects all justifications of war: "jOh, Guerra, solo venida I para causarme Ia muerte!" [War, you've only come for my death]. 60

La Numancia's last act contains the most explicit references to Christian ritual. Marandro's final words to Lira before he dies are charged with Eu­charistic significance: "Ves aqui, Lira, cumplida I mi palabra y mis porfias I de que tu no moriras I mientras yo tuviese vida" [See here, Lira, I've kept my word and struggled so that you shan't die so long as I still have my life]; 61

"Pero mi sangre Veltida I y con este pan mezclada, I te ha de dar, mi dulce amada, I triste y amarga comida" [My blood's been shed, but with this bread mix it to sustain your life, my sad and bittersweet beloved]; 62 "recibe este cuerpo agora I como recibiste el alma" [take now this body, just as you once received my soul] . 63 While such phrasing indicates that the ideal sacrifice is at hand, its final perfection remains elusive because the new morality has yet to transcend the wall separating two peoples. Marandro 's Eucharist is still

190 E. C. Graf

flawed because its components do not come from the same self: the blood is Marandro's, but the bread is Rom,an. Moreover, both have been obtained through a violent attack on the enemy, obscuring once again Christ's dictum, "Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros" [But I say to you, Love your enemies] . 64

The character who most represents Clu·istian perfection is Bariato, the young boy whose sacrifice grants meaning to all that precede it. With him arises also the evangelistic idea of a lone individual dying on behalf of the rest. But ethnocentric motives linger: "Todo el furor de cuantos ya son muer­tos I en este pueblo, en polvo reducido, I todo el huir los pactos y conciertos I ni el dar a sujeci6njamas oido, I sus iras, sus rancores descubie1ios, I esta en mi pecho solamente unido" [All the fury of all those who lie dead in this once proud city, reduced to dust; all their never before witnessed shredding of pacts, designs, and subjugation's lust; their rage, their rancor's now one in my breast]; 6s "Pero muestrese yael intento mio I y, si ha sido el amor perfeto y puro I que yo tuve a mi patria tan querida, I asegurelo luego esta caida" [But let now my intentions be shown fmih and, if my love has been perfect and true, that esteem I had for my country 's wo1ih, then let this fall be the ultimate proof]. 66 The pagan mindset cannot achieve Christian perspective on its own. This final step requires a coordinated resolution involving Sci­pio's voluntary resignation and the allegorical figure Fame's declaration of the transcendental nature of Bariato's act. First, the general links Bariato's new vi1iue and paradoxical rise to his own demise: "Con tal vida y virtud heroica extrafia, I queda muerto y perdido mi derecho. I Tu con esta caida levantaste I tu fama y mis vitorias denibaste" [With this life and this strange heroic vi1iue, my conquering right remains dead and lost. With this fall you have raised on high your fame and laid low all my conquests and my name];67 "Lleva, pues, nifio, !leva !a ganancia I y la gloria que el cielo te prepara I por haber, derribandote, vencido I al que, subiendo, queda mas caido" [Take, then, child, take from here your victory and the glory which heaven prepares you, for, having killed yourself, you above all have con­quered he who, once rising, now falls]. 68 Fame then hails a new morality, hinting in evangelistic fashion at Clu·istian Empire: "Vaya mi clara voz de gente en gente, I y en dulce y suave son, con tal sonido, I llene las almas de un deseo ardiente I de eternizar un hecho tan subido. I Alzad, romanos, Ia inclinada frente. I Llevad de aqui este cuerpo, que ha podido, I en tan pequefia edad, arrebataros I el triunfo que pudiera tanto honraros" [Let fi'om people to people my clear voice go fmih and ring out such sweet and soft song that souls everywhere fill with ardent joy, making such an act so sub­lime live long. Raise up your inclined heads, Roman boys. Carry from here this body, which, so wronged, and at such tender years, came down to earth to steal the triumph that could have proved your worth]. 69 Here Scipio, the Roman army, and by extension the viewing public beyond them, are made

The Politics ofSalvation 191

witness to the play's ultimate rite presided over by Fame. In its final scene La Numancia enacts an epistemological shift that recalls Philippians 2.10 a~ the organizing principle ofEl Greco 's Allegory: all are made to kneel before the decisive Clu·istian example of self-sacrifice.

Having surveyed La Numancia's sacrificial sequence, what remains to be understood is the degree to which this basic theological lesson has political implications. Recent scholarship has highlighted the play 's ambivalent and even subversive pmirayal of the classical exemplar Scipio. 70 We can go fmiher: Scipio's recognition of the self-abnegation that undoes his epic tri­umph is a ·'moral lesson for Philip II. Tlu·oughout La Numancia, Scipio is repeatedly referred to as a "general prudente" [prudent general], 71 alluding to the principal attribute cultivated by "el rey prudente" [the prudent king] , as nearly all of Philip II ' s biographers would come to call him. 72 Cervantes 's play transforms the context in which a spectator is to evaluate the meaning of the exemplar. 73 The result is very much like El Greco's problematic Constan­tinian portrait of Philip II. Cervantes has placed his king in a position that stresses Christian piety as the ultimate virtue and voices Augustinian doubt about worldly government. The fact that said piety remains just out of reach of all of the characters within the historical and spatial confines of the play makes for La Numancia's most important overarching irony. When Marqui­nus inquires into the cause of death of the corpse he is about to resuscitate, the aptly named Milvian replies with a glaring adianoeta that shuttles be­tween "poor diet" and "deficient politics": "Muri6 de mal gobierno" ["He died from a bad regime"]. 74

The theological politics of La Numancia can also clarify Cervantes's career trajectory. I have argued that the play 's political criticism is insepara­ble from religious obligation, that its notes of irony and subversion reflect the goal of subordinating the heroic impulse to the Christian lesson. This fits well with the tone of the generation of dramaturges prior to Lope de Vega, 75

who were generally critical of what Kamen has called the "imperialist trium­phalism of the early 1580s, generated largely by the successful occupation of Po1iugal."76 According to Lope himself, this generation created quite a stir:

Elijase el sujeto y no se mire (perdonen los preceptos) si es de reyes, aunque por esto entiendo que el prudente Filipo, rey de Espana y senor nuestro en viendo un rey en elias se enfadaba. 77

[Choose the subject and do not be concerned (be excused, precepts) if it deals with kings, even though I hear that the prudent one, Philip, king of Spain and lord of us all, on seeing a king on stage was quite enraged.)

192 E. C. Graf

In terms of Cervantes's later work, de Armas, Gunte1i, and Armstrong-Roche read La Numancia as a sign of things to come in Don Quijote-classicism, · irony, and subversion. We can be more specific: Cervantes's career sta1is as an attempt at salvific criticism followed by a more independent course in reaction to that earlier frustrated quest for comily patronage. Reading La Numancia as evidence of "the collapse of an idealistic humanist discourse" 78

is premature; the play is still a visionary application of Christian philosophy to the leader of a world empire. If there is a shift or breakdown that produces the more irreverent anti-epic sarcasm of Don Quijote, it occurs subsequent to La Numancia. Although both texts are skeptical, "Vaya mi clara voz de gente en gente" [Let from people to people my clear voice go forth]79 is still a step removed from "debajo de mi manto, al rey mato" [under my cloak, a fig for the king]. 80

CONCLUSIONS

On July 6, 1581 , San Juan de Ia Cruz wrote a letter to Catalina de Jesus, a Discalced Carmelite nun at Teresa of Avila's new reform convent in Palen­cia, in which he expressed sadness at not being allowed to return to Castile. He chose a striking metaphor to describe his unhappy life in Andalusia in the wake of his flight from Toledo, where three years earlier he had been cruelly imprisoned by Carmelite friars who resisted the Teresian reforms:

Although I do not know where you are, I want to write to you these lines, feeling sure that our Mother will send them on to you if you are not with her; should that be the case, console yourself by thinking that I am more of an exile than you are and more alone. Since that whale swallowed me and vomited me up in this foreign port, I have not been found worthy to see her again nor the saints of those parts. God has done well, though, since in the long run afflic­tion is a file and by suffering darkness we come to a great light. 8!

According to this cosmic vision of penitence, like Jonah, San Juan is swal­lowed by a leviathan that punishes him in order to make him more conscious of his life 's divine mission. At a slightly less personal level, San Juan envi­sions himself as a scapegoat whose suffering is related to the seven-year-long crisis of the Carmelite Order, which officially ended at the Chapter of Separ­ation held at Alcala in March 1581, with the Papacy granting independent status to the Discalced. San Juan 's metaphor is even more meaningful when considered in the context of the similarly organological works of El Greco and Cervantes. 82 The difference is that while San Juan plays the role of sacrificial victim swallowed and then shown the light on behalf of the Car­melite Order, El Greco and Cervantes are insisting that Philip II do some­thing similar with respect to the Spanish state. Moreover, as with San Juan's

The Politics of Salvation 193

li~elong self-flagellation, El Greco and Cervantes seem to be proposing a kmd of perpetual existential-moral crisis at the site of the king 's submissive body as the best way to control the potential for autocratic Caesarism in Europe's most powerful and global empire. In sum, such highly religious meditations are just as much signs of anxiety about power as, for instance, P Simon Abril's translation of Aristotle's Politics int.o Spanish in 1584.83

We might even want to consider El Greco's paintings and Cervantes's play as manifestations of a more general salvific crisis circa 1580, a kind of national trauma related both to Spain's triumphalism as well as the external and internal stresses threatening to undercut it. In addition to the Portuguese crisis (1578- 1580), the struggle between Lutheranism and Catholicism was only growing, as evidenced by the ongoing strife in France and the Low Countries, and now the publication of the Book of Concordia (1580), the Protestant counterweight to the Catholic doctrine emanating from the Coun­cil of Trent (1545-1563). A conflict with England loomed, with Mary Queen of Scots recently dethroned by the English Parliament in 1571. Her eventual execution in 1587 would coincide with the fateful Armada of 1588. Internal­ly, the Carmelite crisis of the 1570s was one example of numerous clerical rivalries and the Morisco insurgency at the end of the 1560s only exacerbated tensions that would lead to the expulsions of 1609- 1614. A similar psychic disturbance might have accompanied Philip II's ominous retreat to the Esco­rial, unde~ construction during this period (1563-1584 ). This retreat was punctuated by the always difficult matter of succession, with the death of the rebellious Don Carlos in 1568 and the bi1ih ofthe future Philip III in1578. In terms of large-scale single-event traumas reverberating through. the minds of Europeans, three engagements come to mind. The Battle of San Quentin (1557) was so horrific that the young Prince Philip would be a reluctant warrior henceforth; the Alpujarras War was also bloody and the subsequent relocations patiicularly agonizing; and the Battle of Lepanto was no less than an early modern Armageddon, the most gruesome military engagement in pre-World War I Europe: "Not until Loos in 1915 would this rate of slaugh­ter be surpassed."84

Finally, as the cases of Vives, Fox Morcillo, and even Mariana demon­strate, we should keep in mind that a theoretical critique of monarchy proper­ly grounded in Christian morality was not ipso facto a problem for Habsburg princes. Acknowledgement of sacerdotum as a check to imperium was in accord with Philip II's vie~ of himself, even a matter of official display: "The image of the king on his knees, overt recognition of the sacred role of the priest standing before him, was a basic symbol in the EscoriaJ."85 Siglienza repmis that he was obsessive in this regard: "he always put himself last in any ceremony," and when clerics who had just taken holy orders gave their first masses, "he used to kiss the hand of the celebrant, and did it as though he were just another worshipper. "86 Philip II conceived ofkingship as

194 E. C. Graf

a balancing act between clemency and severity, between being a humble Christian and a ruthless dispenser of God's justice. 87 El Greco's Allegory cettainly takes a hard look at this dual role. The explicit degree to which his Saint Maurice subsequently pushed the contradiction explains why patronage was ultimately withheld. The image of the Duke of Alba conducting a Dio­cletianic persecution and the blatant sword symbolism that makes the Moris­cos analogous to the Theban Legion, all topped by a protracted dispute over colors and costs, was simply too much. The case of Cervantes's La Human­cia is a similar failed bid for patronage. Given the wave of moral criticism that characterized Spanish theater during the Portuguese crisis, yet another allegorical play critical ofHabsburg power by another humanist whose life's mission was to be a Christian thorn in the side of Philip II must have seemed a bridge too far.

NOTES

1. The freestyle appropriation ofEl Greco 's art is a legacy of the modemists, who redis­covered him at the turn of the nineteenth century . Cezanne's color schemes and Picasso's distortions of the human form are obvious painterly examples. Among writers, Huxley's will ­fu lly ignorant musings set a tone that dominated the twentieth century. Enri~u: Lafuente Ferrari 's genuflection is a good example: "The secret, the quid divinum, of arttsttc_ creatiOn eludes any and every one-sided and pretentious explanation. Genius is not to be explamed; we approach it, admire it, observe it, warm ourselves at its glow" (EI Greco: The Expressionism of His Final Years [New York: Abrams, 1975], 10). Other modernists impressed by El Greco include Orwell, M iller, Lawrence, and Hemingway (cfr. Robet1 Scholes, " Inside the Whale Inside: A Hypet1extual Journey into the Belly of Modem ism," http://www.brown.ed~/Depart­ments/MCM/people/scholes/wwwhale/Enter_Here_365 (accessed May 17, 20 12). Ltke Hux­ley, Lawrence relates the Alleg01y's hellmouth to Melville's .'vfoby Dick_and to his own dystop­ic take on the modern bourgeoisie. Hemingway notes El Greco's escaptsm and seems open to the anarchists' famously homophobic reaction to his pai11tings. Interestingly, he respect~ El Greco's sincerity_ in contrast to Velazquez, whom he v iews as a cout1ly fraud (Ernest Hemmg­way, Death in the Afternoon [New York: Scribner, 1999], 162- 64). Dali's co~ments ru:e typically disingenuous, especially his claim that El Greco "had almost no personality" (Alam Bosquet Conversations with Doli [New York: Dutton , 1969], 24). Among the very few argu­ments f~r serious politics in El Greco, the most intriguing is Mru·ek Rost\vorowski 's reading of Laocoon as homage to Toledo's resistance to Charles V ("El Greco 's ' Laocoon': An Epitaph for Toledo' s ' Comuneros'?," Artibus et Historiae 14, no. 28 [1993]: 77- 83). Another notable effot1 is Rosemru·ie Mulcahy's elucidation of the Saint .'vfaurice's criticism of the Duke of Alba ("Una cuesti6n de iconografia: El San Mauricio de El Greco y su rechazo por Felipe II," in La decoraci6n de Ia Real BasE!ica del Monasterio de El Escorial, trru1s . Consuela Luca de Tena [Madrid : Pattimonio Nacional , 1992], 67-79).

2. Two exceptions ru·e the Pauline readings of Don Quijote by Paul M. Descouzis, "Cer­vantes y Sru1 Pablo. Enlace ideol6gico, en lace hist6rico-religioso," in Cervantes a nueva luz. II. Con Ia Iglesia hemos dado, Sancho (Madrid: Ediciones lberoamericanas, 1973), 108- 22; ru1d A lvaro Molina, "Santos y quebrantos: auge y ocaso de Ia violencia sagrada en Don Quijote II, 58," in Estas primicias del ingenio: J6venes cervantistas en Chicago, eds . Francisco Caudet and Ken-y Wilks (Madrid: Castalia, 2003), 99- 112. . .

3. See Alban K. Forcione, Cervantes and the Humanist Vision (Pnnceton: Pnnceton University Press, 1982).

4. Cfr. Georg Lukacs, The Theo1y of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature, trans. Atma Bostock (Can1bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971).

The Politics of Salvation 195

5. See Americo Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes y otros estudios cervantinos, ed . Jose Miranda (Madrid: Trotta, 2002); Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1973); Leo Spitzer, "Linguistic Perspectivism in Don Quijote," in Linguistics and Litermy Histmy: Essays in Stylistics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1948), 41-85; Malcolm K. Read, "Language Adrift: A Re-appraisal of the Theme of Linguistic Perspectivism in Don Quijote," Forum for Modern Language Studies 17 (1981): 27 1-87; and Anthony J. Cascru·di, "Perspectivism and the Conflict of Values in Don Quijote," Kentucky Romance Quarterly 34, no. 2 ( 1987): 165- 78.

6. Late theological humanism 's extreme subordination of monarchs to Christian morality is summed up well by Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas "Cristo s6lo, supo ser rey; y asf, s61o lo sabra ser quien lo imitru·e" [C!u·ist alone knew how to be king; and thus, on ly he who imitates Him wi ll know how to be king] (Politico de Dios y gobierno de Cristo [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1930], 9). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. For the general sixteenth­century crisis in exemplary literature, see Timothy Hampton, Writingfi·om History. The Rheto­ric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); for the late Atlantic humanists' anxieties about the chivalric enthusiasm at the cout1s of England, France, and Spain, see Robet1 P. Adams, The Better Part of Valor: .'vfore, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives on Humanism, War, and Peace, 1496- 1535 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962); for Erasmus's intransigent pacifism, see James D. Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus: A Pacifist Intellectual and His Political .'vii lieu (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978); for Vives's disinterest in the imperial idea, see J. A. Fernandez Santamaria, The State, War and Peace: Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance, 1516-1559 (Cambridge: Can1bridge University Press, 1977); for more subtleties of sixteenth-century Spanish political di scourse, see Bernice Hamilton, Political Thought in Sixteenth Centwy Spain (Oxford: Oxford Univer­sity Press, 1963); Jose Antonio Maravall , La oposici6n politico bajo los .-l.ustrias (Barcelona: Ariel, 1972); and Ronald W. Truman, Spanish Treatises on Government, Society, and Religion in the Time of Philip 11 (Boston : Brill, 1999).

7. The only attempt to understru1d El Greco in tenns of Neoplatonic philosophy can be found in the studies by David B. Davies, El Greco: Mystery and Illumination (Edinburg: National Galleries of Scotland, 1989) and "The Influence of Philosophical and Theological Ideas on the Art of El Greco in Spain," in .-!.etas del X'CIII Congreso international de historia del arte: Espai'ia entree/ /vfediterraneo y e/.4tlcintico, Granada 1973 [Granada: Un iversidad de Granada, 1976-1978], 242-49 . Jonathan Brovm remains dismissive: " it is difficult to know to what degree, if any, his at1 was specifically motivated by an intention to give visual form to these abstract ideas, . . . Neoplatonism probably ought not to be isolated as the sole motivating force in the m1 of El Greco or any painter of this time" ("EI Greco and Toledo" in El Greco of Toledo [Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1982] , 133).

8. Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir 's Sem inary Press, 1996), 152- 53 .

9. For modem versions of this self-directed rejection of violence via a paradoxical sacri­fice of the sacrificial instinct, see Rene Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Balti­more: Johns Hopkins Univers ity Press, 1986); Jacques Den·ida, " Foi et savoir: Les deux sources de Ia " religion" aux limites de Ia simple raison," in La religion: Seminaire de Capri sous Ia direction de Jacques Den·ida et Gianni Vattimo (Paris: Seui l, 1996), 9-86; and Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of/he Tragic (Padstow: Blackwell, 2003).

10. Bram Kempers, Painting, Power and Patronage: The Rise of the Professional rirtist in Renaissance Italy, trans. Beverly Jackson (New York: Penguin, 1993), 286--98.

II. J. Brown, "EI Greco and Toledo," 88- 90. 12. Wethey, in 1982, fina lly capitulated to the idea that El Greco painted The Modena

Triptych. For a skeptical discussion see Jonathan Brown, "EI Trfptico de Modena" in El Greco (Barcelona: Circulo de lectores, 2003), 61 - 73 . Brown's stylistic and dating issues are weak. The Triptych contains numerous indications of El Greco, which I hope to discuss in a future study.

13. All biblical quotations in English come from the Revised Standru·d Version of New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apooypha, ed. Herbe11 G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

196 E. C. Graf

14. Anthony Blunt, "El Greco's 'Dream of Philip IT': An Allegory of the Holy League," Journal of the War burg and Courtauld Institutes 3 (1939-1940) : 58-69.

15. The IHS in both Raphael and Romano's and El Greco's compositions refers to Constan­tine's vision of a Greek version of the Latin plu·ase in hoc signa vinces (by this sign you conquer) in the sky before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

16. Quoted in Manuel Fernandez Alvarez, Felipe II y su tiempo (Madrid: Espasa, 1998), 902 .

17. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, Golden Legend Series, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univers ity Press, 1993), 190.

18. David Allen Warner, "The Cult of Saint Maurice: Ritual Politics and Pol itical Symbol­ism in Ottonian Germany" (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1989).

19. El Marques de Lozoya Juan Contreras y Lopez de Ayala, £ / "San Jl!Jauricio " del Greco (Barcelona: Juventud, 1947), 7.

20. Mulcahy, "Una cuestion de iconografia," 78. 21. See Jose Gudiol, The Complete Paintings of El Greco, trans. Kem1eth Lyons (New

York: Greenwich House, 1983), 98; El Marques de Lozoya, El "San Mauricio, " 17-18. 22 . Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 131. 23 . Supposedly martyred in Gaul , Maurice was a Mauritanian from African Thebes, just

one of hordes of Clu·istians persecuted by Maximian in Gaul, Italy, Iberia and "with some severity in North Africa where they were numerous" (Oxford Classical Dictionmy, eds. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. 3rd. ed. [Oxford: Can1bridge University Press, 1995), s.v. "Maximian"). The suffering of the defeated Moriscos did not go unnoticed by Spaniards. Don Juan of Austria, the victorious general, writing to Ruy Gomez de Silva, Philip II's most trusted advisor, described their forced relocation out of Granada as "the saddest sight in the world" (Quoted inKamen,PhilipofSpain, 131 ).

24. Catalogo de las causas contra Ia fe seguidas ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio de Ia Inquisici6n de Toledo (Madrid: Archivo Historico Nacional, 1903), 252 [leg. 196, ord. 171).

25. According to Julian Zarco Cuevas, the crown paid 800 ducats for El Greco's piece (Pintores espai'ioles en San Lorenzo el Real de El £scoria! [Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1931], 139--42) and only 550 for Cincilmati 's replacement (182). An initial sum of 500 ducats supposedly went toward the cost of colors and canvas. Nevettheless, El Greco appears to have been nonplussed by the final payment of300 ducats in November of 1582.

26 . I borrow these terms from Janis A. Tomlinson, who sees a series of eighteenth-century courtly tapestry cartoons by Goya as a "thoughtfully developed iconographic sequence" (Fran­cisco Goya, The Tapestry Cartoons and Early Career at the Court of :vJadrid [Cambridge: Cambridge Univers ity Press, 1989], 123); and Erwin Panofsky, who describes Gothic Architec­ture as a sophisticated stylization of Christianity that contains an inherent "visual logic" (Goth­ic Architecture and Scholasticism [New York: Meridian, 1957], 58). For an interpretation of the subversive allegorical and political symbolism woven into Michelangelo's work, see Anto­nio Forcellino, Jl!Jichelangelo: A Tormented Life, trans. All an Cameron (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009).

27. See Willard F. King, "Cervantes' Numancia and Imperial Spain," M'odern Language Notes 94, no. 2 (1 979) : 200--21.

28. See Ibid .; and Carroll Jolmson, "La Numancia y Ia estructura de Ia ambigiiedad cervan­tina" in Cervantes, su obra y su mundo: Aetas del I Congreso Internacional sabre Cervantes, ed. Manuel Criado de Val (Madrid: EDI--6, 1981), 309- 16.

29. See King, "Cervantes' Numancia." 30. See Alfredo Hermenegildo's edition of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's La destruici6n

de Numancia (Madrid: Castalia, 1994). 31. See Johnson, "La Numancia." 32. See Ibid. 33 . Barbara Simerka, Discourses of Empire: Counter-Epic Literature in Early Jl!Jodern

Spain (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). 34. E. C. Graf, "Valladolid dellenda est: La politica teologica de La Numancia," Theatral­

ia: Revista de Poetica del Teatro 5 (2003): 273- 82.

The Politics of Salvation 197

35. Aaron M. Kahn, "Moral Opposition to Philip II in Pre-Lopean Drama," Hispanic Review 74, no. 3 (2006) : 227-50; and Ibid., The Ambivalence of Imperial Discourse: Cer­vantes's La Numancia within the 'Lost Generation' of Spanish Drama (1570- 1590) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008).

36. See King, "Cetvantes ' Numancia;" and Evelio Echevarria, "Influencias de Ercilla en La Numancia, de Cetvantes," Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 430 (1986): 97- 99.

37. Cfi·. Angela Bell i, "Cervantes'£/ cerco de .Vumancia and Euripides' The Trojan Wom­en," Kentucky Romance Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1978): 12 1- 28; and Frederi ck A. de Armas, Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

38. Juan Bautista de Avall e-Arce, "La .Vumancia: Cervantes y Ia tradicion historica," in .Vuevos deslindes cervantinos, 2nd ed. (Barcelona: Ariel , 1975), 24 7- 75.

39. Joaquin Casalduero, Sentido y forma del teatro de Cervantes (Madrid: Gredos, 1966). 40. William M. Whitby, "The Sacrifice Theme in Cervantes' .\ 'umancia," Hispania 45, no.

2 ( 1962) : 205- 10. 4 1. Matthew Stroud, "La .\'wnancia como auto secular" in Cervantes, su obra y su mundo:

Aetas del I Congreso Internacional sabre Cervantes, ed. Manuel Criado de Val (Madrid: EDI-6, 1981): 303- 7.

42. Bryan M. Stiegler, "The Coming of the New Jerusalem: Apocalypctic Vision in Cer­vantes' La Numancia" .Veophilologus 80 ( 1996): 569- 81.

43. Cfr. Maureen Flynn, "Mimesis of the Last Judgment: The Spanish .-/.uta de fe," Six­teenth Century Journa/22, no. 2 (1991): 28 1- 97; and Francisco Bethencourt, "The Auto da Fe: Ritual and Imagery," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55 ( 1992) : 155--68.

44. Miguel de Cetvantes Saavedra, La destruici6n de .\ 'umancia, ed. Alfredo Hermenegildo (Madrid: Castalia, 1994), vv. 197-200.

45. Cervantes, La destruici6n de .\'wnancia, vv. 633- 36. 46. Ibid., VV. 669-71. 47. Ibid., 89. 48. Ibid., vv. 879-84. 49. Ibid., VV. 885- 87. 50. Ibid. , v. 943. 5 1. Ibid., vv. 1035--40. 52. Ibid., VV. 1053- 54. 53. Ibid., VV. 1085- 88. 54. Ibid. , vv. 1073- 76 . 55. Ibid., vv. 1434-4 1. 56. Ibid., VV . 1506-09. 57. Ibid. , VV. 1532- 533. 58. Ibid., V. 1707. 59. Ibid., v. 1711. 60. Ibid., vv. 1722-723. 6 1. Ibid. , vv. 1832- 835. 62. Ibid., vv. 1844-847. 63 . Ibid. , vv. 1862- 863. 64. Matt. 5.44. 65 . Cetvantes, La destruici6n de .\'umancia, vv. 236 1-366. 66. Ibid., vv. 2397-400. 67. Ibid. , VV. 2405--408. 68. Ibid., vv. 24 13- 416. 69. Ibid. , VV . 24 17--424. 70. De Armas, Cervantes; Graf, "Valladolid"; Michael Arn1strong-Roche, "Imperial Thea­

ter of War: Republican Values under Siege in Cervantes's .\ 'wnancia," Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 6, no. 2 (2005): 185-203.

71. Cervantes, La destruici6n de .\ 'umancia, vv. 11 53, 2258, 23 18. 72. Cfr. Kamen, Philip of Spain, 22 1 ff. 73. For Garcilaso's more secular re-appropriation of Scipio in his poetic criticism of

Charles V, see E. C. Graf, "From Scipio to Nero to the Self: The Exemplary Politics of

198 E. C. Graf

Stoicism in Garcilaso de Ia Vega's Elegies," PJIJLA 116, no. 5 (2001): 13 16-333. ForCer­vantes's regard for Garci laso, see Jose Manuel Blecua, "Garci laso y Cervantes," in Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Hom enaje de insula en el cuarto centenario de su nacimiento {1547-1947) (Madrid: insula, 1947), 141-50.

74 . Cervantes, La destru ici6n de Numancia, v. 945. For other takes on the fundamental ironies of La Numancia, see Sabatino G. Maglione, "Amity and Enmity in Cervantes's La Numancia," Hispania 83, no. 2 (May 2000) : 179-88; and Georges GUntert, "La tragedia como Iugar privilegiado de Ia reflexi6n metapoetica: La Numancia," Theatralia: Revista de Poetica del Teatro 5 (2003): 26 1-72.

75 . Cfr. Anthony Watson, Juan de Ia Cueva and the Portuguese Succession (London: Tamesis, 197 1 ); Kahn, "Moral Opposition" and The Ambivalence.

76 . Kamen, Philip of Spain, 276. For Cervantes's pastoral novel La Galatea (1585) as criti cism of the annexation of Portugal, see Jose Montero Reguera, "Historia, politica y literatu­ra en La Galatea de Miguel de Cervantes," Romeral: estudiosjilol6gicos en homenaje a Jose Antonio Fernandez Romero, ed. Jnmaculada Baez and Maria Rosa Perez (Vigo: Universidad de Vigo,2002),329-42.

77. Lope de Vega Carp io, "El mte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo," in Preceptiva dramatica espanola, ed. A. Porqueras-Mayo and F. Sanchez Escribano (Madr id: Gredos, 1971), vv. 157-6 1.

78. Annstrong-Roche, "Imperial Theater ofWm·," 189. 79. Cervantes, La destruici6n de Numancia, v. 24 17. 80. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de Ia Mancha, ed.

Luis Andres MW"illo, 5th ed., 2 vols. (Madrid: Castalia, 199 1), 1:51; Miguel de Cervm1tes Saavedra, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 11. For Cervantes's sonnet "AI t(unulo del rey Fel ipe II en Sevilla" (At the Tomb of Philip II in Seville) as a tuming point in this trajectory, see E. C. Graf, "Escritor/Excretor: Cervantes's 'Humanism' on Phil ip Il 's Tomb," Cervantes 19, no . 1 ( 1999): 66- 95.

81. Quoted in Gerald Brenan, StJohn of the Cross: His Life and Poetty (London: Cam­bridge University Press, 1973), 50.

82. Cfr. Emst Hartwig Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in .\tlediaeval Politi­cal Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966).

83. As Fredric JaJTieson puts it with regard to Milton, "religious and theological debate is the fonn , in pre-capitalist societies, in which groups become aware of their political differences and fight them out" ("Religion and Ideology: A Political Reading ofPm·adise Lost," in Litera­ture, Politics and The01y Papersji·om the Essex Conference, 1976-1984, ed. Francis Barker et al. [London: Methuen, 1986], 38). For intimate aesthetic and even hallucinogenic religiously inspired responses to the social trauma of a military can1paign and the personal trauma of a loss of patronage, each with political implications, see Richm·d L. Kagan, Lucretia 's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Centwy Spain (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1995); and Alison Weber, "Lope de Vega's Rimas sacras: Conversion, Clientage, and the Performm1ce of Masculinity," PJI!!LA 120, no. 2 (2005): 404--2 1.

84. Roger Crowley, Empires of the Sea: The Siege ofMalta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World (New York: Random House, 2009), 276.

85. Hemy KaJTien, The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 20 I 0), 204.

86. Quoted in Ibid., 204. 87. For Philip II 's understanding of this contrast, see Fernandez Alvarez, Felipe II, 782-87.

A modem version of the "two Philips" syndrome can be found in the antithetical opinions of the Spanish king advanced by Geoffrey Pm·ker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); and Kamen, Philip of Spain . Pm·ker criticizes his intolera11ce; Kan1en underscores his humanity .