Sanctity, Heroism, and Performance in Miguel de Unamuno’s San Manuel Bueno, mártir

The title of Miguel de Unamuno’s text identifies its main protagonist as a “saint” – San Manuel Bueno, mártir (1931; my emphasis). The recurrent association of don Manuel with the words “san,” “santo,” and “santidad” – 33 times to be exact in a 55-page text – is haunting. It also raises the question: Under what criteria could don Manuel be considered a saint? Strangely enough, critics have rarely reflected on the designation of don Manuel as “saint.”¹ Yet, the issue of the priest’s saintliness is essential from a hermeneutic perspective since, unless his proclaimed sainthood is meant to be ironic, a clear sense of how and why don Manuel is a saint can shed much light on the meaning of a text with such a title. Furthermore, the text also associates the priest’s attributed sainthood with heroism – his “heroica santidad” (108; my emphasis). As in the case of sainthood, critics have not delved thoroughly into this clearly stated aspect of San Manuel.² I suggest that in order to reach a deeper understanding of Unamuno’s novel the reader needs to take into account both dimensions of don Manuel’s ascribed identity – sainthood and heroism – and consider the synergy between them in view of the priest’s performance on his stage, the village of Valverde de Lucerna.

In this essay, I shall examine, first, if don Manuel’s deeds fit the requirements for sainthood, not in a religious sense, but as used in contemporary moral philosophy – specifically by J. O. Urmson. Second, I will develop how don Manuel’s role in Unamuno’s text corresponds to that of the tragic hero of ancient Greek tragedy. In this task, I benefit from Sigmund Freud’s understanding of the psychological function of the tragic hero as developed in Totem and Taboo. Finally, don Manuel’s sainthood and heroism will be shown to ultimately rely on “restored behavior,” that is, on performance. Another way to approach this issue, as the contemporary German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk puts it, is to assume that the behavior of saints and heroes is always modeled after the deeds of those saints and heroes that came before. Don Manuel’s actions and words are no exception, and in his efforts to shape Valverde de Lucerna into what Victor Turner calls communitas (From Ritual 44), the priest restores Christ’s behavior as the greatest saint and the archetypal tragic hero in what Ángela describes as “su divino, su santísimo juego” (146; my emphasis).

I. Ethics and Sainthood

Unamuno’s text dramatizes don Manuel’s painful shift, in the sphere of ethics, from a “heteronomous” moral framework to an “autonomous” one.³ As Kant says in his Critique of Practical Reason, a heteronomous conscience follows principles whose origins are outside itself (such as “divine command”), while an autonomous one is self-determined (60). From this perspective, as a heteronomous human being, don Manuel used to be a unified conscience, one whose convictions, deeds and words unfailingly depended on the existence of a Supreme Being and the categorical nature of a main duty: obedience to His commands. One must note, however, that the text does not speak of the adult don Manuel as a believer; it only refers to him as such during his childhood, and not in uncertain terms: “¡Y entonces sí creía en la vida perdurable! Es decir, me figuro ahora que creía entonces. Para un niño, creer no es más que soñar” (137-38). Perhaps, the only time in his life that don Manuel possessed a unified conscience was during his childhood. After that, he remains within the Church without questioning its main dogmas until he becomes aware of his lack of faith in the existence of God and the afterlife, a moment that he marks in his prayer book. According to Ángela: “mi hermano [Lázaro] guardó su breviario, entre cuyas hojas encontró, desecada y como en un herbario, una clavellina pegada a un papel, y en éste, una cruz con una fecha” (140).⁴ The...