name of a fortress on the Tagus, in the restoration of which by Alfonso VI., Adefonso Munio, Gonzalo's greatgrandfather, had assisted. From Gonzalo was descended Diego de Cervantes, Commander of the Order of Santiago, who settled in Andalusia and married Juana Avellaneda, daughter of Juan Arias de Saavedra, El Famoso. One of Diego's sons, Gonzalo Gómez de Cervantes, from whom the American branches derived, became Corregidor of Jerez de la Frontera, and, later, Corregidor of Cartagena ; while another son, Juan de Cervantes, became Corregidor of Osuna (1531-1558). Juan's son, Rodrigo de Cervantes, married, about 1540, Leonor de Cortinas, of Barrajas; their offspring were four children, Andrés, Andrea, Luisa, and Miguel. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born, probably on St. Michael's Day, at Alcalá de Henares, and was baptised in the church of Santa María la Mayor, on Sunday, October 9, 1547.1 It seems strange that any a Spanish martyr of the fourth century. There is a reference to San Servando (or San Servan) in the "Poema del Cid": "Essa noch Myo Cid Taio no quiso passar. Merçed ya rey, si el Criador nos salue. Penssad sennor de entrar a la çibdad: (v. 3045-3049.) Calderón likewise mentions it in "Cada uno para sí," Act II. st. xx. 1 The following is a copy of the baptismal certificate: "Año de 1547. Domingo nueve dias del mes de Otubre, año de mil é quinientos é cuarenta é siete años, fue baptizado Miguel, hijo de Rodrigo de Carvantes é su muger Doña Leonor; fueron sus compadres Juan Pardo, baptizóle el reverendo Sr. Br. Serrano cura de doubt should ever have arisen as to his birthplace; but nothing can be more certain than that many of his contemporaries were ignorant of it, and Lope de Vega, to whom Cervantes was personally known, speaks of him in terms which imply that his birthplace was presumed to be Madrid. As the years passed by, and the fame of Cervantes grew, the most baseless surmises were made; and, a century after his death, Madrid, Seville, Toledo, Esquivias, Lucena, Consuegra, and Alcázar de San Juan each claimed him as her own. Diego de Haedo's Topographia é Historia General de Argel, published during the lifetime of Cervantes, states his birthplace accurately enough, and Méndez Silva, writing some thirty years later, confirms the statement of the Abbot of Fromesta, whose work, though of primary importance in many respects, appears to have been almost entirely overlooked by Cervantistas till Juan de Iriarte and the Benedictine monk, Martin Sarmiento, called attention to it nearly a century and a half after the date of its publication. In 1752 the nuestra Señora: testigos Baltasar Vazquez Sacristan, é yo que le bapticé é firmé de mi nombre: El Br Serrano." It will be noted that the surname is given as Carvantes, and the same form is used in the case of Andrea, Miguel's sister; but this is obviously a clerical error, the form of Cervantes being used in the certificates of Andrés and Luisa. Cervantes' elder brother Andrés assumed later on the name Rodrigo. 1 "Topographia é Historia General de Argel por Maestro fray Diego de Haedo, Abad de Fromesta, de la Orden del Patriarca San Benito, natural del Valle de Carrança " (Valladolid, 1612). In a pamphlet entitled "Remarks on the Proposals lately published for a new translation of Don Quixote. . . . In a letter from Gentleman in the Country to a Friend in Town" (London, 1755), it discovery of Cervantes' baptismal certificate by Agustín de Montiano y Luyando finally set the question beyond dispute.1 The Alcalá de Henares of Cervantes' boyhood was a very different place from the decaying, stagnant Alcalá of today, whose grass-grown, silent streets gently echo the muffled footfall of the infrequent traveller. Some fifty years earlier the great Cardinal Ximenes had there laid the foundations of his University, had called around him some of the most accomplished scholars of the time, and within a brief space had made is pointed out that the Cervantes mentioned by Haedo must be the author of "Don Quixote." The reference (p. 30) is to a "passage out of Haedo, a Portuguese writer, which has hitherto been unobserved by all the writers which I have seen, that mention Cervantes, but can belong to no other person," etc. Colonel W. Windham, to whom the pamphlet is attributed, had not, apparently, read Haedo's original, but relied on the summary given by Joseph Morgan in his "Com plete History of Algiers" (London, 1728), ii. pp. 563-566. Morgan ends by saying: "It is Pity, methinks, that Haedo is here so succinct in what regards this enterprising captive." Colonel Windham may be fairly held to divide with Sarmiento the honour of discovering the great writer's birthplace. 1 The matter was much complicated by the discovery, at Alcázar de San Juan, of the baptismal certificate of a Miguel de Cervantes, son of Blas Cervantes Saavedra, baptized November 9, 1558; and, further, by the discovery, at Consuegra, of the baptismal certificate (dated September 1, 1556) of another Miguel de Cervantes. On the margin of the first was written: "Este fué el autor de la historia de Don Quixote"; and on the margin of the second: "El autor de los Quijotes." It is, however, improbable that either of these could have fought at Lepanto. 2 Alcalá de Henares is also mentioned in the "Poema del Cid" (vv. 444-446). The reputation of the theological faculty in the University of Alcalá survived until a comparatively recent date. Questions relating to the temporal and dispensing power of the Pope Alcalá, where he himself had once been a student at the grammar school, the rival of Salamanca and of Basel. Here the celebrated Lebrija lectured, and here Núñez de Guzmán laboured with Demetrius Cretensis and Juan de Vergara on that Complutensian Polyglot which, through the munificence of Ximenes, spread the reputation of Alcalá throughout the world. In this busy, thronged University town, with its seven thousand students beneath the shadow of its college towers, the young Cervantes probably passed his youth. In Spain, as in the rest of Europe, it was a period of transition. The old Spain, the ancient order of things, was passing away; the long struggle of seven hundred years begun by Roderick on the banks of the Guadalete was ended by the conquest of Granada from Boabdil; the unity of the country and the destruction of her infidel enemies were at last accomplished. Spain was now at the topmost pinnacle of human glory. Columbus had added to her trophies a new world in which Hernando Cortés, equalling the legendary achievements of the early paladins, had with eight hundred men shattered the empire of the Aztecs. Only the splendour were referred to it, at the suggestion of Pitt, in 1788, when it still. ranked with the Sorbonne, Löwen, and Douay faculties. See Charles Butler's "Historical Memoirs respecting the English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics" (London, 1819-1821), ii. p. 110; and "The History of Catholic Emancipation," by W. J. Amherst, S.J. (London, 1886), i. p. 163. For a sketch of the foundation of the University, cp. "Der Cardinal Ximenes und die Kirlichen Zustände Spaniens am Ende des 15 und Anfange des 16 Jahrhunderts," von Carl Joseph Hefele (Tübingen, 1851), pp. 94 et seq. of their successes flashed across the Atlantic; only the triumphs of Spanish valour and discipline stirred men's hearts in Valladolid and in Valencia. The groans of Guatamozin, the tortured king of Mexico, passed unheeded, and the murder of the Inca of Peru was forgotten amid the successes of Pizarro. In an earlier generation, Gonzalvo de Córdoba at Atella, at Tarento, in the island of Cephalonia, and on the banks of the Garigliano-the crowning victory of the Great Captainhad established the reputation of that terrible Spanish infantry which for a century carried everything before it. Charles V., tired of the unending struggle against the Lutherans, against Francis I. and Henry II. of France, had, like Diocletian, abdicated the throne, had placed the sceptre in the younger hands of Philip, and had retired to die near those peaceful cloisters of the monastery of the Jeromite monks at Yuste, which, with its orange groves and cool streams in the still shadow of the Estremaduran hills, had been, through many troubled years, a part of his imperial dream. The age of printing had come, and had brought with it new influences and forces into literature. The great Renaissance of letters in Italy reacted on the Spanish students who thronged the Universities of Naples and Bologna. Even the iron-hearted Spanish soldiery who crushed the power of Francis at Pavia had felt the new tendencies; and in many a country town were little groups of veterans. who, ceasing to study war, had hung the trumpet in the 1 1 See the interesting note in the "History of Spanish Literature," by George Ticknor (Boston, 1888), i. p. 355. |