Manuel, Don Juan
(1282–1348)
The most important writer of prose in 14th-century Spain was the nobleman Don Juan Manuel, prince of Castile and adelantado mayor (hereditary governor) of Murcia. Don Juan was the nephew of King ALFONSO X (1221–84), known as El Sabio, or “The Learned.”He spent much of his life in political squabbles with the kings of Castile, attempting to maintain and expand his own power and influence. But he is best remembered for his prose works, in particular El conde Lucanor (“Count Lucanor”), a collection of 51 moral fables and folkstories drawn from a variety of sources. Don Juan was the grandson of King Ferdinand III, and his father Prince Manuel (Alfonso X’s younger brother) died when Don Juan was only two years old. The death of his mother, Beatriz of Savoy, left the young Don Juan an orphan six years later.He was educated at the court of King Sancho IV, his cousin. In 1294, at the age of 12, Don Juan fought in his first military engagement when his territory in Murcia was attacked by a Moorish army. It was his entry into the political life of Castile, which would consume more than 40 years of Don Juan’s life.
Sancho died in 1295, and his widow Dona Maria de Molina, queen mother of Castile, was regent for her nine-year-old son Ferdinand IV. Don Juan supported his uncle Prince Juan’s claim to the throne, but voiced open conflict with Ferdinand and Dona Maria until, in negotiations with King James II of Aragon, Don Juan was successful in securing a promise of marriage to Constanza, James’s three-year-old daughter. At that point Don Juan and James II formed an alliance against Ferdinand IV, who subsequently pronounced a death sentence on Don Juan.When Aragon and Castile formed an alliance against the Moors in 1309, Don Juan refused to join them, and instead engaged in raids on Ferdinand’s territory of León. In 1312, Don Juan was finally able to marry the 12-year-old Constanza. But in that same year, Ferdinand died, replaced on the throne by his infant son Alfonso XI. In 1319, Don Juan was made one of the co-regents of Castile during the king’s minority, and for six years acted essentially with royal power as the king’s guardian, while a kind of anarchy raged in Castile as the various regents fought one another. In 1325, Alfonso assumed power at the age of 14, and promptly quelled any further ambitions on Don Juan’s part by appointing Don Juan’s political rivals to be his closest advisers. While Don Juan began to form new alliances against Alfonso, the new king made peace by offering to marry Don Juan’s young daughter, Constanza. For two years, Don Juan supported Alfonso, but when the king repudiated Constanza and broke off their engagement in 1327, imprisoning her and contracting to marry the daughter of the king of Portugal, Don Juan retaliated ferociously. He began by forming an alliance with Mahomet III, the Moorish ruler of Granada, and together they made war on Alfonso. Don Juan lost his Muslim allies after 1329 but was successful in finding a new ally in Pedro IV of Aragon, and he gained Portugal’s support by betrothing the nowavailable Constanza to the young heir to the Portuguese throne. But when Alfonso refused to allow Constanza to travel to Portugal for her wedding in 1336, Don Juan renewed his attacks on the Castilian monarch. Defeated, Don Juan was forced into exile at Valencia until 1338. The Pact of Seville, signed by Don Juan and Alfonso in 1340, made peace between the parties, and Constanza was finally allowed to travel to Portugal.
Reconciled with Alfonso, Don Juan joined with him in wars against the Moors, and led the victorious Castilian army into Algeciras in 1344. But after that engagement, Don Juan decided to retire to his castle at Peñafiel, where he had founded a Dominican monastery and where he spent his last years peacefully, in study and in writing, until his death in 1348.
Don Juan wrote 14 literary works that we know of, and was conscientious in having accurate texts produced and kept at the Peñafiel monastery. Still, none of these original manuscripts survive, and only eight of Don Juan’s 14 known works are extant at all. One of these, Libro de los estados (Book of the estates), is a discussion of the medieval theory of the estates, or classes of society. It contains a version of the popular story of BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT, and includes Don Juan’s personal recollections of his own experiences. His Libro de las armas tells of Don Juan’s visit, at the age of 12, to the deathbed of his cousin Sancho IV, and relates Sancho’s dying recollections of his violent life. But by far his best-known work is El conde Lucanor (also called the Libro de Patronio). Probably influenced by the earlier Libro de CALILA E DIGNA, this collection of tales is framed by a narrative in which Patronio, a servant and tutor to the young Count Lucanor, tells 51 tales as responses to questions from Lucanor about the kinds of things that might typically concern a young nobleman—how much to trust powerful neighbors, or unsupportive allies, for example. The tales—drawn from animal fables, folktales, and historical anecdotes— illustrate Patronio’s practical advice on matters of diplomacy and politics, and, in the end, spiritual matters. But Don Juan’s practical morality in political matters, illustrating how a statesman may need to use deceit at times, or violence at other times, has led some to see Don Juan as a precursor of Machiavelli. The fact that Don Juan was the earliest prose stylist in vernacular Castilian has also led to comparisons with other vernacular artists of the 14th century, like DANTE and CHAUCER. While a comparison with those artists may be something of a stretch, it is certainly true that, while Alfonso X had established Castilian as a language for serious literary texts, Don Juan developed it into a vehicle for a distinctive individual style.
Bibliography
■ Dunn, Peter N. “Don Juan Manuel: The World as Text,” Modern Language Notes 106 (1991): 223–240.
■ Manuel, Don Juan. The Book of Count Lucanor and Patronio. Translated by John E. Keller, L. Clark Keating, and Barbara E. Gaddy. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
■ Sturcken, H. Tracy. Don Juan Manuel. New York: Twayne, 1974.
Источник: Manuel, Don Juan
