THE THEOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS OF EFFECTIVE GRACE IN TIRSO DE MOLINA'S PLAY “EL CONDENADO POR DESCONFIADO” (THE CONDEMNED FOR BEING DISTRUSTFUL).

photo:Casaderusia.es

 Introduction

When beginning the research for this work, which originally consisted of making a comparison of the theme of honor between "El Alcalde de Zalamea" by Calderón de la Barca and "El vergonzoso en palacio" by Tirso de Molina, I found that it was a much-worked topic, as the most recurrent themes in Spanish Golden Age theater are precisely honor, love (whether frustrated or not), and vengeance motivated by honor. These have been extensively studied and developed over the centuries by thinkers of the stature of Menéndez Pidal with quite enlightening theories.

However, what powerfully caught my attention was the theological drama presented in the work "El Condenado por Desconfiado" by Gabriel Téllez, our Tirso de Molina. It is not common to use something as profound as a theological disquisition as the argument of a play, which, moreover, was admired even in its time given the well-earned reputation for controversy that Tirso had in his themes. But as will be seen through the exposition I will make, the deep theme, the theological-philosophical discursive reflection that Tirso makes in his works is constant. It is for this reason that I decided to focus on studying this fascinating facet in Tirso's work.

It seemed to me, according to my particular and very personal opinion, that there exists in Tirso a need to teach through his works, a pedagogical vocation to change his environment. A Theological Hermeneutics directed at the masses. There is in his writings a rebellious and unruly spirit, which does not remain silent, even in difficult circumstances. He had to mask his intentions of denouncing power and its abuses, sometimes renouncing explicit authorship of his works to avoid censors, which has caused no small controversies regarding his paternity in some of them. Tirso evades, in this way, danger and sends his sharp sarcasm as a sword under innocent forms of versification. He paid all his life as sins for his harsh criticisms of his surroundings and times.

Moreover, the treatment forms he uses are not innocent. Everything carries a purpose, a metalanguage immersed from the profound vision that wonderfully mixes the secular and the religious in an elegant manner, sometimes perniciously burlesque, other times in a more meditative and measured tone, as in the work we are dealing with.

It is a precocious intelligence, where the discourse uses forms and strategies in which dialogue is conditioned linguistically and psychologically in verses by the presence of the interlocutors and the audience of the play as an interlocutive act, seeking prescriptive and moralizing teaching.

Upon reading the work, one can clearly appreciate the use of interior monologue, fictional monologue, and dialogue to outline the characters and their motivations and thus alert the audience about what he wants to point out and provoke the necessary catharsis.

It is tempting to make comparisons between the themes used by Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, and Tirso, which will be my intention in the present work emphasizing the aforementioned work under Augustinian theology, its conceptual and rhetorical implications, and how Tirso used these elements to craft his work.

The theme is ambitious, but it is only a term paper, not a thesis; therefore, in the interest of brevity and the precarious research time, it will not be very extensive, not as much as the theme and hypothesis deserve; however, I will do my best to be concise and precise without detracting from quality.

Brief Biography of Tirso de Molina:

Gabriel Téllez, better known in his time by the pseudonym Tirso de Molina, was born in Madrid in the year 1579. It is known that his parents were humble servants of the Count of Molina de Herrera, which, at the time, was servitude sheltered from vicissitudes. It has been speculated that perhaps he was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Osuna, due to his surname, but this thesis lacks foundation as it has not been evidenced conclusively, since if this fact were true, Tirso would have needed a papal dispensation to enter the Order of Mercy when in his youth he faced that decision.

They were retrograde times, where illegitimate children had no rights and were considered children of sin. On the other hand, none of his numerous contemporary enemies attributed him to that origin, and we know very well how prone to gossip his detractors were. It would have been an excellent excuse to vilify him in his Order, which persecuted and punished him so much for his writings.

At sixteen years old, he entered the novitiate at the Mercy seminary in Guadalajara. He studied in Salamanca and Toledo. In 1601, he was ordained a Mercedarian monk. He was a monk in the convents of Segovia, Soria, Toledo, and Guadalajara, where he received profound humanistic and theological training from his mentors, which later became evident in his works.

There, in the convent, he devoted himself to writing, and by the early 1610s, he was already a much-admired and relatively successful playwright. Between this year and 1615, he lived in Toledo and Madrid, dedicated to teaching, reading, and especially writing. Exiled for his satires against ministers and nobility, he was sent to a convent in Aragon. This would be the first of his many exiles, due to his penchant for letters and satire. His restless and truthful spirit urged him to continue writing despite all difficulties.

From Aragon, he went to the Indies, specifically to the island of Santo Domingo, where he was a professor of theology at its University between 1616 and 1618, also intervening in matters of his Order with great rigor and diligence. His stay in America allowed him to collect from oral tradition about the protagonists of many conquest stories that he would later recreate thematically in his works. Tirso was an organized man, and it is presumed that while waiting during his stay in Seville, having to spend several months waiting to embark, he must have written his famous "El burlador de Sevilla," which still has a controversy over its authorship as there are specialists who attribute it to the playwright Andrés de Claramonte, a contemporary of Tirso, based on historical, metric, and stylistic evidence.

He returned to Spain in 1618, settling in Madrid, where between 1624 and 1633 the five parts of his comedies were published, as they said at the time; these "profane comedies," as his detractors called them, earned him the animosity of many powerful people and caused him a great scandal, costing him the penalty of exile, this time to Seville.

In 1622, on the occasion of the canonization of San Isidro, he competed in the poetic contest, but in 1625, the Reform Board, created by the Count-Duke of Olivares in 1624, in an effort to censor him, punished him for writing profane plays "and of bad incentives and examples" (sic) obliging him to retire to the monastery of Cuenca and not to write any more profane verses or comedies in the future, under penalty of excommunication. It was a lapidary and non-appealable sentence in virtue of his sacramental vows of obedience.

Tirso continued writing, especially what he called "abridged comedies," which were works with a format similar to autos sacramentales, although they cannot be classified as such since they do not have the same strength as his hagiographic works, but as a result of disciplinary measures, his production declined, and he could not continue at the same pace.

The condemnation came channeled by his bitter rivals who denounced him upon seeing themselves portrayed, irritated by Tirso's sarcasm, who had become a highly uncomfortable and annoying voice for the nobility and the Crown's favorites. Let us remember that there were two kinds of censorship in Spain at this time, that of the Crown, and the ecclesiastical. Tirso irritated both.

But these measures did not last long, as the moralistic inclinations of the Count-Duke of Olivares, Grandee of Spain, ended within two years. In 1626, he moved to reside in Madrid, being later appointed commander in Trujillo, residing in Extremadura until 1629. This constant change of residence deeply affected the quality of his works during those years.

He returned to Madrid at the end of his order’s commission, unable to settle fully in any place stably because he continued to be a victim of persecution within the cloister for writing profane comedies and verses, in addition to his old political satires.

Between 1632 and 1639, he was destined to Catalonia, being appointed by his superiors as general definitor and chronicler of the Order. During his stay in Catalonia, he wrote the General History of the Order of Mercy. In 1639, the Holy See recognized some merit in him, Pope Urban VIII granted him the degree of master; however, the heated confrontations and animosities with members of his own Order led to his exile again as a disciplinary measure in Cuenca in 1640.

Tirso was not one to remain silent, although he obeyed that old Spanish adage, “one obeys but does not comply.” He was a true creator, a writer who, against all odds, gave course and meaning to his vein as a playwright of substance and talent.

Finally, he was appointed Prior at the Convent of Nuestra Señora de la Merced, where he was appointed commander in 1645. He died as prior at the convent of Almazán in Soria in the year 1648. He never stopped writing, secretly.

OF THE THEOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS OF EFFECTIVE GRACE IN THE WORK OF TIRSO DE MOLINA "EL CONDENADO POR DESCONFIADO"

First of all, the analysis of this work demands a digression to contextualize the synchronic mode of history according to its theological thesis, the doctrinal substrate through which Tirso develops his exegesis: The theological conflict posed by the Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535-1600) and the Dominican Domingo Báñez (1528-1604).

As we see, it was also a contention between two prestigious religious orders, the school of the Dominican Báñez, a professor at Salamanca, who defended the fatalistic theory of "efficient grace" of Augustine, which conditions the will of men; the Jesuit Molina, a professor at the University of Coimbra, who defended free will, advocating that man decides, always without divine foreknowledge or without it being able to influence the salvation or damnation of man.

Following an aporetic scheme, as we will explain later, Molina sought to make divine omnipotence and human freedom compatible in an eclectic position and affirmed that the person through their actions could receive sufficient grace for their salvation.

Báñez, with his theory of "physical premotion," defended the thesis that God determines who receives divine grace, man can only act under the influence of divine will. It is a form of determinism, "predestination."

This controversy arises in the midst of the fervor of the Counter-Reformation, and the theory of free will is the banner of John Calvin, a French Lutheran preacher and theologian, and then the "Molinists" thought that Báñez's theory prevented admitting human freedom and predetermined everything the man could do, which implied important theological and ethical consequences since predestination entails that the will of man does not intervene in choosing the path of good or evil.

Modernly, it has been termed Congruism, the term theologians use to refer to the theory according to which efficacy or effective grace is due, at least in part, to the fact that grace is given directly by God in favorable circumstances for its operation, that is, congruent in that sense.

The distinction between gratia congrua and gratia incongrua is found in Saint Augustine of Hippo, where he speaks of the elect as congruenter vocati (Ad Simplicianum, Bk. I, Q. ii, no. 13). The issue of free will is treated in the second book of the Questio, or questions, which he developed in epistolary form in a theology strongly influenced by Platonic thought.

The Spanish Church had just combated the great heresy of the alumbrados, which had manifested itself less than a century before, around 1630 there were still active groups. This mystical sect of the 16th century was considered heretical and closely related to the Protestant movement, its postulates resemble Calvinist theses.

It is similar to the mystical current developed in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, illuminism. Perhaps these reminiscences, these echoes in Tirso's works, are responsible for so many exiles and persecutions, as well as the secular justice censored him for his sarcasm. It is a hypothesis that I dare not assert with certainty because I lack the necessary elements, however, upon reading the work, it was surprising for me to come across it and thus I have defined the approach to the text.

Some mystics, among whom Teresa of Ávila stands out, were initially suspected of belonging to the alumbrados. The alumbrados gathered in the cloisters of small towns in central Castile, such as Pastrana or Escalona, where they enjoyed the protection of the Marquis of Villena, read and personally interpreted the Bible, and preferred mental prayer to vocal prayer, as the Quietists did later.

The alumbrados believed in direct contact with God through the Holy Spirit via visions and mystical experiences. This stance brought them closer, according to them, to the divine presence and its manifestations.

This sect mixed excesses of mystical rapture and eroticism and spread through churches and cloisters throughout the Iberian Peninsula, and coincidentally, its strongest and most protected center, formerly by the Dukes of Infantado, was precisely in Guadalajara, where our Gabriel Téllez was formed as a priest. It is plausible that he had contact with some remnant of the sect and that it led him to question, through his art, the not infrequent corrupt practices among the clergy, and not so covert in the reigning nobility.

Huerga (1978) says:

"The alumbrados or illuminists 'advocate an uncontrolled abandonment to divine inspiration and a free interpretation of evangelical texts. The alumbrados claim that they act moved solely by the love of God and that their inspiration comes from Him; they lack their own will: it is God who dictates their conduct; hence, they cannot sin. The alumbrados reject the authority of the Church, its hierarchy and its dogmas, as well as traditional forms of piety that they consider shackles: religious practices (devotions, works of mercy and charity), sacraments."

The Holy Office suspected that there were enough heretical elements in the doctrine of the alumbrados to open an auto-da-fé, so it began an investigation that led to the arrest of its main leaders; the blessed Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, settled in Guadalajara, who were taken to prison in April 1524 and sentenced in an auto-da-fé executed in July 1529, and the promulgation by the general inquisitor, Alonso Manrique de Lara, of an "edict on alumbrados" in September 1525, which included a list of 48 propositions considered heretical. The confessions, of course, were obtained through torture, as was customary in those days.

Santoja (2002) says:

"In 1529, the blessed Francisca Fernández, leader of the group of alumbrados of Valladolid, was arrested, and shortly after, one of her main followers, the Franciscan preacher Francisco de Ortiz. The blessed incriminated her supporters, accusing them of being 'Lutherans.' This was the case of Bernardino Tovar, brother of the Erasmist Juan de Vergara, and María de Cazalla, who was tortured under the accusation of Lutheranism and Illuminism. Another of those denounced by the blessed Francisca Hernández for 'Lutheranism' was the printer of the University of Alcalá, Miguel de Eguía, but he was acquitted in 1533 after spending more than two years in the Inquisition prison in Valladolid, and Juan del Castillo. María de Cazalla, in her defense, argued that in Guadalajara, alumbrada applied to every devout and recollected person."

Santoja (2002) clarifies again:

In this excerpt from the inquisitorial accusation against the Extremaduran group settled in the town of Escalona, where they are compared with other medieval heresies, one can appreciate part of their doctrine:

"They resurrect heresies because that inner detachment, that idle suspension of thought, that doing nothing more than letting God act and not them, was the error of Ioannes Hus and Ioannes Flirseso followed by Luther, who deny free will to act, placing perfection in suffering and that false perfection they dogmatize... of the Beguines and Beghards emanates, for they propose with them that the perfect are not obligated to fast, to pray, nor subject to human obedience, nor bound by church precepts because ubi pus dñi ibi libertas (ubi opus domini ibi libertas) and to the adoration and beating of breasts that they clearly deny, they are of the same ilk and if the zeal of the holy office does not stop it, it is certain that it will introduce the abominable charity that Almerico and Fray Alonso de Mey dogmatized. The third is if indeed it is the bait of the hook in heretics, the greater bait is the greater good; all former heretics sought evangelical truth or goodness and this the one who most sought it was the perfidious Luther who seeks evangelical freedom...(…)."

The report of the prior of the Dominicans of Lucena to the Inquisition of Córdoba, in 1585, records the pretension of the alumbrados to commune without confessing, because they believed that "justified people confirmed in good cannot sin anymore" (Santoja 2002).

I quote Hurtado (1901):

"Hernando Álvarez and Cristóbal Chamizo were clerics of Llerena accused of spreading through Extremadura at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century extravagant practices and theological opinions, which were considered equivalent to those of the alumbrados by the Inquisition:

In contempt of divine precepts and the profanation of the most sacred places, they joined an inconceivable carnal dissolution, and the penances they dispensed in the confessional were sexual unions of the confessants with themselves, teaching them that the Messiah was to be born from the commerce of a maiden with one of the alumbrado confessors."

By linking these theological aspects to adapt them to a sermon-like mode for the spectators recreating them in "El Condenado por Desconfiado," Tirso exercises tremendous astuteness and profound knowledge in philosophy and theology, skillfully creating an interesting contrast to exemplify the conflict.

The text was written before "El Burlador de Sevilla" (presumably between 1612/1615) and complements this work in its exemplification of theological variables exposed for epistemic purposes. It is polymetric in its versification according to the standard established by Lope de Vega.

The text is found in the second part of the comedies of the master Tirso de Molina published in Madrid in 1635.

The work is configured in the form of a religious sermon directed at the public frequenting the comedy courtyards, incorporating habitual components of the saint comedies and the auto sacramental.

It constitutes one of the summits of the Golden Age theater due to its effective framing in handling dramatic tension with its philosophical and ethical implications. It should be noted that Tirso's interest always centers on playful action to achieve the effect of teaching through entertainment; his desire to entertain leads to an explosive and sometimes "strident" pace in the action and dialogues, using psychological intimacy to achieve it.

There is one of the differences with Lope and Calderón, those are more serious, more flat, even with the inventive and perfected incorporation of the Lopesque jester who establishes a balance in his treatise, the "New Art of Making Comedies," to balance dramatic burdens with satire and humor. However, Tirso also incorporates the dynamism of Lope's three acts and the relentless action for spectators and actors, the action is constant, leading the audience not to lose interest.

The central Argument of the work focuses on the monk Paulo, a thirty-year-old proud, haughty, and distrustful young man, who after living ten years as a hermit accompanied by the jester Pedrisco, is assailed by existential doubt. There is no hagiographic character in the story, as here the ascetics are human.

Paulo possesses the vital anguish of knowing, wanting to know if all those sacrifices had not been useless, and prays to God to reveal his final destiny.

Paulo says:

With that fatigue and that fear

I woke up, though trembling, and saw nothing

but my fault, and so confused I remained, 180

that if it is not my unfortunate fate

or the enemy's trick, stratagem, or entanglement,

that wields against me his fiery sword,

I do not know what to attribute it to. You, Holy God,

clarify for me the cause of this dread. 185

Will you condemn me, my Divine God,

as that dream says, or will I see myself

in the sacred crystalline fortress?

Grant me this favor, Lord.

What fate awaits me? For a path so good, do not wish to keep me

in this confusion, Eternal Lord.

Shall I go to your heaven or to hell?

Thirty years of age I am, My Lord,

and ten of them I have spent in the desert, 195

and if I lived a century, I trust

it would be the same; this I warn you.

If I fulfill this, Lord, with strength and vigor,

what fate awaits me? I shed tears.

Answer me, Lord, Eternal Lord. 200

Shall I go to your heaven or to hell?

The devil, disguised as an angel, tells him that his destiny is analogous to that of a man named Enrico, who lives in Naples.

Enrico is a thief, seducer of women, confessed criminal, arrogant executor of his own will as the supreme end and without the barrier of conscience or remorse, in whose name he commits the most terrible meannesses and excesses, but who, paradoxically, harbors within himself, under his cloak of evil, a redeeming love towards his girlfriend, and a filial love towards his father, expressed with loyalty in the care he provides, despite his profession as a robber.

Paulo goes to Naples and investigates who Enrico is and realizes his condition as a thug and thief. Thinking that this means his eternal condemnation, he leaves the habit and in turn becomes a bandit. He commits outrages and misdeeds that make him liable to Justice, and he is sought through the mountains.

But Enrico, immersed in his wrongdoing, heeding his father's exhortations, repents at the end and is saved, while Paulo, sunk in despair, renounces God and condemns himself without appeal, being killed by villagers guided by Justice to apprehend him.

The human dimension of Tirso's theological drama has nuances, slanted aspects that bring it closer to the moral concerns of the drama with a human tinge à la Calderón. The work is written in the midst of the Catholic Schism crisis and evidences two conflicting positions: the one that sustains that man's participation in his salvation process is limited and the one that defends that the subject, as a rational being who can choose, is extremely important.

The problem of the salvation of the soul and the role played by free will in this matter is fundamental for Counter-Reformation Spain of the 17th century, as the supreme bastion of Christendom, like the executioners of the infidels at Lepanto, and in opposition to "perfidious Albion," as England was still called in those years in some sectors, later becoming Anglican thanks to the concupiscence of Henry VIII.

It appears under a different perspective than the theological problem presented in "El Burlador de Sevilla"; in the work at hand, through the figures of a bandit and a hermit (Paulo and Enrico) who, by their free will, reach places completely opposite to those indicated by their lives, since while the bandit is saved, the hermit, distrustful of divine goodness, ends up condemning himself.

While Don Juan in "El Burlador de Sevilla" defies Providence confident that it will grant him the necessary time for repentance ("you give me plenty of time" in a repetitive and obstinate manner), Paulo, the protagonist of "El Condenado por Desconfiado," offends Providence by demanding proofs of his salvation, thus distrusting divine mercy. It is eternal condemnation, by deserved death; one by the statue that breathes the fire that kills him, condemnatory fire, and the other, by the hands of villains who shoot him as punishment for his iniquities and loss of faith.

The conflict establishes a contrast between the hermit and the thief, revealing the paradox that the soul of the criminal is saved by harboring within itself, in its ontological being, a stronghold of love, faith in divine Providence, and charity towards his father, in a salvation without pretensions based on pragmatic, natural repentance. Without artifice and with true hamartia.

Meanwhile, Paulo, who seeks divine salvation after a stage of mortifications and arrogantly demands God to know the mystery of his personal salvation, ends up condemning himself by distrusting divine piety. One cannot imagine a more selfish and vain attitude. And it is in these passages where the human conflict of the characters shines within the theological plot.

Researchers have debated about which position Tirso adopts regarding the theological proposition of his work summarized in the problem: divine foreknowledge that decides everything and limits human freedom, or independent free will of divine foreknowledge or not. If foreknowledge is understood as a fatum where everything is already decreed, an inevitable destiny, there is little room for human will since God already knows what will happen in the future.

Tirso masterfully does not take sides obviously; there is a certain ambiguity, as he succinctly presents free will in action and lets the plot unravel the thread of the story he has woven. Although in the end, the sinner will always be condemned as is the duty according to the commandments of the Holy Mother, the Catholic Church.

In its core content: God, by His intrinsic divine quality, is omniscient and knows everything in advance before it happens, ergo, man's freedom to decide has no meaning; on the other hand, if man can freely decide his destiny in divine grace granted, then man has a power greater than that of God, granted by Him, whose omniscience in turn is limited by man's free will. This is the most relevant aporia of the entire work with tremendous theological content. And it is what makes me link it to the heretical theories of the alumbrados. It reveals in this approach that there is a theological hermeneutics in Tirso's work, subsumed in the actions and dialogues of the characters, which lead us directly to Saint Augustine, and in turn takes us back to Platonic dialogues as a means of maieutic revelation.

The devil tells Paulo:

Today he doubts his faith, which is doubt

of the faith what he has done today,

because faith in the Christian

is serving God and doing

good works to enjoy Him in dying.

This one, although he has been so holy,

doubts the faith, for we see

that he wants from God Himself,

while in doubt, to know it.

In pride too

he has sinned; it is a certain case.

No one knows it better than me,

for I suffer from pride.

And with distrust

he has offended Him, for it is certain

that he distrusts God

who does not believe in his faith.

A dream has been the cause;

preferring a dream

to the faith of God, who doubts

that it is a manifest sin?

And thus, the most supreme and righteous judge has given me license

to incite him anew with more deceit.

His attitude is totally arrogant and haughty in demanding such an assertion from the divinity. He addresses God as a moneylender to whom divine providence owes, demanding immediate payment like a note with a due date, for his virtues and life of sacrifice.

Blinded by pride, Paulo is wounded by the devil's words comparing him to a thug of Enrico's ilk, he who is so convinced on his path of asceticism, of being the perfect saint, acts with manifest impiety without realizing it, in what his mind considers just.

In a psychological bias, the character is narcissistic, as his demand to the divinity is sustained by a drive for self-satisfaction. There is an evident displacement towards psychopathic behavior, where the private revelation from the divinity plunges him into a depressive state, feeling despised by being compared to someone undesirable, and his wounded self-esteem leads him to a state of denial, rendering invisible the consequences of his actions because he justifies them from his desire or unsatisfied drive. For Paulo, the sanction condemning his divine and eternal redemption is beyond his objective and substantive reach. He cannot see it.

Zubiri (1992) states:

"However it may be, God knows what I am going to do: it is divine foreknowledge. Where does my freedom remain? If God knows what I am going to do tomorrow, there will be nothing that will make this divine knowledge fail. Because if God knows what I am going to do, I will do it. Otherwise, God's knowledge would fail. Generally, when this problem is raised, those who cultivate these disciplines think of El condenado por desconfiado. Yes, but in El condenado por desconfiado, I believe that there are not one, but two distinct problems. It has never been focused on –at least as far as I know; I have not dedicated myself to studying the matter– more than from the side of the competition and foreknowledge: indeed, whether God knows with certainty that the character in question will have the same fate as that Enrico who was dedicated to being a thug in Naples. Yes, this is one aspect in question, but the other aspect, which has been disregarded, is that everything is known through a private revelation. Probably it is not excluded that the primary intention of Tirso de Molina was not to enter to expose or refute the theology of his superior and fellow friar of the Order, Zúmel, but simply, in a time when private revelations were commonplace, to show that private revelations fail and crash against the public and objective revelation of divine mercy in the Catholic Church. An aspect of the issue that deserved to have been studied."

The dramatic vein in Tirso:

Tirso possessed solid humanistic and theological training. This distinguishes him from Lope, who, although a friar at the end of his life, with his numerous offspring and lovers, had to concentrate on supporting them at all costs. Tirso was at the same time a man of active social relations, appreciated by his contemporaries except for his superiors in the Order, being consistent in denouncing the ills that plagued the society of his time. His sagacity is manifested in his works; he was a very observant and intelligent man and possessed extraordinarily broad and profound knowledge of female psychology, perhaps due to the secrets of confession that his condition as a priest granted him.

His style of writing is more "realistic" than Lope's, less picturesque and popular, close to the psychological traits manifest in the society of his time. Tirso moves away from the conventional, giving his characters an inner strength that would be emulated by later authors.

He abandons what is false, does not delve into the epic, bucolic, and courtly aspects of Lope de Vega, nor into his chivalric ideals, assuming more intimate notions, with a plasticity that vibrates in his verses. Nor is he inclined to use the theological-sacramental elements of Calderón de la Barca, nor his mythological or allegorical references. His discourse focuses on known topics, and his autos de fe look very bland compared to Lope's according to specialized criticism.

The themes of Lope and their uses are more varied than those of Tirso; we could say that his world is smaller, but more human even than that of his heir in the field of dramaturgy, Calderón de la Barca.

His creativity was less prolific in creating characters than Lope's, but he created real, tangible people, far from the allegorical, imbued with their own character and tangible conflict. Three visions of the same time constitute and complement each other in this Spain that bore them; "humanity" in Tirso differs from "humanity" in Lope and also differs from "humanity" in Calderón: effusiveness and sentiment characterize Lope's characters, they are more passionate, whereas in Tirso the accent is more cerebral and reflective in actions, there is much moderation and restraint, which is why his characters delve into reflections that escape the colloquial and banal. Calderón sets himself apart with a detached stance to present his dramas, which creates an effect of non-involvement, like examining "those who dispute" from the outside, with emotional coldness.

Tirso has been elevated in comparison with Cervantes in the sense that both do not conform to the conventions of their time on the subject of honor. Calderón, as the continuator of the grandeur of Spanish theater, will convert, imbued with the oppressive coldness of his own character and representative ways, those conventions into abstractions of a more calculating mental construct.

His characters will adhere to that coldness, giving his human drama a certain depth, but not reaching the levels exposed in Tirso's work. The three live the conceptism immersed in the baroque, more evidently patent in Tirso in his use of language, especially in the segments of wit, where the jester truly shines. Tirso is more festive than Lope in his humorous characters. Lope surpasses him in the production of works.

There is also a parallel in the sense of humor in Tirso and Cervantes, perhaps being beings so tried and self-denying in vicissitudes throughout their vital journey endowed them with that special condition that shines in people who have a sad smile, both possess the generous tolerance that gives them great human nobility, both knew the mind, and above all, the spirit, the inhabitant in beings, and the inhabitant in their time.

Lukács will say that the man who writes does so according to his circumstances and time, that what he writes can influence in a decisive way the genesis of a new way of thinking and make his environment evolve. I agree with this, because upon reading Tirso, I have discovered an unsuspected sensitivity from the perspective that separates us in time and space.

Heidegger maintained that language is the home of men, that thinkers and poets are its guardians, and Tirso will always be an eternal guardian, of Faith, of language, and of the divine poetry that was born of his talent and he bequeaths to us in his works that are still performed today because they transcend that bothersome spatiotemporal barrier that our time and vital circumstance grant us. He changed his time with his pen and has changed ours.

Gabriel Ganiarov

Bibliography:

1. Andrés Martín, Los alumbrados de Toledo según el proceso de María de Cazalla (1532-1534), Cuadernos de investigación histórica, nº8, 1984.

2. Calderón 1679–1979: “Generalidades y comedias“. Kassel, Germany, Reichenberger Edition 1999.

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