Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr by Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo

First published:San Manuel Bueno, mártir, 1931 (English translation, 1956)

Type of work: Philosophical realism

Time of work: The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Locale: Valverde de Lucerna, a legendary town in northern Spain

Principal Characters:

• Don Manuel, a priest who has lost his faith
• Angela Carballino, the narrator, Don Manuel’s spiritual daughter
• Lazaro, Angela’s brother, who returns to Valverde de Lucerna after living in America and becomes Don Manuel’s friend, confidant, and disciple

The Novel

The story begins at the moment when the town of Valverde de Lucerna begins to promote the beatification of its beloved priest. Angela Carballino, whose real father died when she was a child, has always considered Don Manuel as her “spiritual father”; she recounts his life as a kind of confession, the nature of which is not clear until the end of the novel.

Angela first recalls Don Manuel as a robust, active priest of about thirty-seven who participated in every aspect of the life of the town. He was especially interested in children and often helped in the school, teaching not only catechism but also other subjects. He was moved by the death of any child and rejected the popular notion that an early death is a blessing because a dead child goes directly to Heaven. He routinely helped the poor, providing them with clean clothing. On one occasion, he intercepted a child whose father had sent him for firewood on a wintry day, sending the boy home and going for the wood himself. Rather than preaching the glories of Heaven, Don Manuel urged the villagers to enjoy life on earth; he encouraged them to give parties, to dance, to be happy. His most important function, however, was helping people to die. At the moment of a parishioner’s death, Don Manuel offered comfort and strength.

Don Manuel became the spiritual mainstay of the village. Everyone loved him. Soon his reputation extended beyond Valverde de Lucerna. When Angela went to an out-of-town high school, the girls asked constantly about Don Manuel. Before long, he became famous for his miracles. On the night of San Juan, on which Spaniards celebrate the beginning of summer, the physically and emotionally ill would come from miles around to gather at the lake at Valverde de Lucerna, which Don Manuel turned into a healing pool. Sometimes, moved by Don Manuel’s presence and his extraordinary voice, they would come away cured. Yet when someone asked Don Manuel for a miraculous cure, all he would answer was, “I don’t have permission from the bishop to perform miracles.” As Don Manuel’s fame grew, he received opportunities to advance within the Church structure, but he refused to leave his parishioners. “How can I save my own soul if I fail to save the soul of my people?” he would say.

In the town of Valverde de Lucerna, everyone went to church, many simply to experience Don Manuel’s charismatic presence. At Mass all would recite the Apostles’ Creed, led by Don Manuel. When, however, the congregation came to the words, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” Don Manuel remained silent. On Good Friday, when Don Manuel repeated Christ’s words, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” he did so with such conviction that he brought the parishioners to tears. Afterward, Blasillo, the village idiot, would wander through the streets crying, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” and again, the townspeople would weep. Angela, observing Don Manuel’s silences and anguished lamentations in church, as well as his obsessive need to keep himself busy, begins to suspect the priest’s terrible secret.

When Angela’s brother Lazaro returns to Valverde from the New World with progressive, anticlerical ideas, a clash between him and Don Manuel seems inevitable. Lazaro sees Don Manuel as an instrument of the primitive, theocratic feudalism that is holding Spain back. At the same time, he respects Don Manuel’s intellect. “He is too intelligent to believe everything he has to teach,” Lazaro concludes.

Instead of confronting Lazaro, Don Manuel takes him into his confidence. The two men become close friends. Don Manuel admits to Lazaro that he has lost his faith and that he has long been tempted by suicide, but he argues that the people need religion in order to endure their hardships. When Lazaro speaks of unionizing the workers, Don Manuel counters that new ideas will sow discontent. Since Lazaro is not a believer, Don Manuel cannot win him through faith. He uses reason to convince him that the people are better off with their traditional ways and faith than with new ideas that will introduce turmoil into their lives. It is at this point that the nature of Don Manuel’s martyrdom becomes clear. He has sacrificed himself all these years in order to give the people the faith he believes they need in order to survive.

When Angela’s and Lazaro’s mother is near death, Don Manuel persuades Lazaro to promise that he will pray for her soul so that she can die in peace. Once brought into the fold through prayer, Lazaro becomes Don Manuel’s most ardent supporter. He assists him in his work, not because he believes in life everlasting but because he believes in life on earth. Don Manuel has convinced him that it is better for the villagers to enjoy their lives as much as possible rather than torture themselves with philosophical questions. When Don Manuel dies, it is Lazaro who urges his replacement to give the people “religion,” not “theology.”

Neither Lazaro nor his sister reveals Don Manuel’s secret until the bishop insists that Angela, now in her fifties, write her thoughts about Don Manuel in support of the beatification process. She produces a text that not only will bring down the myth of Don Manuel, the saint, but also reveals her own doubts.

The Characters

Both Don Manuel and Lazaro are partially autobiographical characters. Lazaro, the political and social progressive, reflects the preoccupations of the young Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, who, in his early years, was drawn toward scientific materialism. Later in life, Unamuno experienced a spiritual crisis. Like Don Manuel, he was concerned with the problem of immortality, for it seemed to him that if there were no afterlife, life on earth had no purpose. Don Manuel incarnates Unamuno’s spiritual anguish. His fear that nothing follows death leads to depressions that border on the suicidal.

Like all Unamuno’s characters, Don Manuel is far more complex than he appears. Agonizing over his own doubts while protecting his parishioners from the truth, he seems a saint. Yet Don Manuel has a negative side. The author shows in many of his works that every act of charity is also an act of egotism. Citing the example of Cain and Abel—one of Unamuno’s favorite themes—he argues that the virtuous Abel is actually cruel because he causes Cain to be tortured by guilt. Don Manuel, unable to believe in eternal life, uses the parish to cultivate the fame that will allow him to go on living—through his reputation—after his death. When he tells people that the bishop has not given him permission to perform miracles, he seems humble. Yet he does not actually deny that he can perform them. His refusal to leave Valverde de Lucerna for a more prestigious position reveals not only his love for his people but also his fear of abandoning the safety of their adoring eyes. Don Manuel is cultivating his reputation as a saint. His beatification, which would allow him to be venerated as a local holy person, is a step in the process started by Don Manuel himself.

Unamuno writes in many essays that an unexamined faith is invalid. Although doubt is painful, it is part of the human condition. Christ himself, in human form, spoke the words, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” That is, Unamuno implies, Christ himself doubted. Yet Don Manuel denies his parishioners the right to doubt. He maintains them in a state of childlike dependency, creating a cult of which he is the center. The recitation of the Apostles’ Creed, in which all affirm mechanically, “I believe,” becomes a control tactic.

Don Manuel cultivates his aura of sainthood by performing good deeds which, in fact, often serve to protect him from the scrutiny of the masses. When a judge asks him to interrogate a criminal, Don Manuel responds, “Judge not, that you may not be judged,” an answer against which the court official has no argument. By declining to help condemn the criminal, Don Manuel not only contributes to his reputation but also avoids the anger of the man’s family, who might seek ways to discredit him. In his sermons, Don Manuel never inveighs against masons, liberals, or heretics. His tolerance is a result of his own unorthodoxy, but it is also a means of avoiding the opposition of these traditionally anticlerical elements. On the other hand, Don Manuel constantly preaches against envy, vengeance, and judgment of others; he himself fears the scrutiny of his parishioners.

When Angela questions Don Manuel about dogma and his own beliefs, he gives her orthodox answers, often quoting from the Bible, without really addressing the issues. He encourages her to read adventure stories instead of theology, in order to avoid her soul-searching. Yet Angela guesses Don Manuel’s secret and begins the intellectual process that will lead her to doubt. She comforts Don Manuel, offering him solace by allowing him to believe that she still possesses the innocent faith of a child. In the end, however, Angela asks, “Do I believe?” Her confession—the book Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr, in which she reveals Don Manuel’s secret—is her own attempt at achieving immortality, for she is truly Don Manuel’s “spiritual child.”

Lazaro represents a threat to Don Manuel’s domain. His pamphlets and progressive ideas risk stimulating the populace to reflect, to ask questions, and, finally, to reject Don Manuel’s authority. If he were to confront Lazaro openly, Don Manuel would provoke a rift in the village. Lazaro would continue his campaign and his supporters would oppose Don Manuel. Since Lazaro is a pragmatist and a rationalist, Don Manuel appeals to reason to convince him that it is in the best interests of the villagers to continue in their beliefs.

Critical Context

Unamuno wrote Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr in 1930, six years before his death. It is one of his best and most mature works. Encompassing so many contradictory aspects of human nature—the saintly and the diabolical, the magnanimous and the manipulative, the tolerant and the self-serving, the reasonable and the intuitive—Don Manuel has become a towering character in contemporary Spanish literature. Because of the work’s complexity,it lends itself to diverse interpretations and has attracted much critical attention.

Unamuno called his prose fiction nivolas. Like everything in Unamuno’s world, the nivola defies definition. Unamuno explains in Niebla (1914; Mist, 1928) that a nivola transcends genre and blurs the line between reality and fiction. For example, Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr consists of a mere thirty-five pages and so is neither a novel nor a short story. At the end of the work, the author transcends his role of invisible storyteller to comment on the significance of the characters, especially Angela. By introducing a personal interpretation of his own work, Unamuno eradicates the boundary between reader and writer. He uses an even more radical technique at the end ofMist, in which the author enters the work and is confronted by one of his characters.

Unamuno has often been called a pre-existentialist. Like characters in existentialist novels, Unamuno’s protagonists grapple with nothingness and the finality of human life. Unamuno explains in several of his essays that aside from the eternal life promised by the Church, there are two means to achieve immortality: through children and through art. That is why Don Manuel cultivates a “spiritual daughter” and Angela produces her “confession.”

In his commentary at the end of Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr, Unamuno says that he believes in Angela more than he believes in himself. For Unamuno the creation is more real than the creator because the work of art outlives the artist and attains a life of its own, as future generations reinterpret it. That is why, at the end of Mist, the author is unable to kill his character. That is also why Unamuno sometimes becomes a character in his own books; through art, he attempts to bestow immortality upon himself.

Thus, the creation process acquires transcendental significance. Just as the character creates the author in the sense that the author is not an author without his creation, so man creates God. Thus, creer es crear—believing is creating. By believing—in defiance of reason—an individual performs an act of will, an act of self-affirmation, that gives his own life meaning.

Sources for Further Study

Andrachuk, Gregory Peter. “’He That Eateth of This Bread Shall Live Forever’ (John 6:58): Lazaro’s Communion.” Romance Notes 31, no. 3 (Spring, 1991): 205-213. Discusses the significance of Lazarus taking communion in his own hand before the practice was allowed in Roman Catholicism and likens it to his becoming a priest in the “new religion” of Valverde de Lucerna.

Biggane, Julia. “Introjection, Loss, and the Politics of Possession in Unamuno’s San Manuel Bueno, Mártir.” Hispanic Review (Summer, 2005): 329-349. Discussion of the psychoanalytic, ethical, and political dimensions of mourning as it relates to the state of gender and politics in Spain.

Carey, Douglas M., and Phillip G. Williams. “Religious Confession as Perspective and Mediation in Unamuno’s San Manuel Bueno, Mártir.” MLN 91, no. 2 (March, 1976): 292-310. The themes of absence, replacement, and confession show Don Manuel’s struggle to believe. There is a strong discussion of the parallels between Don Manuel and Christ.

Mancing, Howard. “The Lessons of San Manuel Bueno, Mártir.” MLN 121 (March, 2006): 343-366. Provides a synopsis and a discussion of the characters and the relationships between the novella and Unamuno’s life and previous writings.

Yorba-Gray, Galen B. “Don Quixote till Kingdom Come: The (Un)Realized Eschatology of Miguel de Unamuno.” Christianity and Literature 54, no. 2 (Winter, 2005): 165-182. A description of Unamuno’s vision of Don Quixote as spiritual and national savior of Spain because his creativity pushed beyond the apparent limits of the possible.