The Lost Tomb of Cervantes
March 17, 2015
Forensic scientists in Spain announced today one of the great archaeological discoveries in recent literary history. The scientists believe they have located the tomb of Miguel de Cervantes, Spain’s greatest writer and the author of Don Quixote, one of the masterpieces of literature. The bones have been uncovered in the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians in Madrid nearly 400 years after Cervantes’s death.
Cervantes was buried with his wife and several others in the convent in 1616, but his coffin was later lost. The convent was rebuilt in the late 1600’s, and it is below the crypt of that structure that the partial remains have been found. Authorities in Madrid hope to open Cervantes’s crypt to the public in 2016 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of his death. It was announced that Cervantes would be reburied “with full honors” in the same convent after a new tomb has been built.
Cervantes wrote Don Quixote in two parts (1605, 1615). The title character is a Spanish landowner who enlivens his monotonous life by reading fictional tales about knights of old, which he believes to be true and accurate. Until the 1800’s, Don Quixote was thought of as a humorous tale of a madman’s adventures. Then, it became a model for a new type of fiction with heroes who do not conform to their times.