Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

From King Sebastian of Portugal to Miguel de Cervantes and don Quijote: A Genealogy of Myth and Influence

2020; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 135; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mln.2020.0030

1080-6598

Dian Fox,

Latin American history and culture

From King Sebastian of Portugal to Miguel de Cervantes and don Quijote:A Genealogy of Myth and Influence Dian Fox At the age of twenty-four, King Sebastian of Portugal (1554–1578) led a disastrously failed invasion of Morocco, where he was killed, unmarried and childless.1 His loss led to Portugal's loss of sovereignty to Spain in 1580 when his uncle, Philip II, claimed the neighboring crown. By the early 1600s, rumors that Sebastian was still alive fed his increasingly mythic status on the Iberian Peninsula. During this period, Miguel de Cervantes created a character also en route to iconicity in the Peninsular imaginary. Don Quijote (1605 and 1615) and Cervantes himself (1547–1616) joined in intricate and in a certain sense, intimate contiguities with Sebastian as developing cultural myths. Accidents of history, textual interrelationships, and then-contemporary gender norms link the king, the author, and the knight-errant, in person and personae. The king was born on his saint's day, January 20 of 1554, little more than two weeks after his teen-aged father's death.2 The child was the last surviving member of the Avis Dynasty, apart from his aging great-uncle, Cardinal Henry. His mother, doña Juana de Austria, sister to King Philip II, was summoned back to Spain during Sebastian's infancy, never to see him again. His grandmother Catarina as regent [End Page 387] was involved in raising the boy until he reached the age of seven, when she was forced to hand him over to the care of his Jesuit tutor, Luís Gonçalves da Câmara. Cardinal Henry assumed the regency, but, loath to rule, had Sebastian declared king at the tender age of fourteen. Owing to the precarious dynastic circumstances, Sebastian was under great pressure to produce an heir. However, he managed to evade all suitable matches proposed for him. Instead of courtly amusements, he preferred hunting and practicing war games. Having taken enthusiastically to his religious education, by his late teens Sebastian had come to believe that his life's mission was to conquer and convert the Infidel to Christianity. Setting his sights on North Africa, at the age of twenty in 1574, he impulsively made his first foray "sin haber previamente avisado a nadie" (Rodríguez Moñino 15). The king sailed from Lisbon with three ships full of notables who thought they would merely be visiting the Algarve (Queiroz Velloso 148). However, after a stop there, the party proceeded to Morocco. Spending several weeks at the Portuguese outposts at Ceuta and Tangier, Sebastian hoped to meet the enemy and rode forth to this purpose, but without satisfactory engagement (152). He and his bewildered company returned to Lisbon, the better to plan a second invasion—much to his subjects' dismay. As the king made his preparations, there was a great deal of handwringing. A war in North Africa would be an immense drain on the country's already strained resources. The royal uncle Philip II energetically attempted, without success, to divert Sebastian from his venture, and especially from leading the troops in person.3 Eventually, in 1578, Sebastian again sailed for Morocco, this time with dozens of ships, hundreds of aristocrats, thousands of soldiers, and their ancillaries, including servants, camp followers, and priests to convert the conquered population.4 On July 14 the first troops set foot on African soil (Queiroz Velloso 232), and on August 4 Sebastian led the attack. Poorly organized and vastly outnumbered, the Portuguese were crushed, and the young royal visionary was killed. In September, news reaching Lisbon of the great defeat and the loss of the king was met with dismay and disbelief. As well as the ensuing succession crisis and the impact on the country's already-depleted treasury, so many [End Page 388] who accompanied the king were gone: commoners and the cream of the aristocracy. First in line to inherit the throne was Cardinal Henry. Aged 66, "Henrique o Casto" suddenly wore the crown and, to salvage the dynasty, was compelled to contemplate marriage. However, at the instigation of Philip II, who by now was determined to accede to the Portuguese throne, Pope Gregory XIII withheld...