Love for Life

Cervantes Catalan: New Línes Of Investigation, Censorship & The Control On Printing In The XVIth Century & Some Reflections On The Cervantes We Know"

Cervantes Catalan

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Translated From Catalan Into English (not the best translation but still good enough)

INDEX

1. Some important data on censorship and the control on printing in the XVIth century
2. Books originally written in catalan with compulsory translation into castilian
3. The fatherland
4. There were two Miguel de Cervantes
5. Eulogies of Catalonia
6. Relations with Catalonia
7. Servent: a catalan
8. Cervantes quoted among the authors of the catalan nation
9. Cervantes and Servent: two parallel lives
10. Baptism

Some important data on censorship and the control on printing in the XVIth century

1. 1501.- “Decree or Encyclical on Printing” of Pope Alexander VI.
2. 1503.- Royal Ordinance of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella on the control of printing presses and the printing of books.
3. 1515.- Pope Leo X: Supreme Disposition on the printing of books (censorship and granting of licenses).
4. 1524.- Clement VII: Papal Bull “Caena Domini” against Martin Luther’s books.
5. 1527.- Royal bill of Charles I of Spain forbidding “to sell nor print the reports Hernán Cortés sent from the Índies”.
6. 1528 to 1536.- The Councils of Bruges (1528), of Paris (1528), of Canterbury (1529) and of Cologne (1536) promulgate the prohibition of any book, paper, engraving, etc. not previously revised by the authorities.
7. 1540.- Edict of Charles V against the publications of Luther, Wycliff, Huss, Melanchthon, etc.
8. 1540.- First expurgatory Index of books.
9. 1543.- “Index librorum haereticorum”, published by the theologians of the Sorbonne, in Paris.
10. 1548-49.- Index of forbidden books in Venice (1548) and in Cologne (1549).
11. 1556.- 21st of september: Royal Bill of Philip I (II of Castile) forbidding, among other matters, the printing of books dealing with America.
12. 1556.- 9th of October: Royal Bill of Philip I (II of Castile) directing the royal officials in the American ports to examine the books arriving in the various ships and to collect those included in the lists issued by the Holy Inquisition.
13. 1557.- First papal Index, of Paul IV.
14. 1558.- 7th of September: Royal ordinance of Philip I (II of Castile), ordering the compilation of a Catalogue of all the forbidden books in order to have them publicly burnt.
15. 1560.- 14th of August: Royal Bill of Philip I (II of Castile) enforcing the previous bill of 1556.
16. 1562.- Second Index of Paul IV.
17. 1564.- Index of the Council of Trent.
18. 1566.- Holy Congregation of the Index, instituted by Pius V, with Antonio Possio as secretary.
19. 1569.- The Republic of Venice accepts the Catalogue of Forbidden Books of the Council of Trent.
20. 1570.- Edict introducing the application of the Index in Flanders and the Netherlands.
21. 1573.- The Council of Milan, approves the enforcement of the Index.
22. 1585.- Sixtus V increases the authority of the Holy Congregation of the Index.
23. 1586.- Publication of the Index in Lyons (France).
24. 1590.- Council of Toulouse: new formulation of rules to keep books under control.
25. 1594.- Council of Avignon: new formulation of rules to keep books under control.

Another notes

ALBERTO BLECUA (Manual de Crítica Textual), when he comments on printed transmission, he writes:

“The fake and counterfeit editions deserve also to be mentioned . They were printed with DATE AND PLACE OF PUBLICATION DIFFERENT FROM THE ACTUAL ONE, a very frequent fraud in the XVIIth century (p. 177)

It happened with Guzmán de Alfarache, Cervantes’ Persiles, some of Lope de Vega’s comedies, with Tirso de Molina and Calderón de la Barca and “in general with all those books which were a great success, be it for literary reasons or for whatever other religious or polítical motive”, p. 177.

Josep Guia has demonstrated that the forgery of authorship occurred also with Tirant lo Blanc.

Blecua says that “In all these cases a deep knowledge of the period’s printed matter is needed in order to be able to determine the place and date of publication” (p. 177)

And he warns that “the illegal prints are not to be confused with the perfectly legal ones.”

And he further cautions: “The complaints of the poets [and writers in general] regarding the defacement of their works, and the thefts and false attributions, go beyond the mere rethorical topic” (p. 207)

As for Cervantes, we can also add that no original of any of his books has been preserved, nor a great many of his first editions, that some of his books have two totally different versions, that the dedication of Don Quixote to the Duke of Béjar substitutes the original one, which is lost or missing. And that the Barcelona and Antwerp editions of Don Quixote have never been found.

Books originally written in catalan with compulsory translation into castilian

1. Pere Antoni Beuter, prologue to the Castilian edition of the Historia de Valencia (1546), Vg. Renaixement a la Carta, p. 134-136: “It was printed in the Valencian language, as I wrote it”, but the book “had to be presented in the Castilian language so that it could be understood in the places where the Valencian tongue could not be comprehended”. He excuses himself for having the book translated given that “as I am a Valencian and writing from València to the city’s aldermen [in Valencian, now] I write in Castilian, a language alien to València”, because having the various kingdoms of Spain come under “a general and only authority, excepting the Kingdom of Portugal, it seems that at the same time they shall all now have to share a common language”.

2. Jeroni Pujades, prologue to the Crònica Universal del Principat de Catalunya (1606): he did not translate the book into Castilian, as some wanted him to, Vg. Renaix. a la Carta, p. 139-141: “Some wished this work to be written in Castilian, given that this language is more spread and understood in foreign nations. But it was not possible to do otherwise”. That is to say, that he published the first volume in Catalan, but all the remaining ones in Castilian, even if he wants it stated that he writes in Catalan “in order not to be ungrateful to my country and nation” and also because “the prelates, doctors, teachers and writers must conform themselves to the benefit and advantage of the subjects, listeners, pupils or readers, even if they are scorned, despised and, as Saint Paul says, excomunicated and anathematized” and not act as others do who use the Castilian language.

3. Onofre Manescal, Sermó (1603), he does not want it to be printed in Castilian, “as some thought necessary, understanding that in the Castilian language it would be more commonly (understood) and easier”. Ídem, p. 138. The following sermons are already in Castilian, though.

4. Lluís Ponç d’Icard, prologue to the Castilian edition of the Llibre de les Grandeses de Tarragona (1572), p.136-37: “this book I had composed, discreet and wise reader, in the Catalan language”, but “knowing the harm I did to this city, that my book would be addressed only to Catalonia [...] I have thought of translating it into Castilian, even though I am not very well endowed for it, not because I think this language better than the Catalan one or than others, but that as I am a subject of the most invincible king Philip, our lord, it is the more used in all his kingdoms”. And, especially, because “he does not want to incur the danger of being blamed and badly considered”. He insists with the reader to forgive him for writing in an alien tongue, “since I could not serve you in any other way, nor fulfil my obligation to my country, for which, according to Cicero, we must fear no danger”.

5. Francesc Tarafa had published, in 1552 the book Dels pobles, rius y montanyes de Espanya. It was translated into Latin, but “we know nothing of the original Catalan text”, “Prologue” by Alexandre d’Armengol i de Pereyra to Francesc Tarafa’s book Crònica de Cavallers Catalans, Asociación de Bibliófilos, Barcelona, 1952, vol. I, p. xvj. [Quadern meu, 1].

6. Martí de Viciana. In the Dedication to the Alabanzas de las Lengua Hebrea, Griega, Castellana y Valenciana (València, Joan Navarro, 1574) he asks the Senate to “forgive him for having translated this work from Valencian into Castilian; for the same reason I had to translate the Chronica de Valencia, and the Llibre de la Noblesa, Armes y Blasons, and the Llibre de Recració dels dies calorosos de juliol, and, after having compiled them, I had to work as much in translating them all only to render them known to many other provinces”, even though I had written them in Catalan in order that all those (Catalans) who speak Castilian “return to their natural tongue, the one they sucked from their mother’s teats, and they do not leave it for any other in the world, since it exceeds many others in its properties”. As Joan Fuster says, “he composed the originals in Catalan and then had to translate them in order to have them published”, Hª del País Valencià, III, p. 294. - Cf. Vicente Ximeno, Escritores del Reyno de Valencia, vol. I, p. 168 and Martín de Viciana, Alabanzas de las lenguas; Francisco Aguilar, València, 1877, p. 18.

7. According to DIEGO ROMERO LUCAS, concerning the Catalan editions of the XVIth century: “It is quite remarkable that the literary works printed in this [Catalan] language have disappeared almost completely, save for those regarding a few poetry contests dedicated to Our Lady or to some saint”. “moreover, neither were the great works by Valencian authors of the end of the XVth century and the beginning of the XVIth reprinted, even if they had been massively present at the origins of the printing press in Valencia: Joan Roís de Corella, sor Isabel de Villena, Jaume Roig o el Tirant lo Blanc”; «La Impremta a València a la fi del segle XVI», DelTirant al Don Quixote. La imatge del Cavaller; p. 99.

The fatherland

1737: Gregori Mayans wrote a biography for J. and R. Tonson’s English edition of Don Quixote. Mayans acknowledges that “after his death, many places claimed him as their son. Esquivias says he is hers. Sevilla denies her this glory and wants him for herself. Lucena advances the same claim. Each of them boasts of this right and none of them is entitled to it” (p. 7)
No one of the above mentioned cities has preserved any trace of his life there, nor fame, descendants, nor have their respective illustrious writers left any mention of him as one of their own. According to Mayans there is a strange silence about his birthplace, because Cervantes “at the most said he was a «hidalgo» without adding any other circumstance indicating his ancestral home”.

Per En Mayans hi ha un silenci estrany sobre el seu lloc de naixement, perquè En Cervantes "com a molt va dir que era «hidalgo» sense afegir cap circumstància que indiqués el seu solar".

Mayans writes that “I know for certain that Cervantes’ birthplace was Madrid”, grounding this conviction on a poem of Cervantes’ Journey to Parnassus, which reads:

"A Dios, dige a la humilde choza mía. A Dios Madrid" (Good bye, I said to my humble hovel. Good bye Madrid)
And which ends: “hoy de mi patria i de mi mismo salgo” (Today I leave my fatherland and myself)

But in another passage of this same Journey Cervantes writes: “While I was staying in Valladolid they brought a letter to my house...”, which is a clear contradiction.

Nevertheless, the same objections offered by Mayans for the other cities can be applied to Madrid, too, for neither is there anything to be found. Indeed, nobody nowadays mentions Madrid as his birthplace, nor as his family’s place of origin. And we have just seen how he also said himself that he was from Valladolid.

So : Cervantes died in 1616. In 1737 he had been dead only 119 years. 100 years after his death his first and most well-informed biographer did not know where he had been born, either. Or else he knew, and that is why he wrote his prologue-biography, but it had already been amended on being published.

Also, in an account given at Algiers in the presence of Fr. Joan Gil, dated October 10th ,1580, Cervantes declares twice that he is a “native of the town of Alcalá de Henares, in Castile, and I am presently here in Algiers, just ransomed and free to leave”.

And in some lawsuits in the last years of the XVIth century he confirms that he was born in Córdoba. But Jean Canavaggio, in his biography Cervantes (2003) states that “his silence regarding his Cordobese origins, his refusal to indicate his trade, delineate a twilight zone that somewhat upsets historians” (p. 60). Now, besides the difficulty in knowing where he had been born, for Canavaggio “it is impossible to make his ascendancy fully clear” (p. 50)

And by the end of the XIXth century, in 1878, Nicolás Díaz de Benjumea published La Verdad sobre el Quijote.Novisima Historia Critica de la Vida de Cervantes (The truth about Don Quixote. New critical history of Cervantes’ life). He asserted that a great “range of passages in his works” have remained “hidden under some disguise or other”, especially “many of the topics which are important in establishing his biography”. And he adds, quite surprised, that even if “the most important matter when writing about his life is accounting for his past and his family, he apparently did not want to reveal anything about it; what is more, he purposedly avoided disclosing anything” (p. 2). He thus acknowledges that there was a deliberate intention of concealing his past.

More recently, in his book, Las Vidas de Miguel de Cervantes, published in 1993, Andrés Trapiello tells us that “we ignore much more than what we actually know” about Cervantes. And concerning his origins he points out that : “A simple fact, such as Alcalà de Henares being Cervantes’ hometown, has taken centuries to find out. There have been quarrels; the scholars have stabbed each other in the dark lanes of their bulletins; some of them copied false proofs”.

He asserts that “Cervantes’ birthplace has been, successively or even at the same time, Alcázar de San Juan, Consuegra, Seville, Lucena, Madridejos, Herencia, Madrid, Toledo, Alcalá de Henares...”.

He ends with: “Cervantes, who always has a good memory for exact detail, never told us the name of his birthplace. He sometimes even lied about his origins, and swore , in order to help out a neighbour, or a cause, that he had been born in Córdoba.

“He often acknowledged he came from Esquivias, Toledo, Seville, Madrid, never saying anything about Alcalá de Henares. Like his own creature Don Quixote, Cervantes seems to have concealed the name of his birthplace in order that, in the following centuries, all the towns in La Mancha could claim to be the actual place”.

Which is also like saying that somebody did a cover up so that in the future Cervantes could be thought to have been a Castilian by birth.

There were two Miguel de Cervantes

Something nobody can deny is that there actually was a real person in Alcalá de Henares called Miguel de Cervantes. Alas, his biography does not fit our author’s at all.

Just as it has been ascertained that there were two Christopher Columbus, one from Genoa, an illiterate plebeian weaver, and another from Catalonia, an extremely cultivated nobleman and statesman, there are two Cervantes personalities, a sort of doppelganger
We have the Cervantes who has been documented in Alcalá de Henares, the son of an impoverished village surgeon who, at the time of his death owned only three books, and an exceptionally cultivated Cervantes, a soldier with ties to the Royal court.

According to some contemporary documents, Miguel de Cervantes’ eldest daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, was illiterate (Canavaggio, 314).

And Andrés Trapiello tells us that we are hard pressed to find any information about his grandparents “and even so there are many gaps. His maternal grandparents were peasants from Arganda, Argamasilla, Barajas or some other village in the outskirts of Madrid. Well-to-do peasants of the time, that is to say, rather poor” (p. 21).
Cervantes, instead, sent a memorandum dated 21st of May, 1590, to the Consejo de Indias applying for “a post in the Indies, among the three or four now existing vacancies, one of which is the accountantship of the new Kingdom of Granada, or the Government of the province of the new Kingdom of Granada, or the Government of the province of Soconusco in Guatemala, or accountant of the Cartagena galleys, or magistrate of the city of la Paz”, because his wish “is to continue to serve Your Majesty and end his life as his ancestors did” (Canavaggio, 224).

Thus, according to Trapiello, “it is difficult to ascertain whether Cervantes had, while staying in Seville, any connections with other literary men. Indeed, he had great familiarity with books, and this can be proved because his name appears at the auction dispersing the chattels of a bibliophile and dilettante, when he bought «four little gilded books, in French lettering» and a Vida de Santo Domingo, all for the conspicuous amount of five-hundred ducats, a hundred and eighty-seven thousand maravedis, which is more than double the sum his wife had inherited from her mother. How could a man like Cervantes spend such a quantity of money for these two small magnificent volumes? It is all quite amazing. It is not easy to imagine him near this luxury at all, when his life was never far from penury, nor from hard labour, since it was spent among stable boys, rude innkeepers and hidalgos of no consequence”.

According to Jean Canavaggio, for whom it is apparently rather difficult to link up all the information and data he has gathered on Cervantes, not mentioning his scarce ability in following a logical method and a chronological order, “maybe a day will come when it will be discovered that there were two Miguel de Cervantes” (p. 86).

Praise of Catalonia

In Persiles y Segismunda, he writes: “the polite Catalans, angry, terrible, gentle, quiet people; people who give their life easily for their honour, and to defend both, they surpass themselves , which is to surpass all the nations in the world”.

Agustín de Amezúa, explains that : “about no other Spanish province nor about its inhabitants did Cervantes write such warm praise, so that it sometimes seems more than just a literary topic, looking more like personal memories, an intimate gratefulness for something that happened in that city or region, for memories he cherished but about which we nowadays are completely ignorant” (Cf. Amezúa, II, 351).

In the novel Las dos doncellas he says of Barcelona: “They were taken aback by the fair location of the city and they considered it the flower of the beautiful cities of the world, a credit for Spain, a shelter for foreigners, a school of chivalry, an instance of loyalty”.

Of València he commends “the greatness of the position, the pleasantness of the surroundings, and finally everything that renders it beautiful and rich above all the cities, not only of Spain, but of the whole of Europe” Don Quixote, II, book III.
He also praises the “beauty of the women, their extreme cleanliness and gracious language, with which only the Portuguese tongue can compete in being sweet and pleasant”, which leads Francesc Martínez i Martínez to judge that “a native of the land would not lavish on it greater praise” (St. Fco, Cervantes y Vcia., 45).

In consequence of it all, Américo Castro writes that “it is quite remarkable that Cervantes’ greatest consideration, and his empathy, go to non Castilian regions” (p. 230).

He criticizes the religious persecutions carried out by the Castilian monarchy in the moor Ricot’s words: “What amazes me is not to know why my wife and my daughter went to Berbery rather than to France, where she could have lived as a Christian”. For A. Castro “there is no doubt that this statement implies that the contrary is the case in Spain” (p. 299). That is to say that in Spain, owing to the reactionary politics of the Castilian monarchy, it was not possible to live in a Christian way.

And according to Rosenkratz: “Cervantes was a true Spaniard, but his critical ability and the reforming genius that inspired him, were atypical in his fatherland” (Castro, 55, nota 3)

Relations with Catalonia

After carefully reading the Journey to Parnassus Martí de Riquer arrives to the conclusion that Cervantes spent his youth in Naples and Sicily (Leer a Cervantes, 87).

Towards 1567, Cervantes had some trouble at Court and according to Trapiello went to València and from there to Barcelona, before starting for Rome, where we find him already in 1569.

In Rome he entered the service of cardinal Juli Acquaviva i Aragó, in whose house he stayed.
But the cardinal started his journey to Rome from Barcelona, for which reason a gret number of authors believe that it follows that Cervantes was there, too.

He left the service of the cardinal and went to València, where he enlisted in the company of Miquel de Montcada, to go to the battle of Lepanto. For Martínez i Martínez, “for many years his companions in the army were Valencians (p. 47).

The fleet sailed from Barcelona on the 26th of June of 1571 (Navarrete, 14).

After the battle the fleet returned to Messina, where it found shelter. Here Cervantes disembarked and went to the hospital, in 1574 (Leer Cervantes, 49). We find him in Sicily, at least between 1572 and 1574, staying in Palermo.
In Naples and in Messina he found old friends and fellow soldiers, such as the Valencians Andreu Rey d’Artieda and Cristòfor de Virués.

In November of 1574 he decided to end his military life. He stayed in Naples until November of 1575, when he went back to Spain on board the galley Sol bound for Barcelona (Canavaggio 122).

“Not too far from Cadaquers or Palamós” (Canavaggio, 123), the galley was captured by Arnau mamí and Cervantes was taken to Algiers, together with many other knights and important people (Trapiello, 70). As he was a captain, a ransom was requested.

Martínez i Martínez thinks that Cervantes “had, during his captivity, a great and intimate relationship with the people of this land” (p. 47).

He attempted to flee together with a Valencian called Onofre Eixarch (Canavaggio 143).

The Valencian friars Jordi d’Oliver and Jeroni Antich in order to ransom him, sailed to Algiers, where they arrived on the 20th of April of 1577. The flight, in which the viceroy of València was also involved, failed (Canavaggio, 137).

Shortly afterwards, a frigate was equipped in Mallorca to rescue him (Canavaggio, 134) and Philip II carried out some steps to obtain his release through some Valencian merchants (Canavaggio, 137).

In 1577 his brother was released. He left Algiers on the 24th of August with a group of more than a hundred prisoners and returned to Spain. On the 1st of September he attended a Te Deum in the cathedral of València (Spunberg, 50-51). He delivered some letters addressed to the viceroys of Mallorca and València asking them to try to obtain the liberation of all those still remaining in Algiers (Spunberg, 53).

In 1578, from València, his mother asked the War Council the permission to “export to Algiers eight thousand ducats worth of merchandise” of the Kingdom of València (Canavaggio, 139). The request was granted by the viceroy and Captain General of València (St, Fco., Cervantes y Vcia., 27).

In June of 1578, the Orde de la Mercè authorized the Valencian merchant Ferran de Torres to undertake the negotiation concerning Cervantes’ ransom (Spunberg, 58).

In 1579, still in Algiers, he befriended the Sicilian poet Antonio Veneziano (Leer Cervantes, 56).

In 1580 he returned to Dènia, and from there, together with some of the other prisoners, he arrived in València, where they were received at the convent of the Trinitarians (Canavaggio, 149). After that, “the usual processions and Te Deums took place” (Trapiello, 84). This return is evoked in the novel El amante liberal, where he says that “the following day they saw in front of them the much wished for and beloved fatherland; their hearts rejoiced again, their spirits were agitated with new contentment, which is one of the greatest anybody can experience, arriving safely home after a long time in captivity” (Canavaggio, 149).

He remained for some months in València, where he kept in contact with the Valencian poets, going quite often to Joan Timoneda’s shop (Canavaggio, 150).

He wrote Los baños de Argel, a work dedicated to Miquel d’Aranda, a “Valencian priest that, undoubtedly, was stoned to death and burnt in his presence” (Canavaggio, 130).

In 1582 his mother tried to sell to the Valencian merchant Joan de Fortuny a commercial license that she had kept from the time when her sons were prisoners in Africa (Spunberg, 69).

In 1584, he obtained assistance from Ascanio Colonna, the future viceroy of Aragon.

In 1590 a niece of his broke her marriage to Pere de Lanuça i Perellós, a member of the high Aragonese aristrocracy (Spunberg, 122), and a brother of the famous Justícia of Aragón (Leer Cervantes, 70).

In 1595 he obtained the first prize in a poetry tournament organized by the Dominicans of Saragossa (Spunberg, 123).

Before 1604, possibly in 1603, Don Quixote was published in Barcelona. And in 1605 there were two editions in València.

In 1609, upon the designation of the new viceroy of Naples, Pere Ferrandis de Castro count of Lemos, Cervantes tried to enter his service as a member of his administrative retinue. He therefore went to Barcelona, in 1610, where he tried to see the count. He could only meet his old friend Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, an Aragonese (Leer Cervantes, 79).

According to very popular oral as well as written traditions, Cervantes owned a house in Barcelona, where, in Martí de Riquer’s opinion, he wrote some passages of Don Quixote.

For Riquer, Cervantes was living in Barcelona in 1610 (Leer Cervantes, 80). And he also tells us that “his travels through Catalonia and his knowlege of Barcelona heavily influenced the last section of the second part of Don Quixote” (80).

In 1613, the count of Lemos, Pere Ferrandis, Viceroy of Naples, started to subsidize him financially (Spunberg, 176). Cervantes dedicated the second part of Don Quixote to him.

In 1614 Avellaneda published his own Don Quixote, in Catalonia. It was purportedly printed in Tarragona, but Vindel has shown that the letters were the same of the Barcelonese printing press of Sebastià Cormelles [“Introduction” of Martí de Riquer to Avellaneda’s Don Quixote, xcviii]. In Don Quixote’s second part, the knight errant himself, when he was in Barcelona, tells us that Avellaneda’s false Don Quixote is then and there being printed.

Servent: A catalan

Thus we know that one of the two Miguel de Cervantes (or a few aspects of the Miguel de Cervantes we know) belonged to the upper class and was a military man, that he was in the wars in Flanders and Lepanto, that he participated in the campaigns of Oran and La Goleta. We further know that at some time in his life he resided in Naples, Sicily, València and Barcelona; that his ancestors had all served at Court and that for this same reason he also applied for office there. And that he became a tax collector for the Crown.

And : that he was a great writer, with a tremendous formal education, that he read a lot in Italian, a language and a culture whence he derived a huge amount of expressions and quotations, that he had friends in València and in Sicily and that he denounced the Castilian uniforming policy of the Spanish crown, just when the State was beginning to stiffen its attitude against the legal and political independence of the various kingdoms of the Corona d’Aragó.

We have seen that he supported a mediterranean Catalan policy.

So, which is the Catalan family he can be identified with?

We know that a branch of the Mallorcan Servents went to Castile, where they took the name of Cervantes.

Therefore, were the Cervantes family part of the Servent kin?

To start with, we have the coincidence that the Valencian Servent were a noble family. One Berenguer Servent, from Perpignan, participated in the campaign for the conquest of the Kingdom of València, under Jaume I, later settling in Xixona.

The king granted him the command of Castell Roig, at Ibi. He remained in Xixona, where he had a vast and lasting progeny.

Gaspar de Escolano in the Historia de la Insigne y Coronada Ciudad de Valencia tells us that Jeroni Servent served king Philip II in every opportunity during his lifetime, that is for about forty years, for instance in the campaign to relieve the sieges of Oran and la Goleta or Tunis and the capture of the Peñón de los Vélez de la Gomera. He later went to war in Flanders, with his brothers Andreu and Felip, where they stayed through all the time of the governorship in that country of the Duke of Alba, and where they distinguished themselves at the battle of Sant Guillem [...]. from there they went to Holland, to the siege of Arlén, where the three of them were seriously wounded by the explosion of a mine.
Curiously, there is one Felipe de Cervantes who wrote a poem to Saint Helen.

The García Caraffa brothers tell us that the ancestral home of the Servent family was at Puigcerdà and that they spread all over Catalonia. And in the autobiography Cervantes offers of himself he tells us that “my lineage had its origin [...]somewhere in the mountains”, Don Quixote, I, XXXIX.

Thus, the Servent family, were to be found in the Principality of Catalonia and the kingdom of València, as well as in Naples, where the Barcelonese galley commander Lluís Sirvent acted as ambassador of King Alfons to the Egyptian emissaries at Rhodes, in the years 1429-30 (Alfonso el Magnánimo, 367, note).

Members of the Servent family in the XIVth century:

Garcia Sirvent, chancellor of the king Pere III.

Bartomeu Sirvent: secretary of Pere III and of Joan I. According to Joan Fuster he was one of the “introductors and teachers of the new chancery style”, which deeply influenced Valencian notary offices.

Other members of the Servent family in the XVth century are:

Bernat Sirvent, lieutenant of the Treasurer of king Alfons IV (Dietari General.)
Francesc Sirvent, lawyer
Jofre Servent, merchant of Barcelona and Councillor.
There is also a Jofre Servent who was a tax collector for the Crown and for the General bailiwick during the Catalan revolt against king Joan II in 1461.
Berenguer Servent, consul of the Catalans in Alexandria.

We know that Cervantes was an admirer of Lluís Vives, whom he quotes in several occasions in his works. And that even one Francisco Cervantes de Salazar translated the Introducció i camí a la saviesa, by Vives.

The Servent family were direct kin of the Vives family of València. And in Barcelona, another Vives was the first to publish the two parts of Don Quixote in a single volume in the XVIIth century.

The Catalan Servents who came from Puigcerdà said in their armorials that they had spread all over Catalonia, València and America.

Nevertheless, those whom we actually find in America are the Cervantes.

The Barcelonese Servent were related to the Colom-Bertran family. Cervantes tells us that Sanç de Cardona was Maria Colom’s husband, the Discoverer’s granddaughter. And there are some books by Cervantes in the Biblioteca Colombina.

Cervantes quoted among the authors of the catalan nation

Finally, if Cervantes had been a Catalan, some kind of indication of it must have survived.

And here it is: Andreu Bosch tells us, in his Sumari, dated 1628, that among the authors of the various kingdoms of Catalonia that “prove the inborn loyalty of the Catalan nation”, besides Martínez del Vilar (Aragonese), Lucio Marineo Sículo (Sicilian), Mieres (Catalan), Jeronimo Çurita (Aragonese), Father Diago (Aragonese), Beuter (Valencian), Vicent d’Espinel (maybe really Espinalt, since Bosch quotes his book March de Obregon in Catalan); Carbonell, Molí, Master Osorio with his Sermó de la Immaculada Concepció de Maria, of 1618, Joan Antoni de la Vera y Zunyega (we think that the Zúnyigas are actually Requesens) or Doctor Menescal, there is “Miquel de Cervantes”.

Cervantes and Servent: two parallel lives (see pdf file for chart)

The Servent Family

Miguel de Cervantes

They are to be found in the various royal chancelleries of the Catalan Monarchy

He wrote that his ancestors worked at Court

They were in Xixona and València

He called himself “the swan from the Túria”

They were barristers, lawyers, chancellors, writers

It is believed that he belonged to a lineage of writers

They were treasurers in the Royal chancelleries and one of them (XVth century) was a tax collector of the Royal Exchequer

He applied to several kingdoms for a post of Treasurer in the Indies (America) and worked as a Royal tax collector

Catalan lineage

He said he was “returning to his fatherland” when seeing the Catalan coast of the Kingdom of València

He had friends in València; he had the first known edition of Don Quixote printed there; he greatly praised the city; his mother was in València while collecting his and his brother's ransom; some Valencian merchants got involved; the viceroy of València conducted the negotiations; according to him Tirant lo Blanc is the best novel in the world; València is the most beautiful city in Europe

The Servent family stem from Puigcerdà (Pirenées)

He wrote that his family came from “a place amid the mountains”

In the Servent family from Xixona there were three famous brothers

He acknowledged that he was one of three brothers

The emblem of the Servent family is a stag

The Cervantes coat of arms has a stag as its emblem

The Catalan Servent are called Cervantes in the books we have reviewed

There is a Servent family in Castile, whose members, in settling there, were called just Cervantes

The three Servent brothers fought in Flanders

Miguel de Cervantes fought in Flanders with one of his brothers

They also participated in the wars in Italy and Northern Africa

He fought in Italy and the North of Africa

The three brothers became famous under Philip II

He became famous serving the king Philip II

The three brothers were wounded in an explosion

His left arm was permanently maimed due to war wounds

Members of the Servent family were Chancellors at the court of Alfons el Magnànim

He stayed in Naples and Sicily. He had Sicilian friends

The Servent family had a house in Barcelona

He had a house in Barcelona

The Catalan lawyers opposed the policy of the Spanish Crown which tried to uniform the various kingdoms

He praised Perot Rocaguinarda because he challenged the interests of the Spanish Crown in Catalonia

Bartomeu Servent revolutioned the chancellery prose at the end of the XIVth century

He revolutioned literary prose; his is full of chancellery terms and of words of Catalan origin

They were merchants

He knew perfectly well the customs and the language of merchants

They were seafarers and consuls

He knew perfectly well the customs of navigation and naval language

The Servent family and the Vives family were related

He was an admirer and plagiarist of Joan Lluís Vives; and Rafel Vives printed Don Quixote in one single volume in Barcelona

Baptism (see pdf file for copy of original signatures)

The single record of Cervantes’ baptism. ‘Miguel’ is clearly an addition, written by a different hand and as a surname you can clearly read ‘Carvantes’ and not Cervantes.

Link to this document: http://www.histocat.cat/hta/v31.htm