Sonnet to Saint Francis by Miguel de Cervantes
Cervantes paid a brief visit to Alcalá in July 1613. While he was there, he visited the venerable Order of Franciscan Tertiaries and took their habit. This was an intermediate step in joining this lay order. Dissatisfied with the Trinitarian order, he withdrew from the Confraternity of the Most Holy Sacrament. In his view, it had become too secular and too heavily influenced by the aristocracy.
Cervantes visited his birthplace, Alcalá, in July 1613. There, he visited the Order of the Franciscan Tertiaries and took their habit, an initial step to joining this order. Although he had previously joined a Trinitarian brotherhood, Cervantes soon became disenchanted with the Trinitarian’s secular concerns.
as a novice, on April 2, 1616, he took final vows in the Franciscan order. The ceremony took place at his house. On April 18, he received an Extreme Unction (sacrament that gives strength to the deathly ill) from the licentiate Francisco Lopez. Lopez had given the last rites of the church to his two Franciscan sisters.
The funeral Mass was said by the Franciscan friar who earlier had ransomed Cervantes from prison in Algiers. Following the Franciscan custom, he was buried in the Trinitarian monastery wearing his habit with his face uncovered.
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