Rodrigo de Cervantes

Rodrigo de Cervantes (Alcalá de Henares, 1509 - Alcalá de Henares, 1585) was a surgeon or bleeder (or zurujano as they were called at the time) of the XVI, father of the writer Miguel de Cervantes and brother of Andrés de Cervantes.

Biography

He was the son of Leonor Fernández de Torreblanca and the law graduate Juan de Cervantes, deputy corregidor and judge of the assets confiscated by the Holy Office, a native of Córdoba, and suffered from almost total deafness since he was a child. He learned something about surgery and medicine with his maternal grandfather, who was a doctor, and, after he died, with his stepfather, who was also a doctor, but due to the fickle and itinerant character of his father Juan and his own deafness, he could not carry out continued medical studies or obtain any official degree in his specialty, although he worked as a quota surgeon, that is, without a degree. In 1543 he married Leonor de Cortinas, a rich landowner with assets in Arganda del Rey (Madrid).

Shortly after their marriage, Leonor de Cortinas became pregnant and gave birth, in 1543, to the first offspring of her offspring, the ill-fated Andrés de Cervantes, baptized in Alcalá de Henares on December 12, 1543, who died shortly after coming into the world. Subsequently, the Cervantes surrounded themselves with a boisterous offspring that, to a certain extent, was the origin of Rodrigo's financial tribulations for more than twenty years: Andrea de Cervantes (baptized in Alcalá de Henares on November 24, 1544 and died in 9 October 1609; married to Sanctes Ambrosi, from Florence, and to General Álvaro Mendaño; received the habit of the Third Order on June 8, 1609; mother of Constanza de Ovando, daughter of Nicolás de Ovando (1577 - Madrid, September 22, 1624), one of the many women who lived for several years in the house of her famous uncle); Luisa de Cervantes (baptized in Alcalá de Henares on August 25, 1546 and died in the third decade of the XVII century; professed in the Carmelite convent of La Concepción, in Alcalá de Henares, on February 11, 1565); Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616); Rodrigo de Cervantes (baptized in Alcalá de Henares on June 23, 1550, who shared some notable destinations with his brother such as the militia in Italy and captivity in Algiers; lieutenant, who died in West Flanders on July 2, 1600, when he was taking an active part in the Battle of the Dunes); Magdalena de Cervantes (born in Alcalá de Henares on June 22, 1552 and died on January 28, 1611, married to... Pimentel de Sotomayor, who also shared a residence with her brother, already outside the family home); and Juan de Cervantes (born in Alcalá de Henares in 1554 or 1555 and disappeared on an unknown date before 1593).

He lived in Alcalá de Henares, in a house next to the Antezana Hospital (which was the oldest in Spain). This house was restored in 1956, recovering the primitive style of the XVI century. It has a sober masonry and brick façade and a simple ironwork, all typical of the period of houses in the times of the Habsburgs. The interior was also remodeled evoking the atmosphere of a middle-class family of those years.

In 1552 he moved to Valladolid with his family to "try his fortune away from gossip", from Alcalá. In Valladolid it is known that he signed a contract with the owner Diego de Gormaz to rent a house in what was then the suburb of Sancti Spiritus, recently formed in the vicinity of the convent of the same name that was next to the old Puerta del Carmen and opposite to the convent of Carmen Calzado, on whose site is today the great building of the Military Hospital. In the 16th century all that complex was outside the city walls.

He lived for a while with his brother Andrés de Cervantes in the town of Cabra (described in Don Quixote), since he was looking for a better job in the south and his brother had an enviable position in the town as mayor.

To begin his work as zurujano, he took a 20-year-old servant named Cristóbal de Vegil to his service, who would be his assistant and would bring him the leather bag with the instruments to make visits to the sick who required their services, according to the custom of those years. Another of the requirements that he had to meet was to pay 4 gold shields as a right to perform surgery. The visits he had to do on foot because the use of cavalry was forbidden to quota surgeons and was reserved for career surgeons. Among his trade chores included the bizmar , that is, applying bizmas, a kind of poultice; plastar or put poultices, which were glutinous medicines that were spread on a cloth and applied to the body; and also to do minor surgery.

In those days, the profession of surgery had a lot of competition and it was not easy to make your way. Don Rodrigo had a large family at his expense; he contracted debts and his household belongings, household items, clothing and other items necessary for survival were seized. He was finally imprisoned, from which he was released after a short time when he demonstrated his nobility.

Miguel de Cervantes was a 5-year-old boy at the time, but he never forgot those experiences and throughout his writings he manifested memories and reflections. In his work El colloquio de los perros (written in Valladolid) he makes a harsh criticism of the great abundance of Medicine students at the University of this city.