Sancho Panza

plural Sancho Panzas

1. A person perceived as both foolish and wise and who takes claims at face value, and who is usually the companion of a more important or powerful person whom they idolize beyond reason.

   I defend the pudgy Sancho Panzas, the rotund Ragueneaus, and the sentimental Samwise Gamgees of the world.

   2014, Dwight Longenecker, The Romance of Religion: Fighting for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, page 87=88

   3 more examples

   Nanak's companion, Mardana, was ardently attached to his master and fully believed in him; but his healthy, natural appetite often got the better of his high spiritual aspirations. He had no genius for saintliness and not the slightest predilection for an ascetic life, but had had sanctity thrust upon him by circumstances. He was the Sancho Panza of spiritual knight-errantry, and often grew weary of wandering about in jungles and warring upon invisible, and, what seemed to him, imaginary adversaries.

   1874, E.P. Evans, “Nanak, the Founder of the Sikh Religion”, in The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine, volume 10, Leonard C. Bowles, page 151

   It would be extremely interesting if we had time to give in detail the romantic episodes in the lives of many of these Troubadours, such as Bernart de Ventadour, who, born of the humblest parentage, was the favorite in the courts of the Dukes of Normandy and the Counts of Toulouse; or such as Peire Vidal, the Sancho Panza of the Provençal poets, half genius, half fool, "who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll."

   1903, L. Oscar Kuhns, “The Story of the Troubadours”, in Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review, volume 85, pages 30-31

   He christened Prince Napoleon Jérome Egalité, M. Thiers King Ego, Father Hyacinthe the Sancho Panza of the Church; and his printed sketches of divers anti-clerical people are like anatomical dissections, so cruelly do they expose the innermost blemishes of the victims.

   1853, “Parisian Journalists of To-day”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume 28, page 728