In this essay I am resuming an enquiry into the theological reach of Cervantes’s Novelas which I began in 1996 in a study of La fuerza de la sangre (The Power of Blood). This novella, as I understand it, is a kind of Christian mystery tale which unfolds a warning against prejudiced and pessimistic perceptions of a world in which the innocent suffer and evil can seem to prevail. Its essential theme for a shrewd and not too squeamish reader is the hidden immanence of God. Behind it there lies a medieval Scholastic doctrine on the nature of divine sovereignty which was still accepted by seventeenth-century theologians. Pilloried by agnostic thinkers of the European Enlightenment, this doctrine declared that the whole of life is governed by two forms of providence, one of which is the God who wills what is good in life ( providentia approbationis) and the second of which is the God who permits what is evil ( providentia concessionis) whilst still intending good. Hence the novela's explicit theme of a God who ‘permits’ an innocent child to suffer an accident which is instrumental in bringing about the marriage of his parents; and hence (in my interpretation) the darker and, as Cervantes knows, potentially offensive theme of a God who permits the rape of a virtuous woman with the same end in view. Presented in a form which allows a narrow-minded reader to bury his head in the sand, the theme of providential rape is an example of Cervantine free-thinking concerning the theoretical implications of a traditional religious doctrine. In this essay I wish to show how the same doctrine reappears in forms which I think are still more free-thinking in El celoso extremeño.

Cervantine free-thinking is not specifically metaphysical and it is that of a man whose Christian core is undoubtedly fideist. It is nevertheless an attempt at thinking objectively which sometimes crosses the dividing line between safe thought and curiosity in theological matters. It naturally involves a habit of self-detachment.