A Title of Distinction

Abstract

After the battle of Lopera, fought in 1483 against the Moorish kingdom of Granada, Ferdinand and Isabel, sovereigns of Aragon and Castile, received the victorious Count of Cabra and his nephew, the Alcaide de los Donceles, with lavish entertainment. The sovereigns honored the heroes by bestowing upon them large revenues for life, and in further recognition of their gallant services they granted them and their descendants the privilege of prefixing the title don to their names.' By contrast, little more than a century later, in 1591, Fray Juan Benito Guardiola complained that, low-class people even women of the streets were usurping the illustrious title of don and donia.2 Between these two dates, and continuing into the seventeenth century, social changes were at work breaking down the old hierarchical concept of society. The spurious assumption of the title don became a symbol of the resulting chaos, and criticism of its use appeared frequently in Spanish literature of the Golden Age. The subject furnished the motive for much satiric comment, and sometimes it was closely related to literary theme. Still the great hue and cry against the widespread use of don must be regarded as odd if we consider the historical evidence. In the Cantar de Mio Cid almost everybody was don. The title was given to the two ecclesiastics, to all the hidalgos, whether lords or vassals, and to the women with one exception. It was not used for the Infantes de Carri6n, perhaps because of their youth, although their wives called them don. No Moor was called don, but the Jews Raquel and Vidas were given the If there were a dead level of equality in things, only one kind of created good would exist, which would be a manifest derogation from the perfection of creation.-St. Thomas Aquinas