sancho por negros que sean los he de vo

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Sancho Panzas por negros que sean, los hede volver blancos o amarillos (DQ .) and

Juan de Marianas De monetaof

_____________________________________________E. C. G

Tere is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of soci-ety than to debauch the currency. Te process engages all the hidden forcesof economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner whichnot one man in a million is able to diagnose.

J M K, Te Economic Consequences of the Peace

O decades, materialistic interpretations ofDon Quijote have risen to prominence. Te novel is nowroutinely viewed as the culmination of a host of carnal and

monetary themes that can be traced back to decidedly down-to-earthtexts like La Celestina() and Lazarillo de ormes(). Regardlessof the ideological drift of emphasizing the novels worldly aspects, anapproach from below, as it were, has the advantage of attending to

I use materialistic and materialism, in both broad and narrow senses, to indi-cate a general interest in money, wealth, and economic topics, on the one hand, but also aphilosophy that turns away from theological speculation and focuses on the body and thephysical world, on the other. While I am concerned with the ways in which material realityimpacts a great work of art like Don Quijote, I do not want to imply a deterministic interpreta-tion of authorship as purely a function of said reality. In my view, early modern authors likeNiccol Machiavelli, Miguel de Cervantes, and Tomas Hobbes are important agents in theRenaissances epistemological shift toward the primacy of matter and contingency when think-ing about human affairs as opposed to traditions that emphasized divine intervention and

moral scripture. Louis AlthussersMachiavelli and Usand Jacques Lezras Unspeakable Subjects,which applies Lucretiuss De rerum naturato Cervantes, indicate the range of fruitful work inthis area. For Cervantess direct influence on Hobbesian materialism, see Graf, Cervantes and

Modernity.


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meanings that others overlook. Not only does it clarify some subtledetails, it points up themes that have yet to be fully appreciated; it even

suggests that Don Quijoteplays a more vital role in the evolution ofmodern thought than is generally recognized. A very mild sampling ofthis range: Donald McGrady has noted that the sospiros emitted bySancho Panzas donkey at the beginning of part two, chapter eight arein fact a euphemism for farts, which were interpreted as good omensby ancient authors like Aesop; Carroll Johnson has demonstrated thatpassages like the labor dispute between Andrs and Juan Haldudo inpart one, chapter fourteen or Sancho Panzas request for a salary in parttwo, chapter seven reflect the deeper problem of economic survival ina rural landscape devastated by poverty; and I myself have argued thatthe annihilation of phantoms in part one, chapter nineteen laid im-portant metaphorical groundwork for the materialistic philosophy ofTomas Hobbes and by extension Karl Marx (Cervantes and Modernity-). Indeed, a striking aspect of many Cervantine texts is the degreeto which bodily and economic issues occur in proximity. Combining

the interests of McGrady and Johnson above, we see that the promis-ing gas of Sanchos donkey comes hard on the heels of an attempt bythe squire to get his knight to commit to a salario conocido(.:).Similarly, after dispensing with ghosts in part one, chapter nineteen,

which turn out to be clerics escorting a dead body on a bier, knight andsquire spend the night by some fulling mills in chapter twenty. Te me-chanical noise is so frightening that Sancho cannot leave Don Quijotesside even when forced to relieve his bowels. At this turn from eschatol-ogy to scatology, Sancho inquires about compensation for his service:

querra yo saber, por si acaso no llegase el tiempo de las mercedes yfuese necesario acudir al de los salarios, cunto ganaba un escudero deun caballero andante en aquellos tiempos (.:).

Arguably Cervantess most concise interweaving of bodily andeconomic tropes is his earlier sonnet Al tmulo del Rey Felipe II enSevilla (). Here the poetic persona and a sarcastic soldier stand be-

fore an enormous catafalque dedicated to the recently deceased PhilipII (-). What follows is a classic baroque attack on the structuresoverly elaborate display of royal power, with much of the poems ir-


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Volume . () DQ . and Marianas De Moneta

reverence expressed in monetary language: Voto a Dios que me es-panta esta grandeza / y que diera un dobln por describilla (lines -);

Por Jesucristo vivo, cada pieza / vale ms de un milln (lines -);Apostar que el nima del muerto / por gozar este sitio hoy ha dejado/ la gloria donde vive eternamente (lines -). Te soldier concludesthese cynical evaluations with an abrupt departure in a supplemen-tary triplet known as an estrambote, which ironically distorts the veryanatomy of the sonnet form. His vanishing act starts with an allusionto the diarrheathat most grotesque form of bodily incontinencethat made Philip IIs final days so agonizing: Y luego, encontinente, /cal el chapeo, requiri la espada, / mir al soslayo, fuese, y no hubonada (lines -). Philip IIs reign has been a glittering illusion barelyconcealing the stench of corruption, and while he may have departedto a better place, he has left behind a bankrupt state of affairs (hardlya Golden Age), the costs of which his embittered subjects must stillbear.

Tis present essay is an interpretive contribution to what we might

call the theme of the economic body in Cervantess masterpiece; bywhich I mean, as per the examples above, the uncanny degree to whichthe author alludes to the body and its various functions in the con-text of topics like salaries, economic exploitation, and, as I will showhere, monetary policy. My case centers on a phrase uttered by Sanchoconcerning one of his many get-rich-quick schemes. About halfwaythrough part one, chapter twenty-nine the squire fantasizes about themoney he will make by selling the unfortunate citizens of the mythicalkingdom of Micomicn into slavery. Readers will recall that Dorotea,disguised as the Princess of Micomicn, has sought Don Quijotes as-sistance in liberating her kingdom. Te knight imagines chivalric ad-venture in the service of a damsel in distress, but Sanchos mind turnsout a more modern narrative of conquest and booty. For a moment he

In various etymological, orthographic, and phonetic ways the adverb encontinenteatonce can be read as an adjective derived from the Latin incontinentiaincontinence, implying

moral and political decay via a range of bodily functions. For a discussion of the scatology ofAl tmulo del Rey Felipe II en Sevilla in relation to reports of Philip IIs diarrhetic death, seeGraf, Escritor/Excretor. For a vision of the poems critique of Habsburg monetary policy, seeLezra, La economa poltica del alma.


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is dismayed at the thought of ruling over an unlucrative nation of blackAfricans, but he quickly hits on a solution: Qu se me da a m que

mis vasallos sean negros? Habr ms que cargar con ellos y traerlos aEspaa, donde los podr vender y adonde me los pagarn de contado?(.:). His final observation regarding his plan seems at first glancean obvious paronomasia based on the skin color of the slaves and thecolors of the metallic money that he expects to amass: por negros quesean, los he de volver blancos o amarillos (.:). Te semantic playat the root of Sanchos quip, which juxtaposes the black Africans andthe silver and gold coins of early modern Spain, was noted long agoby Diego Clemencn in his - edition of Don Quijote(.:.).But there is more to the phrases irony. In my opinion, Cervantes is alsoreferring to the centuries-old practice by political authorities of mixingmore and more copper into the precious metals employed in the mint-ing of coins used by Spaniards in everyday commercial activities.

In the year after Philip IIs death and Cervantess outrageoussonnetone of Spains greatest contributions to the genre of princely

advice manuals was published at oledo: De rege et regis institutione[On the King and Kingly Education], written by the historian and phi-losopher Juan de Mariana, S. J. (-).In the edition of Derege et regis institutionepublished at Moguntiae (Mainz), Germanybook three, chapter eight, entitled De moneta [On Money], there isa passage of great interest with respect to Sanchos colorful phrasein chapter twenty-nine. Here Mariana twice refers to bad money as

black. Te scientific reason for this is that copper reacts with oxygenin the air to form copper oxide, which is black. Tus, the more cop-per content a coin has relative to its gold or silver content, the blackerit will become over time. Since copper is more plentiful and easier tomine than the precious metals, the blackness of a coin indicates itslack of value. While Mariana could not have known the chemistry ofthis phenomenon, he clearly understands that black money is moneythat has been contaminated with copper. Furthermore, he notes that

as far back as the reign of Alfonso X (-), this terminology has Te preliminaries of De rege et regis institutioneare dated indicating that the text

was completed and submitted for approval the previous year.


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been used to indicate money that has had its value debased in thismanner; and then, being an excellent historian, and to confirm that

Spanish monarchs have debased the currency throughout the ages, hereports that he has personally inspected coins from the reigns of PedroI (-) and Enrique II (-), finding that the latter containedsignificantly more copper:

Alfonsus Castell Rex cognomento sapiens, cum primum regniinsulas & sceptra capessiit, pro Pepionibus, qu moneta in usuerat, Burgaleses substituit non probam pecuniam. Subsecutam exeo continuo rerum caritatem ut levaret, nova lege merces taxauit.Recruduit remedio malum cum nemo eo pretio vendere vellet. Sictaxatio sub ipsa principia sublata est, caritatis malum diu viguit:quam prcipuam causam inuenio gentis alienat, atque Sanctii& filii in eius locum eo vivente substituti, monet labem, nam uterat capitosus septimo regni anno Burgalesibus abrogatis mone-tam invexit, nigram a vilitate metalli dictam. [] Vidimus Petri

Regis & Henrici fratris Regales, Petri quidem ex argento probo, acqualis cuditur nostra tate in Castella, Henrici autem subnigros,quippe multo re admixto, consecutam ex eo caritatem rerumcum provincialium gemitu ut levaret, compulsus est nova censurade utroque monet genere duas tertias valoris detrahere. Sic incontrarium spe cadunt, qu callide excogitata in salutem vide-bantur. Improvidas hominum mentes & ccas. (.:-)

[When Alfonso the Wise rose to the throne of Castile and took thescepter, he changed the money that was in use at that time, calledthe pepin, for a new one, called the burgalesa, of inferior quality. Inorder to overcome the shortage of goods, which was a consequenceof this change, he fixed the prices of all merchandise. At this the dif-ficulties were augmented, to such an extent that nobody wanted tosell at the prices fixed by decree, and the fixed prices were naturally

ignored, with the result that the shortages were prolonged indefi-nitely. I believe that the poor quality of the new money was theprincipal cause of the peoples exasperated spirits, so much so that


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during the life of King Alfonso they switched allegiance to DonSancho and his sons. Don Alfonso was so stubborn and capricious

that in the seventh year of his reign he tired of the money called theburgalesa and changed it for yet another, which was called negrablack because the metal was so bad. [] We have inspected thereales of Don Enrique and Don Pedro. Tose of the latter weretruly of good silver, equal to that still struck in our day in Castile;those of Don Enrique were rather blackened through much mixing

with the copper they contained. And at the advent of a shortage ofall goods of primary necessity, he found himself obliged to reducethe value of the currency by two thirds. Such often happens, for

what is believed to be most useful and ingenious comes to be mostharmful. Oh, the judgment of men lacks foresight and is blind!]

Te publication history of Marianas De moneta chapter meritssome attention. A comparative reading suggests Mariana was inspiredby either a manuscript or an early print version of a very similar work

by Nicholas Oresme, ractatus de origine, natura, jure, et mutacioni-bus monetarum [A reatise on the Origin, Nature, Law, and Alterationsof Money] (c.), which he could have come across during his yearsteaching at Paris.After its initial publication in the edition of

All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated by additional parenthetical refer-ences to page numbers of an English edition. For Marianas De monetae mutatione, I quotefrom the Latin edition Laures transcribed as an appendix to his book, and I use Brannanstranslation,A reatise on the Alteration of Money, found in Grabill. For Marianas De rege et regis

institutione, I quote from the Latin edition of , a typographically corrected reprint of the edition, and whenever possible, I use Moores translation, Te King and the Education ofthe King, based on the edition. Te exception is the important chapter on money, whichfirst appeared in the edition and has not appeared in English to my knowledge. In the fewcases I have deemed it necessary to give my own translations, I have consulted both Englisheditions just mentioned as well as the respective Spanish editions, Marianas own translationof De monetae mutationeas ratado y discurso sobre la moneda de vellnand Snchez Agestastranslation of De rege et regis institutioneas La dignidad real y la educacin del rey. Finally, Iam indebted to my good friend Hazzard Bagg for his advice regarding Latin translations andorthography.

Like Mariana, Oresme is noteworthy for anticipating Greshams law () and for in-sisting that currency debasement is tantamount to tyranny (). Moreover, he twice men-tions nigra moneta (, ), giving it the exact same sense as Mariana. For the history of thevarious manuscripts and fifteenth-, sixteenth-, and seventeenth-century printings of Oresmes


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De rege et regis institutione, Marianas De monetachapter subsequentlybecame the basis for his larger essay, De monetae mutatione [On the

Alterations of Money],published four years later among a collection ofessays, ractatus septem [Seven reatises] (Cologne, ). In this laterversionwhich is the reason for Marianas current fame as a forerunnerof the so-called Austrian School of economic thoughthe supportshis monetary investigations with additional references to past and pres-ent authorities, delves into changes in the value of Spanish currenciesover time, and attacks the current regime for making recourse onceagain to debasement. Tis led to Mariana being charged with lse-majest and at the age of seventy-three being placed under house arrestfor four months in Madrid; it also prompted Spanish authorities, firstPhilip III (-) and later the Inquisition, to expurgate De mon-etae mutationefrom every copy of the ractatus septemthey could find(Laures -). In this final version of the earlier De moneta, Marianaagain deploys the black money phrase (although only once), and asbefore in reference to the misguided policies of Alfonso the Wise:

treatise, see the introductory essays by Charles Johnson and R. A. B. Mynors. We should note,however, that medieval and early modern jurists from across Europe, whose work was repeat-edly brought to press throughout the sixteenth centurysuch as Andrea DIsernia (-)(Commentaria in usus librum feudorum, Lyon, ), Gabriel Biel (d.) (ractatus de po-testate et utilitate monetarum, Oppenheim, ), and Ren Budel (c.-) (De monetis etre numaria, Cologne, )could all have influenced Marianas monetary analysis. Indeed,Mariana eventually cites Budel and other unnamed scholars as sources for his discussion ofmoneys intrinsic (natural) versus extrinsic (legal) values (De monetae mutatione [reatise onthe Alteration of Money]). For a survey of these numerous treatises, see Menger.

In very broad terms, the Austrian School emphasizes the subjective origins of value,the folly of centralized economic planning, and the idea that inflation is generally the resultof bad monetary policy. Te school includes such notable figures as Frdric Bastiat, CarlMenger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Americans like Murray Rothbard and per-haps even Tomas Sowell, whose book Basic Economicsdisplays many Austrian tendencies. ForMariana and the School of Salamanca as having more impact on the modern history of eco-nomic thought, in particular the Austrian School, than usually has been allowed, see Rothbard;Grabill; and especially Grice-Hutchinson. Of course, monetary debasement was practiced inancient times as well. Te earliest text to reference devalued currency is generally held tobe Aristophaness play Te Frogs(-). In addition to the examples from medieval Spain,

Mariana himself points out numerous debasements in ancient history, even recalling Plautusscomparison between bad money and bad theater: Scitum est illud Plauti ut vetustum, no-vas comdias & pravas nov monet similes perhibentis [Everyone knows that phrase byPlautus, who used to say that the new and bad comedies were similar to the new money] (Derege et regis institutione.:).


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Nam priori errore non contentus & fraude, sexto regni anno

abrogatis Burgalesibus monetam nigram substituit, quindecimMaravedini valore. Quod nil aliud fuit, quam in malo obstinare, utqui natura captiosus esset ingenio praefracto, quod malo tandemfuit. (De monetae mutatione)

[For, not content with his previous error and fraud, in the sixthyear of his reign he revoked the burgaleses and replaced them withblack money, fifteen of which were worth one maraved. Since thisdid not help matters, remaining obstinate in his mistake, beingdeceitful by nature, and having a broken wit, he was thusly evil inthe end.]

Te title page of Manuel Rivadeneiras Spanish edition of Demonetae mutationeindicates Mariana himself as its translator: ratadoy discurso sobre la moneda de velln que al presente se labra en Castilla, y

de algunos desrdenes y abusos; escrito por el padre Juan de Mariana enidioma latino, y traducido en castellano por el mismo (). In what istherefore presumably Marianas own rendering of the passage we have

just quoted, he uses dineros prietos black monies for monetam ni-gram: porque no contento con el desrden primero, despues en elsexto ao de su reinado mand deshacer los burgaleses y labrar losdineros prietos, que cada quince hacian un maraved que parece fuecantar mal y porfiar como prncipe muy arrimado su parecer ().

We do not know the exact reason for the De monetachapters ab-sence from the edition of De rege et regis institutione. However,since it is the only addition to the edition, we have reason tosuspect that he held it back from the earlier one, either because someauthority forced him to remove it or because he already feared the con-sequences of publicly denouncing monetary debasement. Mariana wasprobably interested in this common form of monarchical misbehavior

as early as his time teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris (-), andsurely prior to the publication of his De ponderibus et mensuris [OnWeights and Measures] (), which treats subjects profoundly related


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to the debasement issue.Moreover, in the prologue to the De monetaemutationeof , Mariana states that a recent spat of monetary med-

dling by authorities has caused him to try yet again to publish a workbegun previously:

Ea occasio huius disputationis a nobis ante institutae novo conatuevulgandae: ut certe posteri nostris malis castigati admoneantur,vix unquam pecuniam in peius mutari nisi reipublicae malo: prae-sens lucrum cum maioribus incommodis multiplici labe implicari.()

[Such was the occasion for a new effort to publish this treatise,which we began earlier. It aims at letting other generations learnfrom our misfortunes that money is hardly ever debased withoutcalamity to the state: Profit for the moment is intimately connected

with manifold ruin along with rather great disadvantages. (reatiseon the Alteration of Money)]

Since he translated this final version into Spanish on his own initia-tive, as he did all of his works, with the single exception of De rege et re-

gis institutione, it seems likely that multiple versions of the previous Demonetaessay also existed in manuscript form in either Latin or Spanish,perhaps both, as early as . Finally, we should note that in his esorode la lengua castellana o espaola (), Sebastin de Covarrubias, in hisentry for the termprieto, refers to the same history of Alfonso X thathad caught the attention of Mariana:

Of course, a stable system of weights and measures is fundamental for a stable mon-etary system, which depends on fixed, commonly recognized quantities of the precious metalsused in the fabrication of money as well as all kinds of commercial goods bought and sold withsaid money. Otherwise, prices fluctuate according to random definitions of what constitutesan ounce of silver or a bushel of wheat. Changing weights and measures is often just anothermethod of dictating prices and manipulating a currency. In each of their treatises on money,Oresme and Mariana underscore this danger and its immoral and destructive consequences,

insisting that weights and measures be immutable. See especially chapter twelve of Oresmestreatise, but also the De monetachapter of Marianas De rege et regis institutioneand chapter fiveof his De monetae mutatione. A measure of the interdependency of these two topics is the factthat, in at least one case that I have seen, the edition at Cornell University,De rege et regisinstitutioneis bound with De ponderibus et mensuris.


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Color que tira a negra []. Es muy usado en el reyno de oledo,

que dizen uvas prietas por negras []. En la cornica del rey donAlonso el Sabio, c. , haze mencin de cierta moneda, que la llamadineros prietos, y dize ass: Y en este ao el rey mand labrar lamoneda de los dineros prietos, y mand deshazer la moneda de losburgaleses, y destos dineros prietos hazan quinze dineros dellos unmaraved. ()

Te term, then, appears to have been well known among oledanhumanists, and so, although it remains plausible that Cervantes hadaccess to some earlier version of De moneta before publishing DonQuijotein , it is by no means a conditio sine qua nonfor my inter-pretation of Sanchos por negros que sean, los he de volver en blancoso amarillos.

Tere are, of course, other good reasons to draw a connection be-tween Cervantes and Mariana. Cervantes, who was apparently edu-

cated by Jesuits as a youth, and Mariana, who became a Jesuit priest,share a basic educational ethos. Each has profound affiliations with thefamed Universidad Complutense at Alcal. Whether or not he attend-ed the University of Alcal, Cervantes was apparently born there andhe clearly identified with the Complutense literati, especially upon hisreturn to Madrid in the s (Canavaggio , , -; Estrada andLpez Garca-Berdoy); and we know that Mariana studied at Alcal on

Mariana also briefly mentions the injustice of Alfonso Xs recourse to black moneyin his Historia general de Espaa XX, published in Latin in and Spanish in (.:-). Here we should add to the list of Marianas likely influences Diego de Covarrubias Leyva(-), the first of the neo-scholastics of the School of Salamanca to produce a treatise onmoney, who, if less contentiously, also relates Alfonso Xs recourse to the maraveds prietos;see chapters five and six of his Veterum collationumismatum of , which deal with thehistory of Spanish money. In a preliminary note to his edition of Covarrubias Leyva,

Josef Bern y Catal indicates that the edition published at Len in contains these twochaptersin Spanish and the rest in Latin (Covarrubias Leyva -). Marianas insistent return

to the theme and the governments ultimate decision to repress his later work indicate that thepolitical critique of Habsburg monetary policy played a major role in the earliest inklings ofeconomics as an isolated field of study. Te odd translational foregrounding of the chapters onSpanish money in Covarrubias Leyvas collection signals an earlier phase of this same trajectory.


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two separate occasions in the s (Snchez Agesta ix). Cervantes andMariana also had similar personalities. Each was irascible to the point

of risking and actually experiencing imprisonment, and both were out-spoken critics of Habsburg power. Cervantess mocking in Don Quijoteof the Inquisitions book burnings (.:-), his complaint regardingPhilip IIs North African policy (.:), and his discomfort withPhilip IIIs expulsion of the Christian Moors, the so-called Moriscos(.:-; .:-), are all akin to Marianas well-documentedhostility toward Inquisitional tribunals, the major myths of SpanishImperialism, and the fanatical belief in religious miracles.It is time toadd Marianas frontal attacks on the bumbling monetary experimentsof Philip II and Philip III to this list of commonalities. I would evenargue that one of the best indications of the scale of Cervantess generaldebt to Mariana is found in the way that this particular issue results inthe second and third orders of meaning involved in Sanchos fantasyabout transforming the citizens of Micomicn into slaves.Beyondthe paronomasia on the colors of skins and coins, which can be taken

as a fairly overt criticism of the burgeoning slave trade, additional lev-els of irony in Sanchos phrase have to do with Spanish monetary policyas another, more subtle form of human cruelty. Te geographical andtemporal proximity of Marianas De moneta, composed at oledo be-fore , will not only serve us in the clarification of these furtherlevels of irony, it will allow us yet another glimpse of the radically com-pound nature of Cervantess great novel.

Cervantes scholars have tended to focus on Mariana as a member of the last generationof Erasmian humanists in Spain, citing his relatively liberal work as an historian or a theo-logian. Marcel Bataillon notes Marianas rebellious open-mindedness regarding Benito AriasMontanos biblical exegesis, which had provoked the ire of the Inquisition (.). AmricoCastro emphasizes that, like Cervantes, Mariana was skeptical about miracles, especially thoseassociated with the cult of Santiago (n, n), and openly furious about the way theInquisition targeted conversos, particularly fellow intellectuals like Fray Luis de Len (-,-n).

In his study of the Sierra Morena episodes at the heart ofDon Quijote, Javier Herreroobserves that Cervantess most sophisticated ironies often contain additional rhetorical ges-tures whereby they acquire sincerity. Reflecting back on what has just been narrated, suchmoments involve not only an ironical version of the adventure, but, through its irony, a validcommentary on it ().


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As Mariana points out, the phrase black money had long sig-nified bad money, specifically money that had been altered for the

economic benefit of the prince, who, in effect, stole the difference invalue between the coins new copper content and the precious metalit replaced. So, at an additional level of irony, Sanchos phrase is a digat the debilitating monetary policies of an epic list of Spanish kings,now including Philip II and Philip III, which we might paraphraseas follows: Ill escape the poverty that Spanish authorities are impos-ing on me by co-opting their inflationary policy, by turning copper-adulterated black coins back into pure silver and gold. But there ismore. As Mariana states repeatedly, monetary debasement is immoral;indeed, he allows that it is akin to the immorality of slavery. Tis ideais already overt in Oresme: et sic tandem princeps posset sibi attraherequasi totam pecuniam sive divitias subditorum et eos in servitutemredigere, quod esset directe tyrranizare, immo vera et perfecta tyrannis[And so the prince would be at length able to draw to himself almostall the money or riches of his subjects and reduce them to slavery. And

this would be tyrannical, indeed true and absolute tyranny] (v-r).

And one can deduce the same idea from Marianas De rege et regis in-stitutioneof through a simple bit of transitive logic. First, early inbook one Mariana defines the behavior of a good king, who is a fatherto his people, as the antithesis of that of tyrants, who enslave theirpeople: Sic fit, ut subditis non tanquam servis dominetur, quod faci-unt tyranni, sed tanquam liberis prsit (.:) [Tus it comes aboutthat he rules his subjects not like slaves, as the tyrants do, but he is overthem as if they were his children (Te King and the Education of theKing .:)]; later, after reviewing how Jupiter repressed the Giantsand how Pharaoh exploited the Jews, Mariana concludes:

According to Mynors, the Paris print edition of Oresmes treatise, published byTomas Kees around , contained two gaps (pages - and -), impacting all subse-quent editions down to . Tus for Mariana to have encountered the passage explicitly

linking the tyranny of debasement to slavery, he would have had to consult a manuscriptversion or else one of the first editions printed at Cologne in . Although it is more thanplausible that Mariana encountered either a manuscript or a Cologne edition during his timein Paris, it is also true that the basic idea that debasement is tyranny is not limited to the gapsin the Kees edition.


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Metuat tyrannus necesse est quos terret: & quos servorum locohabet, ab iis ne exitium comparetur, diligenter caveat, sublatis pr-

sidiis omnibus, detractis armis, ne permissis quidem suis ullas in-genuas artes libero homine dignas exercere, aut militaribus studiisrobur corporis, confidentiam animi confirmare. (.:-)

[It is unavoidable that the tyrant be afraid of those whom he putsin a state of dread; and must diligently take care, by removing alltheir means of protection and by taking their weapons away, notleaving them even their personal arms, that those whom he holdsas slaves get no opportunity to engage in any of the liberal arts,

worthy of a freeman, or strengthen their bodily robustness andtheir spiritual confidence by military activities.] (.:)

Ten, early in the De monetachapter, Mariana states that when aking practices monetary debasement, he is a tyrant:

Ac primum illud constituo Principis in iure non esse bona subdito-rum sive moventia sive fundi, ut pro arbitratu ea possit aut sibi su-mere aut transferre in alios temere. Vaniloqui et assentatores sunt,quales in aulis Principum multi vivunt, qui secus disputant. Sedex quo tamen illud efficitur, eum non posse sine consensu populinova genti tributa imperare. Exigat enim precario, non emungatsubditos, neque; aliquid pro voluntate quotidie decerpat unde excopiosis & beatis paulo ante ad inopiam redigantur. Id enim essettyrannum agere, qui suis cupiditatibus omnia metitur, cuncta sibiarrogat, non Regem, qui a volentibus acceptam potestatem lege &ratione temperat, neque immensum extendit. (.:)

[First, it is necessary to affirm that the prince does not have anyright over the private property and estates of his subjects that

would allow him to take them for himself or transfer them to oth-

ers. Tose who maintain otherwise are sophists and flatterers, whomuch abound in the palaces of princes. And from this it is inferredthat the prince cannot impose new tributes without first obtaining


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the formal consent of the people. Let him request them, certainly,but he is not to despoil his subjects by taking something each day

according to his fancy and little by little reducing to misery thosewho until recently were rich and happy. o proceed in this man-ner would be to act like a tyrant, who measures all according tohis greed and arrogates all powers to himself, not like a king, whoshould moderate the authority which he received from those whoaccepted him as such according to reason and law, and not extendit further.]

Tus, comparing the logic of the respective chapters on money andthe tyrant in the edition of De rege et regis institutione, we have anequation: if monetary debasement is tyranny, and if tyranny is slavery,then monetary debasement is slavery. Following this idea, explicit inOresme and implicit in Mariana, the fact that Sanchos phrase alludessimultaneously to slavery and monetary debasement indicates morethan a fortuitous or playful coincidence; we have grounds for a pur-

poseful, compound irony that advances the idea that the practice ofdebasing the Spanish nations currency is tantamount to enslaving itscitizenry, ironically, much in the same way that many Spaniards arenow enslaving black Africans. I would even argue that, since the playon color in relation to the imaginary slaves of Micomicn is ratherobvious, it is instead the complex allusion to monetary debasementas a form of slavery that is the more crafted component of Sanchosmultilayered pun.

Perhaps most astounding, however, Sanchos phrase appears toreference what in the field of economics has come to be known asGreshams law. Greshams law states that when an exchange rate is com-pulsory, bad (overvalued) money replaces good (undervalued) money, aphenomenon that early modern economists like Oresme and Marianaperceived in the tendency of precious metals to get hoarded away or elseexported out of a country in which their market value was repressed

by laws artificially sustaining a debased currency. Ironically enough:Tomas Gresham, who visited Spain in with the object of cash-ing bills of exchange to the value of , ducats drawn in Antwerp


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and payable at the Spanish fairs, was unable to bring away more than, ducats, and expresses astonishment at the shortage of specie in

Spain (Grice-Hutchinson ). Greshams shock at the lack of specie inSpain was in response to a phenomenon slightly different from, thoughnot unrelated to, the law that now bears his name; for it was in thecontext of classic quantity- and velocity-driven inflation, which actu-ally meant that his bills of exchange were probably written for slight-ly higher amounts because they were to be paid in Spain rather than

Antwerp, where specie was even scarcer. Tis latter, relatively naturalphenomenon, thought to have caused most of the rise in prices acrosssixteenth-century Europeespecially in Spain, and particularly Seville,the port of call for the treasure fleet from the Americaswas describedmid-century by neo-scholastics at Salamanca like Domingo de Sotoand Martn Azpilcueta Navarro (Grice-Hutchinson -; Muoz de

Juana). It was also Bodins point in his response to Malestroit. But atthe end of the sixteenth century Mariana and Cervantes are concerned

with the type of inflation occasioned by the return in Spain of au-

thoritarian, or man-made debasement, something more akin to whatearlier jurists like Buridan and Oresme had observed in fourteenth-century France. Rather than the oversupply of silver and gold fromthe New World, which had caused these to flow away from Seville tothe rest of Europe through existing arteries of financial exchange, it

was now debasement by decree, over-issuance of copper-based money,known as velln, which contained at most a few grains of silver, andsubsequent official extractions of this same silver, substituted by copperduring a series of re-stampings, which were all pushing precious metalsdirectly out of circulation and replacing them, a la Greshams law, withbad money.

Tis process had begun innocently enough at the end of the fif-teenth century with Ferdinand and Isabellas efforts to produce a tokencoin appropriate for small transactions.During most of the sixteenth

For small-denominated coins as a key problem for commerce in early modern Europebecause of their natural tendency to disappear in favor of larger denominations, see Velde. Foran excellent presentation of the disastrous velln experiments in seventeenth-century Spain,including innovative graphs and a timeline of events, see the manuscript by Velde and Weber.


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century only minor adjustments to small coins were made, but begin-ning in the s technology was imported from Austria, the so-called

Real Ingenio de la Monedaat Segovia, which allowed the cost-efficientmass production of vellncurrency in a way that also appeared to becounterfeit-proof. Ten came Philip IIs decrees of and , be-ginning the process of removing the silver content of these coins whileretaining their face value. Te idea was potentially sinister, and theCortes protested that the coins lower intrinsic value would encour-age counterfeiting abroad and that any ensuing inflation would violatedebt contracts; but the pace was moderate and the new mintage wasonly supposed to retire old coins (Velde and Weber ).Under PhilipIII and Philip IV (-), however, a series of exponentially largervelln issuances and mandatory re-stampings aimed at extracting rev-enue meant that the coin increasingly became the source of unutter-able confusion in Spanish finance (Lea ). After the re-stamping of, for example, a cuartoso-called because it had been worth fourmaraveds during the reign of Philip IIwas now nominally worth

eight maraveds, but since citizens were given back the same numberof maraveds they brought in, only the state profited (Velde and Weber). Te effect lagged a few years, but just as Mariana predicted, theartificial spike in the nominal value of small currency copper broughtabout economic calamity: Te Spanish experience unleashed unprec-edented man-made inflation, which made the Price Revolution of thesixteenth century (price level increases due to the inflow of Americangold and silver) look tame (Velde ). And as the seventeenth cen-tury progressed, the revenue generated by various debasement schemesproved irresistible to government officials. Te first modern attempt ata national fiat currency finally collapsed in failure as Spaniards tired ofthe games and vellncoins reverted to their intrinsic value (see figure ).

Te Cortes was the major conciliar remnant of medieval constitutionalism in Spain.It was conceived as a parliamentary body of the estates whose approval should be soughtregarding royal policy, especially when the latter diverged from precedent and legal limita-

tions. Beginning in the sixteenth century, it would be consulted less and less by Habsburgs,who transformed it into an institution stacked with appointees who generally rubber-stampedimperial decrees. Even so, fiscal and monetary policy often provoked protests by the Cortes,though to very little effect as Philip III and Philip IV usually ignored them outright.


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Fig. : Spains ultimate black money. A copper billon (velln) coin from the reign ofPhillip IV, nominally valued at sixteen maraveds (Source: Sommerville).

Fig. : Market versus intrinsic value of the cuarto billon coin, -. Tis graph alsoisolates a major component of price inflation as the loss of the coins purchasing power interms of standard silver maraveds. Note the initial doubling at the re-stamping of

(Source: Velde and Weber ).


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Entirely of copper and laughably overvalued, the vellnof Philip IVwas materially as well as nominally among the blackest currencies in

Spanish history (see figure ).Sanchos pun in reference to the Micomicn episode thus amountsto an allegory of Greshams law.Given that he plans to export meta-phorical black money from Micomicn to Spain, where he willexchange it for more valuable silver and gold, which he will pocket,thereby taking it out of circulation, Sanchos fantasy corresponds tothe disappearance of silver and gold in a country with a weak currency.Greshams law in the context of a tyrant (Philip III) contaminating themoney supply with copper: good money leaves and bad money comesin to replace it. Or, think of it the other way around: Sanchos plan isto effectively add to the supply of bad money in Spain by importingmore copper, the value of which has been artificially inflated by thenew policy. Te Spanish regime has set the price of copper so high thateverybodyincluding foreigners and expatriates like Sancho, Kingof Micomicnwants to sell copper to Spain. Conversely, anyone in

Spain who has silver or gold wants to hide it away or get it out of thecountry, where it can regain its purchasing poweri.e., its naturalmarket value. Sanchos comment even expresses the inevitable attrac-tion of counterfeiting the overvalued copper coins. Here Cervantesseems every bit as prescient as Mariana, for this is exactly what hap-pened in the first decades of the seventeenth century:

As an incident to this fictitious valuation of the velln coinage,counterfeiting flourished to an enormous extent, unrepressed bythe severest penalties. Te importation of coins manufacturedabroad added to the confusion, for it was too lucrative to be pre-vented by even the most rigorous measures. In a chroniclerstates that since the recent doubling of the nominal value of thecuartos five or six millions in vellnmoney had been brought from

For the character Ricotes role in part two, chapter thirty-four as a demonstrationof Greshams law, see Liu. Even Philip II may have intuited Greshams law when he observedthat the gold and silver from the New World did not seem to produce wealth, referring to itas ghost money (Shell ).


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England and Holland, stowed in vessels under wheat. It was ex-changed for silver at per cent. discount and the silver exported.

(Lea n)

Adding to this, Sanchos phrase points up the brutal irony that hisown slavery (as per Oresmes and Marianas debasement enslaves citi-zens) is what drives him to dream of enslaving others. Bad money isnot only replacing good money, it is turning good money into mor-allybad money. We might posit Sanchos corollary to Greshams law:

When a societys bad money forces its good money abroad, it relin-quishes moral control over the industries financed by that money.

Regardless of how far we push Sanchos money-slavery allegory,more than some vaguely existential or literary ethos brings bodies andcoins into symbolic contact in Don Quijote. Cervantess materialismis tangible, having as much in common with modern, self-conscioussocial and economic criticism as it does with more abstract views ofthe periods art as the manifestation of baroque complexity (cf. Alonso)

or the continuation of medieval carnival (cf. Bakhtin). Given PhilipIIs edicts of and , the monetary component of Cervantesssonnet mocking the kings catafalque in seems a purposeful attackon a policy doomed to burden Spanish subjects with inflation. Onecan even hear an ironic jab in the form of a phonetic dilation that

Lea cites Luis Cabrera de Crdoba, one of Philip IIs chroniclers, whoseRelaciones delas cosas sucedidas en la crte de Espaa, desde hasta contains an entry from Madrid,

April , in which he notes nefarious behavior by foreign merchants: Hse hallado poresperiencia, que de Inglaterra, las Islas y otras partes, han entrado en Espaa mas de cinco seis millones de moneda de vellon, despues que se creci y dobl el precio de los cuartos,trayndolos en los navos debajo del trigo y otras mercaderas, y los sacaban en plata, dando treinta por ciento por negociar mas fcilmente; y habindose platicado sobre el remedio, se hatomado resolucion de retirar de la costa los tratantes, hombres de negocios estrangeros, porcuyo medio se hacia esto, y han enviado un alcalde de Crte ejecutarlo (). Te attempt atregulation was apparently abandoned within the month: Habase dado comision un alcaldede Crte para retirar veinte leguas de la costa los estrangeros hombres de negocios, por losmuchos daos que de ello resultaba, y despues se ha hallado que se seguirn muchos mas de

ello, y as se ha revocado la comision al alcalde en esto, procurando por otra via remediar loque se pudiere de lo que el reino rescibe de dao, con entrar moneda de vellon de afuera y mer-caderas sin registrar ni pagar derechos y otras cosas, y sacar moneda sin licencia de oro y plata(). For a more recent study of the periods general anxiety regarding money, see Vilches.


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manifests the entropy of the overstated value of the newvelln: valems de un milln (line ). But Philip IIs initial, cautious steps toward

fiat money would lead to Philip IIIs massive debasements of and, which turned minting into the means of financing governmentdebt. So much copper vellnwas produced that larger denominatedsilver coins disappeared, leaving a money stock of token coins withintrinsic values significantly lower than their face values. Tis second,quantitatively radical phase of debasement is the proper context forunderstanding the urgency of Marianas essays: Quod factum est fiet.Sic superiores rerum eventus magnam vim habent ad persuadendumpares habituros exitus, quicunque eandem viam fuerint ingressi (Demonetae mutatione) [What has happened will happen. Previousevents are very influential: Tey convince us that what sets out on thesame path will reach the same conclusion] (reatise on the Alteration of

Money). Te idea that money is like other exchangeable goods, ex-cept even more vulnerable to authoritarian monopolistic distortions ofsupply and demand, is a distinct feature of the late-scholastic econom-

ic thinking of the School of Salamanca, which for its part culminatesin Mariana. Tis realistic sense of currency as a commodity combinedwith the moral intransigence of Counter-Reformation Catholicismmade for staunch opposition to regimes seeking to profit from theintrinsic value of money by mandating inflated extrinsic values andextracting the difference: In short, the evil of currency debasementis derived from deeper sources than its economic consequences. oMarianas mind the very act of currency debasement is in itself evil(Chafuen ; original emphasis). More than ever it makes sense toinsert Cervantes alongside Mariana, not just in terms of the intellectualatmosphere of Salamanca but in terms of their shared attitudes towardmonetary policy in particular.

Although Sanchos curious phrase in part one, chapter twenty-nine is perhaps the most dizzying case, there are similar passages inCervantess novels that read like analogies for debasement in general

For a wide range of the Salamancan Schools possible influences on Cervantess po-litical economy, see Fernndez-Morera. My goal here has been to add the specific economicsubcategory of monetary theory to the list of topics he discusses.


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or criticisms of the inflations of the nominal value of vellnmoney inparticular. For example, the descriptions in El licenciado Vidriera of the

graft practiced by sellers of books and pastries echo the processes andeffects of currency manipulations: Los melindres que hacen cuandocompran un privilegio de un libro, y de la burla que hacen a su autor siacaso le imprime a su costa, pues en lugar de mil y quinientos, impri-men tres mil libros, y cuando el autor piensa que se venden los suyos, sedespachan los ajenos; De los pasteleros dijo que haba muchos aosque jugaban a la dobladilla sin que les llevasen la pena, porque habanhecho el pastel de a dos de a cuatro, el de a cuatro de a ocho, y el de aocho de a medio real, por slo su albedro y beneplcito (Novelas ejem-

plares., ). We also have the remarkable coincidence near the con-clusion of El coloquio de los perroswhere four men obsessed withpseudo-magical tasks bring to mind the unnatural schemes Spanishauthorities were using to finance the nations debt. Tere is a poet ob-sessed with the Holy Grail and a mathematician who seeks the formulafor squaring the circle. Tere is also an alchemist, who, when asked if

he has managed to sacar plata de otros metals, observes wryly thathis art is already practiced in reality: no la he sacado hasta agora; perorealmente s que se saca (.). Finally, an arbitristarecommends thatthe state mandate a day of fasting every month and collect the unspentmoney as revenue. It is a ruthless parody of the kind of actuarial loot-ing that drives the hidden tax agendas of monetary debasement. Tearbitristaeven links his tax to the cost of food, so that inflation resultsin higher revenues:

Hase de pedir en Cortes que todos los vasallos de Su Majestad,desde edad de catorce a sesenta aos, sean obligados a ayunar unavez en el mes a pan y agua, y esto ha de ser el da que se escogiere ysealare, y que todo el gasto que en otros condumios de fruta, car-ne y pescado, vino, huevos y legumbres que han de gastar aquel da,se reduzga a dinero, y se d a Su Majestad, sin defraudalle un ardite,

so cargo de juramento; y con esto, en veinte aos queda libre desocalias y desempeado. Porque si se hace la cuenta, como yo latengo hecha, bien hay en Espaa ms de tres millones de personas


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de la dicha edad, fuera de los enfermos, ms viejos o ms mucha-chos, y ninguno dstos dejar de gastar, y esto contado al menorete,

cada da real y medio; y yo quiero que sea no ms de un real, queno puede ser menos aunque coma alholvas. Pues parceles a vue-sas mercedes que sera barro tener cada mes tres millones de realescomo ahechados? (.)

Right after the alchemist insists that he will soon change base met-als into gold, the arbitristaproposes a national tax in the form of anational fast, thus recalling both the substance and the earnest tone ofarguments that Mariana advances in his critiques of Habsburg mon-etary policy. Te De monetachapter in the edition of De rege etregis institutione, for example, substantially treats debasement as an un-lawful and sinisterly invisible form of taxation; and it begins with thefollowing lethal bit of sarcasm:

Equidem vanissimos homines semper iudicare consuevi, qui occul-

ta quadam ratione permutare metalla pollicentur ex re argentum,ex argento aurum facere quibusdam medicamentis circulatoribuscircumforaneis similes. Nunc maiora prstari video metalla nullolabore geminantur, nullis fornacibus victa lege tantum Principisquasi sacro contactu & vi quadam altiori multiplicata. (.:)

[I always viewed as petulant those men who tried to transformmetals by means of certain occult knowledge, and make silver outof copper and gold out of silver through some circular chemicaldistillation. Now I see that these metals can change their value, andeven multiply it, with no effort and no need of burners, by meansof a princely edict, as if by some sacred contact they were given asuperior quality.]

Similarly, Mariana allows us to see that beyond the sardonic slap

at arbitrary taxation, the most controversial aspect of the arbitristasproposal in El coloquio de los perros is the simple notion that beforeputting such a scheme into practice, the king should seek approval of


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the parliamentary Cortes. Again and again, Mariana underscores theimportance of independent conciliar checks to royal prerogative, espe-

cially concerning fiscal matters:

Neque enim se Princeps reipublic & singulorum dominum arbi-trabitur, quamuis assentatoribus id in aurem insusurrantibus, sedrectorem mercede a civibus designata: quam augere nisi ipsis vo-lentibus nefas existimabit. (De rege et regis institutione.:)

[Now the king will not view himself as the owner of the common-wealth and the individualsalthough the flatterers are constantlywhispering that into his earbut as a director with an allowanceset by the citizens, which he will consider wrong to increase with-out their consent.] (Te King and the Education of the King.:)

***Cur enim maiori ex parte antiquatum in nostra gente est exclusis

proceribus & Episcopis, nisi ut sublato communi consensu, quosalus publica continetur, Regis ad arbitrium, & ad paucorum li-bidinem res public & privat vertantur? (.:-)

[Why, in fact, has [parliament] been put aside, in greater part, byexcluding the bishops and nobles, unless that, by obviating thecustom of general agreement, through which the public safety ismaintained, the public and private business may be left to the deci-sion of the King and to the whim of a few?] (.:)

***Atque iis legibus non modo ebedire Princeps debet, sed nequeeas mutare licebit, nisi universitatis consensu certaque sententia:quales sunt leges de successione inter Principes, de vectigalibus, dereligionis forma. (.:)

[the prince ought not only to obey these laws, but he will not bepermitted to alter them, unless with the consent and expressed vote


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of the whole community; among these are the laws of the succes-sion among the princes, taxes, and the form of religion.] (.:)

***Licebit quidem Regi monet formam mutare, quando inter ea quiure regio continentur lege imperatoria, moneta numeratur, valoretamen iuxta pecuni bonitatem & leges priores sancito. (.:)

[Te king is only allowed to change the form of money when thisright is contained among the kingly rights granted by imperial law,and only if the moneys value is legally established according to its

weight and quality.]

***Quod si in aliis gentibus secus fieret, in nostra certe lege vetitumest, qua Alfonsus undecimus Castellae Rex populi precibus deditin regni conventibus Madriti, anno salutis , petitione : ne

unquam iniussu populi tributum genti imponatur. (De monetaemutatione)

[Other countries may do things in different ways. In our country,this method is forbidden by the law that Alfonso XI, King ofCastile, granted to the people in the parliament of Madrid in re-sponse to petition : Let no tax be imposed on the nation againstthe will of the people.] (reatise on the Alteration of Money)

In one of his last books, the late Carroll Johnson made another ofhis many brilliant contributions to the study of Cervantes, this timehighlighting the novelists attention to the subtleties of economic reality,such as his specific antipathy toward the monopolistic practices of theDuke of Medina Sidonia at Cdiz (Cervantes and the Material World-). Johnson twice mentions Mariana, but only as a kind of diffuse

cultural contextualization of Cervantess criticisms of mercantilisticcorruption (, ). But Mariana is a major source of the philosophyby which we understand early modern materialism; a man who rather


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suddenly came to conceive of the study of history as the study of mon-etary history, and this right around the time that Cervantes was hard

at work inventing the modern novel. Marianas possible influence onSanchos allusion to black money in part one, chapter twenty-nineargues for even more precision in Cervantess novelistic criticism of thepolitical economy of Golden Age Spain, something Johnson wouldhave appreciated. I would, however, conclude with a modicum of dis-sent. In the process of pointing up Cervantess materialistic attitude,

Johnson, like many contemporary literary critics, adopted a Marxistattitude toward capitalism, objecting to the free-market system as acontinuing source of suffering throughout the globe:

Higher prices are called inflation because it appears that theconsumers money is worth less than it used to be. No consumerlikes that, so its easy to sell the idea that inflation is an evil to beavoided. Never mind that the rise in prices is managements doing,in order to keep those profits up, and is in fact not an unfortunate

but inevitable consequence of full employment.We live in a society where capitalism has gone mad, greed has runamok, where the gap between rich and poor is widening virtually bythe hour, and where the middle class is threatened with extinction.

We live in a society where the owners of the means of productionactively and openly seek a situation in which a certain number oftheir fellow citizens go to bed hungry every night, because that isessential to keep profits at an acceptably high level. ()

It is tempting to imagine that inflation is mostly a myth spreadby the rich and then argue that whatever pernicious effects it actuallycauses are to be blamed on greedy capitalists and can be compensatedfor by simply redistributing wealth or, what amounts to the same thing,by taking over managements right to set prices. But the multiple iro-nies of Sanchos fantasy signal a more complex and realistic perspective

on inflation, one developed well over two centuries before the systemicfallacy in economic thought wrought by the tragic turn to the labor


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theory of value.Rather like Oresme and Mariana and the Salamancanschoolmen, and like Keyness one man in a million (; see this

essays epigraph), Cervantes appears to have spotted that other, decid-edly non-free-market factor so often involved in the crushing povertyexperienced by historys workers, consumers, savers, and, yes, even itsmanagers and entrepreneurs: the type of debilitating inflation broughtabout by the tyrannical practice of stealing peoples wealth by debas-ing their currency, which in moral terms transforms them into theslaves of whomever controls, not the means of production but, rather,the means of the production of money (mints) and the means of saidmoneys compulsory acceptance (laws). Of course, those who producea nations money and those who make and enforce its laws tend to beone and the same; in Cervantess and Marianas cases these were theregimes of Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV, who forced creditorsand the public at large to accept their worthless copper coin at facevalue. And when Don Quijote says, los historiadores que de mentirasse valen haban de ser quemados como los que hacen moneda falsa

(.:), we should understand kings as well as counterfeiters as thetargets of his ire.

[email protected] W M

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