“Más no lo saben todo los letrados / ni todos son ydiotas los soldados.” Francisco de Guzmán’s Digression de las armas y letras (1565)

• Published in: Cervantes (Gainesville, Fla.) Fla.), 2009-09, Vol.29 (2), p.5-31
• Main Author: Cull, John T
• Format: Article
• Language: eng ; spa
• Subjects: Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Spanish literature
• ISSN: 0277-6995; 1943-3840
• DOI: 10.3138/cervantes.29.2.005

(64-65) The uniquely Spanish take on the debate between arms and letters has been studied in some detail by a number of critics, including Peter E. Russell, who argues convincingly that the opposition between sapientia et fortitudo takes on social and cultural dimenions in the peninsula that derive from the medieval Spanish belief that the separation between caballero and letrado is of divine origin, and the superiority of the former over the latter is a manifestation of providential will (221). In addition to its possible impact on Cervantes, Francisco J. Cornejo has also studied one of its emblems as a model for a dramatic Triunfo composed by members of the Jesuit College of San Hermenegildo of Sevilla, and intended for representation before king Philip II during his visit in 1570. The inclusion of the debate between arms and letters in Don Quijote is central to the protagonist's desire for fame and social advancement, and in this respect, Cervantes imitates a long literary tradition, best summarized by David Quint in his article on the topic in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata: "The debates between arms and letters [...] and throughout the literature of the sixteenth century thus encode a rivalry between a new nobility rising at court through intellectual talents and an older aristocracy anxious about losing its position as a miltary caste" (375). 3 Solon was an Athenian poet and lawmaker whose fame derived from his attempts to reform the rampant corruption that plagued so many aspects of Athenian life in the 6th centurey B. C. Fellow Athenian Themistocles was a soldier who commanded the army that rebuffed the Persian invasion led by Xerxes a century later. 4 The fable related here originates in Æsop, and finds new life in the Enlightenment with Iriarte's fable, La asamblea de los ratones, and Samaniego's El congreso de los ratones. 5 Numa Pompilius, the legendary second king of Rome and successor to Romulus, is celebrated as a wise and pious legislator who governed with austerity and discipline. 6 Publius Sulpicius Quirinius was a Roman aristocrat who rose through the ranks of the military, serving in Spain among other places, and eventually became a consul and governor of a number of countries, including Syria, towards the beginning of the first century A. D. 7 Liber Regum Tertius, Secundum Hebræ os Primus Malachim.