In Search of Cervantes’s Casket

*They’re just initials on a casket, but the possibility is exciting. Some Spanish thinkers believe that the Catholic view that the spirit is more important than the body is responsible for the neglect in finding Cervantes’ grave. VL

By Dan Piepenbring, The Paris Review

Archeologists in Spain have excavated a casket with Miguel de Cervantes’s initials on it,the Associated Press reported earlier today, which may mean that a long search for the author’s remains is finally over.

When Cervantes died, in 1616, he was buried in the Trinitarias convent in Madrid. This arrangement required a special dispensation: Years earlier, when Cervantes was a soldier, his ship had been captured by pirates, and he was held captive for five years. The Trinitarias’s religious order had helped arrange for his safe release, so he asked to be buried there.

The order obliged, but upon his death, there was a bit of a hiccup: apparently no one thought to mark his grave. If it was marked, it wasn’t marked well—centuries later, no one is really sure where exactly Cervantes was interred. As the New York Times reported last March,\

Click HERE to read the full story.