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  113 7 The ius naturale and “The Indian Question” We turn from the professional legists and theologians of the century to continue our interrogation of the historical record and the discursive formations of the period that produced Don Quixote. What we might now refer to as the Quixotic view of human institutional history was widely disseminated and discussed in Cervantes’s time. A significant example of this is the Trinitarian friar Alonso de Castrillo, whose Tractado de República was published in 1521 in Burgos. What makes Castrillo especially valuable in our effort to demonstrate the match between Don Quixote and the ideas current in his time is the fact that Castrillo was not a professional in the area of jurisprudence. Unlike the theorists we have cited, Castrillo was neither a lawyer nor a theologian in the Thomist tradition. Consequently, his Tractado is not a legal treatise nor is it a work of political philosophy, although it can be said to partake of both genres. The Tractado was not reprinted nor was it widely disseminated. In fact, precisely because of its non-specialist accessibility, it can be seen as even more representative of ideas that were “in the air” in the century. To cite José Megías Quirós: “Castrillo seems to represent the ‘common’ feeling of his period concerning political and juridical matters; that is to say, the ‘feeling’ communally shared in the environment, that is in the air, and that rarely appears in primarily academic texts until those views have gained the necessary prestige” [“Castrillo parece ser un re­ presentante del sentir ‘común’ de su época acerca de materias políticas y jurídicas; es decir, de ese ‘sentir’ comúnmente compartido, que está en el ambiente, en el aire, y que rara vez aparece en textos propiamente 114   The Utopian Nexus in Don Quixote universitarios hasta que esa mentalidad no ha alcanzado el prestigio suficiente ” (Megías Quirós 27)]. The Tractado proceeds in Scholastic fashion from the lesser to the greater. So we have: Capítulo I: Que trata de qué cosa sea casa [Concerning what is a house]; Capítulo II: . . . qué cosa sea cibdad [what is a city]; Capítulo III . . . qué cosa sea cibdadano y qué cosa sea república [what is a citizen and what is a republic]. Castrillo thus appears to be preparing the way for a communitarian theory of the state, an impression that seems to be confirmed in the title of his chapter: Que trata de cierta comparación de las abejas a los cibdadanos y gobernadores de la República [Which treats of a comparison of a beehive and the citizens and governors of the Republic]. In the two chapters that follow, Castrillo adopts the political commonplace of the perfect organization of the hive, and the respect and obedience that all bees have for their “king.” In chapter 6 the argument is reversed. Castrillo states the case against the very status quo he has thus far been describing. The view he now elaborates actually resonates with the peasant’s perspective in the Disputa on the originary equality of humankind and the subsequent and forcible imposition of hierarchy brought about by the ius gentium. In Castrillo’s words: “ . . . whereas nature created us all equal and free, there is nothing that so offends against nature as obeisance, which was introduced rather by force than by natural justice” [“ . . . que como quiera que la natura a todos juntamente nos hubo criado iguales y libres, no hay cosa de que tanto se agravia la natura como de la obediencia, la cual fué introducida más por la fuerza que no por natural justicia” (Tractado 43)]. It is a view we have seen circulating in sixteenth-century Spain by recourse to the authority of both Aristotle and Cicero. A fuller reading of these ancient writers, however, would authorize a less “libertarian” theory of the origins of human society and of the meaning of natural law than Castrillo ascribes to them. In fact, Aristotle and Cicero argued that humans are by nature political animals and have established themselves in power relations from the very beginning. Castrillo’s partial citations of these authoritative sources nevertheless serve to validate his . The universality of this topos is attested to by López Madera: “bees have always been taken as a sign and a symbol of the Kingdom” [“que fueron siempre tenidas [las abexas] por symbolo y señal de Reyno” (fol. 4v)]. [18.222.125.171] Project...

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