The Presence of María de Velasco in Pinar’s Juego trobado, in the Carajicomedia, and in La novela del licenciado Vidriera by Cervantes

Roger Boase

doi:10.7203/mclm.8.16552

Abstract

Research on the court ladies who participated in Pinar’s Juego trobado, a card game in verse completed in 1496, led to the discovery that María de Velasco, wife of Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, and adoptive-mother of Ignatius Loyola, subsequently appears in several literary texts, the first of which is the Carajicomedia, where she is metamorphosed into an old prostitute skilled in the arts of seduction. Surprisingly, I have detected her presence in La novela del licenciado Vidriera, one of Cervantes’ Novelas ejemplares: each of the names of the main character, given or adopted during the course of his life, is linked in some way with this lady; and, furthermore, there are other correspondences, above all the symbolism of the quince. This begs the question whether the tale was intended to convey a coded message, and if so, one wonders what kind of message. This discovery also seems to add some credence to the theory that in Don Quixote Cervantes wished to parody the life of Ignatius Loyola as well as the heroes of chivalric romance.

Highlights

Cervantes; Pinar; María de Velasco; Carajicomedia; Crónica burlesca; La Lena; Batallas y quinquagenas; Don Quixote; Vidriera; Ignatius Loyola; Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar; Germana de Foix, King Fernando; cantharides; symbolism of quince; peacocks; parrots; melancholia
María de Velasco y Guevara (c. 1467-1541) is best known as the adoptive-mother and distant aunt of St Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order, who entered her large household as a pageboy in 1505 or 1506 when her husband Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar was granted tenure of the fortress of Arévalo (Diago Hernando 1980: 168), a position that his father Licenciado Gutierre Velázquez de Cuéllar had once held when the latter was responsible for the affairs of Isabel de Portugal (d. 1496), the mentally disturbed mother of Queen Isabel of Castile
This, I believe, would explain her presence in the anonymous and highly obscene Carajicomedia, where, as Diego Fajardo’s guide to the prostitutes of Spain, she is the counterpart to the damsel personifying Providence in Juan de Mena’s Laberinto de Fortuna (Domínguez 2007-2008). She is identified as the person alluded to in stanza 17 of Gerónimo Pinar’s Juego trobado (Boase 2017), a poetic game completed in the summer of 1496

Summary

Introduction

Cervantes; Pinar; María de Velasco; Carajicomedia; Crónica burlesca; La Lena; Batallas y quinquagenas; Don Quixote; Vidriera; Ignatius Loyola; Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar; Germana de Foix, King Fernando; cantharides; symbolism of quince; peacocks; parrots; melancholia.

Results

Conclusion