Read or listen to the episode of the Toledo traders, Chapter IV, Part I of Don Quixote; then read or listen to my reflection.
He now came to a road branching in four directions, and immediately he was reminded of those cross-roads where knights-errant used to stop to consider which road they should take. In imitation of them he halted for a while, and after having deeply considered it, he gave Rocinante his head, submitting his own will to that of his hack, who followed out his first intention, which was to make straight for his own stable. After he had gone about two miles Don Quixote perceived a large party of people, who, as afterwards appeared, were some Toledo traders, on their way to buy silk at Murcia. There were six of them coming along under their sunshades, with four servants mounted, and three muleteers on foot. Scarcely had Don Quixote descried them when the fancy possessed him that this must be some new adventure; and to help him to imitate as far as he could those passages he had read of in his books, here seemed to come one made on purpose, which he resolved to attempt. So with a lofty bearing and determination he fixed himself firmly in his stirrups, got his lance ready, brought his buckler before his breast, and planting himself in the middle of the road, stood waiting the approach of these knights-errant, for such he now considered and held them to be; and when they had come near enough to see and hear, he exclaimed with a haughty gesture, “All the world stand, unless all the world confess that in all the world there is no maiden fairer than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.”
The traders halted at the sound of this language and the sight of the strange figure that uttered it, and from both figure and language at once guessed the craze of their owner; they wished, however, to learn quietly what was the object of this confession that was demanded of them, and one of them, who was rather fond of a joke and was very sharp-witted, said to him, “Sir Knight, we do not know who this good lady is that you speak of; show her to us, for, if she be of such beauty as you suggest, with all our hearts and without any pressure we will confess the truth that is on your part required of us.”
“If I were to show her to you,” replied Don Quixote, “what merit would you have in confessing a truth so manifest? The essential point is that without seeing her you must believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend it; else ye have to do with me in battle, ill-conditioned, arrogant rabble that ye are; and come ye on, one by one as the order of knighthood requires, or all together as is the custom and vile usage of your breed, here do I bide and await you relying on the justice of the cause I maintain.”
“Sir Knight,” replied the trader, “I entreat your worship in the name of this present company of princes, that, to save us from charging our consciences with the confession of a thing we have never seen or heard of, and one moreover so much to the prejudice of the Empresses and Queens of the Alcarria and Estremadura, your worship will be pleased to show us some portrait of this lady, though it be no bigger than a grain of wheat; for by the thread one gets at the ball, and in this way we shall be satisfied and easy, and you will be content and pleased; nay, I believe we are already so far agreed with you that even though her portrait should show her blind of one eye, and distilling vermilion and sulphur from the other, we would nevertheless, to gratify your worship, say all in her favour that you desire.”
“She distils nothing of the kind, vile rabble,” said Don Quixote, burning with rage, “nothing of the kind, I say, only ambergris and civet in cotton; nor is she one-eyed or humpbacked, but straighter than a Guadarrama spindle: but ye must pay for the blasphemy ye have uttered against beauty like that of my lady.”
And so saying, he charged with levelled lance against the one who had spoken, with such fury and fierceness that, if luck had not contrived that Rocinante should stumble midway and come down, it would have gone hard with the rash trader. Down went Rocinante, and over went his master, rolling along the ground for some distance; and when he tried to rise he was unable, so encumbered was he with lance, buckler, spurs, helmet, and the weight of his old armour; and all the while he was struggling to get up he kept saying, “Fly not, cowards and caitiffs! stay, for not by my fault, but my horse’s, am I stretched here.”[1]
Reflection:
Philosopher Josef Pieper remarks: “If there are no knowers, there also can be no believers.”[2] In other words, to have faith is to participate in the knowledge of someone who knows. Therefore, in the episode that we are analyzing, we have to ask ourselves some important questions: Does Don Quixote know Dulcinea? Does the reader know her? Do the traders know her?
Thanks to the narrator of the novel, the reader knows that Dulcinea is “a very good-looking farm girl with whom he [Don Quixote] had been at one time in love, so far as is known, she never knew it nor gave any thought to the matter. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo.” (I, 2; 29) Of course, Don Quixote also knows her, and due to his madness, for him, she is not only “a very good-looking farm girl,” but the most beautiful maiden in the world. The traders do not know who Dulcinea is nor how she looks. Hence, since they do not know her, it makes sense for them to have or not have faith in Don Quixote’s testimony. For the reader, because of what he knows about Dulcinea and about Don Quixote’s madness, it is logical to conclude that Don Quixote is not a reliable witness.
On one hand, the problem is that Don Quixote is not only asking that the traders have faith in him, but he is commanding it. Faith should never be forced. In matters of faith, the keys are the reliability of the witness and the willingness to believe of the believer. On the other hand, the demand of one of the traders for a picture of Dulcinea is unacceptable for Don Quixote, because instead of being an issue of faith, it would be transformed into one of knowledge, because a picture, by definition, is a copy of reality.
In conclusion, in the episode of the Toledo traders, Cervantes, with great sense of humor, invites the reader to reflect on faith as a meaningful human act. Hence, Cervantes’s masterpiece predates philosopher Josef Pieper’s reflections on faith as a human act first, and as a religious one, second. A major difficulty that many people have today is to accept religious faith as reasonable and transrational instead of emotional, irrational and superstitious. Their difficulty with the issue is a consequence of a lack of reflection on faith as a meaningful human act; because faith as a human act plays an important role in our everyday life, even in those cases in which we are involved with activities that seem to be opposed to faith, such as science or physics. It is evident that there is no student of physics, no matter how brilliant he or she is, who would be capable of replicating all the experiments of the science. Thus, in most cases, the student would have to rely and have faith in the findings of the scientific community. Therefore, faith is a very enlightening human act since it offers the believer access to an area of reality that otherwise would not be reachable. Faith is even more luminous when it is a religious faith, because, as Pieper remarks: “Man can scarcely find anything better and more meaningful to do than ‘believingly to unite with the knowledge of God.’”
Faith is a human act
CCC 154 Believing is possible only by grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. But it is no less true that believing is an authentically human act. Trusting in God and cleaving to the truths he has revealed is contrary neither to human freedom nor to human reason. Even in human relations it is not contrary to our dignity to believe what other persons tell us about themselves and their intentions, or to trust their promises (for example, when a man and a woman marry) to share a communion of life with one another. If this is so, still less is it contrary to our dignity to “yield by faith the full submission of… intellect and will to God who reveals”,26 and to share in an interior communion with him.
[1] Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. John Ormsby
New York: Norton Critical Edition, 1981. pp. 42-43.
[2] All quotes from Faith, Hope, Love by Josef Pieper. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997.
