The Orient in Spain Numen Book Series

Studies in the History of Religions

Series Editors Steven Engler (Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada) Richard King (University of Kent, UK) Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) Gerard Wiegers (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

VOLUME 142

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/nus The Orient in Spain

Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism

by Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano

Translated by Consuelo López-Morillas

Leiden • boston 2013 Originally published as: Un Oriente Español Los moriscos y el Sacromonte en Tiempos de Contrarreforma. Published in 2010 by Marcial Pons, Ediciones de Historia, S.A. Madrid. Translated from the Spanish by Consuelo López-Morillas. Cover illustration: Aḥmad b. Qāsim al-Ḥajarī reproduces a Seal of Solomon. From al-Ḥajarī, Aḥmad b. Qāsim, Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn ʿalā l-qawm al-kāfirīn (The Supporter of Religion Against the Infidel), study, critical edition, and English translation by P. S. van Koningsveld, Q. al-Samarrai, and G. A. Wiegers (Madrid, 1997), 259. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data García-Arenal, Mercedes. [Oriente español. English] The Orient in Spain : converted Muslims, the forged lead books of Granada, and the rise of orientalism / by Mercedes Garcia-Arenal and Fernando Rodriguez Mediano ; translated by Consuelo Lopez-Morillas. pages cm. — (Numen book series. Studies in the history of religions, ISSN 0169-8834 ; volume 142) Translation of: Un oriente español. Madrid : Marcial Pons Historia, 2010; corrected and expanded, with new research and a new bibliography. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-24450-4 (hardback : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-25029-1 (e-book) 1. Moriscos—Spain—Granada—History—16th century. 2. Granada (Spain)—History—16th century. 3. Granada (Spain)—Church history—16th century. 4. Abadía del Sacromonte (Granada, Spain)—History. 5. Forgery—Spain—Granada—History—16th century. 6. Orientalism—Spain— History—16th century. 7. Arabic language—Spain—History—16th century. 8. Islam—Spain— History—16th century. 9. Spain—Intellectual life—16th century. 10. Spain—Historiography. I. Rodríguez Mediano, Fernando. II. Title. DP104.G3713 2013 946’.04—dc23 2013000781

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0169-8834 ISBN 978-90-04-24450-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-25029-1 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents

Abbreviations ...... ix Note to the English Translation ...... xi

Introduction ...... 1

1 The Sacromonte Lead Books: The Events ...... 13 The Turpiana Tower Parchment ...... 13 Archbishop Don Pedro de Castro ...... 21 The Lead Books ...... 22 The Reception of the Finds ...... 25 The Evaluation Process ...... 27 Polemics and Resistance ...... 28 The Lead Books Leave Granada ...... 30 The Lead Books in Rome ...... 31 The Defensorios ...... 32

2 Granada Conquered: Castilianization and Conversion ...... 35 Granada Conquered ...... 35 Language and Evangelization ...... 42 The Eradication of Arabic ...... 47 The Defense of Arabic and its Persistence in Granada ...... 51 Reformers and Alumbrados ...... 56 Granada and its Moriscos around 1580 ...... 62

3 The Noble Families ...... 65 Old Christians of Moorish Origin ...... 66 Conversion ...... 69 Integration ...... 74 Muley Fez and Granada Venegas ...... 76 The Happy Former Days of Our Glory ...... 80 The Origen de la Casa de Granada ...... 86 The Granada Venegas Literary Tertulia ...... 88

4 Alonso del Castillo: Translator, Author? ...... 95 Alonso del Castillo and other Translators of the Parchment ..... 97 The Chapiz Family ...... 98 Physician ...... 103 vi contents

Translator ...... 107 The War ...... 111 The Prophecies ...... 115

5 Alonso del Castillo’s Friends: Priests, Soldiers, Interpreters ...... 121 Priests ...... 121 Diego Marín ...... 123 Francisco López Tamarid ...... 124 Diego Marín in Morocco ...... 130 Diego Marín’s Diplomatic Career ...... 133

6 Diego Bejarano Al-Ḥajarī and the Morisco Understanding of the Lead Books ...... 139 Diego Bejarano or Aḥmad B. Qāsim Al-Ḥajarī ...... 139 Al-Ḥajarī and the Parchment and Lead Books ...... 144 How the Moriscos Read the Lead Books ...... 148

7 Miguel de Luna: Historian, Novelist, Physician ...... 155 The Historia Verdadera Del Rey Don Rodrigo ...... 157 Physician: The Tratado De Los Baños (Treatise on Baths) ...... 165

8 Miguel de Luna: Translator, Apologist, Author ...... 171 The Parchment ...... 171 Miguel de Luna, Pedro Guerra de Lorca, and Benito Arias Montano ...... 172 The Lead Books Translated ...... 174 The Solomonic Letters ...... 176 Friendship with Joan de Faría ...... 183 Miguel de Luna and the Moriscos of Toledo: “There is No Better Moor in Spain” ...... 187

9 Jerónimo Román de la Higuera: The False Chronicles and the Sacromonte Lead Books ...... 195 Annius of Viterbo and Spain ...... 197 Jerónimo Román de la Higuera and the False Chronicles ...... 201 Saint James ...... 202 Toledo and the Cult of San Tirso ...... 205 Román de la Higuera and Alonso del Castillo ...... 206 Román de la Higuera and Pedro de Castro ...... 207 Román de la Higuera, Miguel de Luna, and the Tower of Hercules ...... 213 contents vii

The True Cross of Caravaca ...... 215 The Influence of Higuera: Jews and Phoenicians ...... 219

10 Diego de Urrea ...... 225 Diego de Urrea between Italy and North Africa ...... 225 Urrea in Spain ...... 227 Diego de Urrea and the Lead Books ...... 230 Urrea the Historian ...... 233 Diplomatic Missions ...... 235 Diego de Urrea in Naples ...... 236 Francisco de Gurmendi ...... 241

11 Marcos Dobelio ...... 245 The Sacromonte Seeks Arabic Translators ...... 245 An Arabist in Italy and Spain ...... 248 Marcos Dobelio and the Arabic Manuscripts of El Escorial ...... 253 Marcos Dobelio’s Arabic Books ...... 254 A Partial Translation of Abū l-Fidāʾ ’s History ...... 260 A Translation of a Medical Work and a Grammar ...... 263 Dobelio’s Papers ...... 265

12 Marcos Dobelio and the Books from Pastrana: The Islamic Content of the Lead Books ...... 269 Writing and Necromancy ...... 272 Pastrana ...... 275 The Pastrana Books ...... 280 Genealogies, Religious Polemic, and Stories of the Prophets .... 282 Al-Bakrī’s Kitāb al-Anwār ...... 285 Islamic Texts for a Morisco Audience ...... 289 Muhammad Alguazir or Diego Alguacil ...... 291

13 Is The Arabic of the Lead Books the Language of Islam? ...... 295 The Laminae Granatenses and the Vatican Experts ...... 297 Arabic in Rome ...... 298 Mohammedan Terms ...... 304

14 Father Tomás de León and the Marquis of Mondéjar: A Learned Correspondence ...... 307 Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia, Marquis of Agrópoli and of Mondéjar ...... 309 Father Tomás de León ...... 310 viii contents

Works by Tomás de León ...... 312 Father Tirso González de Santalla ...... 315 Tomás de León and the Sacromonte Abbey ...... 319 Tomás de León, Orientalist ...... 320 Networks of Arabists ...... 322 Martín Vázquez Siruela ...... 327 A Circle of Orientalists? ...... 331

15 The Arabic Language and Orientalism in Spain ...... 335 Learning Arabic: The Problem of Texts ...... 336 Learning Arabic: The New Materials ...... 339 Orientalist Books in Spain ...... 344

16 Al-Andalus in the History of Spain ...... 353 Al-Andalus: Part of the History of Spain? ...... 353 Diego Pérez de Mesa ...... 355 Arabic Sources for Writing the History of Spain: Luis del Mármol ...... 358 Diego de Guadix ...... 360 The Relics of al-Andalus ...... 365 Continuities and Ruptures ...... 366 Problems of Interpretation ...... 369

17 The Arabic Language as a Tool for Scholarship ...... 375 In Defense of Oriental Languages ...... 375 Arabic Script ...... 380 Manuscripts and Translations ...... 386

18 The Orient in Spain ...... 395 Problems of Chronology: The Hijra ...... 395 The Orient in Spain: Judaism ...... 405 The Orient in Spain: Egypt ...... 409 Egyptian Chronology ...... 413 “The Perverse Domestic Enemies of the Church” ...... 416

Epilogue ...... 423

Sources and Bibliography ...... 425 Illustrations ...... 449 Index of Persons ...... 461 Index of Places ...... 472 abbreviations

AASG Archivo de la Abadía del Sacromonte, Granada ACDF Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, Vatican, Rome ADC Archivo Diocesano Conquense, Cuenca AGS Archivo General de Simancas AHN Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid BAE Biblioteca de Autores Españoles BAV Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome BHR Biblioteca del Hospital Real, Granada BNE Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid BNF Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris CSIC Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas EI2 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, Leiden: E.J. Brill FUE Fundación Universitaria Española IVDJ instituto Valencia de Don Juan, Madrid RAH Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid

note to the english translation

The present version is more than a simple translation of the Spanish original; it is in reality a second edition, corrected and expanded, which incorporates results of research that we have carried out since the original publication date of 2010, as well as new bibliography. Above all, we have recast the text in order to clarify matters that would be familiar to a Span- ish audience, but that needed amplification to make them accessible to a wider readership. This restructuring and expansion have led to a division of chapters that differs from the Spanish one. Our collaboration with the translator, Consuelo López-Morillas, has been essential throughout, since she is in her own right a well-known scholar of the literary heritage of the converted Muslims. It has been a privilege to work with her as a reader, translator, and co-author, and we acknowledge our debt to her here. Her translation was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid of Research from the Office of the Vice-Provost for Research, Indiana University, in 2012. We have also taken into account, in this second version, comments and discussions with colleagues who read our book in Spanish and in some cases suggested new avenues of investigation, contributions that we have acknowledged in footnotes: James Amelang, Manuel Barrios Aguilera, Luis Bernabé Pons, Fernando Bouza, Enrique Soria Mesa, and Gerard Wiegers.

Introduction

In the late sixteenth century there appeared in Granada, under miraculous and providential circumstances, some small circular leaves of lead incised with strange, archaic Arabic letters like those used in epigraphic inscriptions, amulets, and magical formulas. They contained what purported to be ancient Christian texts, in which the Virgin Mary took a leading role as the vehicle of Revelation; they spoke of certain Arab disciples who had come to the Iberian Peninsula in the company of Saint James the Greater. These texts engraved on lead complemented and explained a discovery made a few years earlier, during the demolition of the former minaret of the great mosque of Granada, called the Turpiana Tower: a parchment written in Arabic, Latin, and Spanish that contained a prophecy attributed to Saint John, placed within a leaden box together with a handkerchief said to have been the Virgin’s and a relic of Saint Stephen. We call these finds “miraculous and providential” because Granada needed relics, and needed a sacred, Christian past—as a city so clearly shaped by its Islamic history, it had no such past of its own. These discoveries were immediately followed by miraculous cures, ghost lights, and other such wonders; these caused great excitement among the people. The Lead Books provided evidence of the presence of Saint James in Spain and of the belief—which had not yet been declared a dogma of the Church—in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The archbishop of Granada interpreted them as a sign that the city, its cathedral, and the Spanish monarchy enjoyed divine favor. The affair came to be known as that of the Sacromonte Lead Books, or as the Láminas Granatenses (Granadan leaves) when the Vatican decided to study them; in 1682, a century after they appeared, it declared them false and anathema. But the Church in Granada through its Archbishop Pedro de Castro, and the Spanish Crown, both defended the books’ authenticity with passion; thus the Lead Books affair gave rise to a tremendous debate and to a long and varied series of translations and linguistic studies. As the present volume will show, the matter went far beyond the confines of Granada’s local history and of the Morisco problem in the region. It would trouble the Span- ish Church and Crown, the Vatican, the bishops in their struggles with Rome, and the scholars and humanists of half of Europe. The text of the Lead Books is cryptic, obscure, at times deliberately ambiguous, and written without vowels—a “secret” text, as were most of 2 introduction the Moriscos’ writings. It has been interpreted as a syncretic text, or as one that tried to infiltrate Islam into Christianity. But for a long time it was considered by many people, including weighty ecclesiastics and theologians, as authentic, that is, as part of the Revelation—an ancient Christian message containing nothing that ran counter to the Catholic faith. The truth is that the Lead Books were perhaps, as Hagerty has proposed, written to be translated rather than to be read. This notion implies that their translators were simultaneously their authors, and of course the debate about the books was rooted in large part in the different translations that were made of them, and how translators interpreted their more ambiguous passages. Therefore knowledge of the Arabic language is an essential ingredient of this affair. But who were the people who knew Arabic, and what kind of Arabic did they know? Here is one of the fundamental questions considered in the present study, which has the Lead Books at its center. We propose to show how the Sacromonte Lead Books affair transformed both the knowledge and the use of Arabic in Spain, at the same time that it provoked an abrupt turn in the historiographic study of the Peninsula’s Islamic and pre-Islamic past. We will analyze the ties between the situation of minorities in Early Modern Spain and the appearance of an erudite and learned use of Ori- ental languages, beginning with the specific case of Spaniards’ knowledge of Arabic. We emphasize again that the Lead Books were a text written in Arabic and taken by many to be an authentically Christian message, but by others as syncretist and full of Islamic or Islamicizing elements. Many Moriscos thought that it was an unmistakably and impeccably Islamic text. For this reason we must dedicate our early chapters to the norm that existed before the discoveries: that is, we must determine what was happening with the Arabic language in Granada in the context of its speakers, the Moriscos. We begin by following this thread in the period that preceded the 1580s and showing to what extent the Morisco milieu can explain both the form and the content of the falsifications, as well as the intent of the falsifiers. But we need to go back further into the fifteenth century to understand the different processes of conversion that underlie the main topic of this book. The Christian conquest in 1492 of the last Islamic stronghold, the Kingdom of Granada, was followed immediately by a series of laws that forced the conversion or expulsion of Jews and Muslims. As a result, Early Modern Iberia became a society characterized by the imposition of a single religion. The forced conversion of Jews to Catholicism during the fifteenth century and their expulsion in 1492 were followed between 1502 introduction 3 and 1526 (through a series of decrees promulgated at different times in Castile and Aragon) by the compulsory conversion of Muslims, who there- after became known as “Moriscos” or cristianos nuevos de moros (New Christians who were formerly Moors). Thus the final step was taken in converting the—in ethno-religious terms—pluralistic society which had existed in the Peninsula during the Middle Ages into a society in which a single religion held sway. We use the term “religion” in its broadest sense: this transformed society was seen as being endowed with only one Law, one revealed text, a single set of culturally appropriate behaviours, and a single accepted form of spirituality. The change was massive and had profound consequences not only for the converted groups, but also for the society that had to absorb them. The nation also faced the problem of integrating the converted and confronting their respective sacred texts as well as their prophets, lineages, languages, and hygienic and culinary practices. The entire history of Early Modern Spain is marked by this trauma, which gave rise to long-lasting, multifaceted effects. The most important of these were the founding in 1478 of a new institution for enforcing orthodoxy, the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and the creation of statutes of limpieza de sangre or “purity of blood”: these legislated that persons of Muslim or Jewish ancestry could not accede to certain professions that led to positions of privilege and power. The traumatic transition that produced this mono-confessional Spain also saw the the emergence of shifting identities and new religious attitudes; these included forms of overlapping and redefinition of religious beliefs which will make themselves manifest in this book. Two fundamental late-fifteenth-century events—the final culmination of the Christian Reconquest and the discovery of America—had led the Spanish monarchy to believe that it played a special metaphysical role, that it had been divinely chosen to embark on the grandest of political and spiritual undertakings. The two near-simultaneous achievements were confidently attributed to the workings of divine Providence. The conquest of the Kingdom of Granada, and the extension of that conquest to parts of the Maghrib when first Melilla (1495) was taken by military force and then Oran (1509) under Cardinal Cisneros, produced a wave of messianic enthusiasm that foresaw the definitive end of Islam, the conquest of Jerusalem, the reestablishment of the early Church, and the conversion of all humanity to the Christian faith. At the same time Islam had become, after the conquest of Granada, a more real and threatening presence than ever for contemporary Spaniards, and was to remain so throughout the sixteenth century. Spain confronted the Ottoman Empire, 4 introduction which harried the coasts of Naples and Sicily and conquered the island of Menorca. The country was under constant attack from Barbary pirates from the North African regencies, who ravaged Spanish coastlines and shipping lanes (including the routes to the Indies), seizing in the process large numbers of captives. From the latter came back descriptions of the horrors inflicted upon them, and based upon these, religious orders dedicated to ransoming captives created broad propaganda campaigns. Spain suffered a constant unease at the not-always-peaceful presence of its Morisco population, the dangers of which showed themselves in the terrible War of the Alpujarras (1568–70). This rebellion of Moriscos from the mountains of Granada took place after the royal decrees of 1567 that forbade the use of spoken and written Arabic, the posession of Arabic books and documents, Arabic names, and so on. The War of the Alpujarras was considered as a terrible danger by contemporary Spaniards, and an intervention of the Ottomans in favour of their fellow Muslims very much feared. All this is well exemplified by the career of the commander of the army which fought at the Alpujarras, Don John of Austria. Don John of Austria, natural son of Carlos V (and therefore bastard brother of the King Philipp II) was Admiral of the Fleet of the Mediterranean, with which he had been launching war against corsairs and Ottoman ships. After the Alpujarras campaign he went on to lead the fleet to the battle which that Saint League (Spain, the Pope and Venice) fought against the Ottomans at Lepanto (1571) which he won, and afterwards conquered Tunis in 1573. In any way, the War of the Alpujarras ment the second and definite conquest of the Kingdom of Granada. The true authors of the Sacromonte forgeries must have emerged from the Moriscos’ world. In fact Alonso de Castillo and Miguel de Luna, both of whom were Morisco physicians and court interpreters, have been identified repeatedly as the supposed authors. And yet it is not so much the actual authorship, the concrete and individual “guilt,” that we wish to expose; rather we seek to understand the cultural and even emotional horizons of the possible perpetrators on the one hand and of the recipi- ents of the discoveries on the other. We will attempt to identify some of the core values of different groups of Moriscos, and to examine how those values were accepted or reformulated in response to contemporary social and cultural currents—for example, how the Arabic language gradually became the repository of an intrinsic identity, one that was distinct even from religion. We have tried to divine what significance the events in Granada in the sixteenth century held for the individuals who took part in them. We wish to know how introduction 5 those people made their choices and how they justified them to themselves and to others, because that will reveal how they saw their own identity, their self-respect, and their strategies for survival—all that, in the end, gave meaning to their lives. These issues are intimately linked to the purpose of the Lead Books and to why they were created. On the other hand, if the authors were Moriscos, their ability to invent a text was obviously conditioned by the linguistic and conceptual resources at their command. They must have been constrained by the Arabic that they knew, by the Christian Arabic texts that existed in their environment (since the Lead Books were read by some as a Christian document), and by such reference works (dictionaries or glossaries) as were available to them. We must ask what elements made up not only their Arabic and Islamic culture but also their Christian one. What books they had at hand and what they might have read is a matter of special interest in the first part of this volume, and is essential to assessing and understanding the text of the Lead Books. Therefore we begin by interrogating the Sacromonte texts in light of the hybrid Christian-Muslim Morisco culture in which the authors and their patrons moved—at least those who benefited from the finds. At the same time we place this appeal to the texts and to the culture of the book in the context of the events that their protagonists lived through: conversion and evangelization, followed by a protracted series of measures that progressively curtailed the possibility of preserving Arab cultural traits independently of religion. Part of that context is the problem of personal honor, and of the privileges that families related to the old Nasrid aristocracy felt to be their due; another important part is the war of the Alpujarras. Of course we are interested also in the reception of the Sacromonte forgeries, or at least in detecting the factors that can explain their aston- ishing and long-lasting success. The period in which the Lead Books of Granada appeared was also the age of the first construction of a historiography of a “national” or “protonational” character. In it the Islamic epoch in Iberia was portrayed as an alien parenthesis, now closed; Christianity had triumphed over it and had rooted it out completely. Considerable problems remained, however, above all in the case of the Andalusian cities of Cordova, Seville and Granada. When the history of such cities came to be written—their archaeological remains described, their inscriptions deciphered—what exactly were historians to do? How could they deal with an Arabo-Islamic past that was, in those cities, so obvious, so unavoidable, and at the same time so glorious? 6 introduction

Local history, the writing of which proliferated in Spain, particularly after the general history of Juan de Mariana (1592), was governed by very different imperatives from those of the historical chronicles promoted within official court circles. In such works it became necessary to present the conversion of Andalusian cities into Christian ones as, at the very least, not a mere process of transformation or creation but as one of restoration. This was particularly difficult to achieve in the case of Granada. For Granada, conquered barely a century earlier, the problem of its Mus- lim past was even graver and more obvious than for other cities: unlike Cordova or Toledo it had not even had a Christian population, and the names of its bishops, upon whose continuity other cities established their Christian background, were unknown. Such uninterrupted lists of succession of bishops bore witness to a city’s antiquity and its adherence to Christianity, and they were an indispensable prerequisite for writing a city’s history. On the one hand, Granada presented itself as the site of the definitive triumph of Christ over Islam, as a “New Jerusalem” rescued from the clasp of the Muslims. In this newly Christian Granada, the cathedral and palace of Charles V were the emblems of an architectural program based on the imperial idea of Caesar; they were a dynastic expression of the new Hapsburg monarchy. This was true to such an extent that the Emperor had not only made the city a cathedral see but had decided to turn it into the pantheon of the imperial family (although this scheme was later abandoned, just at the beginning of the period to which our book is dedicated). But on the other hand the physical makeup of the city of Granada, with its great Islamic monuments and above all its Alhambra palace dominating the skyline, made it difficult to ignore its Islamic character. Therefore historians found it impossible to write a “history of Gran- ada” for the first one hundred years of its Christian period. No printed history of Granada exists from before the events of the Sacromonte. These were to allow for a new development: a totally novel interpretation of the city’s origins, archaeology, and architecture which, as we shall see, stripped them almost completely of the their “Islamic” character in what must be seen as a true historiographic tour de force. From the viewpoint of this obsessive concern with the origins of Spain, and with establishing the earliest possible connection between particular cities and regions and the history of Christianity, we should note that the Sacromonte Lead Books were not the only forgery that penetrated deeply into Early Modern Spanish historiography. Annius of Viterbo’s pseudo- Berosus chronicle, for example, had a long-lasting impact that can already introduction 7 be detected in the work of Florián de Ocampo, the first great chronicler in sixteenth-century Spain; its influence would persist throughout the century and it would be appealed to constantly as a source for the origins of Spain and of its monarchy. Of equal weight were the forgeries known as the falsos cronicones, invented ancient “chronicles” attributed to real authors like Dextrus and Maximus; these began to circulate in Spain toward the end of the sixteenth century and purported to illustrate its early ecclesiastical history. The man behind these falsifications was a Jesuit, Father Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, whose possible Jewish origins (he may have been a converso) could explain the motive for the fraud: he was trying to give legitimacy to certain Spanish converso families, particularly from his native city of Toledo, by demonstrating that they had lived in Spain since Antiquity and had been early converts to Christianity. Both Annius’s pseudo-Berosus and the false chronicles left a tremendous mark on Spanish historiography. They also provoked a polemical reaction that was particularly strong in the so-called “critical historiography” of seventeenth-century Spain; the names of its chief protagonists, like Nicolás Antonio, will recur often in the pages that follow. It is for all these reasons that we have drawn connections between the Granadan forgeries and the falsos cronicones, by way of the personal relationship between Miguel de Luna and the creator of the latter, Jerónimo Román de la Higuera; we find both men implicated in a movement to invent and rewrite history that extended beyond Spain. The fraud of the Lead Books, which sought to exploit the sacred history of Granada, can only be understood in relation to all the similar finds that were taking place at the time: the saints’ remains and martyrs’ bones, ruined churches and buildings that appeared in many cities and towns. All these made it possible to include Spain in a sanctified history, one that went back to the East of the Bible and even to Babylon and Egypt, wellsprings of a wisdom and prestige that surpassed those of Greece and Rome. Thanks to Luna’s and Román de la Higuera’s falsifications, their respective cities could shine with patriotic pride and create for themselves an ancient and holy identity (and one that translated into special privileges). Such an identity made it possible, moreover, to include those elements of Spanish society that had been marginalized by the purity-of-blood statutes and a whole series of civil and religious decrees. Thus it created Arabs who were liberated from Islam, and Jews who were freed from responsibility for the death of Christ—two peoples who had lived in the Peninsula from the beginning, and who connected it to an earlier age when humankind had been closer to its Creator. 8 introduction

We are interested as well in how the Arabic language was allowed to be used in Spain at the time: for translation and interpretation, especially in diplomatic, mercantile, and military relations—in short, for mediation on the frontier with the lands of Islam. A good example is that of Alonso de Castillo and his friends. But Diego de Urrea, to whom we devote a chapter, shows the first overlap between what we might call a practical and func- tional use of Arabic and a scholarly one. In this regard we are particularly drawn to the figure of Marcos Dobelio, an Eastern Christian who taught Arabic at La Sapienza in Rome; his cultural, intellectual, and even emotional baggage differ from those of everyone else who had been involved with the Lead Books. For Dobelio the books were an aberration, not only from a linguistic or theological standpoint but in the type of religiosity they inspired. Granada was such a singular place that, in the light of these discoveries, its Archbishop could perform an exorcism while uttering part of the Muslim profession of faith in colloquial Arabic. Dobelio, an Arabophone Christian from the East, came from a Roman and European milieu in which Arabic had flourished under the wing of Biblical studies, through its resemblance to Hebrew. Furthermore there were texts and versions of the Holy Scriptures in Arabic, and in that world the language was a vehicle for evangelization and religious polemic; the Eastern Catholic Maronites were creating a “scholastic Arabic” as a vehicle for the new doctrines that emerged from the Council of Trent. In other words, the Arabic language was the voice and identity of a particular sect, the Maronites, who in Rome were claiming the mantle of Eastern Catholi- cism above and apart from all the other Eastern Christian confessions. Dobelio’s view of the Lead Books was wholly distinct from the one that Spanish humanists and philologists expressed. In assessing the books, he concluded that the Moriscos were perpetuating a “residual” or “decayed” form of Islam, a religion that assumed an apologetic or polemical stance vis-à-vis Christianity at the same time that it was profoundly penetrated by the latter. We might add that this form of Islam was not very different (save in its contact with Christianity) from that practiced in other parts of the Maghrib: it relied on the same books, authoritative sources, and works of reference. Dobelio, like his follower Gurmendi, showed that the text of the Lead Books was based on Islamic sources. It purported to be Christian and might be read as such, but its origins and referents were Muslim. It was an example of the richness and specificity of that late Spanish Islam in which cultural motifs, spirituality, and Christian references—including those to reformers and Lutherans—were tightly interwoven with Islam. Thus the Lead Books were in a sense the counterpart to what may be the introduction 9 most important work of all Morisco literature, the Tafsira of El Mancebo de Arévalo: an Islamic text built on a variety of Christian referents, from the Prologue to La Celestina to Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ. Following the theme of how Arabic was used, the second half of the book seeks to reconstruct how the language was apprehended by the Spanish scholarly world in the seventeenth century. It was a long process whose milestones can be followed through the activity of figures like Diego de Urrea and Marcos Dobelio. These two represent both the transition and the hinge between the book’s two parts through their Eastern background and their complex and “cosmopolitan” intellectual horizons, which gave them a singular profile in the Spanish medium in which they came to work. A field of knowledge was gradually created in which Arabic detached itself from its use as an instrument of proselytizing or diplomacy; this shift occurred through the translation and citation of Arabic sources, the cataloguing of the Arabic manuscripts of El Escorial, and the (precarious) effort to institutionalize the teaching of Arabic at the University of Alcalá de Henares. Throughout this process the falsifications in Granada played a fundamental role. They owed part of their impact to the content of the Lead Books, which touched on pressing historical questions: the origins of Spain, the presence of Christianity and the Biblical East in Spain’s ancient history, the issue of what language or languages were spoken in the Peninsula—in short, the integration of al-Andalus and Arab culture into a coherent narrative of the Spanish past. Our story focuses in particular on the activities of a group of scholars who were very significant in Spanish culture in the seventeenth century. The names of Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia, Marquis of Agrópoli and of Mon- déjar; of Martín Vázquez Siruela, and of Nicolás Antonio place us at the center of critical Spanish historiography, in the “struggles for the truth” of history, and in the activity of the Madrid salons where “modern philosophy” was debated. Places, we should add, where Oriental languages were learned, and where books written in Arabic and Hebrew, Coptic and Syriac, were discussed—a world of knowledge that these men, not by chance, considered supremely important in their own intellectual formation. We are at the beginning of an “Orientalist” scholarship. The term “Orientalism” as we apply it to this period refers to the crucial moment in the creation of Oriental studies in Europe with the foundational activities of figures like Erpenius, Raimondi, and Bedwell, both their works and their search for new texts with which to learn Oriental languages. This “Oriental scholarship” or early “Orientalism” proved capable of creating basic critical, historical, and philological tools which were problematic for extant textual and religious authority. 10 introduction

The figure of the Irish-Granadan Jesuit Tomás de León, and his correspondence with historian colleagues, notably the Marquis of Mondé- jar, have allowed us to fix with greater precision the central role played by Orientalism in these works of scholarship. A special feature of this group is, in any event, the extremely close ties of several of its members to the Sacromonte; that place was the nucleus around which, at that very moment, the problem of Spain’s relationship to the Orient and of the construction of its sacred history was being formulated. Tomás de León’s correspondence has the virtue of making visible the specific problems and debates that took place within this circle on the issue of Oriental languages. It also serves to illuminate the makeup of a community of intellectual interests, a network that was included in the wider mesh of the European “Republic of Letters.” We have been especially interested in following the traces of the books that circulated and crossed paths within this group. Thus we show how deeply certain Ori- entalist books were absorbed in Spain: books published in Leiden, Rome, England, and the Low Countries; works by Selden, Erpenius, Hottinger, and Pococke. This fact is highly significant; if, in the beginning, that Orien- talist literature helped to fill gaps in the resources needed to learn Arabic (and other languages), in the end it exerted a profound intellectual influence. Along with those books came a fund of historiographic material, critical tools, and questions that effected a substantial change in the intellectual breadth of the use of Arabic as a language. We can see this assertion illustrated when we consider how the historiographic practices of this group sought to understand Spain’s Mus- lim past. Al-Andalus, as the Sacromonte Lead Books had shown, was an essential point of contact that interrogated the continuities and ruptures of Spanish history. Andalusi books, as well as archaeological and linguistic relics, were increasingly visible signs that required an interpretation. The basic question that arose was: Should one use Arab sources in writing the history of Spain? Mondéjar and León would answer in the affirmative; but theirs was an essentially novel response, precisely because they were armed with the weapons of the European Orientalist learning that they knew so well. Their defense of Arabic repeated the well-known clichés (use of the language for commerce and conversion, the value of Arabic scientific works), but from a much broader perspective. It was no longer a simple matter of writing the history of Spain and its cities, but of something different: of allowing the integration of Oriental worlds, with their immense literature and the extensive, complex, and unimaginably introduction 11 ancient histories of their peoples, into the authorized apparatus of Euro- pean history. We will attempt to show how some of the strictly Orientalist activities that are recorded in seventeenth-century Spain are determined by just this broadened point of view: translations of Egyptian chronicles, for example, could provide information about Eastern antiquities. This deflection of interest from the history of Spain to that of the East helps to explain the continuing concern for the origins of the Hebrews and Egyptians and for the Coptic language, very much under the influence of works by Kircher, Buxtorf, and Selden. These names underscore the importance of the issues that were in play, from the creation of a great cultural project to restore ancient learning to a discussion on the foundations of civil law. In short, legitimating the use of Arabic as a tool for scholarship implied entering into a vast historical, cultural, and religious debate. As a first step, Arabic culture had to be separated cleanly from Islam as a religion (one of the recurrent themes of this book), but such a separation could never be total, and became a problematic issue in debates about the value of Ara- bic texts. The religious dimension was ever-present in a world dominated by polemics with the Europe of the Reformation and by the process of confessionalization. But this was not the only thorny side to learned Ori- entalism; exhaustive study of the Bible and its various textual traditions, the need to coordinate these with newly acquired knowledge of other languages, and the refinement of historiographic and philological tools had all reached the point of dismantling the walls between sacred and profane history. The study of chronology was an especially useful field from which to observe this process; the influential work of Scaliger had opened the way for these unexpected developments. Eastern chronology, Hebrew and Egyptian antiquities, the person of Moses—all constant concerns in the works of the Marquis of Mondéjar and Tomás de León—are themes that allow us to probe the boundaries of the historiographic project of this circle of learned Spaniards. They had embarked on an internal struggle in defense of the Arabic language, but also on an external one against the “perverse enemies of the Church” who threatened the very edifice of religious authority. This book forms part of the research carried out under three projects funded by the Plan Nacional: “Los libros plúmbeos del Sacromonte: edición y estudio del texto árabe” (HUM2004–02018), directed by Mercedes García-Arenal, “Orientalismo e historiografía en la cultura barroca espa- ñola” (HUM2007–60412/FILO), directed by Fernando Rodríguez Mediano 12 introduction and “Islam y disidencia religiosa en la España Moderna: entre la reforma protestante y la católica” (FFI2010–17745), directed by Mercedes García- Arenal. During this five-year period we have conducted lengthy searches and spent many hours in Spanish and Italian archives. The full list of these may be found in the bibliography and we need not repeat it here, except to express the great debt we owe to their respective archivists and librarians, whose assistance has been of enormous value. As an exception, however, we would like to mention by name certain people whose personal stimulus and guidance has been most important for our task: Don Juan Sánchez Oña, abbot of the Abbey of Sacromonte, and its archivist, Don Tomás Redondo, deceased before this book was finished; Doña Isabel Aguirre at the Archivo General de Simancas; and at the Vatican Monsi- gnor Alejandro Cifres, director of the Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina de la Fede. All of them contributed personally to this book, and we wish to acknowledge and thank them. During these same five years we have presented partial conclusions, at different stages of completion, at seminars and scholarly meetings. The discussions that arose on those occasions helped greatly to revise and complete some of our early positions, to reinforce or alter our direction, and to eliminate issues that blurred our argument—several times, for instance, at the University of Granada, home to noted specialists in related subjects. We give special thanks to the organizers and attendees at the meeting “Sola una ley se tenga” at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in 2008, at which each of us gave an independent paper. Mercedes García-Arenal benefited from discussions with professors and students at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, where she presented the Hamilton Gibb Lectures in 2009, and at the Department of History of the University of Chicago. Fernando Rodríguez Mediano gave presenta- tions at the Casa de Velázquez, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and at the European University Institute in Florence. Our thanks to these institutions and their members. chapter one

the sacromonte lead books: the events

In the pages that follow we propose to describe briefly the principal events that surrounded the great series of forgeries perpetrated in Granada toward the end of the sixteenth century, falsifications that are known to Spanish history as “the Lead Books of the Sacromonte.” Their repercussions were extraordinary, as is clear from the abundance of documents that they produced and from their impact on historiography and bibliography.1 The expression “the Lead Books of the Sacromonte” might suggest a single and coherent cycle of forgeries, but nothing could be further from the truth. What we encounter instead is a long-lasting series of events in which many different actors—each with his own talents and motivations— eventually took part. Because churchmen, translators, and polemicists responded immediately to the first discoveries, the later forgeries could be adapted to those responses and to the changing circumstances of each moment. It was a multifaceted affair in which no single perpetrator or motive can be identified, and the resulting evidence has received a wide variety of readings and reinterpretations over the course of several centuries. This long history began on a March day in 1588.

The Turpiana Tower Parchment

The original trove came to light on March 19, 1588.2 The minaret of the old mosque of Granada (the “Old Tower,” renamed “Turpiana Tower” after this event) was being demolished to make way for further construction on the cathedral. Workers who were clearing rubble from the previous

1 A. Godoy Alcántara, J. Caro Baroja, T. D. Kendrick, D. Cabanelas, M. Hagerty, C. Alonso, G. Morocho, and M. Barrios are authors of now-classic works that the reader will find listed in the Bibliography. The most recent review of the research may be found in M. Barrios Aguilera and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte: invención y tesoro (Granada-Valencia-Zaragoza, 2006). 2 C. Alonso, Los apócrifos del Sacromonte. Estudio histórico (Valladolid, 1979), contains a detailed study of all the events in this series of falsifications, from the discovery of the Turpiana Tower parchment to the Pope’s declaration that the finds were fraudulent. The author draws extensively on Italian documents that relate to the Lead Books. 14 chapter one day’s demolition found a leaden box that contained a bone, a triangular piece of cloth, and a rolled and folded parchment. That very afternoon the cathedral Chapter, led by Archdeacon Luis de Pedraza, convened in order to examine the discovery. The parchment clearly held the key that could identify the various objects. It is kept today in the Sacromonte Abbey; it measures 63.5 by 49 centimeters and its contents are structurally complex. From top to bottom, it contains: two texts, of five and ten lines respectively, that appear to be written in Arabic; a square divided into smaller boxes, with 48 rows in 29 columns, each box enclosing a Latin letter (with a few in Greek), in alternating red and black ink; below that a smaller square divided into 10 rows in 15 columns, each box enclosing what appears to be an Arabic word. Along the sides of both squares are single Greek and Latin letters that seem to be clues to their interpretation. Further, in the margin of the first square is an 11-line text, also apparently written in Arabic. Below the second square is a 6-line text in Arabic followed by a signature in the same language, and finally, a Latin text occupies the lower left corner. The first people to see the parchment assumed that the Latin passage contained the key to interpreting the finds. In it a priest named Patricius claimed to have received the relics from the hands of Caecilius before the latter suffered martyrdom. The text identified the relics without any possible doubt: the parchment contained a prophecy by Saint John about the end of the world; the cloth was half of a handkerchief with which the Virgin had dried her tears during Christ’s Passion; and the bone had come from Saint Stephen the Martyr. Furthermore, in the very difficult Arabic text of the parchment, one of the words that could be read most clearly was “Sisiliyu,” i.e., “Cecilio.” Once the Archbishop of Granada, Don Juan Méndez Salvatierra, had been informed of the finds, it was decided to undertake the translation of the parchment’s Arabic texts. The first person contacted for the purpose was José Fajardo, a beneficed priest of San Cecilio Church in Granada and a former professor at the University of Salamanca; but he declined to translate the parchment, claiming that his Arabic was insufficient. In the end the translation was entrusted to two Morisco doctors and translators, Miguel de Luna and Alonso del Castillo, who worked under the direction of a third Morisco, Francisco López Tamarid, a familiar and interpreter for the Inquisition in the Kingdom of Granada. Thus at this singular moment in the month of March, 1588, the first translations took place in what would become an unending series of works based on the hoaxes from Granada. After the Lead Books came to the sacromonte lead books 15 light, one of the obsessive concerns of the authorities, led by Granada’s Archbishop Pedro de Castro, would be to search for translators from Ara- bic. These translators, one after the other, would have to struggle not only with the serious linguistic difficulties of the texts but also with the biased interference of those who, like Don Pedro de Castro himself, wished to force the results of the translations in a particular direction. It was a complicated process and, from a philological point of view, a fascinating one. We are faced with an immense production of transcriptions, translitera- tions, more-or-less tentative interpretations, more-or-less faithful translations, copies and recopies of the same texts, and theological discussions about Arabic words and phrases—all entrusted to different people of diverse geographical and social origins, who had traveled individual intellectual and religious paths and whose linguistic competence varied widely. There was not only a process of translation between two languages that was directed or manipulated, to some degree, by ideological interests, but also the production of a huge, autonomous corpus of texts in which translators played a central role—so much so that from the start, some of them were suspected of being the originators of the hoaxes. Among them were two important figures who, as we have seen, were the first to come face to face with the texts, under the supervision of López Tamarid: Alonso del Castillo3 and Miguel de Luna.4 We shall discuss all three of them in the chapters that follow. In the interest of maintaining all possible rigor in the results of the translation, it was determined that Luna and Castillo would work independently and without consulting each other. Therefore Luna took the parchment home with him first, and later Castillo did the same. On April 5, once the task had been completed, a group of canons and theologians from Granada decided to send all the material to the Holy See and to the king, and to that end a copy of the parchment was dispatched to Philip II; it is kept today in the library of El Escorial. According to these first translations, the content of the Arabic texts in the parchment was, briefly, as follows: Caecilius, in the course of a journey

3 D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino Alonso del Castillo (Granada, 1965). 4 F. Márquez Villanueva, “La voluntad de leyenda de Miguel de Luna,” in El problema morisco (desde otras laderas) (Madrid, 1991), 45–97; L. F. Bernabé Pons, “Estudio Introduc- torio,” in M. de Luna, Historia verdadera del Rey Don Rodrigo (Granada: Archivum, 2001); M. García-Arenal and F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Médico, traductor, inventor: Miguel de Luna, cristiano arábigo de Granada,” Chronica Nova, 32 (2006), 187–231; and eid., “Miguel de Luna, cristiano arábigo de Granada,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), La historia inventada. Los libros plúmbeos y el legado sacromontano (Granada, 2008), 83–136. 16 chapter one from Jerusalem to Athens, had suddenly lost his sight. After his arrival in Athens a holy father, at the end of the Mass, placed over his eyes a handkerchief with which the Virgin had dried the tears she shed over her crucified son—and his blindness was cured on the spot. Afterward the same priest gave him a Hebrew prophecy by Saint John the Evangelist that had been translated into Greek by Dyonisius the Areopagite. Caecilius, in turn, translated the prophetic text into both Spanish and Arabic. One of the original Morisco translations of the parchment places these words in the mouth of Caecilius: “. . . and then I translated it into the common Spanish tongue, and we made on it a full commentary that contains within itself the secret already expressed in Arabic—both being languages used in the land of Spain and its neighboring western lands—so that the Arabic Christians would not be without it; nor in doing so [. . .] did we corrupt the phrasing or the secret mode of address, neither the Hebrew nor the Greek.”5 Clearly the name of this Caecilius who, it seemed, had brought Saint John’s prophecy to Granada, translated it into Arabic, and presumably signed the parchment in Arabic letters was a reference to the Seven Apos- tolic Men of Andalusia, that is, the seven followers of Saints Peter and Paul who, according to a legend that goes back to the tenth century, had been the first Christian preachers in Andalusia and its first bishops. Accord- ing to the legend these seven men had fanned out across Andalusia in order to convert it: Caecilius had gone to Iliberris (modern Elvira, next to Granada), Ctesiphon to Vergi (Berja), Hesychius to Carcere (Cáceres), Tor- cuatus to Acci (Guadix), Indalecius to Urci (Almería), Secundus to Abula (Abla), and Euphrasius to Iliturgi (Mengíbar). This story was widely disseminated in sixteenth-century Spain in part because it argued for a very ancient presence of Christianity in Andalusia, from no less than the first century, and for Saint Caecilius’s having been the first bishop of Granada.6 The text of the Turpiana Tower parchment and the first translations made from it appeared to validate this tradition: in fact, according to these translations the full form of the Arabic signature could be read as Sisiliyu

5 “[Y] luego la traduxe en lenguaje común español y sobre él hizimos cumplido comento que en sí comprehende el secreto ya dicho en Arávigo, lenguajes usados en la tierra de España y las tierras occidentales circunveçinas para que no caresçiesen della los cristianos arávigos y no por eso [. . .] corrompimos el frasis ni el modo secreto así hebreo como griego”: Papeles (various), BNE ms. 5785, fol. 156r. 6 On the legend of the Seven Apostolic Men, their history, and the different historio- graphical interpretations to which it has given rise, see M. Sotomayor, “Los fundamentos histórico-eclesiásticos del Sacromonte: de Santiago y sus varones apostólicos a los hallazgos de Valparaíso,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), ¿La historia inventada?, op. cit., 29–44. the sacromonte lead books 17 ubisbus granatensis, that is, “Caecilius, Bishop of Granada.” The find would therefore be an extraordinary one: documentary proof of the existence of the first bishopric of Granada and of its first bishop, the saint and martyr Caecilius. Nonetheless the parchment presented other features that made its interpretation complex and difficult; among them, and most important of all, was the issue of its languages. As mentioned above, the parchment contained texts in three languages: a Latin text by a certain Patricius, a priest who explained how the parchment was made; an Arabic text seemingly signed by Caecilius, Bishop of Granada; and a text in Spanish. To these should be added a few letters in Greek. The Spanish text was supposedly a translation by Caecilius of Saint John’s prophecy, respecting the content encrypted in the Hebrew original. Thus the text could be reconstructed if one placed in proper order the boxes in the chessboard-like portion of the parchment; these contained alternate red and black letters that, read according to their color, gave the following result: The age of light already begun by our master and redeemed by his passion and bodily suffering, and the prophets of yore enlightened by the third person who awaited his coming. Of the end of the world I wish to speak through the mouth of this master favored by mercy. When six centuries since his advent will have passed, because of grave sins that will be committed in the world, darkest shadows will arise in Eastern lands and will be spread to the West by furious ministers who will be reared within them, by which the light of our sun will be eclipsed and the temple of our master and his faith will suffer heavy persecution. Then when fifteen centuries will have passed and patient hearts will have been hardened, a second set of shadows will appear in Aquilon, and out of them will emerge a dragon whose mouth will spew forth seed that once planted will divide the faith into sects; and once joined with the other they will conquer the world together, and from Western lands will come forth the three enemies increasing their malice, and through their master they will bring sensuality, and a plague heretofore unseen will infect the world. In a tiny corner of the world the light will retreat to where, sustained by shipwrecks, it will be sheltered by the column of its stone with these miraculous signs and another that the veil will reveal; humankind and particularly the priesthood will be threatened and the Anti- christ will announce his imminent coming, with which this prophecy will be fulfilled and the last judgment will approach when this truth, the complete truth, will be announced to the world; and from the South will come forth the judge of the truth whenever he wishes.7

7 “La hedad de la luz ya començada por el maestro y con su passión redemida con dolor del cuerpo, y los prophetas passados que alumbrados de la terçer persona esperaron su venida. Del mundo el acabamiento quiero contar por boca deste maestro en la misericordia 18 chapter one

We can see that this is an apocalyptic text, attributed to Saint John the Evangelist, that seemed to anticipate events that it is not hard to identify as the histories of the prophet Muhammad and the reformer Luther, and that also announced the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world. The passage that presented real difficulties of interpretation, however, was the one written in Arabic. The modern editors of the parchment, G. Wiegers and P.S. van Koningsveld, have even claimed that, except for a few words or phrases that are more or less comprehensible, the rest is actually hybrid or simply invented. Their opinion can help us understand the almost insoluble problems that must have confronted the first experts who worked on the text, like Luna and Castillo (unless, of course, one or both of them took part in the hoax). It also gives us an idea of how these texts were always open to the possibility of different interpretations and readings. On the other hand, the singularity of the Arabic script was used at the same time as an argument in favor of its antiquity:

preferido. A los seis siglos cumplidos de su advenimiento por peccados graves en el mundo que commettidos serán, tinieblas se levantarán muy obscuras en las orientales partes y a las occidentales partes se extenderán por ministros furiosos que en ellas serán criados con que la luz de nuestro sol se eclipsará y el templo de maestro y su fee graves persecuçiones padesçerán; y a los quinze siglos cumplidos por los pertinazes coraçones endurezidos segundas tinieblas se levantarán en las partes de Aquilón, y dellas un dragón saldrá que por su boca arrojará simiente que sembrada la fee dividirá en setas y con la otra juntada el mundo ocuparán y de las occidentales partes saldrán los tres enemigos su maliçia aug- mentando y por su maestro la sensualidad traherán y con lepra nunca vista el mundo se infiçionará. La luz en parte diminuta de la tierra se rretirará adonde con naufragios sustentada será en el abrigo de la columna de su piedra con estas señales prodigiossas y otro que el velo mostrará; el género humano será amenazado y en espeçial el saçerdocio y anunciando el Antechristo que será breve su venida con que esta propheçía se cum- plirá y el juizio final se açercará quando se manifestará al mundo esta verdad, verdad cunplida, del mediodía saldrá el juez de la verdad quando le plazerá.” Many versions of this prophecy exist; we quote the one found in the documents of the archive of the Real Chancillería de Granada edited by I. Boyano, “La traducción del pergamino de la Torre Turpiana de al-Hayari,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos (in press). There is also a modern edition made directly from the original parchment that takes into account the complex diplomatic details of the original text, by P. S. van Koningsveld and G. A. Wiegers, “The Parchment of the ‘Torre Turpiana’: the original document and its early interpreters,” Al-Qanṭara, 24:2 (2003), 327–358, reedited and translated as “El pergamino de la Torre Turpiana: el documento original y sus primeros intérpretes,” in M. Barrios Aguilera and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 113–139. In this transcription we have suppressed a few Greek letters that appear in some boxes and in their margins and that serve as a key to the interpretation and deciphering of the prophetic text. the sacromonte lead books 19

The interpreters of the Arabic language and letters said that the script [of the parchment] seems to be by a man accustomed to writing, and it is similar to what they have seen in Arabic books in El Escorial that are a thousand years old, for although it looks like the modern kind, it differs in many letters and the dotting of letters is different from the modern one, and some letters are used for others in some expressions in the antique mode, and there are some very old expressions, not used nowadays, so that no one now alive could have composed it as it is; and if they after so much study are hardly able to understand it fully, how much more difficult would it have been to compose; and that the Arabic commentary that is in the red and black boxes is in a most elegant form of verse not used at the present time, but of very great age, and that this could not possibly have been composed by Moors, because it contains many things of which they are ignorant and which are contrary to their religion.8 This quotation belongs at the beginning of the debates about the authenticity of the parchment that followed on its discovery, debates that prefigured the polemical future of the Granadan falsifications. In fact, serious arguments against the parchment’s authenticity were raised at once. Some of these were very powerful and were to persist throughout future polemics, such as those having to do with language: why was part of the parchment written in Arabic? The text itself spoke, as we have seen, of certain “Arabic Christians” who lived in Spain in the first century after Christ. But who were those Christians? Did it mean that Arabic had been spoken in Spain before the Muslims came? On the other hand, the parchment claimed that the relics had been hidden to protect them from the “Moors.” Who were these Moors? The whole issue opened the door to a possible presence in the Peninsula, before the eighth century,

8 “Los intérpretes de la letra y lengua Árabe dixeron que la letra parece de hombre diestro en el escrivir tirada, y es semejante a la que han visto en El Escurial en libros Árabes de mil años de antigüedad, que aunque se parece a la moderna, se diferencia en muchas letras y la puntuación es diferente de la moderna, y el uso de algunas letras por otras en algunas dicciones al modo antiguo, y ay dicciones antiquíssimas, no usadas aora, que no avría aora quien lo pudiesse componer como está; y si a ellos con mucho tiempo de estudio apenas les a sido posible perfectamente entenderlo, quánto fuera más dificultoso componerlo; y que el comento Árabe que está en las casillas coloradas y negras, es en verso elegantíssimo y de forma no usada de presente, sino antiquíssima, y que no es possible que ésta sea composición de Moros, porque contiene muchas cosas que ellos ignoran y son contrarias a su secta”: A. Centurión, Información para la historia del Sacromonte, llamado de Valparaíso y antiguamente Illipulitano junto a Granada, donde aparecieron las cenizas de S. Cecilio, S. Thesiphón y S. Hiscio, discípulos del Apóstol, único patrón de las Españas, Santiago, y otros santos discípulos dellos, y sus libros escritos en láminas de plomo (Granada, 1632), fols. 15v–16r. 20 chapter one of peoples who came from Africa. This theme was not a new one in Spanish history, and it could be argued with greater or lesser conviction by appealing to Classical sources or by quoting, for example, Ambrosio de Morales, Philip II’s official historian (justly considered one of the founders of modern Spanish history and archaeology). But apart from the specific chronological difficulty of making this presence of “Moors” in Spain agree with the dates of Bishop Caecilius of Granada, such an argument was linked to a wider issue, the vague idea that Eastern peoples had been present in Spain. The identity of these peoples changed over time as arguments about the discoveries developed, and according to different interpretations of Spain’s ancient history; thus sometimes they were Phoenicians and sometimes Jews—to whom, incidentally, the founding of Granada was consistently attributed. On the other hand, some of the parchment’s Arabic expressions, according to the work of its first translators, were not in Classical Arabic but rather in what seemed to be a Grana- dan dialect, that is, the one spoken by the Moriscos—an argument that directly contradicted the presumed antiquity of the text. This point would recur repeatedly in all the later polemics about the Granadan finds. The Spanish-language part of the parchment presented a similar problem: it was undoubtedly the speech of the sixteenth century. It was beginning to be known with some certainty, however, that Spanish descended from Latin and had been transformed substantially over time—it was sufficient to compare the contemporary language with that used, for example, in the texts of Alphonse X. Was Spanish spoken in the first century, when the parchment was dated? Could this mean that it did not descend from Latin? These are just a few of the arguments that were advanced against the authenticity of the parchment from the Turpiana Tower and that stressed its inconsistencies and anachronisms. But apart from these details, the debates show that the document had touched upon a fundamental question, especially in Granada: that of the city’s original link to Christianity. The issue was all the more important in that it involved a city that had been Muslim until barely a century before, that had retained a significant Morisco population, and that had just suffered the effects of the brutal Alpujarras War. All of these circumstances would come together in the second and greater series of discoveries, and with the arrival on the scene of a key actor in the events. Archbishop Don Juan Méndez Salvatierra of Granada died in that same year of 1588, and his designated successor was Don Pedro de Castro y Quiñones, who would lead the diocese beginning in 1590. the sacromonte lead books 21

Archbishop Don Pedro de Castro9

Pedro de Castro, or Pedro Vaca de Castro y Quiñones, was born in Roa on May 14, 1534. He came from an important family: his father, Don Cristóbal Vaca de Castro, had held among other offices those of member and interim president of the Council of Castile, and Captain General and Governor of Peru. Pedro studied in Valladolid and Salamanca, where he took courses in philosophy, Hebrew, and Greek. In 1561 he graduated from the Univer- sity of Salamanca as a licenciate in Law and was ordained a priest and Archdeacon of Saldaña. This was the beginning of a distinguished career in which he would hold many positions and responsibilities, for example judge of the Chan- cellery of Granada (1566), counselor of the Inquisition of Valladolid (1567), and judge of the same city’s Chancellery (1570). One of the notable events of his term in Valladolid was his participation in the trials of the Hebraists Fray Luis de León and Martín Martínez de Cantalapiedra of the Univer- sity of Salamanca.10 In 1578 he was named president of the Chancellery of Granada and in 1583 of that of Valladolid. After declining the sees of Tarragona and Calahorra, Don Pedro de Castro finally accepted the post of Archbishop of Granada, as noted above, after the death of Méndez Salvatierra. He remained there until 1610, the year in which he was made Archbishop of Seville, an office that he held until his death on December 20, 1623. His tenure in the see of Seville is remembered, above all, for his ferocious defense of the Immaculate Con- ception, which received some of the city’s strongest backing at that time. That belief was closely related also to the Lead Books of the Sacromonte, the phenomenon that marked indelibly Don Pedro de Castro’s episcopal rule in Granada. Ever since his arrival in Granada, in fact, Castro had shown a keen interest in the parchment from the Turpiana Tower and had arranged for it to be interpreted. One of his actions was to request individual reports from two significant persons, Luis del Mármol and Benito Arias Montano, who presented their findings in 1593.

9 In addition to bibliography cited, one may read a profile of Archbishop Don Pedro de Castro in M. Barrios’s “Estudio Preliminar” to D. N. Heredia Barnuevo, Místico ramillete. Vida de D. Pedro de Castro, fundador del Sacromonte (Granada, 1998). 10 G. Morocho, “Estudio introductorio,” in P. de Valencia, Discurso sobre el Pergamino y Láminas de Granada, in Obras Completas, vol. IV (León, 2000), 221–223. 22 chapter one

The first of these, who had been a soldier in Africa, a captive in Morocco, and a member of the army that had crushed the Morisco revolt in the Alpu- jarras, was also a famous writer. At this time he had already published the first two volumes of his Descripción General de África (General Description of Africa), a vast work that included a history of Islam up to the battle of Lepanto and a geographic description of the African continent. Still to come was his Historia del rebelión y castigo de los moriscos del reino de Granada (History of the Rebellion and Punishment of the Moriscos of the Kingdom of Granada), possibly the most important chronicle of the War of the Alpujarras. Mármol pointed out in his report for the first time how the prophecy from the Turpiana Tower parchment reminded him of the jofores or millenarian prophecies that had circulated among the Morisco rebels during the war and had been translated by the Morisco interpreter Alonso del Castillo—an early and highly astute appreciation of the context in which the hoaxes had been produced. Arias Montano was the author of the second report. Because he was then living in Seville and had declined to travel to Granada, the cathedral Chapter sent him the parchment together with an emissary, Pedro Guerra de Lorca, who in his turn had written a defense of the discovery (he had also produced the manuscript Memorias eclesiásticas de la ilustre ciudad de Granada [Ecclesiastical Records of the Distinguished City of Granada]). The report that Arias Montano wrote, doubtless with the help of his student Pedro de Valencia, was unequivocally critical of the parchment; it analyzed the hand, the ink, and the style of the text, concluding that the latter hardly resembled Saint John’s but was closer to that of other recent falsifications. The receipt of negative reports from such authoritative figures as Arias Montano must have cooled the Granadan Archbishop’s enthusiasm for the subject. However, the most important and complete series of discoveries in Granada was just about to begin.

The Lead Books

From late 1594 onward a treasure hunter, Sebastián López, and several companions had been digging in caves on the Valparaíso Hill next to Granada; they believed that the site matched a description of an ancient gold mine from the time of King Rodrigo. On February 21, 1595, they found a sheet of lead written over with strange and twisted Latin letters; once a member of the Society of Jesus in Granada had deciphered it, it proved the sacromonte lead books 23 to contain a brief Latin text that spoke of Mesithon, who was martyred during the reign of Nero. A few days later, on March 21, now digging at the instigation of the Archbishop of Granada, the searchers found another lead sheet covered with the same kind of characters that mentioned Saint Hiscius, a disciple of the Apostle Saint James, who had been martyred with several of his followers and whose ashes were located on that very hill. More discoveries of inscriptions and human remains ensued in rapid succession. In April two more sheets like the previous ones were found; in them two more holy martyrs, Saint Ctesiphon Abenathar and Saint Caecil- ius, also followers of Saint James, were mentioned. Arabic texts began to come to light as well: the first was made up of leaves of lead incised with a steel point, in peculiar characters that were united by a lead wire; the top leaf read, in Latin, Liber Fundamentum Ecclesiae salomonis characteribus scriptus. The second, written on identical although smaller leaves, was contained in a lead box on which a label read Liber de essentia Dei, quem divus Thesiphon Apostoli discipulus in sua naturali lingua arabica, Salomo- nis characteribus scripsit, et alium Fundamentum Ecclesiae appellatum, qui in huius sacri montis cavernis iacet. Once again, then, we find the figure of Saint Caecelius, the martyr and presumed first bishop of Granada. So that there could be no possible doubt, moreover, about the identity of the saint in question, the sheet stated that he was the same person who had signed the translation of Saint John contained in the parchment from the Turpiana Tower. These were the first discoveries in a series that continued at least until 1599, resulting in a collection of 18 or 19 “books,” plus three more that are referred to but do not survive.11 All the books were written in so-called

11 According to a Spanish translation made a few decades after the finds by one of the books’ strongest defenders, A. Centurión, Marquis of Estepa (and edited by M. J. Hagerty, Los libros plúmbeos del Sacromonte), the titles of the books were, in addition to the already- quoted Fundamentum ecclesiae and De essentia Dei, as follows: Libro de la relación de la misa de Jacobo Apóstol por mano de su notario y discípulo Thesiphon Aben Athar (Book of the tale of the Mass of James the Apostle, by the hand of his scribe and disciple Ctesiphon Aben Athar). Libro del excelente bienaventurado Apóstol Jacobo, hijo de Xameh Zebedeo, de la predicación de los apóstoles y con certeza se conformaron en ello. Escribiólo en doce hojas de plomo por su mandado su discípulo y notario Thesiphon Aben Athar, árabe, para utilidad de las gentes y para que se predique en tierra de España (Book of the excellent blessed Apostle James, son of Zebedee, on the preaching of the apostles on which they were surely agreed. His disciple and scribe Ctesiphon Aben Athar the Arab wrote it on twelve leaves of lead by his command, for the use of all people and that it may be preached in the Spanish land). Llanto de Pedro Apóstol, Vicario, después que negó a nuestro señor Jesús en el tiempo que le crucificaron (Lament of the Apostle Peter, Vicar, after he denied Our Lord Jesus at the time that he was crucified). Oración del defensorio de Jacobo, hijo de Xameh el Zebedeo, 24 chapter one

“Solomonic characters,” that is, Arabic letters that were strange, angular, and with few diacritics, and always surrounded by marks in the form of six-pointed stars of different designs. Listing the titles of the books may give the mistaken impression that they were a body of material produced, discovered, and received in a systematic way, but this is far from being the truth. The books appeared at intervals over a five-year period; subsequently they underwent an extraordinary effort of transcription and translation by a great many experts more or less trained in Arabic and in theology, always under the urgent pressure of Archbishop Don Pedro de Castro. One of the books contained a portion that could never be understood or translated, and which therefore was dubbed Libro Mudo (Silent Book). On the other hand, not all the books received the same attention; the two first ones, Fundamentum ecclesiae and De essentia Dei, attracted both the most translations and the greatest

Apóstol, para todas las adversidades; era oración que defendía a la persona que la hacía de todas las adversidades y se la enseñó Jesús, hijo de María, su maestro (Prayer for protection by James son of Zebedee, Apostle, against all adversities; it was a prayer that protected him who recited it from all adversities, and it was taught to him by Jesus son of Mary, his teacher). Libro de los actos de nuestro señor Jesús y de sus milagros y de su madre, María la Virgen (Book of the acts of our lord Jesus and of his miracles and of his mother, Mary the Virgin). Libro de la historia de la verdad del Evangelio (Book of the history of the truth of the Gospel). Libro de los dones de galardón que se ha de dar a los que creyeren la verdad del evangelio. Hay en él ocho preguntas a Santa María (Book of the rewards that should be given to those who believe in the truth of the Gospel. It contains eight questions to Holy Mary). Libro del coloquio de Santa María Virgen (Book of the discourse of the Holy Virgin Mary). Libro de las significaciones misteriosas que vio la Santa Virgen María por gracia de Dios en la noche de su coloquio espiritual con él (Book of the mysterious signs that the Holy Virgin Mary saw, by God’s grace, the night of her spiritual discourse with Him). De Jacobo, hijo de Xameh el Zebedeo, Apóstol, escrito por mandado de ella por mano del notario y dis- cípulo del Apóstol Cecilio Aben Alradi (On James son of Zebedee, Apostle, written on her orders by the hand of the Apostle’s scribe and disciple Caecilius Aben Alradi). Libro de las sentencias acerca de la ley (Book of judgments regarding the law). Libro de las acciones de Santiago Apóstol y de sus milagros (Book of the acts of the Apostle James and his miracles). Parte segunda del libro de las acciones de Santiago Apóstol (Second part of the book of the acts of the Apostle James). Libro de misterios grandes (Book of great mysteries). Libro del conocimiento del divino poder y tolerancia y aceleración en las criaturas (Book of the knowledge of divine power and tolerance and growth in all creatures). Parte segunda de la noticia del divino poder (Second part of the story of divine power). Historia del sello del Profeta de Dios Salomón, hijo de David y de sus significaciones. Por Santa María Virgen, de Cecilio Aben Alradi, discípulo de Jacobo Apóstol (History of the seal of Solomon son of David the Prophet of God, and of its meanings. By Holy Virgin Mary, from Caecilius Aben Alradi, disciple of the Apostle James). Libro de la relación del don del lugar de la paz y del tormento del lugar del castigo. Por Cecilio Aben Alradi, discípulo de Jacobo Apóstol (Book of the tale of the gift of the place of peace, and of the torment of the place of punishment. By Caecilius Aben Alradi, disciple of James the Apostle). Libro de la naturaleza del ángel y su poder (Book of the nature of the angel and his power). the sacromonte lead books 25 polemics. The list of titles does, however, give us an idea of the general story line that they presented: they had been written in Arabic by two Arab saints, Caecilius and Ctesiphon, who would have arrived in Spain at a very early date in the conversions to Christianity. Saint Caecilius would in fact have been the first bishop of Granada. The human remains found near the books seemed to confirm that these and other saints had been executed during the reign of the Emperor Nero, thus completing a very ancient cycle of martyrdoms in Granada. There were several important themes: the presence of the Apostle Saint James the Great (at a time of great debate about the veracity of his journey to Spain), of the Virgin Mary (closely related, as we have seen, to the defense of the Immaculate Con- ception), and, in particular, of the Arabic language. In fact, one of the books stated that “the Arabs are among the most excellent of peoples, and their language is among the most excellent of languages. God chose them to support his religious law in the end times, after they had been his great enemies.”12 The same book announced the appearance in Spain of a book that would contain the Truth of the Gospels, a book that would be proclaimed by the humblest of creatures, at a council in Cyprus to which all Arabs would be summoned.

The Reception of the Finds

The appearance of these books and relics of Granada’s first saints produced extraordinary excitement in the city. Even before the discoveries many people (like the Morisco translator Miguel de Luna) had seen mysterious lights on the hill at night.13 After them, several miracles took place: Isabel de Espinosa, crippled from birth, was cured when her mother called three times on Saint Caecilius and the other martyrs. The Licenci- ate Francisco Osorio, who had been “wounded in the right groin” during a skirmish with the Indians in Mexico, healed himself by applying to the affected spot a small bag of the saints’ ashes taken from the hill. Fatima, a Berber slave of Luis Méndez de Salazar, who had always resisted her master’s and mistress’s pressure to convert, saw in her dreams a figure dressed in white who told her to become a Christian; soon afterward she

12 “Los árabes son una de las más excelentes gentes, y su lengua una de las más excelentes lenguas. Eligiólos Dios para ayudar su ley en el último tiempo después de haberle sido grandísimos enemigos.” 13 See A. Centurión, Información para la historia del Sacromonte, op. cit., fol. 50 ff. 26 chapter one climbed the hill and converted, adopting the significant name of María de las Cuevas (Mary of the Caves).14 All Granada ascended the hill; the path was crowded day and night, teeming with people who wished to visit the holy site. The ground became studded with crosses left there by guilds or pilgrims from other cities, members of the Chancellery, scribes, and parishioners of local churches.15 But the most important figure amid this explosion of holy rejoicing was, as we have said, Archbishop Don Pedro de Castro; it was he who supplied the inspiration, the resources, and the energy for translating and interpreting the finds and who defended their authenticity. From April 1595 onward he was already speaking in his letters of “my Holy Mountain,” anticipating the name that, after these events, the former Valparaíso Hill would bear: Sacromonte. Furthermore, from the very first the archbishop had announced the discoveries to Philip II and, a little less eagerly, to the Papal nuncio. The intricate correspondence among the parties reveals a complicated story in which the Granadan archbishop’s enthusiasm is countered by the nuncio’s calls for prudence, and also by the open hostil- ity of critics who began to proliferate as the nature of the finds became more widely known. The fact is that the Lead Books aroused serious doubts among many people from the very first, just as had happened with the Torre Turpiana parchment a few years earlier. Arias Montano, consulted once again about the texts, expressed his criticisms in the letters he exchanged with Don Pedro de Castro. Father Juan de Mariana was also consulted and let the archbishop know of his hesitation; he was clearly uneasy in the face of an affair that, in his opinion, required great caution. Other opponents of the books gave their opinions more forthrightly. One was Juan Bautista Pérez, Archbishop of Segorbe, a leading expert on Spain’s antiquities and a Hebraist besides; in short, a notable humanist whose Parecer (Opinion) about the tablets, clearly opposed to their authenticity, was one of the earliest polemical works against them. This treatise is related to the Dis- curso (Discourse) of the Licenciate Gonzalo de Valcárcel, composed in the same year of 1595.16 We can see that these were works produced imme-

14 For these and other miracles see ibid., fol. 59r ff. 15 Ibid., fol. 77 ff. 16 On these two works see, e.g., G. Morocho, “Estudio Introductorio,” op. cit., 245–251; B. Ehlers, “Juan Bautista Pérez y los Plomos de Granada: el humanismo español a finales del siglo XVI,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 253–269, and R. Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “El Discurso del licenciado Gonzalo de Valcárcel the sacromonte lead books 27 diately after the discovery of the leaves written in Latin and the first two in Arabic; they repeated some of the arguments already deployed against the Turpiana Tower parchment, pointing out the texts’ internal contradictions and obvious anachronisms. They were the first links in a long chain of writings against the Lead Books, initiating a polemic that would only intensify in later years. But of course not all reactions were critical. Several persons expressed their support for the recently discovered relics, among them García de Loaysa, preceptor to Philip III and a weighty figure at court. The prosecutor of the Chancellery of Granada, Gregorio López Madera, immediately wrote a Discurso sobre las láminas, reliquias y libros que se han descubierto en la ciudad de Granada este año de 1595. Y las reliquias y prophecía que se avían hallado el año pasado de 1588 (Discourse on the leaves, relics, and books that were discovered in Granada in this year of 1595. And the relics and prophecy that had been found in the year 1588), which was published in Granada and went into a second edition. López Madera, who had also written Excelencias de la monarquía y reyno de España (Excellencies of the Spanish monarchy and kingdom), was a defender of the supposed antiquity of the Spanish language, a thesis that seemed to be supported, as we have noted, by the Turpiana Tower parchment.17

The Evaluation Process

These opinions supported Don Pedro de Castro’s firm and unshakable determination not only to defend the authenticity of the discoveries but to make them the cornerstone of the Church in Granada. In fact the process of evaluating the relics had already begun, led by the archbishop himself. In order to gather the necessary documentation, a new round of translations of both the Lead Books and the parchment was set in motion. Once again the two Morisco interpreters, Alonso del Castillo and Miguel de Luna, were called in, but so were other figures who will be discussed in detail in this book. Among them were Diego de Urrea, an Italian ren- egade who, after spending many years in the service of various Ottoman masters, came to Spain and acted as an interpreter of Arabic, Turkish, and

sobre las reliquias del Sacromonte,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 173–199. 17 K. H. Woolard, “Bernardo de Aldrete, humanista y laminario,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 271–295. 28 chapter one

Persian for Philip II and Philip III, in addition to holding a chair of Arabic at the University of Alcalá de Henares; and Diego Bejarano, a Morisco from Hornachos, who eventually crossed to Morocco to work for Sultan Muley Zaydān (“Zidan” in contemporary Spanish documents). The materials with which Don Pedro de Castro sought to defend the finds before the Holy See, and to control the process of their evaluation, were being compiled. In early 1597 Castro sent a letter to Pope Clement VIII attaching translations of the first two books, Fundamentum ecclesiae and De essentia Dei; in Rome the Sacromonte’s cause could count on the help of Cardinal Niño de Guevara, a crucial figure in the early years in which the finds were being presented to the Vatican. In fact Granada’s archbishop had asked the Pope’s permission to evaluate the relics himself, leaving the definitive judgment about the Lead Books to Rome. He requested also to oversee all translations of the books—a situation that, as Gaspar Morocho points out, was really meant to block access to them by the Inquisition, and that guaranteed Castro’s control over how they were evaluated. Thus in the same year of 1597 an assembly made up of eighteen theologians determined that the books contained “theology most sublime, positive, supernatural, and revealed, which exceeds the strength and lights of human understanding, and which seems dictated by the Holy Spirit.”18 This resolution in effect contravened what the Pope had disposed as to who should make decisions about the books, but it also demonstrates the determination of Granada’s Archbishop to have his own way. At last, three years later, came what Carlos Alonso called “the apotheosis of 1600”: the celebration of an Assembly of Evaluation in Granada that ended in a solemn declaration that the relics should be honored, venerated, and worshipped as authentic. This pronouncement was received ecstatically in the city, with celebrations in the cathedral and a solemn Mass on the Sacromonte attended by thousands (see Illustration 1).

Polemics and Resistance

Nonetheless, at this very moment of apotheosis on the Sacromonte, voices opposed to the Books and relics were growing louder. A significant one was that of Father Ignacio de las Casas, a Morisco Jesuit well versed in Arabic, who had studied in Rome and who furthermore had been in con-

18 “Theología altísima, positiva, sobrenatural y revelada, que excede las fuerzas y lum- bres del entendimiento humano, y que parece dictada por el Espíritu Santo.” the sacromonte lead books 29 tact with the Lead Books, since he had collaborated on their translation in 1596 and 1597. Although his opinion of them had been favorable at first, he soon began to think that they were full of indisputably Islamic statements; he launched a vigorous campaign against them, trying to make himself heard by the Inquisition, by the nuncio, even by Rome itself. Ignacio de las Casas was not alone in his conviction that the Lead Books were false and even represented a great danger. Several individuals who had labored to translate them, like Diego de Urrea, considered them forgeries. Over the next few years, several noted intellectuals would express the same opinion. One of the most prominent was Pedro de Valencia, the great Hel- lenist and humanist, a follower of Benito Arias Montano, who composed in 1607 a Discurso sobre el pergamino y láminas de Granada (Discourse on the parchment and lead sheets of Granada). Another member of his circle, Francisco de Gurmendi, was one of the notable polemicists against the Lead Books in the early seventeenth century; a Basque and translator from Arabic, he also worked on the Books and denigrated them in writing. Soon afterward, in 1610, Marcos Dobelio arrived in Spain to help translate the Books; he was an Eastern Christian and former professor of Arabic at La Sapienza in Rome who, soon convinced that they were fraudulent, wrote one of the most important treatises against them. We will discuss him at greater length in two chapters of this book. All these opponents of the Lead Books, from Ignacio de las Casas to Marcos Dobelio, had to suffer the implacable enmity of Don Pedro de Castro, who was determined to silence them. It was an age of intense religious debates, during which the critics were pressured and deligitimized in many ways by the Abbey of Sacromonte. But Castro now had to face not only their criticisms but other serious problems as well. Although the Assembly of Evaluation had declared in 1600 that the Sacromonte relics were authentic, the question of the Books remained open; and here Rome was growing ever more alarmed, as it heard the insistent voices of those who, like Ignacio de las Casas, wanted the discoveries to be condemned. The Pope’s demand that the lead sheets be conveyed to Rome to be examined and assessed met with the Archbishop’s refusal; he stubbornly resisted letting them go, and we can see his resistance in part as a jealous defense of episcopal power in the face of Papal hegemony. During the early decades of the seventeenth century, then, a series of fruitless negotiations took place among Rome, Madrid, and Granada, punctuated by several events. In 1609, it was decided to seek out new Ara- bic translators who would make a revised version to send to Rome; Don Pedro de Castro founded, at his own expense, a basilica and school atop 30 chapter one the Sacromonte to serve as a new sanctuary for the relics; and finally in 1610 he departed for Seville, where he had been appointed archbishop.

The Lead Books Leave Granada

Although he was now established in Seville, Don Pedro de Castro remained closely concerned with Granada and his foundation on the Sacromonte.19 In truth he seems to have viewed the diocese of Seville, one of the richest in Spain, as a source of additional wealth with which to fund the project. Although he had left the relics in the Sacromonte collegiate church, con- secrated in 1610, the same was not true of the lead sheets, which went with him to his new post. The latest translators who worked on the books after 1610, like Marcos Dobelio, had to do so in the city on the Guadalquivir. There, as we have mentioned, the archbishop embarked on a rush of activity in defense of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin,20 one of the key themes for which the Lead Books appeared to offer divine support; this campaign was certainly the most prominent of his Seville period, which lasted until his death in 1623. After Don Pedro de Castro’s death the lead sheets returned to the Sac- romonte, where they were kept in spite of increasing pressure from the Vatican. Rome eventually gained a partial victory, however, persuading the king to order the books transferred to Madrid in 1632, an act carried out in the face of stubborn resistance by the Sacromonte canons. By now another important figure in the history of the Lead Books had arrived on the scene: Adán Centurión, Marquis of Estepa, who had obtained the archbishop’s permission to work on them and had made a Spanish version, the one edited by Miguel Hagerty. After Archbishop Castro’s death Adán Centurión became one of the chief protectors of the books. In the same year that they were taken to Madrid Centurión published one of the most important printed sources for the Sacromonte’s history, the Información para la historia del Sacromonte (Information for the history of the Sacromonte). This text would encounter certain difficulties with the

19 José Antonio Ollero Pina, “La carrera, los libros y la obsesión del arzobispo d. Pedro de Castro y Quiñones (1534–1623)”, in De Libros y Bibliotecas. Homenaje a Rocío Caracuel, Sevilla, 1994, pp. 265–276; Manuel Barrios Aguilera, La invención de los libros plúmbeos. Fraude, historia y mito, Granada, 2011, pp. 133ff. 20 A. Prosperi, “L’Immaculée Conception à Séville et la fondation sacrée de la monar- chie espagnole,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses, 87 (2007), 435–467. the sacromonte lead books 31

Inquisition, which, as we will see, maintained an attitude toward the Lead Books that was generally hostile. At last, in June of 1643, after arduous diplomatic maneuvers, Rome achieved the goal that it had been pursuing for more than forty years, and the Lead Books reached the city of Pope Urban VIII.

The Lead Books in Rome

With the arrival of the Books in Rome, a new stage in the history of the texts began. The canons from the Sacromonte who had accompanied the tablets in order to defend their cause before the Pope found themselves in a political and cultural atmosphere very different from that of Granada or Madrid. Their vicissitudes in the Papal city are reflected in detail in the letters they exchanged with one of the most famous and learned Sac- romonte canons, Don Martín Vázquez Siruela, of whom we will also speak at greater length in our book. One of the most notable encounters that the custodians of the books experienced in Italy actually took place in Naples; they had made it their first stop and planned to travel from there to Rome. They were approached by a Franciscan, Bartolomeo de Pettorano, who had heard tell of the leaves and who wished to see them, since he knew Arabic. Although he was unable at first to make anything of the Solomonic letters, eventually, working from a copy he had been given, he experienced a sort of revelation that led him to devote a good part of his future efforts to making a Latin translation of the Lead Books. Not all the Italian Arabists, however, would undergo a revelation like Brother Bartolomeo’s, nor would they prove as favorable to the books as he had been. In 1645 the Vatican put together a panel of experts that would carry out the “official” Roman translation of the Lead Books. The group was made up of several distinguished figures: Giambattista Giat- tini, Athanasius Kircher, Antonio dell’Aquila, Ludovico Marracci, Filippo Guadagnoli, and Bartolomeo de Pettorano (who played the part of the Books’ defender). The education of these experts and their work on the Lead Books will receive attention in the pages that follow. In any event, by about 1663 their sworn and official translation was complete and ready to be evaluated by a committee of theologians. The final decision would be delayed for another twenty years, but on February 6, 1682, Pope Innocent XI put forth a brief in which he condemned the contents of the Books and the parchment. This brief, however, said nothing about the relics, which were “separated” from the condemnation of the Books. 32 chapter one

The Defensorios

Rome’s condemnation caused dismay in Granada, but was far from putting an end to the defense and vindication of the Books—in fact, these only grew stronger. No sooner was the decision known than the collegiate church of Sacromonte began to ask Rome for a new examination of the Books and the naming of a new set of assessors. At the same time it embarked on a series of statements, called defensorios (defenses),21 that meant to provide Rome with a new battery of documents and data that would alter the Papal decree. The first of these was Vindicias catholicas granatenses by Diego de la Serna Cantoral, prosecutor of the Royal Chan- cellery of Granada. The book was published in Lyon in 1706, to avoid Spanish censors who did not wish to contravene the Papal verdict, but it circulated widely in Spain. It had no effect at all on Rome, but the defensorios continued in a vindictive sequence of which the titles of the works give good account: Guerras cathólicas granatenses (Catholic wars in Granada), composed in 1736 by Vicente Pastor de los Cobos, a Sac- romonte canon, and Mystico ramillete (Mystical bouquet) by Diego Nico- lás de Heredia Barnuevo, a biography of Pedro de Castro that served as pretext for a defense of the Sacromonte’s cause. The apologetic efforts of the Sacromonte’s defenders lasted into the middle of the eighteenth century, concluding with the Historia authéntica de los dos descubrimientos de Torre Turpiana y Monte Santo de Granada (Authentic history of the two discoveries of the Turpiana Tower and the Holy Mountain in Granada), commissioned by Ferdinand VI in 1756 and written by two Sacromonte canons, Francisco de Viana y Bustos and José Juan de Laboraría. These eighteenth-century defensorios can be linked to an unbroken chain that goes back to the “martyrs’ mentality” that was developed and made profit- able beginning with the War of the Alpujarras.22 Cristóbal de Medina Conde, another Sacromonte canon, collaborated as a secretary in Viana and Laboraría’s Historia authéntica. He was tried and found guilty of taking part in another set of hoaxes in Granada’s old fortress, the Alcazaba; these were carried out in the mid-eighteenth century and directed by Juan de Flores y Odduz, a canon of Granada Cathedral.23

21 M. Barrios Aguilera, La invención de los libros plúmbeos, op. cit. 22 M. Barrios Aguilera and V. Sánchez Ramos, Martirios y mentalidad martirial en las Alpujarras (Granada, 2001). 23 D. Rodríguez, La memoria frágil. José de Hermosilla y las Antigüedades árabes de España (Madrid, 1992). the sacromonte lead books 33

They involved the fraudulent discovery of marble slabs covered with strange characters, altar stones and tombstones, tablets about bishops of Illiberis, and books about the first Council of Illiberis. As a counterpart to the Sacromonte hoaxes, they display an unbroken affirmation of an ancient sacred territory, confirmed and amplified within the space of that territory in the present. The Lead Books, then, stand at the center of a great fraud perpetrated without doubt by Moriscos. But their chief product, the Sacromonte Abbey, founded and created by Pedro de Castro, became a site of capital importance in the religious legacy of Spain’s Counter-Reformation; further, it left a deep imprint on Granada’s historical and cultural development well into the eighteenth century.24 Granada’s evolution would eventually free it from the unique past that had begun with the conquest of the city in 1492.

24 For a study of the extent to which the building of the Abbey transformed and shaped the new Granada of the Christian era, see A. K. Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada. Inventing a Cit‎y’s Past in Early Modern Spain, (Baltimore, 2007).

chapter two

granada conquered: castilianization and conversion

We take as our base, then, a text written in Arabic in Granada toward the end of the sixteenth century; this is the first surprising fact, because the Moriscos had been expelled from the Kingdom of Granada following the war of the Alpujarras, the Morisco rebellion that ended in 1570. Because the present book is organized around the axis of an Arabic text, we devote this chapter chiefly to the Arabic language in Granada: its persistence, the attempts made to eradicate it, and its use in evangelism. We seek to determine what form of Arabic the Moriscos knew, how much of it, and for how long, in order to understand the features of the Lead Book texts and how they were apprehended and judged. We will show, among other things, how the language gradually evolved to the point of representing, or incarnating, the identity of these New Christians, even if that meant separating and disentangling it from religion. From this point of view, the degree to which Arabic was or was not identified with Islam was of the first importance: it sheds light on the processes of conversion and mission that we also touch on in this chapter, and on the measures that the Christian authorities increasingly adopted as they sought to banish the language from Granada.

Granada Conquered

Granada was taken by Christian forces at the beginning of January 1492, following the signing of a surrender agreement that had been negotiated during the last months of the previous year. The so-called Capitulations offered generous terms to the vanquished: these included legal protection for the practice of Islam, while at the same time giving all possible assistance to those Muslims who wished to emigrate to North Africa.1 Neverthe- less, for over a century Granada had represented, for the Christians of the

1 M. Garrido Atienza, Las capitulaciones para la toma de Granada (Granada, 1910); facsimile ed. with introductory study by J. E. López de Coca (Granada, 1992). 36 chapter two

Iberian Peninsula, a messianic faith in a revitalized Christendom.2 There existed a climate of intense missionary aspiration and “Pauline” spirit: the current that held that baptism, with its sanctifying grace, wiped away the origin of those who received it and therefore created a unified Christian- ity. As a result, efforts of conversion and assimilation were directed at the Muslim population of the whole former Kingdom of Granada. The Hieronymite friar Hernando de Talavera, upon being named archbishop of Granada in 1492, initiated a series of measures intended to persuade the Granadan Muslims to accept baptism; he respected the legal framework established by the Capitulations of late 1491, which forbade the use of any coercion in the conversion process, and insisted on this point in the Instructions (Instrucciones) that he gave to the clergy of his diocese: “in their conversion, let the Capitulation that their Highnesses granted to the Moors in these matters be respected.”3 The Instrucciones are of particular importance in illuminating the nature of the archbishop’s pastoral mission: they specify, among other things, the practices that the Moriscos of the Albaicín quarter of the city should follow, and define the fundamental ways in which a Morisco should both be and appear to be a good Christian.4 They exhort the Moriscos to abandon and forget all the ceremonies of their former religion, including their traditional celebrations of births and funerals. They urge them further to give up little by little their language, their clothing and footwear, their habits of shaving and hairdressing, and their foods. Talavera also orders those who are literate to possess books in Arabic containing Christian prayers and psalms “that will be given to you.” This policy, incidentally, contradicts the one dictated by the Catholic Monarchs in Seville in February 1502, and thus reveals the tensions and differences of opinion that were in play in those crucial years at the turn of the century. The monarchs had decreed that the new converts learn the basic prayers in Spanish and Latin, but never in Arabic.5 As for those “psalms that will be given to you,”

2 S. Pastore, Il Vangelo e la spada. L’Inquisizione di Castilia e i suoi critici (1460–1598) (Rome, 2003), 108 ff. 3 “En su conversión se guarde la capitulación que sus Alteças tienen con los moros cerca desto”: J. Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción de Fr. Hernando de Talavera para el régi- men interior de su Palacio,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 96 (1939), 785–835. 4 A. Gallego y Burín and A. Gámir Sandoval, Los moriscos del Reino de Granada según el Sínodo de Guadix de 1554 (Granada, 1968; repr. Granada, 1996), 161–163. 5 F. Pereda, Las imágenes de la discordia. Política y poética de la imagen sagrada en la España del 400 (Madrid, 2006), 275–276. granada conquered 37 we have no indication that they were given nor that any Arabic translation of the Psalms circulated in those years except, possibly, a manuscript said to be found “in the house of the sainted Bishop of Granada”: the Psal- terium Arabicum, now preserved in Rome.6 If not this text, what could the archbishop have had in mind—to commission a new translation? Or to use one that had been made in Mozarab times? The problem of the existence and dating of Christian scriptures in Arabic is one to which we must return later on, when we consider the accusations that the Lead Books were not written in “Christian Arabic.” Pedro Guerra de Lorca speaks of “learned and wise men who, to help the converted Moors read our holy books, turned the New Testament into the Arabic language,” but he gives no further details.7 After him (but before the fabrication of the Lead Books), when the Tipografia Medicea Orientale was established, Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici ordered the printing of Arabic translations of the Scriptures to serve the needs of, among others, the Moriscos of Granada;8 we do not know if these versions reached the Moriscos or not, because by that time the use of Arabic had been forbidden to them. We shall return to this question, because it will be crucial when we consider what Christian Arabic writings the authors of the Lead Books might have known and to what Arabic versions of the Scriptures they had access, since the Lead Books were believed by their many defenders to contain a Christian text. Talavera, however, accorded primary importance to language as an indispensable tool for engaging his new community of unbelievers. In

6 We will be making a detailed study of this text from the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome (ms. Or. 32), notice of which we owe to Angelo Michele Piemontese. It seems to have been found in Granada at an unknown date; it contains a version of the translation of the Psalms by Ḥafs b. Albar al-Qūṭī. The latter has been edited by M.-T. Urvoy, Le Psau- tier mozarabe de Hafs le Goth (Toulouse, 1994), based on a manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan copied by David Colville in El Escorial. We are grateful to Mayte Penelas for information on this point. 7 P. Guerra de Lorca, Cathecheses mystagogicae pro advenis ex secta Mahometica (Madrid, 1586); quoted in F.J. Simonet, “El catolicismo y la filología arábiga,” La Ilustración de España y América, 43 (November 27, 1877), 326. 8 “He ordered that the Holy Bible, in particular, be printed in Arabic in its entirety or part by part at first; and also all the Catholic books of Scripture that could be found in the said language; this for the benefit of the Arab Christians who are in the East, and the Granadans in Spain” (“Comandò che in lingua arabica si stampasse principalmente la Bib- lia sacra tutta insieme o vero in questi principii a parte a parte, et tutti libri cattolici della Scrittura che si potessero ritrovare in detta lingua e questo per servitio de christiani arabi quali sono in Oriente et Granatini in Spagna”: A. Tinto, La Tipografia medicea orientale (Lucca, 1987), 95. 38 chapter two order to preach in the tongue of Granada’s natives, the archbishop sought out priests who knew Arabic and even tried to learn it himself. When he went to address groups of Muslims, he took along converted Arabs who could act as his interpreters. Some of these had converted before the Reconquest, or were nobles who had come to form part of the Castil- ian elite. Among the latter was the noble convert—a former member of the Nasrid aristocracy—Don Gonzalo Fernández Zegrí, whose testament records the merit of having helped to “address and admonish the newly converted residents of this city and its region and of Guadix [. . .] to attract them to the knowledge of our holy Catholic faith.”9 An additional eyewitness to Talavera’s preaching in the Alpujarras was a another convert of noble origin named Francisco Núñez Muley.10 In the Memorial that Núñez Muley would write half a century later, addressed to the Tribunal (Audiencia) of Granada in 1567 (and to which we shall return),11 Núñez Muley recalled vividly how Talavera not only respected the language, but even used traditional music of the Granadan Arabs in the liturgy, and at the end of the Mass replaced the normal dominus vobis- cum with the Arabic phrase ybara ficun. Talavera’s stance was a highly ambiguous one. On the one hand, he clearly belonged to the group who sought to build bridges, and to find and accept in the culture of others those elements that could be integrated according to his own way of thinking. But on the other, as his Instrucciones make clear, he was convinced of the need to change radically the lives, thoughts, and feelings of those he was catechizing. That was also the position of Pedro Guerra de Lorca, a canon of Granada Cathedral—like Talavera from a converted Jewish family, and a character whom we shall meet repeatedly in these pages—half a century later. His principles for treatment of the Moriscos

9 “[P]laticar e monestar a los vezinos nuevamente convertidos de esta cibdad e su tierra e Guadix [. . .] en atraellos en conocimiento de nuestra santa fe católica”: A. García Pedraza, “La asimilación del morisco don Gonzalo Fernández el Zegrí: edición y análisis de su testamento,” Al-Qanṭara, 16 (1995), 45. 10 M.J. Rubiera, “La familia morisca de los Muley-Fez, príncipes meriníes e infantes de Granada,” Sharq al-Andalus 13 (1996), 156–168; and B. Vincent, “L’Histoire d’une déchéance: la famille des Fez Muley à Grenade au XVIème siècle,” in N. Harwich (ed.), Hommage à Alain Milhou. Les Cahiers du CRIAR, 21 (2002), 69–79. 11 Published in full in Appendix to B. Vincent’s “Introducción” to the new edition of A. Gallego Burín and A. Gámir Sandoval, Los Moriscos del Reino de Granada según el Sínodo de Guadix (1554) (Granada, 1996), XXXIX–LII. granada conquered 39 included the elimination of every cultural trait related to their speech and mode of dress.12 Talavera made annual confession one of the key tenets of his own pastoral practice. One of the main advantages possessed by the “Arabic” (that is, Arabophone) priests was that they could hear the new converts’ confessions in their own language.13 At the same time, and during the six years in which he enjoyed full autonomy in managing his diocese, Tala- vera surrounded himself with religious men, alfaquíes (Ar. al-faqīh) whom he consulted in depth about the fundamentals of Islam, and who could help him to form a clergy capable of teaching Christianity in Arabic. His personal library contained translations of the Qurʾān into both Latin and Romance;14 in short, he was an “Arabized Christian,” as Ramon Llull liked to define himself.15 At his request his confessor and fellow-Hieronymite, Pedro de Alcalá,16 composed two works that appeared in 1505, through the press that Talavera had created in Granada in 1494: an Arabic-Romance glossary, Vocabulista in Arabico, and a grammar or method for learning the language, Arte para ligeramente saber la lengua arábiga.17 The Arte included a basic catechism for the evangelization of the Moriscos, in Ara- bic transliterated into Latin letters so as to ease the task of the priests. The Vocabulista, on the other hand, was a dictionary of the spoken Arabic of Granada that could be equally useful for Muslims and Christians. In compiling it, Alcalá must have received help from the aforesaid educated Granadan Arabs who moved in the archbishop’s circle.18 In composing a

12 P. Guerra de Lorca, Cathecheses mystagogicae pro advenis ex secta Mahometica (Madrid, 1586), fol. 23r ff. 13 See the recommendations made to the clergy of the Granada diocese in 1500: “Let the (beneficed) priest who does not know the Arabic language not confess anyone . . .” (“El cura o beneficiado que no supiere la lengua arábiga no confiese a ninguno . . .”): B. Vincent, “Reflexión documentada sobre el uso del árabe y de las lenguas románicas en la España de los moriscos,” in El río morisco (Granada-Valencia, 2007), 116. 14 Q. Aldea, “Hernando de Talavera, su testamento y su biblioteca,” Homenaje a Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel, Studia Silensia, 3 (Silos, 1976), 513–547. 15 D. Urvoy, “L’Idée de ‘christianus arabicus’,” Al-Qanṭara, 15 (1994), 497–507. 16 A friar of the Hieronymite order, like Talavera himself, Alcalá would have been, according to Garrido Aranda, a converted Muslim born before the conquest of Granada: A. Garrido Aranda, “Papel de la Iglesia de Granada en la asimilación de la sociedad morisca,” Anuario de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea, 2–3 (1975–1976), 69–104. 17 A recent edition is A. Lonnet (ed.), Les textes de Pedro de Alcalá. Édition critique (Paris-Louvain, 2002). 18 R. Ricard, “Remarques sur l’Arte et le Vocabulista de Fr. Pedro de Alcalá,” in Études et documents pour l’histoire missionaire de l’Espagne et du Portugal (Louvain, 1930); E. Pezzi, “El problema de la confesión de los moriscos en Pedro de Alcalá,” in Homenaje al P. Darío Cabanelas, vol. I (Granada, 1987), 433–444; and G. Drost, “El Arte de Pedro de Alcalá y su 40 chapter two dictionary of an Arabic dialect Alcalá was entering virgin territory, nor did he have any precedents in seeking Arabic terms for Christian religious concepts and practices. His dictionary was produced by an Arabic speaker who was immersed in a still-Arabophone milieu. When Pedro de Alcalá, in his Arte para ligeramente saber la lengua arábiga, had to explain to the new converts what confession was—confession that not only for Talavera, but for the whole Catholic Church, had become a basic tool for controlling belief and conscience—he faced a considerable problem. There was no Arabic word that translated “confession of sins,” nor any Islamic practice that resembled it. In the end Alcalá dedicated many pages to explaining confession as a sort of spiritual cleansing, comparable to the Islamic waḍū’ or ritual ablution.19 “Confes- sion” was not the only term that gave Alcalá difficulty: he found it impossible, or did not wish, to include Christian religious terms like “baptism,” “Holy Spirit,” “redemption,” and so forth. Arnald Steiger even finds it strange that Alcalá translates Dios as “Allah,” when in works meant to evangelize Native Americans, for example in Nahuatl, Dios is never rendered as “Theotl” but simply as “Dios.” But other terms also demonstrate the difficulty of the task, as when Alcalá renders “el sacerdote, porque él es vicario de Dios” (the priest, because he is the vicar of God) as al-faqīh li-annahu khalīfat Allah. One could hardly find a translation that had clearer Islamic overtones. In like fashion, for all the Christian rites and expressions, Alcalá sought an Islamic equivalent— finding correspondences like masjid for “church,” miḥrāb for “altar,” and ṣalāt for “Mass.”20 A century later the Morisco Jesuit Ignacio de las Casas, who strove to catechize the Valencian and Granadan Moriscos and who played a crucial role in denouncing the Lead Books,21 would insist that it

Vocabulista: de tolerancia a represión,” in A. Temimi (ed.), Las prácticas musulmanas de los moriscos andaluces (1492–1609) (Zaghouan, 1989), 57–69. 19 “This is the true washing and cleansing of sins, and not that one that the Moors perform, washing their feet and legs and shameful body parts in a bath or stream; such washing can take away only the dirt of the body, [. . .] while holy confession cleanses and heals the stains of the spirit” (Este es el verdadero lavatorio y alimpiamiento de los pecados, e no aquel que los moros hazen, lavándose los pies y piernas y partes del cuerpo vergonzosas, en el baño o acequia, el qual lavatorio non podía lavar sino la suciedad corporal [. . .] mas la sancta confesión alimpia e sana las suciedades espirituales): E. Pezzi, “El problema de la confesión de moriscos,” op. cit., 433–444. 20 R. Ricard, “Remarques sur l’Arte,” op. cit., 223–224. 21 R. Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “De Pablo a Saulo, crítica y denuncia de los Libros Plúm- beos por el P. Ignacio de las Casas, S.J.,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal, Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 217–251. granada conquered 41 was a dangerous practice to use Islamic terms for Christian concepts and rituals. In 1499 the Catholic Monarchs made another visit to Granada in the company of Cardinal Cisneros, the Queen’s confessor. They were displeased by what they found: the city was still Muslim, and the conversions had made little progress. At that time the Inquisition had just been established, and in September 1499 Diego Rodríguez de Lucero was named Granada’s first Inquisitor. The contrast between the Archbishop and the Inquisitor was so great that Ferdinand the Catholic, only two months later in November, named Francisco de Cisneros special Inquisitor for the whole realm of Granada—and Hernando de Talavera was tried by the Inquisition by the end of that same year. The Franciscan Jiménez de Cisneros had a very different notion of how to handle the conversion of the Muslims. We know of the measures that he adopted only through the reaction of the local population. In December 1499 there was a serious revolt in the Albaicín quarter, and the Christian authorities were unable for several days to take control of the higher parts of the city. Talavera and the Count of Tendilla managed to negotiate a surrender without reprisals, provided that the Muslims agreed to convert and the Christians promised not to proceed against the rebels. Cisneros hastened to claim credit for the mass conversions that followed.22 Biographers of Cisneros relate how he ordered the public burning of all books in Arabic that could be found; only those on scientific subjects were exempted and sent to the University of Alcalá, which had been founded by Cisneros himself.23 Again, we know of this event only because Cisneros’s chroniclers boast of it; it appears in no other source, so that we do not know the extent or proportions of this supposed or symbolic book-burning. Nor have we learned which books perished and which ones survived, in a city abandoned years before by its religious and civilian elites. In any case, the fact that the Inquisition impounded volumes or collections in later years shows that Cisneros’s destruction could not have been complete, or at least that books continued to be written and copied. In Octo- ber 1501 a royal decree ordered the burning of every copy of the Qurʾān

22 These conversions extended to areas outside the city itself: see AGS, Patronato real, 1117 and 1118, Capitulaciones de los Reyes Católicos for the year 1500 with Valdelecrín and the Alpujarras and with the city of Baza. 23 Juan de Vallejo, Memorial de la vida de fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, ed. A. de la Torre (Madrid, 1913), 35. 42 chapter two that could be found in the Kingdom of Granada.24 In 1511, Queen Joanna forbade the possession of Arabic works of sharīʿa and sunna—that is, having to do with religious law—but she did allow preservation of works of medicine and history, once judicial authorities had inspected the books and decided which ones fell into those categories.25 In the autos-da-fe celebrated in Granada between 1550 and 1571, several Moriscos were tried for possessing copies of the Qurʾān and of religious works.26 The pressures and mass conversions continued. Between the 18th and 25th of December 1499, three thousand Muslims were baptized, resulting in an uprising that spread in the first months of 1500 into the Alpujarras and the mountains of Ronda.27 In the wake of the rebellion the Capitu- lations of 1492 were revoked.28 In 1502 the Catholic Monarchs decreed the conversion to Christianity of all Muslims who lived under the Crown of Castile.

Language and Evangelization

The end of Islam as a religion did not presuppose the end of the Arabic language, nor even the end of its use for evangelistic purposes. The Society of Jesus, shortly after its founding in 1540, took an active interest in proselytizing the Moriscos, and in 1545 created a bilingual school in Gandía for their children; it failed, however, both through a lack of Arabic-speaking teachers and because the Moriscos resisted sending their children there. In 1559 the Society created a broader enterprise, the House of Doctrine (Casa de la Doctrina), in the Albaicín neighborhood of Granada. Jesuits of Morisco origin, like the well-known Father Juan de Albotodo and the abovementioned Ignacio de las Casas, were among its collaborators.29 To the strategy of preparing clergy of Morisco origin who could preach in Arabic in the public square was added the selection of women who could

24 According to a document published by M. A. Ladero Quesada, Los mudéjares de Cas- tilla en tiempos de Isabel I (Valladolid, 1969), 146. 25 P. J. Arroyal Espinares, E. Cruces Blanco, and M. T. Martín Palma, Cedulario del Reino de Granada (1511–1514) (Granada, 2008), 69. 26 AHN, Inquisición, leg. 1953, no. 5, penitentes 4, 5, 16, and 24. 27 Pope Alexander VI congratulated Cisneros on the conversions he had achieved: S. Pastore, Il Vangelo e la spada, op. cit., 114. 28 J. Meseguer Fernández, “Fernando de Talavera, Cisneros y la Inquisición en Gran- ada,” in J. Pérez Villanueva (ed.), La Inquisición española. Nueva visión, nuevos horizontes (Madrid, 1980), 399. 29 F. de Borja de Medina, “La Compañía de Jesús y la minoría morisca (1545–1614),” Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 57 (1988), 4–137. granada conquered 43 enter the private, feminine space of Morisco homes. Archbishop Pedro Guerrero began a search for older women of proven virtue who would teach little Moriscas to read and write Spanish, to sew, and to perform the other domestic tasks that were common for females in Old Christian society.30 In the matter of language, Martín Pérez de Ayala, the bishop who in the mid-sixteenth century led the two Spanish dioceses with the largest Morisco populations, Guadix (1549–1560) and Valencia (1564–1566), took a line similar to Talavera’s. For Don Martín, knowledge of Arabic was indispensable for instructing the New Christians, and he therefore asked the Emperor for “Arabic theologians”—that is, ones who knew the language—to undertake the task. He made it a requirement that priests who heard Moriscos’ confessions should know Arabic. In 1554 he convoked the Synod of Guadix for the evangelization of the new converts, and ordered the composition of a new catechism in Arabic, the Doctrina Christiana; it was written in the Granadan Arabic dialect with Latin letters31 and was the work of Bartolomé Dorador, a beneficed priest from Guadix.32 Just as Pedro de Alcalá had done, Dorador uses terms like mihrāb for “altar,” faqīh for “priest,” and ṣalāt for “Mass.” In the catechism Bartolomé Dora- dor tells us that Martín de Ayala “used to go on Sundays to preach and teach to these New Christians in a parish church of this city [. . .]. I am his interpreter, because many of the newly converted do not understand the common Spanish language well; it is my custom to declare and turn into Arabic what he has preached in the common tongue, in the same order and hardly missing a single point.”33

30 A. García Pedraza, Actitudes ante la muerte en la Granada del siglo XVI. Los moriscos que quisieron salvarse, op. cit., vol. I, 389–390. 31 Doctrina Christiana en lengua aráviga y castellana, compuesta e impressa por mandado del Illustríssimo y reverendíssimo Señor don Martín de Ayala Arçobispo de Valencia, para la instrucción de los nuevamente convertidos deste Reyno (Valencia: en casa de Joan Mey, 1566). 32 M. P. Torres, Bartolomé Dorador y el árabe dialectal andaluz (Granada, 1971). The original is ms. 1389 of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Algiers. See also C.J. Garrido García, “El uso de la lengua árabe como medio de evangelización-represión de los moriscos del reino de Granada: nuevos datos sobre Bartolomé Dorador, intérprete y traductor de Martín de Ayala, obispo de Guadix,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, 57 (2008), 123–137. 33 “Los domingos acostumbraba yr a predicar y enseñar a estos nuevos Cristianos a una parrochia de esta ciudad [. . .]. Yo soy su intérprete, porque muchos destos nuevamente convertidos no entienden bien la lengua vulgar castellana y suelo declarar y volver en Arávigo lo que él ha predicado en lengua vulgar, con la mesma orden y casi sin perder punto”: quoted in M.P. Torres, “Don Martín de Ayala y la catequesis de los niños moriscos,” in Homenaje al Prof. Darío Cabanelas, op. cit., vol. I (Granada, 1987), 509–517. 44 chapter two

During his time in Guadix Martín de Ayala wrote another catechism, which was printed only after his death by his successor in the Valencia diocese, Juan de Ribera.34 Although Ribera made use of Ayala’s catechism he was radically opposed to Ayala’s stance on the use of the Arabic language, as he declares: “To seek preachers who know Arabic would be impossible, and even if they existed it would not do to instruct them [the Moriscos] in that language, because it lacks the terms to illuminate the principal mysteries of our faith; and those who try to find equivalents by circumlocution not only do not explain its power, but more often than not state errors in our religion. This is why I have desisted from learning Arabic.”35 At about this same time, the Morisco Jesuit Ignacio de las Casas was defending the need to preach to the Moriscos in Arabic,36 although he warned against the dangers that such preaching could bring: for instance that neophytes might think, on hearing familiar terms, that they described practices equivalent to their own, or that a simple change in terminology represented an unchanged reality. To illustrate, he cited the example of a preacher who assured the Moriscos that conversion “did not take away their language or their dress or their God; rather, just as you now call yourselves muzlamín, which means ‘saved’ [. . .], once a little water has been poured on your head you will be called naçara, which means Chris- tians or Nazarenes; and as such you will be defended and protected by the Christian monarchs and by all of Spain.”37 He insisted above all on

34 Catecismo para la instrucción de los nuevamente convertidos de moros (Valencia, 1599). 35 “Buscar predicadores que sepan arábigo sería imposible y quando los uviesse no con- vendría enseñarles en aquella lengua, por falta de términos para manifestar los principales misterios de nuestra fe y los que se buscan equivalentes por circounloquios no sólo no explican la fuerza, pero las más de las veces dicen errores en nuestra religión, lo que fue causa que yo desistiera de aprender arábigo”: R. García Cárcel, “Estudio crítico del catecismo de Ribera-Ayala,” in Les Morisques et leurs temps (Paris, 1983), 161–168. 36 “Who has ever seen someone, in order to change other people’s minds, not only speak to them in a language as outlandish to them as theirs is to us and equally obscure and unintelligible, but even forbid them to use their own mother tongue, as beloved to them by nature as their mother herself, known for that very reason as the mother tongue?” (“¿Quién jamás vio, para convencer los ánimos, no sólo hablalles en lengua tan bárbara para ellos como la suya para nosotros y tan obscura e inintelligible, sino aun prohibilles la suya materna tan amada naturalmente como la propia madre, que por eso tiene tal apellido de materna?”); quoted in Y. El Alaoui, Jésuites, Morisques et Indiens. Étude comparative des méthodes d’évangelisation de la Compagnie de Jésus d’après les traités de José de Acosta et d’Ignacio de las Casas (1605–1607) (Paris, 2006), 287. 37 “No les quitaba su lengua ni hábito ni su Dios, sino llamándoos—dixo—muzlamín, que quiere dezir salvos [. . .], echándoos un poco de agua en las cabeças os llamarán naçara, granada conquered 45 the need for preachers not only to know Arabic but to be good theologians, capable of explaining and finding terms “for saying Trinity, Divine Persons, Divine Essence, hypostatic Union between God and Man, Sacra- ments, Mass, Communion and Confession, Absolution, and innumerable other words that, for the Moriscos in their sect, are as unheard-of as the Koran and their ceremonies are for us.”38 The point to be stressed for the argument we develop here is that in the Spain of the second half of the sixteenth century there existed no Arabic sources or references that would allow principles of Catholic doctrine to be translated adequately using established and accepted terms. And it is an important point when we consider the text contained in the Lead Books of Granada, which was defended by its partisans as a Christian document. The existing vocabularies were those mentioned above, all of them developed for the needs of catechization—there were no others. In 1594, Arias Montano complained of the lack of Arabic glossaries in a letter to Archbishop Pedro de Castro.39 All of these considerations about language, and about the use of the language of the catechized for their own religious instruction, forms part of a debate among different civil and ecclesiastical authorities in Spain over which areas of human life fell into the province of religion. The debate included the distinction that was made at the time between what was “custom” and what was “ceremony”: there was an attempt to determine whether certain gastronomic, hygienic, linguistic, or festive practices proved one’s religious affiliation. Festive customs were often associated with rituals of life or death (weddings, births, funerals) that the Church claimed as part of its own sphere. In other words, there was controversy over whether certain cultural traits could be separated from correct observance of religious ritual and sincere belief, or whether the former had to be eliminated (even if they were only “customs”) so that the latter could flourish—this being the point of view that won out in the end. In 1526,

que quiere dezir christianos, o naçareos, y significa defendidos y amparados como lo seréis de los reyes christianos y de toda España”: ibid., 122. 38 “Dezir trinidad, personas divinas, divina esencia, unión hipostática Dios y hombre, sacramentos, missa, comulgar y confessar, absolver y otros términos sin número que para los moros en su secta son tan inauditos como entre nosotros el Alcorán y sus ceremonias”: ibid., 180. 39 “There are no good vocabularies among us, nor have the Licenciate Luna nor Castillo told me of any, although I have asked them” (“No hay buenos vocabularios entre nosotros, ni el licenciado Luna ni Castillo me han dicho aunque les he preguntado”): BNE ms. 5953, fol. 174r. 46 chapter two

Dr. Carvajal’s report recommended that not only Arabic books, but also talismans and amulets (which we will encounter often in later chapters) should be forbidden: “[. . .] let them be stripped of certain other signs, like the carved and painted moon and those hands they wear and their stars.” In their place the Moriscos should wear “the cross and [an image of] Our Lady,” “because persons and things are recognized by the signs they bear, and they are judged to belong to the one whose signs they carry.”40 Chang- ing their system of symbols meant, then, proclaiming their acceptance of the new religion, and the step was considered fundamental for the proper functioning of the new Christian society of Granada. The question of using Arabic to catechize entered into a larger theological problem that included not only the evangelization and conversion of the Moriscos but also that of the Native Americans. This theological debate turned on the desirability of preaching to these groups in their original languages or in Spanish, and on whether Catholic doctrine was, or was not, diluted when it was presented in a different language that might presuppose an alternate conceptual and dogmatic framework. It was argued—and practice seemed to confirm—that there was a risk of encouraging syncretism in the newly converted; or simply that neophytes, lulled by the familiarity of their own language, would convert to a religion that they could not understand. The debate, then, was about the problem of the untranslatability of faith. It was a matter of determining to what extent religion was simply dogma—that is, beliefs and rituals that could be superimposed on other hygienic and alimentary customs, other forms of dress, another language, a different family structure—or if religion was more than this, and a religious conversion must bring with it a total transformation of the convert’s cultural referents. Beginning early in the century the Christian position evolved toward the complete elimination of every Moorish cultural trait, seeking total Hispanization along with conversion to Christianity. In Granada one can date the several phases of this evolution, which have to do not only with the Church and Archbishop Talavera but with the first generation of conquerors and aristocrats. The first Marquis of Mondéjar,

40 “[Q]ue se les quiten otras çiertas señales como la luna esculpida e pintada y las manos que traen y las estrellas”; “porque las personas y las cosas se conosçen por las señales que tienen y se juzgan ser de aquel cuyas señales se traen”): A. Redondo, “El primer plan sistemático de asimilación de los moriscos granadinos, el del doctor Carvajal,” in Les Morisques et leurs temps, op. cit., 115. granada conquered 47 who had taken the city, had died in 1515. After him Granada’s nobles gradually lost ground to the legal scholars from the Chancellery (Cancillería), who defended interests other than those of the lords—in particular, an absolute and consistent application of the law. The nobles were not bothered by the Moriscos’ attachment to their customs, their dress, or their language; they were willing to be flexible, and often considered the measures adopted by the lawyers and clergy to be inappropriate and demean- ing. In fact, they were of the party who felt that the Moriscos’ mode of dress had nothing to do with their religion. Even Charles V showed himself accommodating in Granada in 1526, and thus the Moriscos reached an agreement with the Crown: in exchange for payment of a large sum, they managed to halt the prohibition of their language and customs and to prevent the Inquisition from confiscating their property. Almost all the other measures against them became, through inertia, a dead letter.

The Eradication of Arabic

In any case it is clear that the Arabic language—or rather, its elimination— became a rallying point for Granada’s leaders and society in the sixteenth century. In the first place, the language was equated with the religion. One of the leaders of the Morisco rebellion in the Alpujarras, Abén Daud, declared: “He who loses the Arabic language loses his belief.”41 For his part Diego de Ordóñez, chaplain to Charles V’s sister Princess Leonor, complained that the cursed “sect” would remain as long as the “Moham- medan” language was spoken.42 For many people the crux of the problem lay here. It is pertinent to quote a letter from Pedro de Deza to the Jesuit Francisco de Borja, dated in May 1561: “Further, many means have been sought by which, with love and gentleness, these people may abandon their former customs and bow to the observance of our holy faith. Special care has been taken in the matter of language, that being the most difficult and most important thing [. . .]. And since this city is the head whose example all other places in the kingdom must follow, it is right that the

41 “Quien pierde la lengua arábiga pierde su ley”: L. del Mármol Carvajal, Historia del rebelión y castigo de los moriscos del Reino de Granada, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 21 (Madrid, 1946), 179. 42 B. Vincent, “Reflexión documentada,” op. cit., 117. 48 chapter two greatest effort should be made here.”43 There we have it: the language as the hardest challenge, the one that required the greatest determination. Knowing Arabic, and therefore having access to its religious texts, could cause the weak in spirit to doubt and go astray.44 But the issue was not only one of religion: Arabic was also the language of magic spells, incantations, and talismans, and as such it granted strange and disquieting powers to those who used it. It was the language of esoteric knowledge. It was also the vehicle for the plots and deceptions woven by New Christians in the very face of old believers who could not understand them—a barbarous language, possibly a conspiratorial one, whose very sound was an irri- tant. Las Casas said that Christians “are disturbed by hearing them [speak Arabic]”45 and automatically associate knowing the language with Mus- lim status.46 Equating the language with Islam was inevitable in a place like Granada, where the memory of the Reconquest was still fresh and had been revived by the Alpujarras rebellion. The mere sound of Arabic placed its speakers under suspicion and brought to mind a non-Christian past that everyone wanted to erase. That past still colored Granada as late as 1610, according to a letter that Don Fernando de Irarrazábal sent to the king rejoicing in the Expulsion, for only then could the city be free of “this yoke of Mohammed, and even more of the sinister reputation that this most noble city has endured.”47

43 “Ansí mismo, se han buscado muchos medios para que con amor y suavidad esta gente se desarraygase de sus antiguas costumbres y se reduxese a la observancia de nuestra santa religión. Especialmente se a puesto cuydado en lo que toca a la lengua, como cosa más dificultosa y más ymportante [. . .]. Y como esta çiudad es la cabeça de donde los demás lugares del reyno an de tomar exemplo, es muy justo que aquí se ponga mayor diligencia”: quoted in A. García Pedraza, Actitudes ante la muerte, op. cit., 465. 44 A fine illustration is this paragraph from the Inquisition trial of an Old Christian: “And his nature was so pliable and fragile that, had he known Hebrew and Arabic, he would easily have been inclined to follow the law of the Jews or the sect of the Moors; and he became so confused by his diverse readings that if he found himself among Moors he would not know whether to follow their religion and leave that of Christ, were it not that he feared excommunication” (“Y tenía un natural tan vario y frágil que aviendo sabido las lenguas hebrea y aráviga fácilmente se inclinara a seguir la ley de los judíos o la secta de los moros y se hallava tan confuso con las varias lecturas que si se viera entre moros no savía si siguiera su ley y se apartara de la de Cristo si no fuera por el temor de verse excomulgado”): AHN, leg. 2135, nos. 17–25. 45 I. de las Casas, in Y. El Alaoui, Morisques et Indiens, op. cit., 419. 46 As Miguel de Luna himself wrote in a letter to Archbishop Pedro de Castro of Gran- ada: “If justice means no more than saying, ‘He knows Arabic, he is a Morisco,’ then let them arrest him without hearing him out. It is unfair indeed” (“Si no vale justicia más de solamente dezir sabe la lengua Arábiga, es morisco, atropéllenle sin o‎‎ýrle. Rezia cosa es”): AASG, leg. VII, 1, l. 889. 47 AGS, Estado, leg. 245, 10. granada conquered 49

We could cite many incidents and anecdotes to illustrate the distrust and rejection that the Arabic language provoked, and to show how swiftly it aroused suspicion in Spanish-speaking circles. But we will choose just one: Francisco Núñez Muley was the author of an appeal in defense of Arabic presented to the Audiencia of Granada. Many years before, in 1545, he had been involved in a highly significant event. Francisco had been collecting the farda tax that year when the Old Christian notary reproached the local tax collectors for speaking Arabic among themselves, saying to one of them, “speak Romance, and let no one speak Arabic.” It seems that the notary understood some Arabic and sensed that the Moriscos were trying to cheat him (“it appeared to him [. . .] that they were speaking to his detriment”). Núñez Muley took the part of the Arabic speakers against the notary, affirming “that everyone, if he does not speak ill of others, may speak in his own language.” But the notary continued to think that they were speaking dishonestly and insisted, “let them speak Romance, since they know it.” Núñez Muley was called “Moorish dog,” a common insult from which his princely lineage did not exempt him. It is not hard to imagine this aristocrat’s anger in the face of such an offense.48 Blows and oaths were exchanged, and weapons were drawn before witnesses could separate the parties. The testimony of those present is striking. All the Moriscos blamed the notary for causing the incident and initiating the violence in word and deed, except for Francisco el Zegrí, another notable Morisco involved in collecting the farda, who said that Núñez Muley had begun it all. We can guess what separated Francisco el Zegrí from Núñez Muley, because Granada’s Moorish elites were anything but unanimous in their attitudes, their politics, and their personal and family strategies, as we shall relate in later chapters. This is not the place to review in detail all the restrictive measures and hardening of positions on the Moriscos that developed from the second decade of the sixteenth century onward. Charles V arrived in Granada in June 1526 and remained until December; his reception by representatives of both Old Christians and Moriscos made him aware of the enormous extent and complexity of the problem. In order to obtain better information he ordered a survey, entrusted to important individuals like Gaspar de Ávalos and Antonio de Guevara, which drew a dismaying picture: the Moriscos suffered continual extortion and all sorts of ill-treatment and

48 The complete account of the resulting trial is recorded in A. García Pedraza, Acti- tudes ante la muerte, op. cit., II, 940 ff. 50 chapter two despoilment, women’s veils were pulled off on the streets, and so on. Under these conditions a meeting of the governing body of the Royal Chapel was called (November–December 1526), an event that marked a significant step in forging agreements that sought to end abuses of the Moriscos and to draw up plans for their evangelization. But at the same time there was an expansion and combination of earlier decrees against Morisco culture, and the Holy Office was officially installed. All of these matters were brought together in a report compiled by Dr. Galíndez de Carvajal, which touched on the following points: first, it defined those Morisco customs and rites that must be eliminated; second, it indicated what steps should be taken by the Archbishop and the prelates; third, it announced the introduction of the Inquisition into the Kingdom of Granada; fourth and fifth, it set forth ways of reining in the clergy and civil officials so that the Moriscos would not be victims of offenses and confiscations. In other words, it combined tough and repressive measures with protective and charitable ones. The conclusion to be drawn from this report was that everything that differed from the Old Christians’ world, whether in religion, habits, thought, or language, was to be condemned absolutely and would be watched for and persecuted by the Inquisition—there would be no quarter given. The assembly that met in Granada’s Royal Chapel in 1526 forbade both spoken and written Arabic, but it soon became clear that its order was not being obeyed. The definitive law came by royal warrant on November 17, 1566, and was ratified by a royal decree of December 10, 1567. This law prohibited any use of Arabic either in speech or in writing, and gave the Moriscos three years in which to learn Spanish. Furthermore it eliminated Arabic surnames, distinctive Morisco dress and adornment, music, baths, slave ownership, bearing of arms, and a whole series of measures that dismayed Granada’s Morisco population. Their dismay extended to the economic sphere: contracts and property deeds were nullified, taking away Morisco owners’ last line of defense against expropriation by the Christian conquerors. All of this occurred, moreover, after years of mounting pressure from the Inqui- sition. It was the last straw, and the ultimate reason for the Morisco rebellion that would give rise to the War of the Alpujarras (1568–1570).49

49 As the chronicler J. de Arguellada asserts in his Sumario de probezas y casos de guerra, “the cause of the uprising was chiefly that they were ordered not to speak Arabic, but rather Spanish, and that they wear Spanish dress, something that was very hard and heavy for them to bear” (“La causa del levantamiento fue lo primero por averles mandado granada conquered 51

The Defense of Arabic and its Persistence in Granada

The decree of 1567 caused, as we have seen, great consternation at all levels of Granada’s originally Muslim population, and provoked the Memorial by Núñez Muley that we have mentioned above. In his appeals to the Audie n cia of Granada and his petition to revoke the decree, Núñez Muley tried to distinguish between all those matters that we would consider today part of “culture” in the anthropological sense, and belief in and practice of Islam. Thus he points out that regional costumes in different parts of Spain vary without regard to what their wearers’ religion may be, and that the garb of Granada’s Moriscos was just that, a regional costume typical of “the natives of the place.” Núñez Muley takes pains throughout to give the Moriscos the name of “natives” (naturales) of the land or of Granada, that is, people who belong there and are not outsiders or strangers to be kept apart. He insists particularly on trying to separate the use of Ara- bic from religious practice, alluding to the existence of Eastern Christians who speak Arabic but whose Christianity is not subject to doubt: “We see Christians, both clergy and laymen, from Syria and Egypt in Turkish-style dress, with turbans and caftans down to their feet; they speak Arabic and Turkish, they know no Latin or Romance, and in spite of it all they are Christians.” He returns later to the same argument: “Let us turn then to the Arabic language, which is the greatest stumbling-block of all. How are we to take away a people’s native language in which they were born and raised? The Egyptians, Syrians, Maltese, and other Christian peoples speak, read, and write in Arabic, yet they are Christians like ourselves.”50 Ignacio de las Casas employs the same arguments in his brief and fascinating treatise in defense of Arabic. In the first place the language should not be equated with the religion “just because the Koran and laws are written in it, for it is preserved only by their pious and learned men, just

que no hablasen algarabía sino en lengua castellana y que vistiesen traje castellano, lo qual a ellos era muy duro y pesado de llevar”): in M. Barrios (ed.), La suerte de los vencidos (Granada, 2009), 111. 50 “Vemos venir a los cristianos, clérigos y legos de Suria y de Egipto vestidos a la tur- quesca, con tocas y cafetanes hasta los pies; hablan arábigo y turquesco, no saben latín ni romance, y con todo eso son cristianos”; “Pues vamos a la lengua arábiga, que es el mayor inconveniente de todos. ¿Cómo se ha de quitar a las gentes su lengua natural, con que nacieron y se criaron? Los egipcios, surianos, malteses y otras gentes cristianas, en arábigo hablan, leen y escriben, y son cristianos como nosotros.” 52 chapter two like Latin among ourselves.”51 And secondly, in the East it is used also by the Christians and Jews who live there.52 Núñez Muley adds the following paragraph about the state of the language among the people of Granada: “How many must there be in towns and villages outside this city, as well as within it, who speak their own Arabic language differently from the rest, with accents so various that you need only listen to a man from the Alpujarras to know what area he comes from! They were born and raised in small towns where Romance has never been spoken and no one understands it except the parish or beneficed priest or the sacristan, and these always speak in Arabic; it would be difficult if not impossible for all the old people to learn it in the time that is left to them.”53 Thus he sketched a linguistic picture that was strongly dialectalized and fragmented, with perceptible internal variations especially in rural areas and the Alpujarras region, but also vital and firmly rooted. Specialists agree that Granadan Arabic was retained as a spoken and written language in the Kingdom during the whole first half of the sixteenth century, after which it declined steadily until about 1600.54 Written Arabic remained alive in Granada in the first two decades of the century because the Christians needed to understand the fiscal practices of the Nasrid period. During these early years, scribes literate in Arabic created,

51 “Por estar en ella su Alcorán y secta, porque se conserbara solamente entre los alfaquíes y doctos della como entre nosotros la latina”: I. de las Casas, “De la bondad y facilidad desta lengua arábiga,” in Y. El Alaoui, Morisques et Indiens, op. cit., 590–596. 52 “Not only Mohammedans use it in those regions, but also the various Christians and Jews who live there, so that their children and women know no other [. . .]. Today it is the language of the Syrians or Chaldaeans, Jacobites, Maronites, some Armenians, all Geor- gians, and Greeks called Melkites, Copts, and Abyssinians. All these are Christians (though schismatic) except for the Maronites, who are Catholics” (“Usan della no solamente los mahometanos de las regiones dichas sino los varios christianos y judíos que en ellas ay sin saber sus hijos ni mugeres otra [. . .]. Es oy propia de los syros o caldeos, jacobitas y maronitas y de algunos armenos, de todos los giorgianos y griegos llamados melechitas, de los coptos y avasinos. Todos christianos aunque schismáticos si no son los maronitas, que son cathólicos”): ibid., 592. 53 “¿Cuántas personas habrá en las villas y lugares fuera desta ciudad y dentro della, que aun su lengua árabe no la aciertan a hablar sino muy diferente unos de otros, for- mando acentos tan contrarios que es sólo oír a un hombre alpujarreño se conoce de qué taa [región] es? Nacieron y criáronse en lugares pequeños, donde jamás se ha hablado el aljamía ni hay quien la entienda sino el cura o el beneficiado o el sacristán y estos hablan siempre en arábigo: dificultoso será y casi imposible que los viejos aprendan en lo que les queda de vida.” 54 J. Martínez Ruiz, “Ausencia de literatura aljamiada y conservación del hispano-árabe y de la identidad arabo-musulmana en la Granada morisca (siglo XVI),” Chronica Nova, 21 (1993–1994), 402–425. granada conquered 53 among other documents, individual censuses of many towns: in the far west of the diocese of Málaga, for example, Mudejar scribes and alfaquíes played a significant role and were rewarded for it with special privileges.55 Both wills and notarial documents reveal the inexorable advance, in the course of the century, of the Spanish language over Arabic. Although a large percentage of Moriscos signed in Arabic there is no record in those same documents that an interpreter was used, which suggests that testators and witnesses knew Spanish well enough to communicate orally.56 The retreat of Arabic can be traced through the declining number of cases in which an interpreter was needed. Nevertheless Alonso Gabano, a Morisco public scribe, in 1564 (that is, only three years before the language was forbidden once and for all) was still acting as an interpreter for some of his Morisco testators, especially women.57 Here we have a bilingual public scribe who helped Morisco parishioners to fulfill a duty—if not a religious duty, still one that was much recommended by the Church, that of making one’s will as part of “dying a good death”—and who read a Spanish text to them in Arabic so that they could understand it fully. This situation would be unthinkable by the second half of the sixteenth century, when an absolutist conception of what a confessional society should be had prevailed. We also have abundant evidence that Moriscos went to confession and confessed in Arabic, to priests who sometimes were themselves of Morisco origin. An example is found in a letter from the Duke of Sessa to the king during the Alpujarras War, in which the Duke reported that “most honorable priests” had informed him about the plans of some of the Morisco rebels, having learned about them in the confessional. These priests, on being interrogated about the identity of the confessants and the sources of their information, said that they were bound by the secret of the confessional. The Duke tried to make the bishop coerce them but the latter declared himself incapable of doing so; the Duke finally asked the king

55 A. Galán Sánchez, “Fuqahā’ y musulmanes vencidos en el reino de Granada (1485– 1520),” in A. Echevarría (ed.), Biografías mudéjares o la experiencia de ser minoría: biografías islámicas en la España cristiana (Madrid, 2009), 342 ff. 56 A. García Pedraza, Actitudes ante la muerte, op. cit., I, 466 ff. 57 In 1564 Gabano drew up the will of Leonor Xarifa and gave “the testatrix to understand in Arabic everything that this will contained; and she, having understood it, said that it was as she wished, and I conveyed that in Spanish to the witnesses to this document” (“. . . a entender en lengua arábiga a la dicha otorgante todo lo contenido en este dicho testamento; la qual aviéndolo entendido, dixo que así lo otorgaba e así mismo lo di a entender a los testigos de esta carta en lengua castellana”): ibid., I, 472. 54 chapter two to exert pressure on the priests to reveal what they knew.58 These clergymen were indeed honorable. In contrast, the Morisco Jesuit Albotodo told the authorities that Master Francisco Abenedem, a Morisco mason who worked on the royal repairs to the Alhambra, had revealed in confession the plot that the Moriscos of the Albaicín had laid for Christmas 1568. Those rebels retained an understandable resentment of Albotodo.59 These two accounts show how widespread was the practice of confession even in the most rebellious and hermetic sectors of Morisco society, and how swiftly both the Spanish language and the Catholic faith were advancing. On the other hand, the persistence of Arabic signatures on wills and notarial documents is significant evidence of limited literacy in Spanish; the fact that writing progressed much more slowly than speaking can be seen clearly, with differences that depended on class. Moriscos whose families were well-placed socially knew how to write Spanish, while members of the artisan and working classes could barely sign their names even in Arabic. Irrespective of class, wills and notarial documents allow us to observe the loss of Arabic even within successive generations of the same family. But at mid-century there still existed persons who were capable of teaching Arabic, and books from which it could be learned. We will choose only two examples in illustration. Sebastián Elgaci, a native of Oria on the Almanzora River who had been exiled to Castile after the uprising, was arrested by the Inquisition in Socuéllamos in 1574. Seek- ing to be reconciled to the Church, he confessed among other things that he had been a captain of Morisco rebels and that during that time, as they awaited reinforcements from Barbary to help reconquer the kingdom, he had wished to learn to read and write in Arabic. He had been taught by an unnamed person who possessed two Arabic books that contained prayers and the proper ways to pray and fast.60 A few years earlier Luis Pérez de Berrio, a Morisco university graduate, was caught red-handed at home in Baeza: Inquisition agents burst in on him while he was copying a “Koran of Mohammed.” Pérez de Berrio escaped by jumping out a window, and hid in Osuna with some relations who helped him to leave there in turn. He traveled to Rome and there presented himself before the Roman office of the Inquisition, seeking reconciliation and pardon. There he obtained

58 IVDJ, envío 1/1, fol. 71 ff. 59 L. del Mármol, Rebelión, op. cit., Book III, Chap. 3, and Memorial Histórico Español, op. cit., III, 47. 60 ADC, leg. 262, no. 3573, quoted in M. García-Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, los procesos del tribunal de Cuenca (Madrid, 1978), 129. granada conquered 55 a brief absolution on condition that he report once again—pardoned, but still in need of reconciliation—before the Inquisition in Cordova.61 There is abundant evidence in Inquisition trials of knowledge and use of Arabic by Moriscos from Granada who had been exiled to Cas- tile. They were accused of speaking it among themselves, of gathering to sing Arabic songs, and of becoming angry, after having married “native” Moriscas from Castile, upon learning that their wives did not know the language.62 There is also mention in these trials of Granadan Moriscos who had learned to read and write Arabic from North Africans who had come to them as allies during the Alpujarras War.63 By joining these small fragments we can build the individual stories into a mosaic that illustrates how Arabic managed to survive in Granada up to the expulsion of 1610. As a final example there is Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rāfiʿ, who wrote, in Tunisian exile, a book called al-Anwār al-nabawiyya in which he recounts how his father taught him to write Arabic when he was only six, while they still lived in Spain and unbeknownst even to his mother, using as a “slate” a walnut table that he would erase and polish between lessons. His father had taken him to visit learned Muslim figures in Jaén, Cordova, and Granada, and in the latter city they met scholars who knew and taught the history of the place from the time that it was still an Islamic kingdom.64 It appears that until the early seventeenth century and in spite of extensive Hispanization, many Granadan Moriscos betrayed their identity through their manner of speech. In 1610 Don Francisco de Irarrazábal wrote to the king about how Moriscos would claim to be Old Christians, and even bring proofs, in order to avoid going into exile: “Although we know their [Morisco] fathers and grandfathers, and although they cannot speak our language clearly as we do and thus betray who they are, even so they try to convince us that they are Old Christians and even that they descend from the Visigoths.”65 A year earlier, in 1609, a Castilian Inquisition

61 AHN, Inquisición, leg. 1856, exp. 33. 62 M. García-Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, op. cit., 55 and 78. 63 Ibid., 83. 64 A. Turki, “Documents sur le dernier exode des andalous vers la Tunisie,” in M. de Epalza and R. Petit (eds.), Études sur les moriscos andalous en Tunisie (Madrid, 1973), 117– 118. 65 “Que se les conocen los padres y abuelos y que sus lenguas aun ellos no las hablan claras como nosotros y que dan a entender quiénes son, con todo eso quieren darnos a entender que son cristianos viejos y no como quien sino de los godos”: AGS, Estado, leg. 245–11. 56 chapter two trial had involved a man who in “the soft tone and sound of his voice seemed to be a Morisco.”66 This general picture makes us wonder what kind of Arabic was known to the Moriscos of whom we will be speaking in later chapters, and what resources (books, grammars, Arabic dictionaries) they could rely on for mastering and using the language. It is an issue to which we will pay close attention as we examine the lives of these individuals. But we will turn first of all to the conversion and integration of the principal noble families of Granada. To understand this process we need to realize that it was not simply Moriscos and Old Christians who were involved. The latter, during most of this period, did not form a homogeneous mass, but rather participated in the spiritual and reformist currents that roiled Spanish religious life in the first half of the sixteenth century. Granada was a frontier city, a land of missions, and attracted some of the chief reformers of Spain in their day; these set out to evangelize, as we have seen, but also undertook to reform the regular and secular clergy, or offered versions of Catholicism that differed from Church orthodoxy. The city was defined not only by its originally Muslim inhabitants and the need to convert them to Christianity, nor even by the opposition between Christians and Muslims. If we look at its situation from that perspective alone we will miss much of the religious and social complexity within which both the conversion of the Moriscos and the fabrication of the Sac- romonte Lead Books took place. We must dedicate a few paragraphs to the reformers and dissidents, first because they may have influenced the Moriscos’ notions of what would be expected of them as Christians, and second because they brought the Moriscos into contact with versions of Catholicism other than those defended by Church orthodoxy and by the Inquisition.

Reformers and Alumbrados

The picture we have painted of the repressive measures dictated and carried out by both local authorities and the Crown, and of the ever-increasing pressure for more evangelizing, must be balanced by another series of processes that were going on in Granada at the same time and that call for a more nuanced and complex representation. Granada was open to

66 AGS, Estado, leg. 2639. granada conquered 57 all the sixteenth-century movements of spiritual and mystical innovation, and took part in the religious and intellectual ferment that characterized Spain in the first half of the century. In this it was not very different from the other large cities of Castile. In 1544 the inventory of a Granadan book- seller, Pedro de Torres, encompassed about 500 volumes and showed that the city’s readers had access to all the Catholic theological and spiritual writers of the day, from Thomas à Kempis to Francisco de Osuna and Eras- mus of Rotterdam. Torres’s catalogue resembled that of any well-stocked Castilian book merchant at the time, and reflected the same devotional concerns on the part of Granada’s inhabitants.67 Mystics of the stature of John of the Cross and Luis de Granada passed through the city. Further, Granada was home to a considerable population of Jewish converso origin. Among them were Hernando de Talavera and Pedro de Alcalá, as well as the former’s biographer, Fernández de la Madrid, Canon Pedro Guerra de Lorca, and many more, adding up to an impressive number. It was not a coherent or homogeneous group, but the fact is that some of the most important currents of spirituality at the time were transmitted and adopted by converts from Judaism. Perhaps because they were fellow New Christians themselves, they were drawn to the attempts to convert the Muslims. In 1498 Diego Rodríguez de Lucero was named Inquisitor in Cordova, resulting in an exodus of conversos to Granada. Among these were canons and prebendaries of the cathedral, which objected to having the statutes of purity of blood applied to it.68 But there was also a large number of merchants, most of whom had come from Toledo; they served as collectors of the silk tax, municipal representatives, and city councilmen.69 Lawyers and administrators of converso origin came to Granada when the Royal Chancellery was founded in 1505 and entered local governing bodies like the city council. Because, as a group, they were hypersensitive to questions of status and prestige, they came into conflict with members of the old nobility and competed with the former Nasrid aristocracy, about

67 D. Coleman, Creating Christian Granada (Ithaca, 2004), 94. The inventory contains works of poetry, history, and literature by Spanish and Italian authors and works in Classi- cal Latin, and should be read in the light of S. Nalle, “Literacy and Culture in Early Modern Castile,” Past and Present, 125 (1989), 65–96, and id., “Printing and Reading Popular Reli- gious Texts in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” in T. Lewis and F. J. Sánchez (eds.), Culture and the State in Spain 1550–1850 (New York, 1999), 126–156. 68 D. Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, op. cit., 88 ff. 69 S. Gilman, “ ‘Judea Pequeña’: Granada ante la Inquisición,” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 30 (1981), 586–593. 58 chapter two which we will speak in the next chapter. Abén Daud, leader of the Alpu- jarras rebels, in a letter to North African Muslims asking for their support, names among the offenses suffered by Moriscos that “they have placed over us Jews who do not keep their faith or their word; every day they come to us with new schemes, lies, trickery, disdain, attacks, and acts of revenge.”70 It is not clear whether he refers to actual officers of the Chan- cellery or whether the sentence is a rhetorical flourish that expresses the extremities to which the Moriscos had been subjected. In either case the Jews were the chief target of the Inquisition in Granada from the first auto-da-fé in 1529, and the Moriscos, along with the rest of the population, would have been present at the event and have heard the accusations and sentences. As a frontier city Granada attracted a healthy contingent of reformers. The most notorious of all was Juan de Ávila, “the apostle of Andalusia,” also of converso origin and one of the most influential Catholic reformers of the century. He was a powerful orator who preached not only in churches but in public streets and squares, stirring up both fervor in his hearers and suspicion in other clerics, who denounced him as an Illuminist and a Lutheran. He was eventually tried and spent a year in the Inquisition’s dungeons. Years later in 1536, now a figure of stature, he came to Granada, where he founded a community and carried out an important educational and missionary program. Wishing to catechize the masses without recourse to Latin, he composed a Doctrina cristiana in verse that became one of the most widely used catechisms in Spain. In Granada he attracted many people to the religious life, including famous individuals like María de Mendoza, and in his preaching he urged a moral and exemplary reform of the clergy. He converted Francisco de Borja (Borgia) when the latter came to inter the body of the empress in the Royal Chapel in 1539; Moriscos must have played some role in her funeral procession, for contemporary descriptions note the participation by their women as professional mourners. The case of the Granadan alumbrados or Illuminists is particularly interesting. The archbishop of Granada in 1527–1528 was a disciple of Talavera’s, another Hieronymite friar named Pedro Ramírez de Alba. Alba called to Granada the missionary and evangelizer Juan López de Celaín;

70 “Han puesto sobre nosotros a los judíos, que no tienen fe ni palabra; cada día nos buscan nuevas astucias, mentiras, engaños, menosprecios, abatimientos y venganzas”: L. del Mármol, Historia del rebelión, op. cit., Book III, Chap. 8. granada conquered 59 he belonged to the group of Illuminists that had formed during the century’s second decade in Medina de Rioseco around Isabel de la Cruz, to whom he was very close. The alumbrados defended an intimate, interior form of religiosity that was tinged with asceticism. They never came to form a coherent or well-defined sect, but rather were joined in what Mar- cel Bataillon called “Illuminism,” a belief in divine illumination and the power of faith above all things; they practiced an “inward Christianity” that rejected every outward manifestation or ritual. The converso poet Juan Álvarez Gato,71 another Hieronymite who was close to Talavera, used language and terminology that were similar to those of the Illuminists. Beside the fact that they were not an official grouping and held no clear body of beliefs, they have proved difficult to study because the Inquisi- tion—obsessed, as always, with conversos—sometimes classified them as Judaizers based on of the origin of some of their members. Juan López de Celaín arrived in Granada in 1527 and served as chaplain of the Royal Chapel and diocesan judge (provisor) of the archbishopric. He was accompanied to the city by his bosom friend Diego López de Husillos, whom he had met during the alumbrado gatherings in Medina de Rioseco;72 a third figure who joined them was Diego del Castillo, Juan del Castillo’s cousin and a disciple and follower of Celaín. Diego del Cas- tillo and López de Husillos were condemned by the Inquisition in Gran- ada in 1530 together with Celaín, but received lighter sentences. Thus an important segment of the Illuminist circle from Medina de Rioseco came together and reconstituted itself in Granada. The group that formed around Isabel de la Cruz believed in the notion of universal salvation: that every human being was saved by virtue of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. Thus they believed in neither heaven, nor hell, nor ret- ribution, nor punishment, and minimized the role of law and scripture as opposed to that of the inward light.73 Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, a lay preacher also associated with this group, showed in his Inquisition trial his interest in the connections among the three monotheistic religions, at the same time that he minimized the role of Scripture as a source of truth and lib- eration. It is fascinating how Alcaraz took the passage from the Epistle to

71 Magisterially studied by F. Márquez Villanueva, Investigaciones sobre Juan Álvarez Gato (Madrid, 1960). 72 In all of this section we follow S. Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola. Spiritualità conversa, alumbradismo e Inquisizione (1449–1559) (Florence, 2004), 156 ff. 73 J. Longhurst, “La beata Isabel de la Cruz ante la Inquisición (1517–1546),” Cuadernos de Historia de España, 25–26 (1957), 279–303. 60 chapter two the Romans in which St. Paul claims that the doctrines of Scripture are intended only to preserve hope in the believer, and extended it to include the Qurʾān among those scriptures.74 Juan del Castillo was saying just the same thing: that the scriptures had not been granted as articles of faith, nor as a path to salvation, but rather as rules for how to live in peace. They were a positive law, given to men to guide their living together on earth; they were not meant to show who would be saved nor to create divisions between people. “The law of our Lord God was given so that we could live in peace, not so as to save us by that law; for among the saved have been both those who live by it and those who do not.”75 Therefore, Castillo claimed, God had wished to reveal the truth even to Muhammad, a prophet comparable to Christ in having received the revelation. “Our Lord God had revealed this to Mohammed, for he claimed that everyone would be saved.”76 That is, Castillo attributed to Muhammad the idea that every person could find salvation by following his own religion—a point of view that toppled every division between faiths and doctrines. The institution of the Church, in particular, with its rules and restrictions, became absolutely irrelevant. The Illumi- nists’ characteristic scorn for rules, rituals, and ceremonies, as interpreted by Castillo, was deeply radical and went so far as to invalidate any sign of distinction or belonging. Castillo’s ideas would be reformulated and reaffirmed by Celaín in the Granadan context. Celaín had been a companion of Juan del Castillo and, like him, claimed that “all nations would be saved.” For Celaín, Christ’s sacrifice had served once and for all to save the human race and redeem all of its sins.77 One witness in Celaín’s Inquisition trial reported how the

74 “Exponebat illud dictum Apostoli ad Romanos 15, quaecumque enim scripta sunt ad nostram doctrinam scripta sunt ut per patientiam et consolationem Scripturarum habea- mus, dicebat reus quod haec autoritas intelligenda est de omnibus Scripturis, etiam de Alcorano ipsius Machometi et aliis boniis ac malis Scripturis”: S. Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, op. cit., 150. 75 “La ley de Dios nuestro señor hera puesta ut viverimus in pace y no para salvarnos en ella pues ansí se salvaban los que viven en ella como los que no.” 76 “Dios nuestro señor avía revelado esto a Mahoma pues dezía que todos se salvaban.” 77 “Jesus Christ was offered once for us as a sacrifice, and that sufficed for our redemption; therefore there is no need to say Mass or fast or do good works, for through the one time that God offered himself, all our sins were pardoned” (“Jesu Christo una vez fue ofreçido por nosotros en sacrificio y bastó para nuestra redenpçión y que por esto no ay neçesidad de decir misas ni hazer ayunos ni obras meritorias que por sola la vez que Dios se ofreció nos fueron perdonados todos los pecados”): in S. Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola, op. cit., 135. granada conquered 61 accused, in speaking of the conversion of the Moriscos, had told the following story: “Juan López related a disputation that certain theologians of Granada had held with a Jew. And since they could not convince him with the authority of Holy Scripture nor with reasonable words, they grew angry with the Jew and insulted his honor; then the Jew, deeply offended, said: ‘If your words could not result in my conversion, then the example you have given makes it even less likely’.”78 Celaín also affirmed: “No one should venture to judge Mohammed, but rather should leave him to God.”79 López de Celaín was arrested in 1528; he fled, but was recaptured and returned to Granada where he was burned at a famous auto-da-fé in 1530, one of the first that the new tribunal of the Holy Office held in the city. There is no doubt that some of Granada’s Moriscos must have known of this famous case; its subject’s heterodox ideas must have affected how the Moriscos were evangelized, and how they were incorporated into Catho- lic society. Castillo and Celaín, when they stated that everyone may be saved within his own religion, were surely quoting the following verses of the Qurʾān: “Those who believe, and those who follow [the Jewish scriptures], and the Christians and the Sabians—any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve” (2:62), and “Those who believe, those who are Jews, and the Sabians and the Christians—any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness—on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve” (5:69). Disputers and evangelizers would make great efforts later on to disabuse Muslims of this error, which became known as “each one is saved in his own religion”; it was considered, in Inquisition terms, a “proposition,” and a specifically Islamic one. It would be interesting to trace the history of this belief, which was shared by alumbrados and Muslims at least for a time, before some Morisco positions turned into polemic and confrontation. In any case it bears witness to a religious ferment that was still far from the radical stances that the two sides would eventually take. We need to keep it in mind as we

78 “Juan López contó de una disputa que tuvieron unos señores teólogos de Granada con un judío y como no le pudiesen convertir con autoridades de la sagrada Scriptura ni con buenas razones, enojados con el judío, le deshonraron malamente, y el judío, viéndose afrontado, dixo: ‘Muy menos me convertirá el ejemplo que me avéis dado que vuestras palabras’.” 79 “Nadie debe juzgar de Mahoma a donde está sino dexarlo a Dios.” 62 chapter two weigh a text as complex as that of the Sacromonte Lead Books, which arose in a Morisco milieu in the second half of the sixteenth century. Muslims had their own notion of “illumination,” formulated around the tradition of nūr Muḥammad (the light of the Prophet) that is so important in Sufism. While we do not wish here to take up the question of possible influence, we do wonder whether the Moriscos felt any recognition of, even empathy or affinity with, Illuminist ideas. We are unable to answer this question (in part, as we have said, because the Inquisition framed these issues in terms of its own heresiology, thus obscuring and silencing many of them), but we shall return to it at several points in this book.

Granada and its Moriscos around 1580

As we stated in the Introduction, we proceed from the assumption that the Morisco milieu both produced and nourished the falsification of the Sacromonte Lead Books. This starting point may cause confusion, since we are speaking of a period in which, at least in theory, Granada no longer had a Morisco population. That fact is precisely what makes the appearance of the Lead Books in the waning years of the sixteenth century so surprising. In principle, by the 1580s when the events explored in this book took place, the Moriscos had been expelled from the Kingdom of Granada, deported, and scattered throughout Castile in 1571 after the defeat they had suffered in the War of the Alpujarras (1568–1570). The true picture is more complex: a considerable number of Moriscos either escaped expulsion—for reasons we will discuss in the next chapter—or returned to the kingdom in the following years, so that by 1580 its Morisco inhabitants numbered around 10,000.80

80 B. Vincent, “Los moriscos en el reino de Granada después de la expulsión de 1570,” in Andalucía en la Edad Moderna: economía y sociedad (Granada, 1985), 267–286, esp. 269; and A. Herrera Aguilar, “La población morisca granadina a partir de 1570,” in Actas del I Congreso de Historia de Andalucía (diciembre de 1976), Andalucía Moderna, II (Cordova, 1978), 101–107. According to Deza’s letter to the king in March 1572, some town councillors (seises) and masters of guilds had remained: “there are some who, because they are persons of quality and for other reasons, were never listed or included in the published proclamations [. . .] and it seems that they deserve to remain in this kingdom with their property, at Your Majesty’s pleasure” (“Hai algunos que por qualidad de sus personas y por otros respectos nunca fueron alistados ni comprendidos en los bandos que se han publicado [. . .] y parece que merecen que Vuestra Majestad sea servido de que queden en este reino con sus haciendas”), and he sends a report with a list of these wellborn persons who ought to remain. AGS, Cámara de Castilla, leg. 2172. granada conquered 63

Nonetheless the specter of expulsion continued to threaten, and not only for the Granadans: on September 21, 1582, in Lisbon, the Junta of the Council of State discussed for the first time the possibility of expelling all Moriscos from Spain.81 The idea was revived on several occasions in the following years, and if it was not carried out at the time the likely reason was the devastation that had befallen the Kingdom of Granada after the war and consequent banishment of its Moriscos in 1571. The repopulation council ( Junta de Población) that was held in Granada on February 17, 1582, sent to the king asking what to do with the Moriscos who were continually returning to the kingdom, stating: “all the Moriscos are uneasy, and suspicious that we want to do something with them.”82 In 1584 a “re-expulsion” decree resulted in the exiling of some 3,500,83 and finally, in 1610, about 11,000 Moriscos were expelled from the Kingdom of Granada.84 The Morisco problem in Granada, therefore, was far from concluded; rather, the decade of the 1580s saw the adoption of many decisions and measures, in particular ones that restricted the privileges of noble families of Moorish origin,85 events to which we will now turn. We shall argue that it was precisely that restriction of the importance and status of the noble houses of Granada, their loss of honors and of honor, that explains, at least in part, the falsifications; this argument will be developed and defended in the following chapters. It is also clear that the Morisco community of Granada was in tatters, and that the Alpujarras War had brought about the true and definitive Christian conquest of the kingdom in a form very different from the one that had taken place at the end of the fifteenth century. We shall make the impact of the rebellion on different individuals and groups—even beyond the Moriscos’ expulsion—the object of our upcoming analysis.

81 M. Danvila y Collado, La expulsión de los moriscos españoles (Madrid, 1889), 199– 203, and P. Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos españoles y su expulsión, I (Valencia, 1901), 300–301. 82 “Todos los moriscos andan sospechosos y recatados de que se quiere hazer algo con ellos”: P. Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos españoles, op. cit., I, 591. 83 H. Lapeyre, Géographie de l’Espagne morisque (Paris, 1959), 127–129. 84 Ibid., 154–155. 85 B. Vincent, “Histoire d’une déchéance: la famille des Fez Muley à Grenade au XVIème siècle,” Cahiers du CRIAR, 21 (2002), 69–79.

chapter three

the noble families

Núñez Muley, in the Memorial that we cited so often in the previous chap‑ ter, cared not only about defending the Arabic language and a series of cultural practices, but also with other issues connected with language, such as onomastics and the preservation of noble lineages. He was deeply concerned with the latter, for as he asks in a scandalized tone, “Must [the Moriscos] be all alike?” He continues, “The ancient surnames that we bear are needed for people to recognize one another, for without them, persons and lineages would be lost. What good would it do to lose the memory of these? For in all truth, they increase the glory and exaltedness of the Catholic Monarchs who conquered this kingdom. Such was the intention and will of their Highnesses and of the Emperor, may he rest in peace; this is why the rich palaces of the Alhambra, and lesser ones like them, still stand just as they were under the Moorish kings, so that they may forever display the Monarchs’ power, and as a remembrance and trophy of the conquerors.”1 Here we have a defense of memory and of past glories that become a legitimate form of pride and honor, both for the Moors’ descen‑ dants and for the conquerors, who will adopt them as their own: the glory of the vanquished increases the glory of the victor. It is a defense above all of the nobles of the former Kingdom of Granada, whose history and continued existence should be preserved in the present. What good would it do, whom would it serve, to lose the memory of them? We will begin here by examining the families of the Morisco elite, those to whom some historians apply the unfortunate term “collaborationists”: they were integrated into Christian society and shared power and wealth with their Christian counterparts. By no means did they form a homoge‑ neous group. Since well before the Christian conquest, there had been

1 “[H]an de ser todos iguales? [. . .] Los sobrenombres antiguos que tenemos son para que se conozcan las gentes, que de otra manera han de perderse las personas y los linajes. ¿De qué sirve que se pierdan las memorias? Que, bien considerado, aumentan la gloria y ensalzamiento de los Católicos Reyes que conquistaron este reino. Esta intención y vo‑ luntad fue la de sus altezas y la del Emperador, que está en gloria; para éstos se sustentan los ricos alcázares de la Alhambra y otros menores en la mesma forma que estaban en tiempos de los reyes moros, porque siempre manifestasen su poder y por memoria y trofeo de los conquistadores”: Memorial, in M. García-Arenal, Los moriscos, op. cit., 54. 66 chapter three profound divisions among the various Nasrid noble families that extended into disputes about what their nobility implied for wielding political power; these fissures continued under Christian rule, as we shall see in future chapters. But at present we seek to establish, in studying these great families, their possible relationship to, or even patronage of, the Sacromonte hoaxes. Here and in what follows we will try to understand what were the values, the “ethos,” that motivated the different sectors of Morisco society; on what they based their feelings of identity and self- esteem; and what gave them a sense of worthiness and pride.

Old Christians of Moorish Origin

An important group of Moriscos had escaped the expulsion of 1571 legally, by virtue of their social status and privileges; these, according to ancient prerogatives, granted them the name of Old Christians. In Granada, the descendants of Moors who had converted to Christianity before the city’s conquest were considered Old Christians, but those who had done so between the conquest and the decrees of forced conversion were not. This distinction was established by an ordinance issued in 1526.2 Old Christians of Moorish origin included a significant number of the families that had joined the Christian side immediately after the conquest: nobles of the former Nasrid aristocracy, beneficiaries of economic concessions by the Crown and of fiscal exemptions that placed them at the summit of Granada’s social pyramid. In their capacity as royal administrators they played a crucial role in integrating the Kingdom of Granada into the Crown of Castile. Their problems had begun prior to the war of 1568–1570; they had suffered from the state of tension that prevailed between, on the one hand, the Christian nobility and its dependent soldiers and military men, and on the other, the legislators and bureaucrats of the civil admin‑ istration represented by the Audiencia and its president, Pedro de Deza. This tension was resolved, to the detriment of the Moriscos, by the defeat of the former faction and, in particular, by the exclusion of the Mendoza family from city government.3 But it was the catastrophic Alpujarras War that brought these contrasting personal choices into high relief, at the same time that it put an end to any chance of coexistence between Old

2 J. Caro Baroja, Los moriscos del Reino de Granada, 2nd ed. (Madrid, 1976), 207. 3 Ibid., 149 ff. the noble families 67

Christians and Moriscos in Granada. Even worse, the war shattered the latter group into fragments. It is true that most of the Muslim nobles emigrated to North Africa when the city was conquered, but many remained. Wealthy Moriscos, when the farda tax was imposed, sought to remove their names from the rolls just as the Christian hidalgos did; thus they could at the same time save money and rise in status. The farda del mar was a tax devoted to maintaining and equipping Granada’s coastal defenses, and it fell only on the Moriscos. Some of the highborn were exempt, but they were required to take part in collecting and distributing the tax; that duty acknowledged their aristocratic status and emphasized their identity. As a general rule every honor and office reserved to members of the Moorish nobility had an ambivalent quality, and marked them as a group apart.4 Exemption from service, and a certain degree of hidalguía, could be obtained in two ways: first, by demonstrating that one had been baptized voluntarily before the final conquest of the kingdom (a recognition of Old Christian standing, as we have seen); or second, by proving that one was a noble of Moorish origin, that is, a member of a family descended from the ancient Muslim aristocracy and the Nasrid royal house. The latter, if accompanied by service to the Crown, gave one the status of hidalgo.5 Naturally, the need for documentation to obtain hidalguía produced a whole series of fraudulent lineages, backed up by origins, service records, royal grants, and hoary family trees. Petitions for hidalgo status and exemption from taxes were very numerous in the 1570s6 and continued

4 B. Vincent, “Las élites moriscas granadinas,” in El río morisco, op. cit., 193. 5 E. Soria Mesa, “De la conquista a la asimilación. La integración de la aristocracia nazarí en la oligarquía granadina. Siglos XV–XVII,” Áreas, 14 (1992), 51–64; and J. Castillo Fernández, “Luis Enríquez Xoaida, el primo hermano morisco del Rey Católico (análisis de un caso de falsificación histórica e integración social),” Sharq al-Andalus, 12 (1995), 235–253, esp. 240. 6 They had begun from the moment of the mass conversions: M. Á. Ladero Quesada, Granada después de la conquista. Repobladores y mudéjares (Granada, 1988), 505 ff.: “Royal grants given to New Christians to compensate for their conversion and avoid the eco‑ nomic repercussions that it may cause them (1500 and 1501)” (“Mercedes reales concedidas a nuevos cristianos para recompensar su conversión y evitar los perjuicios económicos que pudiera causarles”). In 1573, seventy Morisco families from Granada had brought suit to prove their Christian origins. AGS, Cámara de Castilla, legs. 2176 and 2178; see B. Vincent, “Los moriscos que permanecieron en el Reino de Granada después de la expulsión de 1570,” in Andalucía en la Edad Moderna. Economía y sociedad (Granada, 1985), 267–286, esp. 269. 68 chapter three into the early seventeenth century;7 with the expulsion of 1610 they pro‑ liferated once again.8 As Javier Castillo sagely observes, a link can be seen here between lineages and the Lead Books; fabricating documents and false proofs requires “an imaginary refashioning of the family’s history, resulting in a curious syncretism between the two cultures; the practice was known in the religious sphere, its supreme example being the falsifi‑ cation of the Sacromonte Lead Books.”9 In both cases it was a matter of recreating or inventing a past so as to eliminate—or, if the facts proved too stubborn, to legitimate—the period of Muslim domination. We will return to this point later on. In any case there were families that managed to erase their Morisco origins entirely.10 Morisco nobles received generous payments and privileges in exchange for their cooperation with Christian authorities (particularly the Captain General and the corregidor or royal magistrate): they collected taxes, organized services, and took on some of the tasks of city administration. Some of them enjoyed a high standard of living. They belonged to fami‑ lies named Granada Venegas, Fez, Muley, Zegrí, López Zaibona, León, Córdoba, Palacios, Benajara, Avís, Belvís, Dordux, Reina, Hermes, and Chapiz—all of them well known, and all the object of important recent research.11 Aside from these aristocratic families there were wealthy and famous mercantile clans; some of these took part in the governance of cities and preserved ties with the rural oligarchs.12

7 J. Castillo Fernández, “‘Hidalgos moriscos’: ficción histórica y realidad social. El ejem‑ plo del linaje Enríquez Meclín en la tierra de Baza (siglos XV–XVIII),” in Mélanges Louis Cardaillac, I (Zaghouan, 1995), 161–180. 8 See the complaints of the officials in charge of organizing the expulsion from Granada, faced with proofs of hidalguía presented to them from all sides. AGS, Estado, leg. 245. 9 “[La] reelaboración imaginaria de la historia del linaje, obteniendo así un curioso sincretismo entre ambas culturas; algo ya conocido en ámbitos como el religioso, cuyo máximo exponente fue la falsificación de los Libros Plúmbeos del Sacromonte”: J. Castillo Fernández, “Luis Enríquez Xoaida,” op. cit., 244. 10 E. Soria Mesa, “La asimilación de la élite morisca en la Granada cristiana, el ejemplo de la familia Hermes,” in Mélanges Louis Cardaillac, II (Zaghouan, 1995), 649–658. 11 M. Barrios Aguilera, Granada morisca, la convivencia negada. Historia y textos (Gra‑ nada, 2002), 137. In addition to works already cited by J. Castillo and E. Soria, see L. P. Harvey, “Yuse Banegas: un moro noble en Granada bajo los Reyes Católicos,” Al-Andalus, 21 (1995), 297–302; A. García Pedraza, “La asimilación del morisco Don Gonzalo Fernández el Zegrí,” op. cit.; A. Galán Sánchez, “Poder cristiano y colaboracionismo mudéjar en el Reino de Granada (1485–1501),” Estudios sobre Málaga y el Reino de Granada en el V centenario de la conquista, op. cit., 271–289; and M. J. Rubiera, “La familia morisca de los Muley-Fez, prínci‑ pes meriníes e infantes de Granada,” Sharq al-Andalus, 13 (1996), 159–168. 12 As an example see E. Soria Mesa, “La asimilación de la élite morisca,” op. cit. the noble families 69

Conversion

Let us now step back and return to some of those aristocratic Moriscos, members of the Nasrid nobility, who converted to Christianity before the city of Granada was taken, usually upon negotiating the surrender of a fortified town. Their decision to convert and to change sides was not a novelty in the late fifteenth century. The Kingdom of Granada had existed for two hundred years, and its frontier created a special situation within the Iberian Peninsula; it was very common for members of the elite—who hoped to continue to belong to it in case the frontier shifted or changed hands—to make a religious conversion. On both sides it was religion what defined the elites, but they shared a series of aristocratic codes and ideals. The conversion of individual nobles was a constant process during the fifteenth century, and gave rise to such well-known phenomena as the Moorish guard of Kings John II and Henry IV of Castile.13 This was a sort of praetorian guard of Muslim knights, most of them from families that opposed the Granadan king of the moment, who would arrive at the royal encampment asking to serve the king of Castile; they expected either to return to Granada if its political situation changed, or to remain and become Christians. Others were frontier lords who offered to surrender a fortification and convert in return for certain privileges. There were also cases of families exiled from Morocco by political circumstances, so that we find various Benimerines (Banū Marīn) among the royal guard. But most of them were men who had simply changed sides; they begin to appear in King John II’s rolls by 1409. The phenomenon was not exclusive to Castile: the Crown of Aragon had its own guard of Muslim genets, while that of Granada was served by elches, Castilian knights who had converted to Islam and entered the service of its king. This characteristic trait of frontier life shows us that, on either side, political divisions counted for more than religious ones, and that political loyalties and alliances did not necessarily go hand in hand with religious belief. That belief did condition, absolutely, membership in the elite; but aristocrats on both sides shared values and behaviors that were easily transferred across the frontier. Within this fifteenth-century context, a typical case was the conversion of Sīdī Yaḥyā al-Najjār, leader of Baza, Almería, and Guadix, and a cousin

13 A. Echevarría, Caballeros de la frontera. La guardia morisca de los Reyes de Castilla (1410–1467) (Madrid, 2006). 70 chapter three of El Zagal. He was the son of Prince Abenzelín, an opponent of “the Little King” (el Rey Chico). He surrendered Baza, where he had been governor, after a five-month siege in 1489. Those five months of resistance in an encircled town must have seemed a long and desperate period to its inhab‑ itants, and gave rise to serious reflection.14 From this date of Sīdī Yaḥyā’s conversion onward, all his family entered the service of the Christian kings: Sīdī Yaḥyā himself, who on converting took the name of Pedro de Granada Venegas; his son Alfonso, veinticuatro of Granada (an important administrative post, one of the twenty-four members of the city council) and its chief interpreter; and his grandson Alfonso, another veinticuatro. As governors and residents of the Generalife, all were knights of the Order of Santiago, a religious-military order that would later distinguish itself by demanding proofs of “purity of blood” from its members. They also belonged to the Order of Calatrava, another of the main religious-military orders, for which they provided detailed genealogical information.15 Pedro de Granada Venegas took part in conquering the city of Granada, and it seems that he personally converted the al-Ṭayyibīn mosque into the church known as San Juan de los Reyes. In the months that followed the city’s defeat, the Christian conquerors made every effort to force the upper classes to leave the kingdom and cross over to Barbary. Those who remained had not all converted prior to the conquest; therefore the Muslims notables who had stayed in the city were the object of special pressures when the task of evangelizing and catechizing the Moriscos began. The conversion and baptism of these individuals could serve as an example and exert great influence; the same had occurred with prominent Jews in the years preceding the edict of their conversion or expulsion in 1492. These persons, termed “principals” in contemporary documents, were, moreover, instructed and catechized more carefully than the public at large. They were also taught both spoken and written Spanish at greater

14 The king accepted him as a vassal, together with his sons and nephews, “so that you may continue to serve God and me in the remainder of the conquest; in this way you will belong more closely to us. And so that your men at arms will not abandon you and go over to our enemies, to prevent this, since you wish to receive holy Baptism, you shall do so secretly in my chamber, so that the Moors will not know of it until the surrender of Guadix is accomplished” (“por más servís a Dios y a mí en lo restante de la conquista que desta manera seréis más parte y porque vuestra gente de guerra no os deje y se pase con nuestros enemigos y para remedio desto queriendo bos recevir el santo Baptismo, lo resceviréis en mi cámara secretamente de manera que no lo sepan los moros hasta estar hecha la entrega de Guadix”): RAH, Salazar y Castro, B-86 9, fol. 28. 15 J. Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, op. cit., 102, and RAH, Salazar y Castro, D-49. the noble families 71 depth, and were recruited for the task of catechizing other Moriscos. Such was the case of Muḥammad El Zegrí, taken prisoner by Cisneros, who pressed him hard to convert.16 El Zegrí was “a prominent man, endowed with good understanding in moral affairs, though at the same time arro‑ gant and proud”;17 his stern opposition to Morisco conversions led Cisne‑ ros to imprison him.18 El Zegrí put up a fierce resistance, but in the end he capitulated and became a Christian with the name of Gonzalo Fernández el Zegrí. In later life he was an exemplary Catholic, as is attested in his will: he records that he was present, and acted as interpreter, in Cisneros’s conversion campaigns.19 A related case is that of the alamín (city inspec‑ tor) and alfaquí Yūsuf el Mudéjar, who converted with the name of Pedro González de Mendoza; the monarchs rewarded him with a gener‑ ous annual income and every possible exemption and privilege. Gonzalo Fernández el Zegrí said that the reason for his unusually high compensa‑ tion was “that the said Pero Fernández [sic] was somewhat reluctant to convert [. . .] so the Catholic Monarchs granted him that favor and privi‑ lege, also for the many services he had rendered to them and because he was in good standing and a principal figure among the Moors.”20 There are many other almost-contemporaneous instances of conversions like those of Gonzalo el Zegrí or Pedro González de Mendoza, examples of notable Moors who could, as such, persuade many others to convert. A parallel case is that of the Jew Abraham Senior in 1492,21 the history of whose “conversion” contains highly significant elements. He was an advi‑ sor to the Catholic Monarchs and had, in fact, played a significant role in arranging their marriage. Much pressure had been put on him to convert,

16 J. Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, op. cit., 117–118. Mármol Carvajal asserts that with El Zegrí, “Fray Francisco Jiménez [de Cisneros], setting aside all human feeling, strove to bring him by force under God’s yoke” (“don Fray Francisco Jiménez dejada a parte toda humanidad, trabajó de traerle por fuerza al yugo de Dios”). 17 “Hombre principal y dotado de buen entendimiento cuanto a las cosas morales, aunque por otra parte arrogante y soberbio.” 18 L. del Mármol, Historia, op. cit., Book I, Chap. 24. 19 Helping to “speak with and admonish the newly converted inhabitants of this city and its territory and Guadix [. . .] drawing them to the knowledge of our holy Catholic faith” (“platicar e monestar a los vezinos nuevamente convertidos de esta çibdad e su tierra e Guadix [. . .] en atraellos en conocimiento de nuestra santa fe catolica”). See A. García Pedraza, “La asimilación del morisco Don Gonzalo Fernández el Zegrí,” op. cit. 20 “Porque el dicho Pero Fernández estava algo reasio a convertirse [. . .] los Católicos Reyes le hisieron la dicha merced e le dieron el dicho previlegio e por otros servicios muchos que les avía fecho e porque era de buena parte e prençipal persona entre los moros”: quoted by A. Galán Sánchez, “Fuqahā’ y musulmanes vencidos,” op. cit., 356–357. 21 S. Gilman, The Spain of Fernando de Rojas, op. cit., 190. 72 chapter three and his baptismal ceremony would be an important one; the Monarchs themselves would be his godparents. On the appointed day he was found praying in the synagogue, and it was feared that he had changed his mind and that the occasion for an exemplary triumph of Catholicism would be lost. Nonetheless, on being questioned, Abraham Senior explained that until the moment of baptism he would not abandon his religious duties as a Jew, for he did not wish to live a single day of his life “outside the law.” Not many converts would have shown the lucidity and understand‑ ing of their new situation that Senior displayed, but several members of the Granadan noble families probably shared such feelings. A case in point was that of El Zegrí, who, like the Granada Venegas fam‑ ily, was a knight of the Order of Santiago and a veinticuatro of the city. He claimed royal descent but not, like the Granada Venegases, from the Nas‑ rids but rather from the ruling dynasty of Morocco—his son Francisco el Zegrí asserted it in his petition to enter the Order of Calatrava. Francisco had taken part in the attack on the Moroccan promontory of Vélez de la Gomera and had been imprisoned in Africa by the king of Morocco, his cousin, “who, acknowledging their kinship, wished to marry him to the only heiress of those kingdoms, and that he return to the Moorish sect and abandon the law of Christ. And because he would not accept they took him to the torture chamber three times [. . .] from whence they would return him only to praise and flatter him to see if they could submit him to their command. But he was so constant in our holy Catholic faith that he would rather be a martyr and a Christian slave than one of the greatest kings of Africa, in a kingdom that had belonged to his ancestors.”22 It is a remarkable story, undoubtedly embellished, that draws on the themes of martyrdom—one of the great motifs of the Alpujarras War—, the tempta‑ tion of kingship, and loyalty to one’s sovereign and one’s faith.23 Nor does it lack the theme of erotic temptation, or at least of the chance to make a noble marriage with no less than the heiress to the throne. It is strik‑ ing how often these petitions to enter the military orders reproduce the literary motifs found in, for example, the work of Ginés Pérez de Hita and local histories of different cities of the Kingdom of Granada; all of these

22 “Conociéndole por deudo le quiso casar con su única heredera de aquellos reinos y que se volviese a la secta de los moros y dexasse la ley de Christo y por no querer aceptar lo sacaron a martirizar tres vezes [. . .] de donde le bolvían para halagalle y regalalle a ver si lo podían reduzir a su dictamen, en que estuvo tan constante en Nuestra Santa Fe Católica que deseó sumamente ser mártir y esclavo cristiano que uno de los mayores Reyes de África, Reino que había sido de sus abuelos.” 23 RAH, Salazar y Castro, D-49, fol. 212. the noble families 73 blended historiography with fiction, using the literary devices of the libros de caballerías or novels of chivalry.24 In any event, Francisco’s story and those of many others make us won‑ der about the limits of conversion, even when it was voluntary. One’s reli‑ gion, or rather as it was called at the time one’s “law,” penetrated every aspect of one’s daily life, and it took time to acculturate to the change. Conversion entailed an alteration in both “law and doctrine,” of which the first, the law, was the most immediate, necessary, and visible. Even if one’s acceptance of Christianity were unwilling, forced by cir‑ cumstances, or even cause for resentment, that fact need not keep the convert from assimilating a good portion of the practices, values, and cus‑ toms of Spanish Catholics. The outward performance of Catholicism by the Zegrí and Granada Venegas families was always impeccable. It is their interior life that remains inscrutable to us, because the few bits of evi‑ dence that reveal it are hard to interpret. For example, when Núñez Muley (again, in his inexhaustible Memorial) says that “the Mohammedan sect requires solitude and intimacy,” and later that “the Moorish ceremony or rite always required cleanliness and solitude,”25 are we wrong to hear a tone that approves of that solitude and intimacy? Are we wrong to think that these phrases recall so many followers of Erasmian or Lutheran doc‑ trines, who maintained that religion lives inside of man and dwells in each person’s solitude? These were the inclinations of the alumbrados whom we saw in the previous chapter. Nonetheless, these direct and explicit instances were not frequent; we have no way of knowing what intimate thoughts these “principal” Moriscos had about their own conversion, how they saw their options, or what were their feelings about the choice they had decided to make. Their performance of ritual was scrupulous and public, at times even ostenta‑ tious. Their conflict with Christian society was never expressed in reli‑ gious terms, but rather, as we shall see, in the realm of their social status, prestige, honor, respect, and reputation. This question of true, as opposed to apparent, conversion, and what it meant for the converts’ relations with their own communities, will accompany us in future chapters.

24 S. Carrasco Urgoiti, El moro de Granada en la literatura (Madrid, 1956), 78. See also the ed. in the series Archivum (Granada, 1996), with an introduction by J. Martínez Ruiz. 25 “Que la seta de Mahoma soledad requiere y recogimiento”; “la cerimonia o rito de moro requiere limpieza y soledad”; see M. García-Arenal, Los moriscos, op. cit., 53. 74 chapter three

Integration

We will now turn from the limits of conversion to the noble families of Granada and their uneasy integration into the new Christian society of Granada. Members of these families fought in the Comunidades, the upris‑ ing in the early 1520s of Castilian cities against the power of the Emperor, and they did so on Charles V’s side. They also took part in attempted or successful conquests of North African cities like Oran, Tunis, and Algiers, again in allegiance to the Emperor. Military prowess and loyalty to the king were clearly part of these knights’ ethos. On the other hand, some aristocratic Moriscos had served since 1502 as intermediaries between the Christian authorities and the Morisco masses, and some had become spokesmen for the latter’s grievances. In 1526, for example, when Charles V was in Granada, three noble Moors who were city councillors, Don Fernando Venegas, Don Miguel de Aragón, and Don Diego López Benajara, petitioned him on behalf of the Moriscos of the Kingdom. These subjects asked for his protection against the assaults being made on them by judges, sheriffs, and other officials.26 And we have already spoken about how Don Francisco Núñez Muley, with his Memorial of 1567, protested against the decree by Charles V that was to light the fuse in the Alpujarras. Núñez Muley and Granada Venegas require special attention, which we will give them in the next section. But first we must stress that the integration of many of these families into Christian society was problematic. If we look at two indica‑ tors of integration—mixed marriages, and the location of family homes within the city—we shall find that the picture of integration and “collabo‑ rationism” with Christian authority varies a great deal from one clan to another. Mixed marriages were certainly not the norm among these privileged families. Most of them chose to conjoin with other families of the Morisco elite, and the total number of mixed unions was less than a dozen.27 One of the exceptions was the Granada Venegas clan. This family possessed large tracts of rural land that, with time, became the estate of the lords of Campotéjar,28 and its members allied in matrimony with noble families

26 A. Redondo, Antonio de Guevara (1480?–1545) et l’Espagne de son temps. De la carrière officielle aux oeuvres politico-morales (Geneva, 1976), 265. 27 See the detailed analysis by B. Vincent, “Las élites moriscas granadinas,” op. cit., 191 ff. 28 E. Soria Mesa, Señores y oligarcas: los señoríos del Reino de Granada en la Edad Moderna (Granada, 1997). the noble families 75 of Castile. Pedro married the granddaughter of the Count of Castro; his son Alonso, who had joined in the assaults on Algiers and Oran, married Doña Juana de Mendoza; and his son, in turn—another Pedro—took as his first wife María Rengifo, daughter of the commander Vázquez Rengifo, governor of the Generalife, who descended from a Genoese family, and as his second María de Mendoza, daughter of Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, who was probably related to the Marquises of Mondéjar, captains-general of the Kingdom of Granada. Therefore the Granada Venegas clan was closely associated with the Generalife and with the Mendoza family. Pedro de Granada had seven children, two sons and five daughters; three daughters entered the convent, and the other two married veinticuatros of Granada: the Genoese Estéfano Lomelino, and Pedro de Hinojosa.29 The second Alonso de Granada y Rengifo represented Granada at the Cortes of 1566, and played an important role in putting down the rebellion. This is the Don Alonso of whom we shall speak more below: son of the sec‑ ond Pedro, and married to Doña María Manrique de Mendoza. After the war, in which he had rendered such important service, he was allowed to continue living in the Generalife with all of his own family members and sixteen other Morisco families who made up his personal household. He was also permitted to maintain up to forty-two Morisco families on his lands in Campotéjar and Jayena.30 Gonzalo el Zegrí married Doña María de Venegas, daughter of Don Pedro Granada Venegas; this alliance strengthened the ties between these noble, assimilated Morisco clans. Gonzalo’s oldest son, Luis Hernández el Zegrí, inherited his father’s estate, which had been granted by royal decree; at this point his integration into the Granadan hierarchy was complete. The sons of El Zegrí, like the Venegases, married Old Christian women of good family.31 During the Alpujarras War, Francisco el Zegrí was a member of Don Juan de Austria’s council and his chief commander in the field. In his petition to join the Order of Calatrava, Don Francisco claimed that to him “may well be attributed the greatest share in the pacification of the kingdom. Don John of Austria removed his hat in his presence, something that he did only for persons of royal blood.”32

29 AGS, Contaduría de Mercedes, leg. 103, 22. 30 E. Soria Mesa, “Don Alonso de Granada Venegas y la rebelión de los moriscos. Corres‑ pondencia y mercedes de Don Juan de Austria,” Chronica Nova, 21 (1993–1994), 547–560. 31 Francisco el Zegrí, Gonzalo’s son, married Inés Dávila; his son, Juan Zegrí Dávila, married Magdalena de Figueroa. 32 “[Se le puede] muy bien atribuir gran parte de la pacificación del reino. El señor don Juan de Austria se quitaba el sombrero en su presencia, cosa que solo hacía con gente de sangre real”: RAH, Salazar y Castro, D-9, fol. 212. 76 chapter three

In most of these families mixed marriages do not begin to occur until the end of the sixteenth century, that is, a century after the conversions, in the lives of the third generation of converts and after the rebellion and expulsion had reduced the size of the Morisco elite. In contrast, the period 1550–1570 is marked by a growing number of matrimonial alliances between aristocratic families and those of Morisco merchants, thus blend‑ ing lineage and wealth. The second indicator of the limits of integration was a family’s place of residence within the city. There was certainly no ghetto in Granada: the Albaicín quarter was largely Morisco, but Old Christians lived there as well. Christian notables lived in a clearly defined group of parishes in the central city, but their Morisco counterparts did not. Only about four families of the Morisco elite lived in a neighborhood with a majority of Old Christians: most of them were in the Albaicín, particularly in the par‑ ish of San Miguel.33 There lived the Granada Venegases, and there Alonso del Castillo both lived and was buried. So on the whole, the great families maintained ties with the wider Morisco population.

Muley Fez and Granada Venegas

The Muley Fez clan were probably Merinid princes,34 belonging to the family of the Banū Marīn, which had been the ruling dynasty in Morocco in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; as such they were contempo‑ raries of the Nasrids of Granada, in whose political and dynastic affairs they had been deeply involved. Fernando de Fez, married to a daughter of the Granadan sultan Muley Ḥassān (1462–1482), must have been a Merinid prince, perhaps having fled Fez during the rebellion of 1465. His laqab or nickname was al-Mutawakkil and he was a son of ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, the Merinid sultan of Fez who was executed as a result of that revolt;35 for this reason, although he was of royal blood, he could not emigrate to Morocco with his wife. To this same family belonged Fernando de

33 B. Vincent, “Las élites moriscas granadinas,” op. cit., 192–193. 34 As M. J. Rubiera convincingly proposes in “La familia morisca de los Muley-Fez, príncipes meriníes e infantes de Granada,” Sharq al-Andalus, 13 (1996), 159–167. See also B. Vincent, “L’histoire d’une déchéance: la famille des Fez Muley à Grenade au XVIème siècle,” in N. Harwich (ed.), Hommage à Alain Milhou. Les Cahiers du CRIAR, 21 (2002), vol. I, 69–79. 35 M. García-Arenal, “The Revolution of Fes in 869/1465 and the Death of Sultan Abd al-Haqq al-Marini,” Bulletin of the School of African and Oriental Studies, 41 (1978), 48–76. the noble families 77

Fez Muley, who represented the Moriscos in the “general negotiation”— the name given to the New Christians’ attempt in 1559 to be allowed to pay a tribute in exchange for freedom from pressure by the Holy Office.36 He was unsuccessful, he was expelled from Granada and his goods were confiscated, but he petitioned to return and have his property restored, making among other claims that of royal blood. Fernando de Fez Muley was among the Moriscos who remained in Granada after the 1570 expulsion,37 although other members of his family were expelled and led an attempted rebellion in Seville in 1580.38 Another Fernando Muley was a veinticuatro of Granada and protégé of the Marquis of Mondéjar; he was “one of the Morisco gentlemen and persons of quality who were held to be servants of His Majesty”39 and who were revered by the Moriscos. Juan de Arguellada, the chronicler of the Alpujarras War, named among the affronts that led the Moriscos to rebel that “a sheriff confiscated a dagger from Don Fernando de Muley, a Morisco and venticuatro of Granada; all the Moors felt this insult deeply because they considered him their leader and lord, recalling that he was nobly born.”40 From this family came Francisco Núñez Muley who, in great old age, presented the Audiencia in Granada with a moving Memorial that chal‑ lenged the Decree of 1567 and defended, in particular, the use of the Arabic language. He was the same person whom we saw in the previous chapter in a confrontation with El Zegrí—one of many signs that the Morisco oli‑ garchs did not always share the same positions and allegiances. An even better indication lies in the choices Moriscos made at Christmas 1568, the start of the uprising that forced all of these families into agonizing dilemmas. As in every civil war, some people had to join factions with whose aims they did not identify in the least. Others felt no allegiance to the Christian side and may have been tempted to rebel, but abstained doubtless because they felt that the situation was hopeless and victory unobtainable. Nonetheless there were wealthy and important men who

36 C. Álvarez de Morales, “Lorenzo el Chapiz y el ‘Negocio General’ de 1559,” Qurtuba, 1 (1996), 11–38. 37 B. Vincent, “Los moriscos que permanecieron en el Reino de Granada,” op. cit. 38 B. Vincent, “Les rumeurs de Séville,” in Vivir el Siglo de Oro. Poder, cultura e historia en la época moderna (Salamanca, 2002), 165–177. 39 “Uno de los caballeros moriscos y personas de calidad que tenían por servidores de su majestad”: L. del Mármol, Historia del rebelión, op. cit., Book IV, Chap. 7, 188. 40 “A don Fernando Muley, morisco y veinticuatro de Granada, le quitó un alguacil una daga, lo qual avían todos los moros sentido en sumo grado porque lo tenían por cabeça y señor, atento que descendía de alta prosapia”: according to the transcription by M. Barrios, La suerte de los vencidos, op. cit., 111. 78 chapter three were drawn to join the rebellion and to drag with them all their clients and friends, as we shall see. Here we must mention again another noble Morisco, Don Alonso de Granada Venegas y Rengifo, a knight of the Order of Santiago, veinticuatro of Granada, and governor of the Generalife. In 1568 Don Alonso was in Madrid, trying to negotiate gentler treatment of the Moriscos and a soft‑ ening of the effects of the Decree of 1567, the same aims that Núñez Muley was pursuing with his Memorial. After his mission failed, he returned to Granada just as the uprising was beginning. During the war Don Alonso acted as an intermediary and agent for the Castilians to try to make peace with the rebels; he was sent to meet in person the rebel chief known as Aben Aboo, and also to Court to seek pardons for any Moriscos who sur‑ rendered. He found the minds of the ministers very ill-disposed against him. Don Alonso asked that the king go to Granada in person, to ensure a definitive victory; the ministers took advantage of this request to replace Mondéjar—who had come into conflict with Deza, the president of the Audiencia of Granada—with Don John of Austria. Once Mondéjar was out of the picture—in the Alhambra, he was left isolated from any politi‑ cal or military action—the Moriscos lost all hope of being treated with mercy, and the war grew more savage.41 Both the Granada Venegas and the Núñez Muley families, therefore, belonged in some degree to the circle of Morisco nobles connected with the Mondéjars; some of these had accompanied the second Marquis to Castile to fight with the Emperor against the Comuneros.42 Further, the ties of friendship that united the two Moorish families were confirmed by Fernando Muley de Fez’s testimony of 1596 in the case with which the Granada Venegases sought to establish their genealogy.43 This docu‑ ment stated among other things that both Don Luis Muley de Fez and the infante Don Fernando de Fez frequented the home of Alonso de Granada. Don Alonso, like Don Fernando de Muley, enjoyed extraordinary esteem among the Moors. In the trial of a Morisco war captive the prisoner, sub‑ jected to questioning to see if he was a Christian, gave this peculiar defini‑ tion of the Trinity: “He said that there were three gods: one was the god

41 J. Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, op. cit., 193 ff. 42 The rebellion, also known as the Comunidades (1520–1522), by several cities of North‑ ern Castile (particularly Valladolid and Toledo) against the newly arrived young King Charles V and his government of Flemish courtiers. 43 J. A. García Luján and R. Blázquez Ruiz, “Don Fernando Muley de Fez. Una infor‑ mación genealógica (1596) del linaje Granada Venegas,” in VIII Simposio Internacional de Mudejarismo, II (Teruel, 2002), 733–740. the noble families 79 in the sky, one was Mohammed, and the one on earth was Don Alonso Benegas, and he would die for all of them.”44 Don Alonso was also a personal friend of Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who had retired to the city, having lost the king’s favor through his unfortunate performance in Italy during the war of Siena.45 This same Hurtado de Mendoza, in old age, in disgrace and in retirement in Gran‑ ada, wrote the chronicle called La Guerra de Granada (The Granada War), one of the first accounts of the Alpujarras conflict. It is a text of great ambiguity, although in principle it reflected the “official” history of the war. It is also intentionally obscure, since Don Diego was out of favor and dared do no more than insinuate his opinion of the events; even so, it was not published until well after his death. It recounts how Don Alfonso was approached by some Moriscos from Almería, under their leader El Ramí, who asked him to become their king: from a “fortified place next to Almería, believing that the Morisco residents of the city would take up arms against the Old Christians, they wrote and also sent certain trusted persons to petition, among others, Don Alonso de Venegas, a nobleman of great authority. He took the sealed letter to the members of the city council; having read it, he was first lost in thought and then fell into a faint. When the other councillors revived and rebuked him, he replied: ‘a kingdom is a great temptation’; then he showed them the letter, in which they offered to make him king of Almería. From that moment he lived in pain, but always loyal and active in the king’s service.”46 It is a subtly ironic text, in which the noble Morisco undergoes a harsh experi‑ ence of temptation and resignation that left him permanently “in pain,” that is, in poor health. It is remarkable that Don Alonso is said to have taken the letter, addressed to him and unopened, to be read only when

44 “Dixo que auía tres dioses y que uno era dios del çielo y el otro era Mahoma y en la tierra hera don Alonso Benegas y que por estos avía de morir”: M. Barrios, La suerte de los vencidos, op. cit., 146. 45 E. Spivakovsky, Son of the Alhambra: Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, 1504–1575 (Austin-London, 1970). On marriage ties to the Granada Venegas family see 23–24. 46 “[Desde un] sitio fuerte junto a Almería, creyendo que los moriscos vecinos de la ciudad tomarían las armas contra los cristianos viejos, escribieron y enviaron personas ciertas a solicitar entre otros a don Alonso de Vanegas, hombre noble de gran autoridad, que con la carta cerrada se fue al ayuntamiento de los regidores; y leída, pensando un poco cayó desmayado, mas tornándole los otros regidores y reprendiéndole, respondió: ‘recia tentación es la del reino’ y dióles la carta en que parecía cómo le ofrecían tomarle por rey de Almería. Vivió doliente desde entonces, pero leal y ocupado en el servicio del Rey”: D. Hurtado de Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, ed. B. Blanco-González (Madrid, 1970), 143–144. 80 chapter three he was with the city officials; in those hard times, merely to have received and read such a letter could suggest complicity. But he continued in loyal service to the king, on which his honor depended.

The Happy Former Days of Our Glory

In the spring of 1570 Don John of Austria asked Don Alonso to open nego‑ tiations with Aben Aboo; but these were thwarted, according to Hurtado de Mendoza, because some ministers were jealous of Don Alonso, or perhaps did not trust him.47 Hurtado de Mendoza and Don Alonso were cousins and neighbors, one living in the Alhambra and the other in the Generalife, and they appear to have been on friendly terms. Correspon‑ dence between them has survived, as have letters from Don Alonso to the king and to the Grand Inquisitor proposing conciliatory measures.48 In these letters Don Alonso insisted several times on the distinction between peaceful and rebellious Moriscos, and between those who wished to live like and among Christians and those who did not. We will return often to this argument about distinguishing good from bad Moriscos; many promi‑ nent members of the community used it. It is also a motif in the work of Ginés Pérez de Hita and, to a certain extent, in that of Miguel de Luna. Don Alonso did not take up the defense of the Arabic language, as Núñez Muley had done; rather, he stressed the insults and humiliations. He declared in one letter to the king: “In the Kingdom of Granada the path taken with those people is a very harsh one; I do not refer to repressing their language and dress (this should have been done a long time ago, and no one wishes to see it more than I), but to the ill treatment meted out to them in enforcing the decrees.”49 He had suffered these insults and humil‑

47 “As for the peace, using the license they were given in dealing with the defeated Moriscos and those who came to surrender, [some ministers] raised obstacles and showed themselves jealous of Don Alonso: they sent Moriscos all over Castile, consigned many to the galleys, abused those who had come to surrender, and with little motive bound them over as captives, stripping them of their clothes” (“cuanto a la paz, con licencia en el tratamiento que se hazía a los moriscos reducidos y que venían a reducirse y poniendo algunos impedimentos y mostrando celos de don Alonso Venegas [algunos ministros] enbiavan moriscos a toda Castilla, sacábanlos muchos para las galeras, denostavan los que se iban a rendir y por libianas causas los daban por cautivos, su ropa perdida”): ibid., 174. 48 E. Spivakovsky, “Some Notes on the Relations Between D. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and D. Alonso de Granada Venegas,” Archivum, 14 (1964), 212–232. 49 “El camino que en aquel reino de Granada se toma para con aquella jente es muy áspero, y no digo en quanto annudalles la lengua y ábito, que esto ojala estuviera hecho the noble families 81 iations in his own person. The contemporary chronicler Henríquez de la Jorquera tells of an incident that took place during the Corpus Christi celebrations in Granada on June 16, 1588: And on this day occurred in this city of Granada a case that could have caused a sudden uproar, if the prudence of the president and other impor‑ tant figures had not imposed calm. As is the custom, a royal representative was inspecting the streets (in this case it was the Licenciate Don García de Medrano, a member of His Majesty’s council and magistrate to this Royal Chancellery). On the street of the jail, he saw canopies hanging in front of the dwelling of Don Pedro de Granada y Venegas, on whose sides were the coats of arms and coronets of this royal house. The magistrate ordered that they be taken down, and at this, Don Alonso de Venegas de Granada and all his sons and many gentlemen, clients, and friends were so enraged that they would have killed the magistrate. After officers of the court and other people had pacified them, that very day Don Alonso went to the bishop to complain to His Majesty of this offence against his nobility and his blood, [recalling] the many honors and favors and privileges that he had received from the Catholic Monarchs and the Emperor Charles V, who used to write to the grandfather of this noble gentleman calling him cousin.50 The next year, it was recorded that in the resulting lawsuit “the said Don Alonso was exonerated and the said magistrate condemned,” causing the king to invest him with the Order of Santiago in compensation.51 It is a small but highly significant anecdote: the Old Christians were not pre‑ pared to forget the Moorish families’ origins no matter how noble and días á, que no ay nadie que lo desee más que yo, sino en los malos tratamientos que les asen en los medios de la esecuçión de las premáticas”: ibid., 227. 50 “Y este día sucedió en esta ciudad de Granada un caso que pudiera ocasionar un repentino alboroto, si la prudencia del señor presidente y otras personas de quenta no le apaciguaran. Y fué que andando visitando las calles como es costumbre una persona del real acuerdo, lo fué agora el señor licenciado don García de Medrano, del consejo de Su Magestad y su alcalde de corte esta real cancillería y vido colgados unos doseles de las casas de don Pedro de Granada y Venegas, en la calle de la cárcel, en cuyas colgaduras estaban los escudos y coronas de las armas desta real casa, los quales fuerton mandados descolgar por el señor alcalde, por lo qual se alborotaron don Alonso Venegas de Granada y todos sus hijos y muchos cavalleros, deudos y amigos de suerte que se entendió que mataran al dicho alcalde; y abiéndolos apaciguado los tribunales y otras personas, este día se partió a la corte del obispo don Alonso a quexarse a Su Magestad de aqueste agravio en contra de su nobleça y de su sangre y de sus grandes preheminencias y mercedes y pre‑ vilegios de los Reyes Católicos y del emperador Carlos quinto que le escribía a su abuelo deste noble cavallero, llamándole primo.” 51 F. Henríquez de la Jorquera, Anales de Granada. Descripción del Reino y ciudad de Granada, Crónica de la Reconquista (1482–1492), Sucesos de los años 1588 a 1646, ed. A. Marín Ocete (Granada, 1934); facsimile ed. with preface by P. Gan Giménez (Granada, 1987), 525 and 531. 82 chapter three aristocratic they were, and even if these Moriscos enjoyed royal favor, sheriffs and magistrates could still insult them. On the other hand, the incident shows that nobles of Morisco origin shared the habits and attitudes of Christian aristocrats in every respect: not only pride in their military prowess, as we have seen above, and in their loyalty or proximity to the king (whom some call “cousin”), but also in outward signs: banners, crests, coronets, coats of arms, hangings on their balconies during festivities—everything that made their nobility vis‑ ible and displayed their power in a public way. Aristocratic Morisco fami‑ lies habitually had their coats of arms sculpted above their front doors.52 Some of these nobles not only had elaborate genealogies drawn up, but also, like their Christian counterparts, had their portraits painted. An example is the portrait of Pedro de Granada Venegas, preserved in the Casa de los Tiros in Granada (see Illustration 2); or that of Martín el Partal of Santa Fe, whose picture, as it happens, strangely resembles King Philip II, even though he is distinguished by the scimitar he wears. This portrait appears in an illuminated manuscript that contains an “executive order” declaring the Partal family to be Old Christians, precisely because they had converted before the fall of Granada—in Santa Fe, where the monarchs resided at the time and from which they took their name.53 This order is also mentioned in a suit in 1558 by Francisco and Lorenzo Fernández el Partal, who had been denounced for “wearing and carrying arms” in spite of the decrees that forbade New Christians to do so.54 The case illustrates how wearing and owning arms was a badge of honor and a clear sign of noble birth, a status symbol that aristocratic Moriscos felt as a deprivation if it were denied them. During the Alpujarras War, a Partal (probably from this same family) played an important role as a rebel chieftain and finally fled to Morocco. Don Alonso’s argument that it was these humiliations and offenses that led to rebellion is supported by the case of Fernando de Córdoba y Válor,

52 D. Alonso de Bazán carved his arms in stone above his door: “This coat of arms belongs to Don Alonso Bazán Hacén, descendant of the kings of Granada, 1686” (“Este escudo de armas es de D. Alonso Bazán Hacén, descendiente de los Reyes de Granada. Año 1686”): see V. Sánchez Ramos, “Los moriscos que ganaron la Guerra,” in Mélanges Louis Cardaillac, op. cit., 613–627. 53 R. de Zayas, Los moriscos y el racismo de estado, op. cit., 569. 54 During the Partals’ trial (which they won), they showed that they were the legitimate sons of Antón (son of Martín) el Partal and María Romaymía, a couple legally married by the Church in the parish of San Salvador; the wedding party was held at the home of Gonzalo Fernández el Zegrí. Ibid., 580. the noble families 83 the rebel chief known as Aben Humeya; unlike Don Alonso, he had been unable to resist “the temptation of kingship.”55 A fascinating and telling document emerged from the interrogation of Brianda Pérez, a Morisca from Alcolea in the Alpujarras, aged twenty-three years, who had been the wife (married according to the “law of the Moors”) of Don Fernando de Córdoba y Válor, “whom the Moors had chosen as their King.” The interview focused on where and when her husband was chosen king, what the ceremony was like, and who participated in it.56 Brianda recounted how the selection took place, in a ceremony that she witnessed; it was held at the home of Álvaro Elcaerçi, a rich Morisco who lived in the par‑ ish of San Miguel (the same one in which some of the Granada Venegases and other highborn Moriscos lived). The young Morisca did not know the community members who gathered there, but other witnesses who were questioned, among them Aben Humeya’s father’s black slave, revealed that they were members of the city’s elite and some rich merchants from the Alcaicería, the silk market.57 According to Brianda, the decisive factor in her husband’s decision to accept the conspirators’ offer to become their leader was that Don Fer‑ nando had been dismissed from his post as veinticuatro two days before Christmas in 1568. That night, “as soon as the post of veinticuatro had been sold, officers came on order of the magistrates of the court and took away his money, chain, and necklace, leaving Don Fernando in despair.”58 That was what prompted him to go to Elcaerçi’s house and take part in the ceremony; once again it was outrage and humiliation, and the loss of privilege, that pushed him to the edge. “Then the next day,” Brianda Pérez continued, “Don Fernando took me to the house and garden of Don Pedro Banegas, outside of Granada [. . .] and that day and night they remained in that house [. . .] and then the next day they went to the Alpujarras.”59 Don Pedro Venegas took no part in the uprising, but the relationship must have been close or friendly enough for him to give shelter to the new “king.” After spending that day and night at Don Pedro’s, “they set out for

55 J. Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, op. cit., 197–198. 56 Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 65 (1914), 385–392. 57 B. Vincent, “Las élites moriscas granadinas,” op. cit., 195. 58 “Acabada de hacer la venta de la veinticuatría vino la justicia por mandado de los señores Alcaldes desta Corte y sacaron el dinero, cadena y collar, y el dicho don Fernando quedó como desesperado.” 59 “Luego otro día mañana el dicho don Fernando llevó a ésta que declara a la casa y huerta de don Pedro Banegas, que es fuera de Granada [. . .] y aquel día y noche estuvieron en la dicha casa [. . .] y luego al otro día se fueron a la Alpujarra.” 84 chapter three the Alpujarras, and on the way were overtaken by some Moriscos com‑ ing from Granada, who told him that he should return to the city; but on his replying that there was no point, those Moriscos turned back.”60 When these Moriscos, opposed to the rebellion, caught up with him and begged him to return while there was still time, Don Fernando felt that he now had nothing to lose. In fact the man called Aben Humeya, who was eventually charged with treason and executed by his own followers, died claiming that he was a Christian and that his only goal had been to avenge the insults made to his family and lineage—in particular a false accusation against his father, which had sent him to prison and brought the family to ruin.61 A second rebel leader, Fernando el Zaguer, claimed: “And you must know well how, for almost a hundred years, the Christians have robbed and usurped our glorious deeds and respected triumphs, won by our people in times past.”62 Similarly Hernando el Habaquí, another chief‑ tain of the uprising, wrote in a letter to Pedro de Deza: “As for all those people who say that I erred in renouncing the faith of Jesus Christ, I swear to God that if what was done to me had been done to any gentleman, even if he had been of the purest Old Christian stock, he would not have stayed in the Kingdom of Granada but would have crossed to Turkey and renounced his faith.”63 The defense of one’s aristocratic lineage is clearly an essential factor, as are the recognition and vindication of an honor that was earned by great deeds of the past but should be reflected in privileges granted in the pres‑ ent. On the contrary, it meets only humiliating assaults.

60 “Fueron camino de las Alpujarras e yendo les alcanzaron ciertos moriscos que iban de Granada los cuales les dijeron que se volviese a Granada y él dijo que ya no había para qué y así los dichos moriscos se volvieron.” 61 Hurtado de Mendoza described him as “rich in income, silent, and resentful, his father being a prisoner” (“rico de rentas, callado y ofendido, cuyo padre está preso”): Guerra de Granada, op. cit., 120.; J. Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, op. cit., 198. 62 “[Y] bien sabréis cómo casi hace cien años que los Christianos nos tienen robadas y usurpadas nuestras felices glorias y estimados trofeos en los passados tiempos por los nuestros adquiridos”: see J. Gil Sanjuán, “Estudio preliminar,” in G. Pérez de Hita, La guerra de los moriscos (segunda parte de las Guerras civiles) (Granada, 1998), LVII. 63 “En lo que tienen por allá entendido que yo lo he hecho mal en renegar de la fe de Jesus Christo, juro por Dios que si con cualquier caballero se hubiera hecho lo que conmigo, aunque fuese christiano viejo de todos cuatro costados, no hubiera parado en el reino de Granada sino pasado a Turquía y renegado de su fe”: see B. Vincent, “Les élites morisques grenadines,” in P. Civil (coord.), Siglos dorados. Homenaje a Agustín Redondo, II (Madrid, 2004), 1467–1479. the noble families 85

Recent studies dedicated to the European nobility in the Early Mod‑ ern period have stressed the ever-changing meaning of the concept of honor.64 At the end of the Middle Ages honor was derived from military prowess, lineage, fealty to one’s lord, and the help and protection given to one’s dependents. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it became generally accepted that the Crown was the chief generator of honor, and that therefore what mattered most was dedicated and efficient service to the king—implying that one must have access to or contact with the monarch. We return once more to Núñez Muley, who said: “Note that the following accompanied the Marquis of Mondéjar on the king’s side [. . .] against the Comuneros: Don Hernando de Córdoba el Ungi, Diego López Abenaxar, and Diego López Hacera, with more than four hundred soldiers of our nation.”65 He is not seeking recompense for a service rendered, but recalling that honor accrues to noble Moriscos who have fought in the service of the king. This issue of honor was of the greatest importance, and was decisive in integrating or “recruiting” Moriscos into Spanish society. Several of their Old Christian contemporaries understood this. One was a political writer of Philip IV’s time, the Augustine Friar Pedro de Figueroa, who in the fol‑ lowing passage made a penetrating diagnosis: The recent expulsion of the Moors, planned and carried to its happy conclu‑ sion by the pious Philip III, was just; but if before taking that extreme step the State had admitted them to some of its honors, they would have loved it like its own children—at least adopted ones—and would not have seen it as their wicked stepmother. Perhaps then they would have passed through the doors of honor into the temple of virtue, and have joined the obedient flock of the Catholic Church. Those excluded from honors have become enemies, every one; and it is natural that he who desires honor and does not find it where he lives, being unable to live without it, will create it within the sect that he professes; he will be free to find it by breaking restraints and throw‑ ing off the yoke. What will prevent him, if he has no honor to lose?66

64 K. Thomas, The Ends of Life. Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2009), esp. the chapter “Aristocratic Honour,” 154 ff. 65 “Por cierto, en favor de su Magestad acompañaron al marqués de Mondéjar [. . .] contra los comuneros, Don Hernando de Córdoba el Ungi, Diego López Abenaxar y Diego López Hacera con más de cuatrocientos hombres de guerra de nuestra nación”: Memorial, in M. García-Arenal, Los moriscos, op. cit., 51. 66 “Iusta fue la expulsión última de los agarenos que intentó y consiguió felizmente la piedad del Tercero Felipe; mas si antes de aquella desesperación los admitiera a algunas honras la República, tuviéranla amor como hijos propios, aunque prohijados y no la mira‑ ran como a su enemiga madrastra; y quizá hubieran entrado por las puertas de la honra en el templo de la virtud y por el gremio y obediencia de la Iglesia católica. Tantos son 86 chapter three

The Origen de la Casa de Granada

The Granada Venegas family carried out one of the most complete and extensive genealogical records produced by any Moorish clan, in a work titled Origen de la Casa de Granada (Origin of the House of Granada); it is preserved, in illustrated manuscript form, in the library of the Academia de la Historia in Madrid.67 This work was not content to prove that the Granadas belong to the Nasrid royal line; it further related them to aris‑ tocratic families of Hispania before the Arab conquest, and traced their origins all the way back to the Visigothic kings. A mythology of Gothic origins flourished among Christians in these years, and this family appro‑ priated it to give itself a legitimacy dating to pre-Islamic times. The Origen de la Casa de Granada, like many contemporary genealo‑ gies and local histories, mixes both genuine and false documentation. Among the fraudulent texts is a letter from Prince Alfonso, elected king of Castile by the nobles who rebelled against Henry IV; among the true ones is a series of concessions granted by the Catholic Monarchs. But the most interesting point—even more than the family’s giving itself, with admirable syncretism, a Gothic origin—is that the work presents different members as having been “Christianophiles” or secret Christians during the Islamic period, and having collaborated often with Christian kings in the wars waged during that time. This is likewise one of the most notable fea‑ tures of the work of Ginés Pérez de Hita,68 of which we will speak below; there is a connection between Pérez de Hita’s work and the Origen de la Casa de Granada in addition to their similarities in content. Pérez de Hita wrote a famous book called Guerras civiles de Granada (Civil Wars of Granada) which, together with the chronicles of Mármol Carvajal and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, makes up the classic historio‑ graphic triad about the Alpujarras War. Pérez de Hita’s contribution is a literary one that mixes historical truth with fiction, and that both defends los enemigos, como los exclusos de las honras; y es muy consiguiente que el que la desea y no la halla donde vive, haga honra (por no vivir sin ella) en la seta que professa, que la procure en su libertad, quebrando las coyundas y sacudiendo el yugo. ¿Qué le puede estorbar si no tiene honra que perder?”: P. de Figueroa, Aviso de príncipes (Madrid, 1647), 126–127; quoted in J. Caro Baroja, Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa. Religión, sociedad y carácter in España en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1978), 508. 67 RAH, Colección Salazar y Castro, B–86. E. Soria Mesa, “Una versión genealógica del ansia integradora de la élite morisca: el Origen de la Casa de Granada,” Sharq al-Andalus, 12 (1995), 213–221. 68 Historia de los bandos de los Zegríes y Abencerrages, caballeros moros de Granada, de las civiles guerras que hubo en ella [. . .]; we follow the edition of P. Blanchard-Demouge (Madrid, 1915). the noble families 87 and admires those Moors who acted nobly, loyally, and generously, fol‑ lowing the same chevalric ideals as Christian knights. We are chiefly inter‑ ested here in the first part of the work, which deals with the descendants of noble Moors of the city of Granada. Exploring genealogies in depth, Pérez de Hita links the Moriscos of his time with noble Nasrid clans. He provides a detailed description of the background of several Moorish lin‑ eages that converted when Christians conquered the city, and brings them up to his own time of writing. As Soledad Carrasco Urgoiti noted in her pioneering study,69 Pérez de Hita was trying to defend the hidalgo status of Granadan Morisco families by insisting that most of them converted voluntarily to Christianity and entered the Castilian nobility with equality of rank. He deployed an abundance of stories not only about their conver‑ sions but about their “Christianophile” activities (especially those of the Abencerrajes) in the years before they converted.70 Thus his strategy was identical to the one used by the Granada Venegases. Pérez de Hita suggests that many of the eminent Morisco families of Granada in his time descended from those who cooperated with the Catholic Monarchs when the kingdom was conquered. But above all he insists, as Don Alonso de Granada had done, that the Moriscos were not homogeneous: some of them were good, and were disposed to assimilate to Christendom. When the Catholic Monarchs took Granada, the result was the conquest and spiritual annexation of the good Moors and the extermination and expulsion of the bad ones.71 Even in narrating the Alpujarras War he presents Moriscos who are secret Christians but do not dare to reveal it, like El Tuzani and El Habaquí; these were forced to join the rebellion against their will. Pérez de Hita gives detailed examples of Moors and Moriscos who were wholly assimilated. His basic argument is that there can be no true assimilation and integration of the Moriscos into society unless their nobility and military prowess are recognized; he urges that Morisco nobles be granted a status equivalent to the one they had enjoyed before the fall of Granada. There were other narratives that stressed the continuity of genealogies from the period before Islam through the entire history of al-Andalus.

69 El moro de Granada en la literatura, op. cit. 70 “They [the Abencerrajes] were, finally, friends to Christians; we find that they went in person to the dungeons to visit Christian captives and did them good deeds, and also sent them food through their servants” (“Eran finalmente, amigos de Christianos: ellos mismos en persona se halla que yvan a las mazmorras a visitar los Christianos cautivos y les hazían bien, y les embiavan de comer con sus criados”): Historia de los bandos de los Zegríes y Abencerrages, op. cit., I, 551. 71 In the words of S. Carrasco Urgoiti, El moro de Granada, op. cit., 68. 88 chapter three

Pedro Velarde de Ribera, in his treatise on the history of the Sacromonte, wrote: I must confess that it has been very useful to me to have had prolonged contact and communication with many older learned Moriscos of this king‑ dom, since I was a beneficed parish priest from my youth in many of their towns, and I was always curious to learn about their histories, for it is well known how much stock they place in their traditions. And thus I learned about many of their old families, which the Moors themselves took to be among the original colonists of this land; when they [the Arabs] conquered it they remained and lived among them, and with the passage of time, as their descendants communicated with [the Arabs], they came to be Moors themselves. And all this can be proved; moreover there is their reputation for preserving the old names and surnames until today, though in somewhat altered form; and the same may be said of those who descended from Chris‑ tians and those who came from Jews.”72 The work of Velarde Ribera is of the greatest interest, coming from one who knew the Morisco milieu well, who had been a priest in “their towns” (like the Morisco priests of whom we shall speak in the next chapter), and who, moreover, seemed to be well acquainted with a significant center of Granadan cultural life at the time, the literary tertulia (conversation circle) of Don Pedro de Granada Venegas.

The Granada Venegas Literary Tertulia

Don Pedro de Granada Venegas hosted in his home a literary tertulia of considerable breadth;73 he showed a keen interest in the poetry and Baroque literary culture that was produced in the city. Several members of

72 “Tampoco puedo negar que no me aya sido de mucha utilidad el largo trato y comu‑ nicación que tube con muchos moriscos doctos y antiguos deste Reino, aviendo sido cura y beneficiado desde mis primeros principios en muchos lugares dellos, y siempre he tenido curiosidad en inquirir sus antigüedades, pues se sabe la mucha curiosidad que esta gente tiene en sus tradiciones, y así conocí entre ellos muchos linages antiguos que entre los mismos moros eran tenidos por descendientes de los antiguos pobladores desta tierra, que quando la conquistaron se quedaron a vivir entre ellos, y después por el discurso del tiempo y comunicación que con ellos tuvieron sus succesores vinieron a ser moros, que todo esto se prueba y averigua demás de la reputación que tenían en aver conservado hasta oy los nombres y apellidos antiguos, aunque algo corrompidos, así los que descendían de Christianos como los que procedían de Judíos”: P. Velarde de Ribera, Historia eclesiástica del Monte Santo, ciudad y reyno de Granada, dirigida a la Magestad del Rey don Phelipe, nuestro señor, tercero deste nombre, compuesta por el licenciado Pedro Velarde de Ribera, canónigo de la iglesia colegial de Sant Salvador de Granada, BNE, ms. 1583, fols. 24v–25r. 73 See, for example, F. López Estrada (ed.), Luis Barahona de Soto y su época (Lucena, 2001). the noble families 89 the circle seem to have held positions that we could call “Moriscophile,” or at least to have produced works that—like the genealogies we have just described—sought to reconcile an individual’s past history with his present identity. The aim was to gain honor in this life, but also to ensure one’s ancestors’ fame and one’s own after death; this aristocratic ideology was no different from that of the Old Christians. We have seen, in fact, that works like Ginés Pérez de Hita’s tried to send a message of concord, on the assumption that a “good Moor” could become a “good Christian,” and that nobles of both religions could understand one another because they had always shared the same chevalric ideal. Let us take the example of Gonzalo Mateo del Berrío, a Granadan poet of some repute. Agustín de Rojas considered him the inventor of the “Moors and Christians” plays, in which we again find a chevalric milieu and a poetic representation of the Moor of Granada—something very similar to the themes and literary taste of Pérez de Hita, who was presumably of Morisco origin74 although the fact is not confirmed. When Pérez de Hita presented the manuscript of his Guerras civiles de Granada to the censor before its publication, it was this same Gonzalo Mateo del Berrío who signed the approval.75 Another frequenter of the tertulia was Hernando de Acuña,76 a soldier-poet and good friend of Luis del Mármol, whom he had met in Sicily. He was also a friend of the humanist, physician, and classicist poet Luis Barahona de Soto, another important figure who was often at the Granada Venegas house.77 Luis Barahona had a particular interest in genealogy: he had petitioned the Audiencia of Granada to have his own hidalguía proven, for which he had brought suit before the city council.78 He had also written an entire mythological genealogy about his protectors, the Dukes of Osuna, in the form of an epic poem, Las lágrimas de Angélica (Angelica’s Tears), mod‑ eled on Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Don Pedro de Granada Venegas himself appears in it under the pseudonym Pilas. In this poem Bernardo del Carpio,

74 S. Carrasco Urgoiti, El moro de Granada en la literatura (Madrid, 1956), 78. It has been re-edited in Archivum (Granada, 1996), with a preface by J. Martínez Ruiz. 75 S. Carrasco Urgoiti, The Moorish Novel (Boston, 1976), 86. 76 L. F. Díaz Larios, “Introducción” to his edition Hernando de Acuña. Varias poesías (Madrid, 1982), 33. 77 F. Rodríguez Marín (ed.), Luis Barahona de Soto. Estudio biográfico, bibliográfico y crítico (Madrid, 1903). 78 Published by J. Lara Garrido, “Nuevos datos para la biografía de Luis Barahona de Soto,” Analecta Malacitana, 7 (1984), 297–310; and id., “Poesía y política: a propósito de Las lágrimas de Angélica de Luis Barahona de Soto,” in Actas del I Congreso de Historia de Andalucía. Andalucía Moderna, II (Cordova, 1978), 117–124. 90 chapter three one of the figures most often exalted by neo-Gothicist Castilian writers, is portrayed as the mythical ancestor of the House of Osuna, but he appears not as a battler against the Moors but as a hero who defeats the French.79 Specialists in Barahona’s work may be able to find traces of it in the Origen de la Casa de Granada, which it undoubtedly helped to inspire. Las lágrimas de Angélica was published with introductory sonnets by Joan de Faría,80 a licenciate, attorney, and court reporter in the Chancellery of Granada. He too was a member of the Granadas’ tertulia and a particular friend of Miguel de Luna, for whom he provided two prefatory sonnets to La historia verdadera del Rey Don Rodrigo (Granada, 1592). Faría wrote a significant work that survives in manuscript in El Escorial: Dialogismo y lacónico discurso: en defensa de las reliquias de San Cecilio que se hallaron en la Iglesia mayor de la ciudad de Granada. Compuesto por el licenciado Faría, abogado y relator en ella: dirigido a su Magestad el Rey Don Phelippe [II] Nuestro Señor.81 The work is structured as a dia‑ logue with Miguel de Luna, whom Faría, “with the assurance I have of our friendship,” questions about the relics and discoveries of the Sacromonte. This text is especially interesting in showing how Luna formed popular opinion about the finds and contributed vigorously to their defense; we will return to it in the chapter dedicated to Luna. There are also surviving letters from Joan de Faría to Archbishop Pedro de Castro, in which he defends the holy relics and answers objections to their authenticity; here he uses the same arguments that Luna had put forth in Faría’s Dialogismo y lacónico discurso. An important issue was that of the Arabic language, which Faría claims was the most ancient in the Peninsula because “Aben‑ tarique says so in the second part of his history, which will soon be in print.”82 Of course “Abentarique” (for Ibn Ṭāriq) is the Arab author whose chronicle Miguel de Luna pretended to have discovered and translated. Luna, therefore, may have had contact with the Granada Venegas circle,

79 See L. Garrido’s “Introducción” to his edition. 80 I. Osuna, Poética silva: un manuscrito granadino del Siglo de Oro (Málaga, 1991). 81 “Dialogue and brief treatise: in defense of the relics of Saint Caecilius that were found in the principal church of the city of Granada. Composed by the Licenciate Faría, attorney and reporter in it: dedicated to His Majesty King Philip [II] our lord”: L. Garrido, Luis Barahona de Soto, Las lágrimas de Angélica, op. cit., 91; J. Zarco Cuevas, Catálogo de los manuscritos españoles de la Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, I (Madrid, 1924), 128; and M. García-Arenal and F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Médico, traductor, inventor: Miguel de Luna, cristiano arábigo de Granada,” Chronica Nova, 32 (2006), 187–231, esp. 205 ff. 82 “Lo refiere Abentarique en la segunda parte de su ystoria que pronto se verá ynpressa”: AASG, leg. IV, fols. 431–436. the noble families 91 though there is no solid proof of the connection; if it existed, it would link the Granada Venegases also to the falsification of the Lead Books. Barahona and Luna were strict contemporaries, both having been born around 1544 and having studied medicine at the University of Granada at about the same time; they must have known each other. We know that the former was a member of the Granada Venegas’s literary tertulia, so it is not hard to believe that the latter took part also, given his contacts with Barahona and Faría. The following facts are also not likely to be coincidental: when the lead sheets began to be found, the “discoverers” brought the first one unearthed, that of St. Mesithon, to Alonso Venegas de Alarcón, another aristocrat who belonged to the famous family of Nasrid origin. Don Alonso rewarded the discoverers with two hundred ducats. It is curious that Miguel de Luna happened to be visiting Don Alonso’s house just when that gentleman was examining the newly discovered leaf of lead.83 One more connection exists, recorded by the chronicler Justino Antolínez de Burgos.84 In May 1596, in a letter from the city of Granada to the king, the archbishop related his efforts to interpret the Lead Books. Claiming that it would be very inconvenient for them to pass into other hands, he begged that while the task of interpreting them continued the originals not be transferred to Madrid. The bearers of this letter to Madrid were “Don Joan Fernández de Córdoba and Don Pedro de Granada Ven‑ egas, [who] go in our name. They shall kiss Your Majesty’s royal hands and will entreat you to grant these our sincere wishes. May God save [Your Majesty].”85 It was never stated, either then or later, that the Granada Venegas family might be involved in the Sacromonte hoaxes; but the finger was pointed at other Moriscos very early on. The chronicler Luis del Mármol Carvajal was the first to tell Archbishop Pedro de Castro that the deception of the parchment and the Lead Books might have involved Miguel de Luna and other Moriscos. He singled out in particular El Meriní, who had died in the first year of the war and whose daughter, married to the Morisco Mendoza el Seis, had given Luna her father’s Arabic papers. Mármol had learned

83 AASG, leg. C 49, fols 8r–v; see K. Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City’s Past in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore, 2007), 170. 84 J. Antolínez de Burgos, Historia Eclesiástica de Granada (Granada, 1611); edited and studied by M. Sotomayor (Granada, 1996), Chap. 42, 520. 85 “Don Joan Fernández de Córdoba y Don Pedro de Granada Venegas van en nuestro nombre. Besarán las reales manos de V.M. y supplicarán por el cumplimiento destos nues‑ tros justos deseos. Dios guarde . . .”): Historia Eclesiástica de Granada, op. cit., 521. 92 chapter three all this from his friend Alonso del Castillo,86 whose father, “Old” Castillo, had examined those papers. The surname “el Seis” probably referred to the office of geliz, of which there were six in the city of Granada. The gelices were in charge of the silk auctions: they oversaw the silk farmers who came to the silk merchants’ district in the capital. They spoke Arabic and played an important role as middlemen; it was a prominent office, and one much coveted by the better Morisco families in Granada. We have found several individuals named “Meriní” in documents related to the silk trade.87 Mármol returned to this conjecture—that the fraud had been planned by Moriscos no more than twenty years earlier (toward the end of the Alpujarras War)—in a letter to Pedro de Castro of January 26, 1594. There he alluded explicitly to Miguel de Luna and to his haste not only to take part in translating the finds but to be well compensated for his work.88 Mármol was a close personal friend of Castillo and had worked side by side with him during the Alpujarras War.89 He seems to suggest

86 D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 254–255: “The Licenciate Castillo says that four or six years before the Morisco rebellion, a Morisco called El Meriní told him that, when the Tower of the principal church was demolished, there would be found there a great Levantine prediction (an Oriental prophecy); and if this is true, then the Moriscos certainly knew about the find when the Tower was torn down, and it may even be that one of them had [the prophecy] in his house to plant it there whenever he wished. Finally, this Meriní died in the first year of the uprising and left a daughter who is now in Granada married to the Morisco Mendoza el Seis. She has told me that she gave her father’s papers to Luna, another Morisco” (“[E]l licenciado Castillo dice que, cuatro o seis años antes del levantamiento de los moriscos, le dixo un morisco llamado el Meriní que, cuando derriba‑ sen la Torre de la iglesia mayor, se hallaría allí un gran pronóstico levantisco [una profecía de oriente]; y, si esto es verdad, cierto es que tenían los moriscos noticia de él cuando derribaron la Torre y aun por ventura lo tenía alguno de ellos en su casa para arrojarlo allí cuando le pareciese. Finalmente, este Meriní murió el primer año del levantamiento y dejó una hija que ahora está en Granada casada con Mendoza el Seis, morisco. Esta morisca me ha dicho que dio los papeles de su padre a Luna, también morisco.”). 87 In 1562 the geliz was Pedro López Abençaybona, who ceded the office temporarily to Gaspar Fernández el Meriní. Another holder of the office was Alonso el Meriní (A. García Pedraza, Actitudes ante la muerte, op. cit., 429–430). Hernando de Mendoza Fez Muley had married Florencia Çaybona, and Pedro Çaybona or Abençaybona had married a daughter of Hernando de Fez (B. Vincent, El río morisco, op. cit., 192). 88 “They also tell me that when those relics were found, Luna went with great dispatch and concern; he soon offered to translate the parchment, and swiftly took it to His Maj‑ esty in order to receive a reward” (“También me dicen que cuando se hallaron aquellas reliquias fue con much diligencia y solicitud el dicho Luna y acudió luego a traducir el pergamino y lo llevó luego a Su Majestad para que le hiciese merced”): D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 254; and C. Alonso, Los apócrifos, op. cit., 53. 89 In composing his Historia del rebelión y castigo de los moriscos del Reino de Granada, Mármol made use of many documents translated by Castillo. The latter calls Mármol the noble families 93 that Castillo, while he must have known who was involved, was not directly culpable himself.90 Nevertheless a contemporary translator, Marcos Dobelio (whom we will discuss in Chapters 9 and 10), sent a report to the Inquisition in Rome in which he affirmed that “Castillo and Luna were the authors of this invention.”91 By now we can identify and name almost every person in Spain at the time who knew Arabic well enough to perpetrate the fraud. Of these, only Luna and Castillo actively defended the documents’ authenticity; they were helped by the Morisco priest Francisco López Tamarid, preb‑ endary of Granada Cathedral and Arabic interpreter for the Inquisition, although he soon moved into the background. These three, Castillo, Luna, and Tamarid, were involved from the very first in translating and defending the veracity of the finds, particularly that of the parchment. The Morisco Aḥmad ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī Bejarano, from Hornachos,92 who fled to Morocco in 1599, was in Granada soon after the first Lead Books appeared; he took part in translating the parchment and was also an ardent defender of the authenticity of all the documents. Al-Ḥajarī men‑ tions yet another Morisco, al-Jabbīs or El Chapiz, calling him old, wise, and involved in translating the parchment; he speaks also of that man’s grandson, Muḥammad ibn Abī l-Asi. We believe that the actual forgers must be found among these men, and we dedicate the coming chapters to them. These particular Moriscos and those around them bring us into

“my friend Luis de Mármol” in his Cartulario (collected letters): Memorial Histórico Espa- ñol, op. cit., III, 56. 90 “And Your Lordship should order the Licenciate Castillo to state whom he heard to say, four or six years before the Morisco uprising, that when the Tower came to be torn down a great prophecy would be found there. For he has told me that an old Morisco called el Meriní, who died in the first year of the revolt, had told him so; and he probably told others as well, and it seemed that they were already planning the affair, for El Meriní was proud of being well read, and had many papers in Arabic” (“Y mande Va. Señoría que el dicho licenciado Castillo diga a quién oyó decir, cuatro o seis años antes del alçamiento de los moriscos, que cuando derribasen aquella Torre se hallaría allí un gran pronóstico, porque él ha dicho a mí que un morisco antiguo llamado el Meriní, que murió el primer año de la rebelión, se lo dixo, y no lo debió decir solo a él, y parece que ya era negocio entre ellos, porque el Meriní presumía de muy leído y tenía muchos papeles en árabe”): see D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 253. 91 “Castillo y Luna fueron los autores de esta novedad”: F. Rodríguez Mediano and M. García-Arenal, “De Diego de Urrea a Marcos Dobelio, intérpretes y traductores de los ‘Plomos’,” in M. Barrios Aguilera and M. García-Arenal, Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 297–333. 92 As I. Boyano has shown in “Al-Hayari y su traducción del pergamino de la Torre Turpiana,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal, ¿La historia inventada? Los libros plúmbeos y el legado sacromontano (Granada, 2008), 137–157. 94 chapter three contact with another milieu, that of physicians, interpreters, and clergy‑ men, whose positions and characters are less well known and harder to capture than those of the nobles of whom we have been speaking. They open up a whole field of persons and activities that are rarely taken into account in the study of the Moriscos of Granada. chapter four

alonso del castillo: translator, author?

In 1569 Miguel Hernández Hagim, a Morisco chandler from Granada, was tried by the Inquisition in that city because there had been found in his house “certain papers written in Arabic” and a sheet of lead covered with Arabic characters. The latter contained words by Muhammad “and other Moorish prayers meant to produce riches,” from which we conclude that this lead sheet must have been inscribed with the “Solomonic” or pseudo-Kufic letters that the Moriscos used for magic and fortune-telling. Miguel’s wife, Leonor Hagim, was tried also for teaching and circulating Moorish prayers, and both were included in the auto-da-fé of 1571.1 Chan- dlers, at that time, played an essential part in the engraving process, and several of them (along with parchment makers), after the discoveries at the Torre Turpiana and the Sacromonte, would be interrogated before a notary about the age of the documents.2 But perhaps Hagim’s Arabic texts, which seemed meant for finding hidden treasure—an activity in which Moriscos specialized, and to which all their contemporaries were so addicted3—were instead spells for healing or prevention of disease: Hagim, or ḥākim, means “wise man” (one who possesses gnomic knowledge) and also “physician.”4 This incident is only one of the many ties—both slender and not so slender—that unite the Sacromonte hoaxes to aspects of the Moriscos’ cultural and mental milieu that we wish to explore here, including magical cures and treasure-hunting. In this peculiar world of Morisco religiosity, magic was intertwined with prophecies, medicine, divination, and the search for hidden treasures. During the Alpujarras uprising, for example, an infantry captain named Diego Felipe was captured by the insur- gents, and while a prisoner obtained a book of “prescriptions” for finding

1 AHN, Inquisición, leg. 1953. 2 These reports were collected by Pedro de Castro and sent to the Vatican. See ACDF, Stanza Storici, R7c, fol. 290 ff. 3 M. Tausiet, Abracadabra Omnipotens. Magia urbana en Zaragoza en la Edad Moderna (Madrid, 2007), 39 ff. 4 In 1562, a Sebastián el Haguim was a signer of a power of attorney by the members of the guild that administered the Morisco hospital in Granada’s Albaicín quarter. A. García- Pedraza, Actitudes ante la muerte, op. cit., II, p. 900. 96 chapter four treasure; there was one that King Rodrigo was said to have buried on a hill in a sealed mine when the Muslims first invaded Spain. Two treasure- hunters decided that the hill had to be the one called Valparaíso in Gran- ada, and after having explored it they found caves that had been filled up with earth. After seeking help from “a certain Castillo,” they soon came upon the first Lead Book.5 The Morisco priest Luis de la Cueva also knew about treasure: in a chronicle on Granada’s Valparaíso he wrote, “This hill had been revered by the Moriscos from time immemorial, and they said that there was a Christian treasure there.”6 The present chapter is dedicated to Alonso del Castillo, a physician and royal interpreter. Here (as in the chapter on Miguel de Luna) our intent is not to give proofs of his possible authorship of the Sacromonte hoaxes; the issue is not whether Castillo and Luna were the actual authors. Instead we will examine stages in their lives and the events that they lived through and that may have shaped them, together with aspects of their professional activity that will make the origins and purposes of the frauds more understandable. What interests us is to establish, so far as possible, what values, attitudes, and strategies moved these two supposed falsifiers, and what events might have motivated their fabrications. Furthermore, we are still faced with the question of the limits of religious conversion. These two highly interesting figures are always spoken of together, as a unit, but we shall see that they are, in fact, not to be so tightly identified either personally or ideologically. They were two very different personalities, and were not always in accord with each other. Darío Cabanelas, in his excellent monograph on Alonso del Castillo, suggested that Luna might have been married to a daughter of Castillo’s;7 their relationship as father- and son-in-law has since been taken as a given, and used to explain both men’s actions and positions. Further, it has led to the assumption that the two would be, respectively, grandfather and father of one Alonso de Luna, a Morisco doctor who was tried by the Inquisition in Granada in 1619 and

5 M. J. Hagerty, Libros plúmbeos, op. cit., 29–30. 6 “Este monte era venerado de los moriscos desde tiempo inmemorial y dezían que hauía allí un tesoro de los cristianos”: L. de la Cueva, Diálogo de las cosas notables de Gran- ada y lengua española y algunas cosas curiosas (Sevilla: Fernando de Lara, 1603); facsimile ed. with preface by J. Mondéjar (Granada, 1993), 53. 7 D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 231. The hypothesis was repeated by B. Vincent, “Et quelques voix de plus: de Francisco Núñez Muley à Fatima Ratal,” Sharq al-Andalus, 12 (1995), 131–145, esp. 139. A Spanish translation of the article is included in B. Vincent, El río morisco, op. cit., (2007). L. Bernabé Pons, “Estudio preliminar,” in M. de Luna, Historia verdadera, op. cit., pp. XXXII–XXXIII, also mentions this conjecture. alonso del castillo: translator, author? 97 condemned to life imprisonment for heresy. We shall speak of this Alonso de Luna in the next chapter. In the present chapter we show that Luna and Castillo’s supposed kinship, and the identity of their motives and actions, need to be revisited. To begin with, Miguel de Luna was married to an Old Christian woman, María Berasategui.8 Alonso del Castillo not only never mentions Luna among his relatives and friends (as he does regularly, in the Cartulario, with all those whom he considers as such), but strongly criticizes his work as a translator.9 The life stories and activities of the two differ notably, to the point that we have convincing evidence of Castillo’s distrust of Luna. This attitude shows clearly in a letter that Castillo wrote to the Granada Inquisition in 1600: “It has come to my attention and I have been told that our Lord the King has decided to send Miguel de Luna, a resident of this city of Granada and a native-born Morisco of the other party, to address and do business with the king and Xerife [sharīf ] of Africa. And seeing what kind of man he is, I implore Your Lordship to take heed and to consider this well, so that no ill consequences will come of such a person’s journey to Moorish lands.”10 Clearly Castillo did not trust Luna and believed it was dangerous to have him negotiate with the Sharīf, because he was a member of “the other party” of Moriscos. We shall examine below this supposed duplicity of Luna’s.

Alonso del Castillo and other Translators of the Parchment

Alonso del Castillo must have been born in Granada in the late 1520s, the son of a Morisco whom Mármol, in a letter we have quoted, calls “Old” Castillo (Castillo el Viejo). The latter was very likely Hernando del Castillo el Acahal (al-kaḥḥāl, the apothecary) of the parish of San Nicolás, who appears as a debtor in the testament of another Morisco dated in 1556.11

8 There exists a letter signed by her and addressed to the archbishop after her husband’s death, AASG, leg. V, fol. 738. 9 AASG, leg. C7, “Tratado sobre el Pergamino de la Torre,” written by Alonso del Castillo in 1595. Isabel Boyano has studied these documents in depth in her doctoral dissertation. 10 “A mi noticia ha venido que el Rey nuestro Señor ha determinado a enviar, según me han dicho, a hablar y trabar negocios con el rey Xerife de África a Miguel de Luna, vecino desta ciudad de Granada y natural y morisco de los de contrabando, y por ser de la calidad que es suplico a Vuestra Señoría avisar a ello para que se mire mucho y no nazcan algunos inconvenientes de ir semejante persona a tierra de moros”: AHN, Inquisición, leg. 2608.1, year 1600. We thank Enrique Soria Mesa for this reference. 11 A. García Pedraza, Actitudes ante la muerte, op. cit., II, 958. 98 chapter four

Acahal means “apothecary,” but also more precisely “eye doctor.”12 Al-Ḥajarī, in his famous Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn, which contains a long chapter about the Torre Turpiana parchment, mentions several of the translators who were working on it and on the first Lead Books around 1597. He speaks in particular of one he calls al-Ukayhil (the diminutive of Acahal, i.e., “the younger”), mentioning that he was an older man who had learned Arabic as a child, close to the time when Granada had been Muslim, and that he was the “official interpreter.”13 Both the man’s title and his age correspond to Castillo, who held that position first in the service of the Granada city council, then for the Inquisition, and finally as royal interpreter in the pay of Philip II from 1579 onward.14 In fact al-Ḥajarī speaks of two translators of the parchment, al-Ukayhil and al-Jabbis; doubtless because of the linkage of the two figures just described, these have been identified in recent studies with Luna and Castillo. We, however, believe that al-Ukayhil is, as we have explained, Castillo, and that al-Jabbis is El Chapiz, probably Lorenzo Hernández el Chapiz, whom Castillo calls his “friend” in the Diario.

The Chapiz Family

Little is known about this Hernández el Chapiz except that he was a rich man, remembered above all for the house that still bears his name (la Casa del Chapiz) in the Albaicín quarter of Granada. Documents from the Sac- romonte Abbey reveal that one of the parchment’s translators was called Lorenzo Hernández el Chapiz, a resident of Baeza, but we cannot be

12 Juan el Çafar, eye doctor, appears as a witness in the 1556 testament from the neighborhood of San Nicolás. 13 G. A. Wiegers, “Nueva luz sobre Alonso de Luna, alias Muhammad b. Abi l-Asi, y su proceso inquisitorial,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 403–418, and L. Bernabé Pons, “Estudio preliminar,” op. cit. If Alonso de Luna were indeed Muhammed Vulhaç, there would be a connection between the authors of the Lead Books and the Gospel of Barnabas (Evangelio de Bernabé), an apocryphal gospel in Arabic that arose among the Moriscos in Istanbul. L. F. Bernabé Pons, “Los mecanismos de una resistencia: los Libros Plúmbeos del Sacromonte y el Evangelio de Bernabé,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 385–402. 14 Diario, fol. 36v. He left Granada for Madrid on May 8, 1583, accompanied by Don Hernando Muley, to take up his post as royal translator. The letter in which Philip II names him is on fol. 27. In a letter of 1600 preserved in the correspondence of the Granada Inqui- sition, Alonso del Castillo claims that he has been a translator for forty years: AHN, Inqui- sición, 2608-1. alonso del castillo: translator, author? 99 sure that this was the same person.15 From other sources we know of an individual also named El Chapiz who was occasionally consulted about historical matters related to the Muslims of Granada, because he was a Morisco highly respected for his knowledge.16 We are acquainted with Lorenzo Hernández el Chapiz in particular (or one of them, if indeed there were two—the length of time between our two references would make him a very old man) through a lawsuit that Don Fernando de Fez Muley brought against him in 1563, demanding payment of a salary for his participation in the “General Negotiation” (Negocio General). In pursuit of that negotiation, Fernando de Fez Muley had traveled throughout the Alpujarras, Vélez Málaga, and Málaga in the winter of 1559, acting as an accountant and accompanied by a scribe, an interpreter, and Chapiz himself; their goal was to collect money from the local New Christians, a sum to be used to negotiate with the Inquisition to delay its taking action against the Moriscos. El Chapiz rejected Fez Muley’s suit, arguing that the negotiation was not private but made on behalf of all and that therefore he was not obliged to pay anything. The suit was settled in El Chapiz’s favor.17 We know also that Lorenzo Hernández el Chapiz and Daniel Sánchez el Cenati, in the name of “honorable knights, ancient hidalgos, and highborn

15 In 1596 Don Pedro de Castro proposed the following persons as translators of the Arabic portion of the parchment: “Having brought together in this city Diego de Urrea, royal interpreter of Arabic and holder of the Chair of Arabic at the University of Alcalá, and Lorenço Hernández Chapiz, a resident of the city of Baeza, and the Licenciate Pinto, a physician from Valencia, with the Licenciate Miguel de Luna, a doctor from this city and interpreter of Arabic to His Majesty” (“Aviendo trahído y juntado en esta çiudad ansí a Diego de Urrea, intérprete del Reyno de la lengua Árabe y Cathedrático de la Cáthedra de Árabe de la Universidad de Alcalá, y a Lorenço Hernández Chapiz, vezino de la çiudad de Baeça, y al liçençiado Pinto, médico natural de Valençia, con el liçençiado Miguel de Luna, médico vezino desta ciudad e intérprete de Su Magestad en la lengua Árabe”): AASG, leg. V, fol. 142. 16 P. Velarde de Ribera, Historia eclesiástica del Monte Santo, ciudad y reyno de Granada dirigida a la magd. del Rey don Phelipe nro señor tercero deste nombre, BNE ms. 1583: “And the local Moriscos gave as the reason [for Granada’s foundation by the Muslims] that the Moorish kings of Granada did not want to have two cities so close to each other, for they feared that some tyrant could enter them and stir them up. And an omen had told them that on leaving the city to work their fields on the plain they should have the sun in their faces. So said the most learned Moriscos, among them El Chapiz” (“Y la causa que daban los naturales moriscos era que no les estava bien a los Reyes moros de Granada tener dos ciudades tan cercanas temiendo se podría entrar en ella algun tirano que los desasosegase, y por agüero tenían que al salir y al entrar en ella a sus labranças de la Vega de Granada les diese el sol en el rostro, y esto decian los moriscos mui doctos, entre ellos el Chapiz”): fol. 88v. 17 C. Álvarez de Morales, “Lorenzo el Chapiz y el ‘Negocio General’ de 1559,” op. cit. 100 chapter four men from the great and famous city of Granada,” went to the royal court in Madrid to present King Philip II with capons and fruit on the occasion of his recent marriage. The king sent them a letter of thanks, directed also to Don Francisco el Zegrí (who had written the congratulatory message they bore), and said of them all, “we are certain that being our good vassals as you are,” they must rejoice in his marriage and his return to Spain.18 There is not enough evidence, even with the information in the previous chapter, to suppose that El Zegrí and El Chapiz were friends and allies against Fez Muley; even if that friendship existed we could draw no conclusions about it. In any event, Alonso del Castillo was the friend of both El Chapiz and Muley; Muley went with Castillo when, in 1583, the latter left Granada to take up his post as royal interpreter in Madrid. We know that the Chapiz family was related to another well-known and highborn clan named Hermes. Diego Hermes’s sons were expelled from the kingdom in 1570 and settled in Pastrana (in the province of Guadalajara in New Castile), a refuge for many Granadan families and a flourishing commercial center for silk; there they enjoyed the protection of the House of Silva, kinsmen to the Mendozas of Granada. Diego’s son Jerónimo Hermes was married to Isabel de Chaves, herself a relative of Alonso de Chaves el Chapiz, who managed to be recognized as an Old Christian by means of forged genealogies.19 Álvaro Hermes was settled in Pastrana together with Felipe Hernández el Chapiz, a member of another important family of silk merchants.20 We need to keep this connection with Pastrana in mind. At the end of the century, the Inquisition there seized an important group of Arabic manuscripts belonging to Granadan Moriscos, and with their help Marcos Dobelio was able better to understand and interpret the Lead Books; we will return to this matter in greater detail in Chapter 12. First we wish to present briefly a later incident that has to do with the Moriscos’ relationships prior to the expulsion, and in which once again the names of Granada Venegas and Chapiz appear closely linked. The story begins with testimony taken from a certain Jerónimo de Zúñiga, a prisoner of the royal Court in Madrid in 1609; while in jail he had been overheard in conversations that aroused suspicion. Zúñiga stated that he was from Lucena, a lieutenant, and thirty-two years old. He told the tale that we will now summarize in the course of a detailed

18 “Somos ciertos que siendo vosotros tan buenos vassallos nuestros como sois”: RAH, Salazar y Castro, A. 52, fol. 324 r–v. 19 E. Soria, “La asimilación de la élite morisca,” op. cit., 656–657. 20 AGS, Cámara de Castilla, leg. 2169; see B. Vincent, El río morisco, op. cit., 197. alonso del castillo: translator, author? 101 interrogation before the magistrate López Madera.21 During a trip to Granada in 1608, Zúñiga fell ill in Úbeda, where he met at the inn a “very comely” Morisca maid “with whom he hoped to dally.” He sought out a go-between, who told him that to achieve his purpose he should pretend to be not only a Morisco himself but a member of the Venegas family, “related to the kings of Granada,” who were held locally in deep respect. He took this advice, and as soon as the young lady began to boast of her suitor’s supposed lineage, he began to receive messages from Moriscos who wished to house and care for him and take him to a Morisco surgeon; the notion appealed to Zúñiga, for “he had heard that the Moriscos cured patients in a different way.” All the Moriscos began to address him in the warmest and most con- fidential terms, and even some from Quesada and Cazorla wrote to him, “trusting him in all things.” He now called himself Don Jerónimo de Granada Venegas, and one of his new friends was a certain “Martín de Ávila, a spice merchant and resident of Quesada, because he claimed to be married to a woman who descended from the said Venegases and was also first cousin to Don Fernando de Válor, who rebelled in the Alpujarras.”22 These men’s great respect for Jerónimo led them to reveal that they were organizing their departure from Spain, and were beginning to leave. Those from Baeza, the Chapiz family’s home town, had already left, and El Chapiz and his father-in-law had taken a house in Toulouse “to guide those who had left and to encourage those who were still here.” They also told him that in Toledo, Ocaña, Pastrana, Valladolid, and Murcia there was one Morisco in each city “of the richest and most influential among them, whose charge it was by common consent to encourage and aid those who would depart, and to collect a certain fund of money that was gathered and sent to an account that El Chapiz held in Toulouse so that Moriscos who arrived without means could be endowed, succoring them and showing them the way to Marseille.”23 Thus, once again there was a Chapiz put in charge of

21 AGS, Estado, leg. 2639, “Información hecha ante el licenciado Gregorio López Madera sobre la deposición de Jerónimo de Zúñiga.” The document has been published in full by H. Bouzineb and G. Wiegers, “Tetuán y la expulsión de los moriscos,” in Titwān khilāl al-qarnayn 16 wa 17 (Tetuan, 1996), 73–108. Here we cite our own transcription of the original in the Archivo General de Simancas. 22 “Martín de Ávila, especiero, vecino de Quesada, porque decía que estaba casado con una muger descendiente de los dichos Benegas que también decía ser prima hermana de Don Fernando de Bálor, el que se levantó en la Alpujarra.” 23 “De los más ricos y principales dellos que tenían cuidado con orden de todos de fomentar y ayudar a los que se han de ir y de recoger cierto repartimiento de dineros que 102 chapter four collecting funds among the Morisco community to defend the interests of its members. We cannot dwell further on this extraordinary account, nor on the Christian authorities’ suspicions of whether Jerónimo was really one of the Granada Venegases; but we note that some of the names that have come up in relation to the parchment and the Lead Books also appear in leadership roles in the networks that the Moriscos established before and after their expulsion.24 The story also demonstrates the great respect in which Moriscos held families who were elsewhere accused of “collabora- tionism,” like the Granada Venegases. But the main purpose of Zúñiga’s interrogation was to obtain details of Morisco contacts with Muley Zidan and Muley Xeque that might lead to an invasion of southern Spain. Zúñiga declared that, because these Moroccan princes were preoccupied with their own civil war and could not attend to the Moriscos, El Chapiz had sent a spokesman to seek Ottoman help from Istanbul—this envoy would probably have been his grandson, Muḥammad b. Abī l-Asi.25 We will take up again in later chapters these Morisco networks inside and outside of Spain, and their connections with Pastrana, Morocco, and Istanbul; we can do little more than intuit some kind of link to the falsification of the Lead Books, but we can trace the Morisco milieu in which it must have been carried out. The Zúñiga affair gives us a little more insight into the fissures and rivalries between different Morisco clans; these could have to do with the memory and defense of Umayyad legitimacy, as in the cases of Don Fernando de Válor and the Zegrí and Chapiz families.

se cobraban y remitían a Tolosa a una caxa en poder del Chapiz para que los moriscos que llegaban sin caudal fuesen favorecidos, socorriéndolos y encaminándolos a Marsella.” 24 On the role played by several rich Granadan Moriscos in organizing the Moriscos’ emigration to Tunis, see L. Bernabé Pons, “Notas sobre la cohesión de la comunidad morisca más allá de su expulsión de España,” Al-Qanṭara, 29:2 (2008), 307–332. 25 “This Palera told him that when he was about to leave, the said Chapiz had called him in to say farewell. And they had let him know that the Moriscos of these lands had first asked the kings of Fez and of Marrakesh to help them with a good armada out of Larache, and that secretly, in less than a month, there would be more than fifty thousand armed Moriscos with them” (“Le dijo este Palera que cuando se quería ir el dicho Chapiz le había embiado a llamar para despedirse dél y le abían dado quenta de que los moriscos destos reinos abían tratado primero con los Reyes de Fez y de Marruecos que los ayudasen con alguna buena armada por Larache y que a la desilada en menos de un mes abría más de cincuenta mill moriscos armados con ellos”): AGS, Estado, leg. 2639, fol. 10. alonso del castillo: translator, author? 103

Physician

In following the Chapiz and Granada Venegas families we have skipped forward in time and departed from Alonso del Castillo’s biography, to which we now return. Alonso had a brother, García,26 who in turn had a son, Alonso del Castillo, a “joiner” (ensamblador), that is, one who set fractures and straightened bones. In the Iberian Peninsula in the sixteenth century—Alonso del Castillo’s world—many Moriscos and Jews were related in some way to curative, preventive, or healing activities. In this world medicine and magic were closely connected, and one of their manifestations was the amulets, talismans, and magic symbols that healers would hang on the necks or sew into the clothing of those whom they wished to cure or preserve from disease. These talismans included words written in Hebrew or Arabic with pseudo-ancient characters, and included letters in strange and arcane alphabets. A good number of these papers have survived from Inquisition trials, and their strokes and signs are remarkably similar to the ones that appear in the Sacromonte texts.27 What might Castillo have learned from his father, or from other Morisco healers like the ones mentioned earlier in this chapter? Castillo was undoubtedly in contact with the healers’ milieu, but his education had been different from theirs. Alonso del Castillo used his title of interpreter always accompanied by that of “licenciate” (licenciado),28 meaning that he had completed the university, where he must have studied medicine around 1540. The Uni- versity of Granada had been founded by Charles V in 1531 as part of a plan to acculturate and assimilate the newly converted.29 Even though this

26 To whom he wrote when García del Castillo was in Jerez de la Frontera: Diario, fol. 204r. 27 See A. Labarta, “Supersticiones moriscas,” Awrāq, 5–6 (1982–1983), 161–190, and Libro de Dichos Maravillosos. Misceláneo morisco de magia y adivinación (Madrid, 1993). 28 He certifies or heads his translations: “I, the Licenciate Alonso del Castillo, physician, translator into Spanish of Arabic writings in this city and kingdom of Granada” (“Yo, el licenciado Alonso del Castillo, médico, romançador de las escrituras arábigas en esta çibdad y reino de Granada”): Memorial Histórico Español, op. cit., III, 35. 29 L. García Ballester, Los moriscos y la medicina. Un capítulo de la medicina y la ciencia marginadas en la España del siglo XVI (Barcelona, 1984), 52–53. The founding document stated explicitly: “In this manner [the new converts] would be instructed in new customs and adorned with virtues, they would be inspired with knowledge of the truth and with clarity in their understanding” (“De este modo serían instruidos en las nuevas costumbres y adornados con virtudes, se les inspiraría el conocimiento de la verdad y claridad en su inteligencia”). 104 chapter four assimilatory project of Charles’s had only a limited effect, a large number of Moriscos chose to study medicine, as converted Jews would do in the next century. It was the only profession—unlike the law or the Church— that could be practiced with some chance of gaining honors and contact with the privileged classes without, at least early in the sixteenth century, being subjected to proofs of purity of blood. It was also “universal,” meaning that it could be practiced in other regions and other countries; this aspect must have mattered to those to whom exile and even expulsion formed part of a plausible future. The number of Moriscos in Granada’s faculty of medicine must have been high, to judge by the fact that it suffered a genuine collapse when the Moriscos were expelled after the Alpujarras War. Between 1580 and 1640 all publication of medical textbooks in Granada ceased.30 But con- sequently a flood of Granadan Moriscos entered the faculties of Alcalá and Toledo, if we are to believe Pedro de Vesga’s proposal to the Cortes of Castile that these men should be forbidden from practicing medicine. According to Vesga, being a physician implied wearing silk, riding on a mule, and holding positions of respect. If all these were done by men who were known to be the enemies of Old Christians and to have rebelled against them, how could they be trusted with cures? He went on to say that Old Christians would not want their sons to enroll in faculties of medicine so as not to mix with Moriscos, and therefore after a time, the latter would monopolize the profession: “for during the last few years the Moriscos from the latest rebellion in the Kingdom of Granada, who hear Mass only on feast days and then under duress, send their sons to study in the medical school, since they cannot be accepted as apothecaries, scribes, lawyers, or in other positions of trust. And many disadvantages flow from this, because Old Christians and men of honor do not enter that faculty for this reason, depriving their parents and themselves of the status of medical men [. . .]; many [Moriscos from Granada] study and practice in the Universities of Alcalá, Toledo, and others.”31 This citation

30 L. García Ballester, “Academism versus Empiricism in Practical Medicine in Sixteenth-Century Spain with Regard to Morisco Practitioners,” in Medicine in a Multicul- tural Society: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Practitioners in the Spanish Kingdoms, 1222–1610 (Ashgate: Variorum, 2002), Chap. 8, 262. 31 “Por quanto de algunos años a esta parte los moriscos de la nueva rebelión del reino de Granada que van a oír misa las fiestas, con pena si no la oyen, ponen a sus hijos a oír la facultad de medicina, no pudiendo ser admitidos para boticarios, escribanos, letrados ni otros oficios de confianza, y desto se siguen muchos inconvenientes, porque los christianos viejos y gente honrada no entran a oír la dicha facultad por esta razón, deshonrándose alonso del castillo: translator, author? 105 also helps to explain the social context with which Alonso del Castillo, Miguel de Luna, and many other Moriscos had to struggle if they wished to obtain privileges and reach positions of prominence. Castillo practiced medicine throughout his life, and we have two principal sources for his professional activity. In the Cartulario, he copied the Spanish translations of letters that he himself had written in or translated from Arabic; these had been either received or had been confiscated by Christian authorities during the Alpujarras War and had been collected for Don Pedro de Deza, president of the Audiencia of Granada.32 Castillo’s Diario (preserved in manuscript in Madrid’s Biblioteca Nacional) centers on his role in translating letters from the Moroccan Chancellery, which he transcribes and annotates. At the same time he includes many other texts that interested or occupied him during those years, among them letters and notes from his own family, notation of Christian feast days, and prayers to the Virgin, his “advocate and protector.” A close analysis of this remarkable work shows that Castillo drew directly on medical writings by Arab authors that circulated only in Arabic, as well as on quotations from Hippocrates and Galen.33 He even copied into this diary a brief treatise on physiognomy. He knew a little Greek and a good deal of Latin, as quotations, notes, and glosses in the diary show.34 Alonso del Castillo knew the colloquial Arabic dialect that was spoken in Granada during the first half of the sixteenth century; his spelling of Spanish sometimes reveals its phonetics. He tells us that he learned Classical Arabic with Nicolas de Clénard (1495–1542), the famous Flemish humanist and philologist who had come to Granada in the hope—vain, as it turned out—of perfecting his Arabic; Clénard’s quest led him, several years later, to Fez.35 But Castillo was in contact with Arabic books los padres y ellos de ser médicos con ellos [. . .]; estudian y practican muchos en las Uni- versidades de Alcalá, Toldeo y otras”: Actas de las Cortes de Castilla, vol. XXIII (Madrid, 1903), 587. 32 Sumario e recopilación de todo lo romançado por mi el licenciado Alonso del Castillo, romançador del Santo Oficio, desde antes de la guerra del Reyno de Granada y en ella y después [. . .] hasta el presente año de 1575, ed. P. Gayangos, Memorial Histórico Español, III (Madrid, 1852), 1–164. 33 L. García Ballester, Los moriscos y la medicina, op. cit., 53 ff. 34 BNE ms. 7453. 35 In 1595 Castillo, who claimed to be then more than seventy years old, wrote: “Yours truly is a native of this kingdom and brought up in the Arabic language. And he studied its grammar very carefully and also heard it from Clenardo and from the beneficed priest Leoní, who knew it very well” (“Este testigo es natural deste Reyno y criado en la lengua arábiga y la ha estudiado preceptivamente con mucho cuidado y la oió de Clenardo y del beneficiado Leoní, que la sabía muy bien”): ACDF, Stanze Storici, R7-c, fol. 288v. 106 chapter four all his life, and his Diario reveals a high level of learning, particularly in Islamic history. He came to know Arabic very well, as is shown by his work with the epigraphic inscriptions of the Alhambra and with the con- voluted letters in rhymed prose of the Moroccan court,36 as well as by his own careful and precise hand. It is clear that he imposed on himself the same advice that he gave to his nephew Alonso: to study and cultivate his handwriting, for “a man’s virtue is reflected in a fine calligraphy.”37 As an interpreter for the Inquisition he catalogued books and documents confiscated by the Holy Office, together with those held in the Royal Chapel of Granada Cathedral, in Baeza, in Cordova Cathedral (together with Ambro- sio de Morales),38 and in Jaén. He worked for many months in the library of El Escorial and made up the first catalogue of its collection, which J. H. Hottinger used later in compiling his own Latin catalogue.39 Castillo moved to El Escorial in 1573, having been put in charge of cataloguing its Arabic holdings, an important portion of which were scientific and medical manuscripts. The prior of the monastery wrote a most interesting account in a letter to Philip II’s secretary: “the enclosed list of books, at the end of which are the fifteen books in Arabic identified by the Morisco doctor who is here in San Lorenzo [. . .]. And this Morisco says that some of them are worth a great deal, because good doctors can be formed with them [. . .]. And the Morisco is performing good cures in these parts.”40 Thus Castillo was also practicing medicine during his stay at court. Miguel de Luna also consulted these medical books at El Escorial;

36 Luis del Mármol, who was unable to translate one of these letters, recommended that “this letter should be sent to Granada to the Licenciate Castillo, a Morisco who has glossaries and who knows both grammars; he will do it better” (“será bien que vaya esta carta a Granada al licenciado Castillo, Morisco que tiene vocabularios y sabe entrambas gramáticas, que él lo hara mijor”): M. García-Arenal, F. Rodríguez Mediano and R. El Hour, Cartas marruecas. Documentos de Marruecos en archivos españoles (siglos XVI–XVII) (Madrid, 2002), 32. In the summer of 1575 he was called upon to translate some Arabic letters sent by governor of El Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera. Francisco Ibarra, a member of the War Council, explains in a letter the efforts he has made to find a trustworthy translator, because the subject is a delicate one; he states that Castillo has been particularly recommended to him for his breadth of knowledge and good results. Biblioteca F. Zabálburu, Altamira, 139, GD.1, docs. 14–15. 37 In a letter to his nephew Alonso: Diario, fol. 221r; Spanish translation in D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 72–73. 38 Diario, fol. 18. He examined the very small Cordova collection in 1582. 39 J. H. Hottinger, Promptuarium, sive Bibliotheca Orientalis (Heidelberg, 1658). 40 “El memorial de los libros que va con esta, en fin del qual van los quince libros de arábigo intitulados por el médico morisco que está aquí en San Lorenzo [. . .]. Y dice el mismo morisco que valen algunos dellos mucho dinero, porque con ellos se pueden hacer buenos médicos [. . .]. Y el morisco hace por acá buenas curas”: see L. García Ballester, Los moriscos y la medicina, op. cit., 54. alonso del castillo: translator, author? 107 in his report on the Lead Books and on how hard it was for people less prepared than he to read them, he refers to abbreviations “difficult to read and understand except for those who are experts in reading them; such also are the ancient books of Arabic medicine and other sciences that can scarcely be read, of which His Majesty has many by various authors in the library of El Escorial, all of which differ from modern usage.”41 Physicians clearly enjoyed an intellectual and cultural level greater than that of their fellow New Christians. Other Morisco doctors were proposed as possible translators of the Lead Books, aside from the already mentioned Muḥammad b. Abī l-Asi, a grandson of El Chapiz. Arias Mon- tano mentions two in a letter to the archbishop about possible translators: “Gonzalo de Ayala, a doctor born in Granada, came to my house,” and “Gerónimo de Álava, a doctor, understands less of the older language than Ayala, because the latter uses his wits and the fact that he has studied medicine in Latin and speaks his native Andalusi dialect, while Álava speaks the modern [North] African one. Neither of them has any glossaries for understanding the books.”42 We can conclude from this letter (aside from its insistence on noting the absence of dictionaries and other tools for working with Arabic) that Ayala was a Morisco physician like Castillo and Luna, that he knew the colloquial Arabic of Granada from having grown up there and Latin from university studies, and that Álava might have learned “African” Arabic from having been a captive or having worked in Barbary.43

Translator

Aside from medicine, which he seems to have practiced all his life, Castillo’s activity was especially intense and notable as a translator; in this regard there are five events that mark the different stages of his life.

41 “Difíciles de leer y entender sino para aquellos que están muy peritos en leerlos, pruébase esto por los libros antiguos de medicina arábiga y otras facultades que apenas se pueden leer, de los quales Su Magestad tiene muchos y de diversos autores in la librería del Escorial, todo lo qual es contra el uso de los modernos”: ACDF, St. St. R7-c, fol. 281. 42 “Gonzalo de Ayala, médico natural de Granada, acudió a mi casa”; “Gerónimo de Álava, médico, entiende menos la lengua antigua que el Ayala porque éste se ayuda de su ingenio y de que ha estudiado la medicina en latín y habla la lengua andaluza en que se crió, y el Álava la africana moderna. Ambos son faltos de vocabularios para entender los libros.” 43 Letter from Benito Arias Montano to Don Pedro de Castro, November 10, 1596, Diario del viaje desde Valencia a Andalucía hecho por Don Francisco Pérez Bayer en este año de 1782, BNE ms. 5953, fol. 174r. 108 chapter four

First, he made an important translation of the Arabic inscriptions of the Alhambra (1564) at the request of the city council and the cathedral Chapter.44 Second, he worked intensely as a translator and interpreter during the Alpujarras War, with a strong personal stake in his role as intermediary. Third, after the war and as interpreter to the king, he catalogued, as we have seen, the Arabic manuscripts of El Escorial; fourth, he was in charge of the correspondence between Philip II and the Moroccan Sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr between 1579 and 1587.45 And finally, he threw himself entirely into translating and defending the Torre Turpiana parchment and the Sacromonte Lead Books, always at the right hand of Archbishop Pedro de Castro. We do not intend to make a detailed review here of all these stages, which are amply covered in Darío Cabanelas’s monograph on Castillo.46 We will concentrate here on his activity during the Alpujarras War, and will deal later on with his work as a translator of the parchment and the Lead Books, together with that of Miguel de Luna. We believe that Castillo’s participation in events related to the Morisco uprising is especially relevant to our theme, because it reflects his position vis-à-vis the social and religious group from which he came. From the first the rebellion horrified him, and he rejected it: “those who caused this are halfwits and madmen and hopeless.”47 “How do these crazy people think that they can rise against such a great power with their slingshots and their hempen sandals? Enough of this farce; let them listen to wise and learned men, and abandon fantasies and useless dreams. These are the drunken reveries of men who are not ashamed to lose themselves either in wine or in hashish, which is even cheaper”; “you who are men of reason despair on seeing the damage that these evil and thoughtless men have caused with their cursed uprising.”48 He is of the reasonable faction, and

44 Work that earned high praise from E. García Gómez, Poemas árabes en los muros y fuentes de la Alhambra (Madrid, 1985), 60 ff. 45 D. Cabanelas published the Arabic text of the letters that refer to negotiations for recovering the body of King Sebastian. The others are included in M. García-Arenal, F. Rodríguez Mediano and R. El Hour, Cartas marruecas, op. cit. 46 D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 83 ff. 47 “Mentecatos e locos e perdidos los que esto causaron”: Sumario e recopilación, op. cit., 26. 48 “¿Cómo quieren agora estos locos perdidos alçarse contra tan grand poderío con sus hondas e alpargatas de esparto? Vaste ya la burla, crean a los doctos e a los que han le‎‎ýdo, e désense de fábulas e de juicios vanos por que son borracherías de hombres que no tienen vergüença de emborracharse ora con vino, ora con alhaxix que es más barato”; “Que los que soys hombres de razón estáis allá desesperados de ver el mal que los malos e inconsiderados causaron con su negra levantada.” alonso del castillo: translator, author? 109 also a friend of men of the Alpujarras whom he can call right-minded, men of reason like himself. He describes himself as “an interpreter and someone who understands the Arabic language, and a person who knows the most important and respected men of the Alpujarras, and some who are known for their honorable and manly nature.”49 In other words, there existed among the Moriscos men of good will and of reason, “good” Moris- cos, together with a cursed revolt that would harm all of them, provoked by “bad” Moriscos who had risen against the king. Castillo always refers to the rebels in these terms: not as Muslims or even as apostates, but as vassals who have taken arms against their legitimate monarch. All of Castillo’s efforts were bent toward “subduing” (reducción), that is, doing everything possible (and impossible) to achieve a swift negotiated surrender of the rebels; at the same time he revealed his horror and anxiety at the uprising. Castillo translated into Spanish the Arabic letters that the rebel leaders exchanged with the Spanish authorities, as well as the ones they wrote to each other that were confiscated or intercepted, or found in areas that had been conquered. He did this within the Alpujarras region itself, following the camp of the Duke of Sessa and later that of Don John of Austria. While in the field he also rendered into Arabic the Spanish letters that the civil and military authorities wanted to convey to the rebels. Moreover he wrote false Arabic letters, that is, ones that were forged in order to sow fear and discord among the rebellious ranks. Castillo took part in negotiations designed to achieve the surrender of several individuals. In this second field of activity (that is, in anything not related to translation of letters), his constant aim was to arouse suspicion about the supposed aid that was to come from the Turks of Algiers or from the Moroccans; the Moriscos hoped for it in vain, because the outside aid that the Granadans received was negligible. But the Moriscos truly expected a North African invasion that would come to their rescue and recover the Kingdom of Granada, and the Christians expected it as well; this possibility caused real fear in Christian society, keeping local officials constantly on the watch for the arrival of Turkish galleys. The possibility of Ottoman intervention, and that the Granada conflict would escalate into a Mediterranean one that would bring the Spanish crown

49 “[R]omançador e persona que entiendo la lengua arábiga e como hombre que conozco a los más principales e hombres de bien desta Alpujarra, e hombres que se entendía dellos que tenían acuerdo e manera de hombres . . .”: ibid., 23. 110 chapter four face to face with the Ottomans, contributed to a great intensification of the Alpujarras War. Another constant theme of Castillo’s was the false nature of the millenarian predictions and prophecies that circulated among the Moriscos and fed the revolt. He also insisted on the immense and proven might of the Spanish army, which made the rebellion useless and destined it for a terrible defeat; he argued that the king would be merciful to those who surrendered. He was right about the defeat, but not about the king’s clemency: the measures taken against the vanquished Moriscos were extended to those who had never rebelled. Knowing that this would be the result—that the war would wipe away any chance of restoring a normal life—must have plunged into despair all those Moriscos who either never thought that the revolt could succeed, or who had adjusted to life in Christian society and had come to enjoy a relatively comfortable or respected position. Castillo was acting as an interpreter for the Inquisition in Granada when he was asked to translate the text of two prophecies called jofores (“divinations,” Arabic jafr, jufūr) that the Holy Office had seized, plus a third that had been found in a cave. These prophecies were of a type very common in sixteenth-century Spain: they spoke of the corruption of the times and the oppression and iniquity from which the Moriscos would be freed; this would happen soon, at the end of days, when a king and savior would defeat the Christians and impose Islam as universal law. All this was expressed in obscure and highly ambiguous language. The Christians attached great importance to these prophecies and considered them a driving force of the uprising. So said Mármol, who copied Castillo’s translation of the three jofores into his chronicle of the rebellion.50 Castillo had given his version to Már- mol and had warned him that the Arabic text—undoubtedly copied from an earlier one—was difficult to understand, for “the Arabic language is so equivocal that often the same thing, written with a short or a long mark, will mean two opposite things; and the same happens if it is written with one mark and one spelling in different sentences; and it is not surprising that the Moriscos, who no longer studied Arabic grammar (except in secret), should read and understand one meaning instead of another.”51

50 L. del Mármol, Historia, op. cit., Book III, Chap. 18. 51 “La lengua árabe es tan equívoca que muchas veces una mesma cosa, escrita con acento agudo o luengo, significa dos cosas contrarias; y lo mesmo hace estando escrita con acento y con una ortografía en diversas oraciones; y no es de maravillar que los moriscos, alonso del castillo: translator, author? 111

Castillo and Luna would both take advantage of this already-established ambiguity of the language to adjust their translations of the Lead Books to the wishes of their readers, especially to the wishes of Don Pedro de Castro. And Castillo’s analysis also explains why, in both his Cartulario and his Diario, he is so careful to specify, each time that he translates or copies an Arabic letter, that he has written it “well pointed” (bien xuclada), that is, with all its diacritical marks and vowels in place, so as not to give rise to misunderstandings.

The War

Early in 1570 the Duke of Sessa, while leading one of the army’s campaigns in the Alpujarras, captured some Morisco messengers in an ambush and took from them Arabic letters written by one of the rebel chieftains, Aben Aboo, and addressed to various administrators of the region. Sessa wrote at once to Pedro de Deza, president of the Chancellery of Granada, requesting a translator, and Alonso de Castillo was sent.52 Castillo joined Sessa in his camp at Órgiva, where he composed a false letter intended to prove to the rebels how reckless their enterprise was; it was worded as if written by a Muslim religious authority who was concerned for their wel- fare. This is the first of the letters in his Cartulario that he acknowledges having written by order of Deza himself. Castillo’s principal aim, aside from bringing about the “subduing,” is explicit: that Moriscos who took no part in the rebellion not suffer the same punishment as those who did. At the Duke’s orders, a Moorish spy distributed copies of this letter to different points in the Alpujarras. The ruse seems to have succeeded and to have convinced many by its reasoning, for several chiefs entered into negotiations for treaties of surrender.53 In any event, Castillo remained in Sessa’s camp for several months more until his return to Granada in November 1570. He covered the Alpujarras with Sessa from west to east; later, after Sessa joined the army’s other branch under Don John of

que no usaban ya los estudios de gramática árabe, si no era a escondidas, leyesen y enten- diesen una cosa por otra.” 52 Ibid., Book VIII, Chap. 12. 53 “And I promise Your Lordship truly that, as I learned from some important Moors who surrendered, these letters were the main reason that moved them to do so” (“E de verdad prometo a Vuestra Señoría que, según entendí por relación de algunos moros principales que se redujeron, que estas cartas fueron el principal motivo que movió a los moros a reducirse”): Sumario e recopilación, op. cit., 14. 112 chapter four

Austria, they would approach Granada by rounding the mountains to the north as far as Guadix, their aim being to cut off the retreat of rebels who sought to flee either northward or toward Murcia.54 The war was nearing its end, which would arrive officially with Don John of Austria’s departure from Granada in late November 1570 and the death of the last rebel, Aben Aboo, a few months later. What must Castillo have felt and thought about everything he saw? We know which events he witnessed not only through Mármol’s and Hurtado de Mendoza’s chronicles, but also, perhaps more vividly, through minor ones like that of Juan de Arquellada55 and through the abundant correspondence among the various actors that survives from this phase of the war.56 These letters show that the war was bloody and waged without quarter, dominated by the “insatiable greed” of Christian soldiers who committed all sorts of crimes and robberies, even against the “quiet and peaceful” Moriscos, the ones who had not rebelled. By this time, pillage and seizing booty had become the chief motive for the war on the Christian side. It was impossible to restrain the crimes; they were committed with total impunity, because the officers claimed that the soldiers would desert if they were punished.57 Systematic devastation of fields and crops; stealing of flocks; sacking of villages and houses that extended even to agricultural tools; the enslavement of captured Moriscos, including the distribution in Málaga of their women among the regiments from Naples—all these led to the terrible destruction of the kingdom. The letters also reveal Christians’ fear of a Turkish invasion, and the measures taken to deport Moriscos, including those who had not joined the uprising, from their villages to places farther inland. Málaga’s corregidor (royal magistrate), Arévalo de Zuazo, protested against these expulsions vigorously and often, but in vain: he claimed that the Moriscos of his district were good people, were needed to till the soil, and had remained

54 The letters from the Cartulario that are dated during those months were written at Órgiva, Portugos, Juviles, Ujíjar, Adra, Castelferro, Dalías, Padules (where the Duke of Sessa met up with Don John of Austria), and Guadix. For details of this itinerary and its circumstances see D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 149 ff. 55 Included by M. Barrios in La suerte de los vencidos, op. cit., 111 ff. 56 We draw above all on the letters edited in Memorial Histórico Español, 28 (Madrid, 1856), 5–159, especially those between Philip II and Don John of Austria, and between the latter and Cardinal Espinosa: originals in the IVDJ, Madrid, Envío I, 1 and 2. Note the letters of Arévalo de Zuazo, corregidor of Málaga, and from the Licenciate Briviesca de Muntañones, the envoy of Cardinal Espinosa. 57 IVDJ, Envío I, 1, letters from the Licenciate Briviesca de Muntañones dated from August 1569 onward. alonso del castillo: translator, author? 113 absolutely peaceful. But they lived too close to the coast. These blame- less Moriscos were tricked, forced to abandon their houses and towns on the pretext of protecting them from violence by the troops; they were told that they would come back when all was over, but they were put on the roads to Antequera, Seville, and Extremadura, never to return. The Morisco rebels were left confined to the highest peaks, living in caves, their women leaping like goats from rock to rock with their children on their shoulders, “for the Moors are agile and swift and can decide whether to fight or withdraw, and they go from crag to crag fleeing like deer.”58 Acts of vicious savagery were committed by both sides in an all-out war in which it was already hard to distinguish bandits from rebels and from regular soldiers; both camps were riven by internal quarrels that inflamed the conflict. We cannot resist telling what happened in Galera when it was taken by Don John of Austria’s men: They had arrow-slits in their houses from which they shot at our protective wall. There many important persons died, captains and a lieutenant. The artillery was firing from three or four directions. When [Don John of Austria] gave the cry of ‘Santiago, Santiago!’ our people were roused to the attack. The Moors (whose castle we had destroyed) began to retreat to lower ground; then we pressed our advantage, until by four o’clock there were more than 3,500 Moors piled up like pig carcasses, and we went about slash- ing their throats and stripping them naked. And Don Juan ordered that we do the same to the women and children, and more than 600 of these must have had their throats slit, because he wished to leave not one of them alive. Finally his rage left him, and he told the soldiers to deal with the captives as they wished; there must have been more than 1,800 women and youths and children up to 8 years old, because the older ones had all been killed. There was a single building where 200 Moors were slaughtered. More than 500 took refuge in a nearby mine, and on it being agreed to burn them, that was done; so that as far as we can tell, the number of dead is over 4,000. There were a few Turks among the Moors. We found the Christians they had been holding dead and thrown into a corral, some with their heads cut off, and among them dead dogs and other animals.59

58 “Porque los moros son ágiles y veloces y está en su mano pelear o dexarlo, que se van de risco en risco huyendo como corzos”: IVDJ, Envío I, 1, fol. 133. 59 “Ellos tenían en las casas hechas sus saeteras, por donde tiraban al mampuesto. Allí murió mucha gente muy principal, capitanes y alférez. La artillería jugaba por tres o cuatro partes. Mandando [D. Juan de Austria] ¡Santiago, Santiago! comenzó a arremeter nuestra gente animosamente. Los moros (derribado por nosotros el castillo) se fueron retirando a lo bajo; y nosotros siguiendo la victoria, de manera que a las cuatro de la tarde estaban hacinados como puercos más de 3.500 moros; y nosotros degollando y dejándolos en cueros. Y lo mismo mandó el Sr. D. Juan que se hiciese de las mujeres y niños que serían más de 600 los que se degollaron; porque era su voluntad no quedase ninguno con vida. 114 chapter four

“Finally his rage left him.” Words fail us in the face of this episode, which was not an isolated one: it belongs to a way of waging war that would be justified ideologically just then, around 1572, at the time of the defeat in Flanders. Those close to Philip II claimed that after one had used every means to put down a rebellion without success, the only recourse was the death of all the rebels.60 Benito Arias Montano, then the king’s agent and advisor for the affairs of Flanders, championed this type of measure. Assessing the situation there before the arrival of the Duke of Alba, he affirmed: “Because nothing conquers them in the end except respect, suspicion, or fear—not reason, not gentleness, not treating them hon- orably nor other laudable and desirable means by which men are usually swayed.”61 It had already been decided that “laudable means” were useless. This atrocious war was a terrible spectacle for a learned man dedicated to knowledge and science. And Castillo must also have been aware of what was happening in Granada itself: in June 1570 it was decreed that all Morisco males from the Albaicín between the ages of ten and sixty should be gathered in churches and hospitals and expelled from the kingdom into Castile. The operation was to be carried out in the quietest possible way to avoid disturbance, the Moriscos being told that it was a temporary measure and that they would be allowed back after the war. The Moriscos, on the other hand, believed that these gatherings would end in their all being murdered, even though the Morisco Jesuit Father Albotodo made Pedro de Deza promise them that their lives would be spared. Even so, the city resounded with screams: “the New Christian women, children,

En fin, se le pasó la cólera y mandó se aprovechasen los soldados de los captivos. Habránse habido más de 1.800 mujeres y muchachos y niños de hasta 8 años porque a mayores no se les ha dado vida a ninguno. Hubo casa donde se mataron 200 moros. Se metieron en una mina que corresponde al campo más de 500; acordóse de quemallos allí y así se hizo; de manera que a lo que tenemos visto, pasan de 4.000 los muertos. Estaban entre los moros algunos turcos. Hallamos a los cristianos que tenían dentro muertos, echados en un corral, y algunas cabezas cortadas; y entre ellos echadas bestias y perros muertos”: “Relación de lo sucedido en el cerco de La Galera,” in B. J. Gallardo, Ensayo de una biblioteca española de libros raros y curiosos (Madrid, 1863–1889), facsimile ed., vol. I (Madrid, 1968), 818. 60 A stance supported by Tacitists like Baltasar Álamos de Barrientos: see J. L. Sánchez Lora, Arias Montano y el pensamiento político en la corte de Felipe II (Huelva, 2008), 30 ff. 61 “Porque ninguna cosa los rinde al fin sino el respeto, recelo o temor, no la razón, no la blandura o el tratarlos por vía de nobleza ni otros medios loables y deseables con que los hombres se suelen mover”: a letter addressed to the king in 1571, ibid., 31. alonso del castillo: translator, author? 115 and old men cried aloud as they saw them taken away.”62 Mármol took an active part in the expulsions from the city: “It was a miserable sight to see so many men of all ages, their heads low, their hands crossed, and their cheeks bathed with tears, with sad and gloomy faces realizing that they were leaving their comfortable homes, their families, their homeland, their birthplace, their estates, and all of their possessions, and still not knowing if they would keep their heads.”63 They were exiled and dispersed throughout Castile; during their march, in the middle of winter, many died or succumbed to disease. Few were ever able to rejoin their families, and their goods were confiscated. We repeat that this would have been a terrible spectacle for an educated, cultivated Morisco physician, a man of peace and concord who was well prepared to live in the kingdom’s new society.

The Prophecies

The Christian side gave surprising weight to the prophecies that Castillo translated: not only does Mármol quote them in full, but they appear also in a transcribed copy that he gave in person to the Abbey of Sacromonte,64 together with another that is found among correspondence and documents from the Granadan war in the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan. One reason that these prophecies may have struck such terror into the Chris- tians—like many other aspects of the war—is their remarkable resemblance to the prophecies of Saint Isidore, the famous Visigothic bishop, which announced the “downfall of Spain”; these had always enjoyed a wide circulation. The Moriscos possessed predictions and prophecies that alluded to Saint Isidore; some survive in Aljamiado, Spanish written in the Arabic alphabet, and they emerge frequently among the documents confiscated from Moriscos in Inquisition trials.65

62 “Fue grande el alarido que las cristianas nuebas, muchachos y viejos davan viendo los sacar”: IVDJ, Envío I, 1, fols. 136–137. 63 “Fue un miserable espectáculo ver tantos hombres de todas edades, las cabezas bajas, las manos cruzadas y los rostros bañados en lágrimas, con semblante doloroso y triste viendo que dejaban sus regaladas casas, sus familias, su patria, su naturaleza, sus haciendas y tanto bien como tenían y aún no sabían cierto lo que se haría de sus cabezas”: L. del Mármol, Historia, op. cit., Book VI, Chap. 27. 64 AASG, leg. IV, 1, fols. 24–28, copied in Mármol’s hand. 65 See, for example, the trial of Francisco de Espinosa: he claimed “that the time would come when anyone who had a Morisco relative would count himself lucky, because the 116 chapter four

The Moriscos found comfort in the idea that the time of Spain’s destruction was at hand: “Alas for you, Spain” is the refrain of one of the extant prophecies.66 Luis del Mármol describes Moriscos dancing in villages of the Alpujarras in the first months of the war, the women with their hair loose and their breasts uncovered in public because, they said, there had been a return to a state of innocence.67 One of the three jofores that Már- mol recorded announces the arrival of a King of the Arabs, a “veiled man” who would cross over to Fez on a magical bridge and take the sword of Idrīs from its mosque, after which all Christians would convert to Islam.68 In some prophetic legends this veiled man is Boabdil, the last sultan of Granada, who is sleeping with his army in caves.69 Caves, a sacred and

Moors would rule in Granada; and there was an astrologer who said that the Moorish king would enter Granada through the golden gate and conquer all the land, and he would burn the bones of Queen Isabella,” and that all this would take place because “Saint Isidore’s prophecies could not lie” (“que vendría tiempo que se tendría por vienaventurado el que tuviese un pariente morisco porque reinarían los moros en Granada y que había un astró- logo que dezía que el rey moro avía de entrar por la puerta dorada de Granada y ganaría toda la tierra y avía de quemar los huesos de la reyna doña Ysabel [. . .] las profecías de sant Ysidoro no podían mentir”): ADC, leg. 218, no. 2670. 66 M. Sánchez Álvarez, El manuscrito misceláneo de la Biblioteca Nacional de París (leyendas, itinerarios de viajes, profecías sobre la destrucción de España y otros relatos moriscos (Madrid, 1982), 246 ff. 67 “It was amazing to see how possessed they all were, great and small, by the accursed sect: they said their prayers to Mohammed, they made their processions and pleas, with the married women showing their breasts and the young girls their bare heads; and with their hair spread over their shoulders they danced publicly in the streets. They embraced the men, and the idle youths went before them fanning them with their headscarves and crying out that the state of innocence had come, and because their religion gave them freedom they were going straight to heaven” (“Era cosa de maravilla ver cuán enseñados estaban todos, chicos y grandes, en la maldita secta; decían las oraciones a Mahoma, hacían sus procesiones y plegarias, descubriendo las mujeres casadas los pechos, las doncellas las cabezas; y teniendo los cabellos esparcidos por los hombros, bailaban públicamente en las calles, abrazaban a los hombres yendo los mozos gandules delante haciéndoles aire con los pañuelos y diciendo en alta voz que era llegado el tiempo del estado de inocencia y que mirando por la libertad de su ley se iban derechos al cielo”): L. del Mármol, Historia del rebelión, op. cit., Book IV, Chap. 8. 68 L. del Mármol, Historia, op. cit., Book III, Chap. 3. See also A. del Castillo: “At this time God will send a king tall of stature, veiled, taller than the mountains, who will strike the sea with his hand and split it, and out of it will come a bridge [. . .] and they will enter Fez and will find the veiled man in the mosque with Idris’s sword in his hand, dressed as a Moor; an on seeing this, all the Christians will become Moors” (“A la sazón enviará Dios un rey de alta estatura, encubierto, más alto que las sierras, el que dará con la mano en el mar y la henderá y saldrá della un puente [. . .] y entrarán en Fez y hallarán al encubierto en la mezquita con la espada de Idris en la mano y vestido de moro; lo qual visto, todos los christianos se volverán moros): Cartulario, op. cit. 69 F. Delpech, “Un mito andaluz: el reino oculto de Boabdil y los moros encantados,” in J. A. González Alcantud and M. Barrios, Las Tomas: antropología histórica de la ocupación territorial del Reino de Granada (Granada, 2000), 565–615. alonso del castillo: translator, author? 117 primordial space, provided refuge for the Morisco rebels, who must have seen themselves as the army of the “veiled” king. Caves also played a significant part in Morisco reinterpretations of the prophecies attributed to Saint Isidore, as we learn from Aljamiado manuscripts.70 Fernando el Zaguer, one of the rebel chieftains, used to harangue his followers with tales of prophecies that “showed the defeat of the Christians” with unusual events like a solar eclipse, and “extraordinary appearances of armed men”—the Plutonic or cave-dwelling army of the last sultan—in the mountains of Granada.71 Both this prophecy and those of Saint Isidore could be read one way or the other by both Muslims and Christians, as part of an ideology of exclusion that would eradicate every member of the other group and triumph at the “End of Days.” These are in fact identity myths, created on a foundation of strong religious polemic.72 It is especially interesting to read these prophetic texts together with Castillo’s translation of the prophecy contained in the parchment, and to see to what extent their phrasing, their deliberate obscurity, their tone, and their predictions are alike.73 Mármol saw a clear relationship between the prophecies translated by Castillo and the one in the parchment, and as a result wrote to Pedro de Castro74 pointing out the correspondences between the two in both style and form. But the parchment’s prophecy, however obscure, was a Christian one that spoke of the advents of Muhammad and Martin Luther as two great threats that would be defeated at the end of time. Can this prophecy be interpreted as consonant with Castillo’s other efforts to deny the prophetic belief that Islam would triumph? The parchment’s text is a Catholic message that announces the destruction of both Islam and Lutheranism,75 but the Alpujarras rebels

70 “Poisonous Moorish beasts will emerge from their caves to destroy Spain from top to bottom”; “and the veiled one will come with men of Hector’s line and will cleanse the caves and the city of Hercules”; “then the new David will be proclaimed by desire of the veiled one” (“Salran de sus kuebas las bestias agareñas emponçoñadas para destruir a Spaña la alta y la basa; i berna el enkubierto kon los del linaje de Etor y linpiaran las kuebas y la ciudad de Erkules; sonara entonçes el nuevo David por akuçiya del enkubierto”): M. Sánchez Álvarez, El manuscrito misceláneo, op. cit., 248. 71 F. Delpech, “Un mito andaluz,” op. cit., 594. 72 M. García-Arenal, “ ‘Un reconfort pour ceux qui sont dans l’attente’: Prophétie et millénarisme dans la péninsule Ibérique et au Maghreb (XVI–XVII siècles),” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 220, 4 (2003), 445–486. 73 Library of El Escorial, sig. RII15. Included by Grace Magnier in her edition of P. de Valencia, Sobre el pergamino y las láminas de Granada (Bern, 2006), Appendix II, 88. 74 AASG, leg. IV, 1, fols. 17r–22r. Included in D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 251. 75 As P. S. van Koningsveld and G. A. Wiegers argue in “El pergamino de la Torre Turpiana,” op. cit. 118 chapter four had expected to be helped not only by the Turks, but by the Spanish monarchy’s delicate situation with its open frontiers in Northern Europe. For example the Morisco leader Fernando el Ferza, as he tried to subdue the Christians who had barricaded themselves in the tower at Órgiva, shouted to them that “King Philip could not come to their aid because he was surrounded by Lutherans.” In other words, can we speculate that Castillo, or another in his situation, might have invented this prophecy during the Alpujarras uprising as a way to combat the jofores that were circulating among the rebels? This hypothesis would accord very well with certain of Castillo’s actions: falsifying documents in Arabic that appeared to come from Moriscos, but that expressed the opposite of what they actually believed. This is only a supposition, and would force us to conclude that the parchment was written at one time with one purpose, and then re-used at a later date with a different purpose. In any event, we have seen that Mármol claimed that Castillo had known ever since the rebellion that there would be a discovery of this kind. It is clear that when Castillo translated and introduced the jofores, he was convinced that the Moriscos believed in them. He bent his efforts to showing not that they were fabricated but that they had been mis- interpreted, and adduced as proof his own translations of the Alhambra inscriptions. For instance, in his letter to the rebel leader Hernando el Farrá urging him to surrender,76 he insists that the Muslim rulers of al- Andalus always knew that their dominion there would end, for that had been announced in prophecies.77 And the Muslim kings always acted knowing how precarious and ephemeral their power would be, even in their architecture: They understood that they remained in these lands by God’s will more than by their own power, and only temporarily, like tenants, for as long as the Christian kings chose to allow it. And this is why we read and understand that they never built many fortifications, but rather for their recreation and ease erected palaces and royal buildings, gardens, pools, and water

76 A. del Castillo, Sumario y recopilación, op. cit., 22 ff., April 15, 1570. 77 It is true that this type of prophecy circulated at certain times in the history of al- Andalus, as can be seen, for example, in the work of ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Ḥabīb. Castillo himself cites one occasionally: he speaks of the predictions of King Abū l-Ḥasan’s astrologer, who warned his master that he would very soon lose his kingdom: “so I could bring you a thousand and more of these sayings, which I have heard from old, ancient, and famous historians of these kingdoms of al-Andalus and of all Spain” (“e ansí destas razones os podría traer mill que no ternían cuento, que he oído referir a antiguos viejos e grandes historiadores destos reynos del Andaluzía e de toda Hespaña”): ibid., 31. alonso del castillo: translator, author? 119

fountains [. . .] and on everything they would carve the words la galib ily alah, which means “there is no victor except God,” recognizing the great power of Christendom [. . .]; for they were present in these kingdoms rather Deo permitente than by their own strength.78 This is a fascinating passage and a clear instance, if not of biased or self- interested translation, at least of a forced interpretation. Castillo knew perfectly well, from his work on the Alhambra inscriptions, that lā ghāliba illā Allah was the motto of the Nasrid sultans and that it meant “there is no victor except God” or, rather, “there is no reign but that of God,” a saying by which the Nasrids attributed their own rule to divine inspiration and help.79 He therefore gives the translation an unheard-of twist when he claims that it means the Nasrids knew that their power, Muslim power, was destined to end. All this is consistent with other actions by Castillo. What the parchment clearly implied—and here we are certain that it was in accord with Castillo’s beliefs—was that, even though Islamic rule must disappear, Arabic as a language could survive in perfect harmony with an authentic Christian life. It is difficult to conclude from the above that Castillo falsified, or helped to falsify, the discoveries of the Torre Turpiana and the Sacromonte; but he did possess the intellectual and mental tools to do so. And he certainly thought that the entire Sacromonte hoax was a true gift from God, something that ought to be believed and that was extraordinarily good for the people of Granada, Old and New Christians alike. Aside from having defended the authenticity of the finds, he seems to have believed sincerely in the message that they contained. In July 1618, the Archbishop reported on the deaths of Luna and Castillo: Castillo was a respected man, older [than Luna], well thought of, and during the revolts of the Granadan Moriscos he always served His Majesty, so that he was allowed to remain a loyal citizen of the Kingdom of Granada even though most of the others were expelled. And he was an interpreter

78 “Entendieron que estavan es estos reynos sino por permisión de Dios, más que por sus fuerças, e de emprestado como quien vive por alquilé mientras fue la voluntad de los Reyes cristianos de les dexar en ellos. E por esto leemos y entendemos que nunca se dieron a hazer en el muchas fuerças, mas que a recrearse e holgarse e hazer alcáçares y edificios reales, vergeles, albercas e fuentes de agua [. . .] y en todo esculpían y dezían la galib ily alah, que quiere decir ‘no hay otro vencedor sino Dios’ en reconocimiento deste grand poderío de la Cristiandad [. . .] que más estaban en estos reinos Deo permitente que no por sus fuerzas”: ibid., 28. 79 S. Peña and M. Vega Martín, “La clave de la guerra en la historia de la traducción del árabe: el caso del lema de los Nazaríes desde el siglo XVI,” in M. J. Hernández Guerrero and S. Peña Martín (eds.), La traducción, factor de cambio (Bern, 2008), 134 ff. 120 chapter four

for His Majesty and for the Inquisition. No evidence was ever found that he was anything other than a Catholic Christian. He died after receiving the Sacraments, and on his deathbed he was chanting the Creed. He took Com- munion and received the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. He said, “What I have received is the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ; this is the truth, the rest is falsehood. Oh Saint Caecilius, ora pro me; Saint Ctesiphon, ora pro me; Saint Hiscius, ora pro me.” And he called on all the saints of the Sacromonte whose books he had interpreted. He invoked them over and over, and he [. . .] argued to all who went to see him that the Christian religion was true; and for this he quoted many of those books and said that that was the truth, and what they must believe. He made his will. He was buried with honors in the parish of San Miguel.80 Thus Castillo died calling on the saints of the parchment and the Lead Books, and believing (or pretending to believe) that they expressed the true Christian faith. If indeed he took part in their falsification, it was there that he resembled the creators of prophecies, of whom Mármol said: “They defended it so strongly that they themselves, who had invented it, believed it, and held as true that what they had predicted would happen to them.”81

80 “Castillo era hombre de bien, de más hedad, aprobado, y en todas las rebeliones de los moriscos de Granada sirvió siempre a Su Magestad y le dexaron como a fiel vezino en el reyno de Granada, aunque fueron sacados otros, los demás, del Reyno. Y era intérprete de Su Magestad y de la Inquisición. Nunca se halló contra él cosa que no fuera de cathólico cristiano. Murió con los Sacamentos y estando muriendo en la cama, estava cantando el Credo. Comulgó y recibió el santísimo sacramento por viático. Dezía [. . .] ‘lo que e recibido es el cuerpo de nuestro señor Ihesu Christo, ésta es la verdad, lo demás es mentira. Sancte Cecilio, ora pro me, Sancte Thesifón, ora pro me, Sancte Hiscio, ora pro me.’ E invocava a todos los sanctos del Monte Sacro, que avía interpretado sus libros. A éstos invocaba muchas vezes y a los que [. . .] iban a verle les persuadía que era verdad la ley de los christianos; y les dezía para esto muchas cosas de estos libros y que esa era la verdad y lo que avían de creer. Hizo testamento. Enterróse con sacrifiçios en la parrochia de San Miguel”: AASG, leg. IV, fol. 852r–v; in A. García Pedraza, Actitudes ante la muerte, op. cit., II, documentary appendix, doc. 18, 1010–1011. 81 “Era tan grande la eficacia con que lo certificaban que aun ellos mesmos, que lo habían inventado, lo creían y tenían por cierto que les sucedería como lo decían.” chapter five

alonso del castillo’s friends: priests, soldiers, interpreters

In Alonso del Castillo’s Diario and Cartulario, we find over and over a series of individuals with whom he had close personal or professional ties. We wish to devote this chapter to them because we feel that they shed new light on him: they were Moriscos and members of the same professions that he belonged to, particularly that of interpreter and translator. As such they were intermediaries between communities, liminal figures, dwellers in the borderlands. Most notably, several were priests. These were the only professions, aside from that of merchant—and the wealthi- est merchants soon allied themselves with the aristocracy—that allowed Moriscos to scale the social ladder. We speak of them not because we think that they were directly implicated in the affair of the Parchment and the Lead Books, but because they were in personal contact with Alonso del Castillo and represent some of the choices that Granadan Moriscos had to make from the outbreak of the Alpujarras War. Pondering these individual lives makes it easier to capture and comprehend a complex situation in which identities shift, pass through phases of uncertainty, and are multifaced or adaptable to different circumstances and different geographical locations.

Priests

It is important to stress the existence of a Morisco clergy, which seems to have been abundant throughout the Kingdom of Granada. Notarial archives contain rich documentation of priests who acted as interpreters for their parishioners—Arabic-speaking priests, some of Morisco origin. We have seen that Pedro Velarde de Ribera had had “communication [. . .] with many Moriscos” as a “beneficed priest [. .] in many of their villages”; he speaks, in a passage we will return to later, of “many churchmen and laymen who have lived and live in this Kingdom of Granada from whom the Moriscos enjoyed learning the Arabic language.”1 One may wonder if

1 “Muchos eclesiásticos y seglares que a avido y ay en este Reyno de Granada de quien los moriscos gustavan de deprender su algarabía”: P. Velarde de Ribera, Historia eclesiástica del Monte Santo, op. cit., fol. 182r. 122 chapter five all of these Arabophone priests were Moriscos. Francisco Núñez Muley, in his appeal of the decree of 1567, tells of villages and rural areas of the kingdom where Spanish has never been spoken nor understood, “except for the parish or beneficed priest, and these always speak in Arabic.”2 In the first half of the sixteenth century efforts were made to educate Morisco youths, and some went on to study in the seminary; that was also the destination for sons of mixed unions in which the mother was a Morisca servant or slave. In principle the existence of Arabic-speaking priests should have helped to evangelize the New Christians, but after the uprising the Christian authorities protested their presence and sought to remove clergy of Morisco origin. Archbishop Pedro Guerrero, in need of officials and personnel after the rebellion, had proposed benefices for persons who, although of demonstrated faith, did not have the proper proofs of purity of blood;3 for this he was reprimanded by Philip II in 1572. In September 1597, Archbishop Pedro de Castro found himself in the same situation. His secretary had written to him from Madrid recalling the insistence on applying the purity-of-blood statute to beneficed priests; the Granadan prelate replied that this was not possible because “the land is very unclean”—that is, there were too many converts—and because the benefices in question were so meager that no one wished to hold them except local New Christians.4 A few of these beneficed priests seem to have been intimately connected to Alonso del Castillo; he may have met them through the role of interpreter that these Morisco clergy sometimes played for their parishioners. In any case, the activities of some of them in the Alpujarras War, like Castillo’s, can be documented, and we explore them in what follows.

2 M. García-Arenal, Los moriscos (Madrid, 1975), 55. 3 See the case of the cathedral canon Francisco de Torrijos, a Morisco priest, in F. J. Castillo Fernández, “El sacerdote morisco Francisco de Torrijos: un testigo de excepción en la rebelión de las Alpujarras,” Chronica Nova, 23 (1996), 465–492. 4 In September 1597 Dr. Jerónimo de Herrera, prebendary of Granada Cathedral on a visit to Madrid, wrote to the archbishop: “Your Lordship is obliged to name Old Chris- tians [for the benefices], and if someone is not one you must say so; and although I told him everything that Your Lordship wrote me about how difficult this is, because the land is very unclean and because the benefices are very meager and some of the candidates are outsiders so that they cannot be vetted, he says that Old Christians must be named” (“Vuestra Señoría tiene obligacion de nombrar christianos viejos y del que no lo fuere, decir que no lo es, y aunque le dixe todo lo que Vuesa Señoría me escribió de la difficul- tad que en esto ay assí por estar la tierra muy manchada como por ser los beneficios muy pobres y algunos oppositores forasteros, que no pueden hacerles información, dice que es fuerça nombrar christianos viejos”): AASG, leg. III, fol. 318. alonso del castillo’s friends 123

Diego Marín

Alonso del Castillo had a bosom friend to whom he was attached both personally and professionally and who appears often in his famous Cartu- lario. This was the Morisco clergyman Diego Marín, the beneficed priest of the villages of Bédar and Serena in the north of Almería province.5 He enjoyed a successful personal and working life that took him, as we shall see, to Morocco. He seems to have been held in high regard by the Moris- cos: Mármol, who knew him, affirms that “the Moriscos of that region [Almería] respected him greatly”.6 The Christian authorities felt likewise: “He is educated and a great clergyman and considered a very good Chris- tian,” according to the corregidor of Málaga, Arévalo de Zuazo, in 1583.7 Our first traces of Marín are found in notarial documents from Almería and are dated toward the end of the Alpujarras War. These documents refer to a great many priests who took part in purchasing slaves, that is, buying back Moriscos who had been captured during the war. It is a rare village whose parish or beneficed priest—including members of the cathedral Chapter—does not appear in the protocols buying, selling, or exchanging slaves.8 A good number of white slaves, both male and female, “captured fairly in the war that His Majesty ordered waged against the rebellious Moors of the Kingdom of Granada,” passed through Marín’s hands. He appears in the documents buying and, especially, redeeming slaves, and also giving manumission letters to slaves captured in war who had bought their freedom. These letters were written as though the slaves were buying themselves, but logically it must have been their families who paid their ransom. The documents date from 1569, before the end of the war and the expulsion decree that was issued late in 1570.9 Marín often came to grief through the enmity of other ecclesiastics and the friendly relations he always maintained with his former coreligionists. Around 1570 he was involved in at least two lawsuits, one with a familiar

5 There was a second Diego Marín, also a Morisco, a doctor of laws and schoolmaster at Almería Cathedral. It is sometimes hard to distinguish him from our subject, because they were contemporaries and both were concerned with the end of the war and the traf- fic in slaves. 6 A. Domínguez Ortiz and B. Vincent, Historia de los moriscos, op. cit., 151. 7 IVDJ, Envío I, 1, fol. 71. 8 N. Cabrillana, Documentos notariales referentes a los moriscos (1569–1571) (Granada, 1978), docs. 141, 148, 270, 356, 462, 464, 482, 484, 490–493, 532, 533, 565, 571, 730, 759, 914, 915, 918, and 920. 9 N. Cabrillana, “Esclavos moriscos en la Almería del siglo XVI,” Al-Andalus, 40 (1975), 108. 124 chapter five of the Inquisition and another over livestock. But most seriously, he was accused of having relations with a niece who lived with him, a certain Mari Pérez, and of being the father of her child. Although the accuser later retracted the charge it was not an unlikely one, because later in life we find Diego Marín always accompanied by his nephew, also named Diego Marín.10 Father Marín, his siblings, and his nieces and nephews were permitted by royal warrant to remain in the Kingdom of Granada after the expulsion of 1570.11

Francisco López Tamarid

A second Morisco priest, Francisco López Tamarid, was both beneficed in the town of Sorbas and vicar of the city of Vera and its district. He also appears in notarial records during these years, buying and selling Moriscos enslaved by the war, and obtaining—for a fee, of course—manumission letters for several Morisco captives. It is hard to determine from these documents to what extent Marín and Tamarid were helping these slaves, and to what extent they were profiting from the situation. They had never felt the slightest sympathy for the rebels, and they certainly did not offer their services for nothing. At the same time they were creating a “trade” for themselves, specializing in mediation and translation. The war had devastated the region and exiled its inhabitants, leaving their fields untilled; resettlement efforts were a failure. The towns of Tamarid’s jurisdiction, like so many elsewhere, had lost their parishioners and since the priests thus had no income, they had no choice but to look for other ways to survive. For this reason Tamarid was empowered by the dean and Chapter of Almería Cathedral to sell or auction the assets of three-ninths of the New Christians of Vera, Mojácar, and the hamlets in their district. In 1569 the beneficed priests of Zurgena, Barera, Teresa, Benaguacil, Benitagla, Lúcar, Bédar, and Serena authorized Tamarid to appeal to the king in their name, begging for a few maravedís for their sus- tenance, because all of their villages, having been inhabited by Moriscos, were now deserted.12

10 Francisco Ximenes withdraws what he had said about Diego Marín and against his niece Mari Pérez, when he accused them of having carnal relations as a result of which Mari Pérez had given birth: N. Cabrillana, Documentos notariales, op. cit., doc. 484 (Vera, April 1569). 11 AGS, Cámara de Castilla, leg. 2181. 12 N. Cabrillana, Documentos notariales, op. cit., docs. 220, 326, 327, 567, 572, 895, 896, 897, and 988. alonso del castillo’s friends 125

López Tamarid, unlike Diego Marín, had not emerged prosperous from the war: Morisco rebels burned his houses in Antas after having robbed him of his goods and livestock.13 We find him a few years later as a prebendary of Granada Cathedral and an interpreter for the Holy Office’s tribunal in the city, a post to which he had risen after its previous holder, Alonso del Castillo, was named royal interpreter. We know from a report by Tamarid to the Crown that before that, at the time of the uprising, he had survived by taking refuge inside the walls of Vera, near Sorbas where he held his benefice. He had spent the whole war as vicar of Vera, acting as assessor for the city council and the militia and taking in at his own expense several soldiers who came to him for help. Furthermore he had ridden out on horseback himself to chase and harry the rebels, and had taken part in a number of skirmishes—buckling on his sword, it seems, over his cassock.14 When Don John of Austria brought his expedition through the valley of the River Almanzora, finding himself in need of Arabic translators he took López Tamarid into his camp, just as had happened with the Duke of Sessa and Castillo. As Tamarid stated in his report to the Crown, “he worked beside Don John in Andarax so that those rebels would come to obey Your Majesty, and he wrote the decrees and the amnesty in Arabic and Don John signed them with his name so that they would trust them, and he took part in all these negotiations diligently and with danger to himself.”15 Mármol confirms this claim, mentioning that Tamarid was one of the envoys who met El Habaqui and other Moorish and Turkish commanders in Fondón de Andarax. The friendship between Tamarid and Alonso del Castillo must have been forged between mid-1569 and late 1570, when the two branches of the Christian army led respectively by Sessa and Don John of Austria came together. Diego Marín and Francisco López Tamarid, for their part, knew each other and worked together: the Christian delegation that negotiated with the rebel leader El Habaqui in May 1570 included López Tamarid (as we have just seen), Diego Marín, and the Morisco priest of Darrical, the Licen- ciate Torrijos. We will not linger over this Torrijos, who seems not to have

13 A. Domínguez Ortiz and B. Vincent, Historia de los moriscos, op. cit., 150. 14 A. Gil Albarracín, “Francisco López Tamarid, clérigo, guerrero y humanista y la Almería de su tiempo,” Roel, 11 (1990–1991), 34–47, esp. 35. 15 “A servido acerca de la persona del señor Don Juan en Andarax para que los dichos revelados viniesen en obediencia de Vuestra Magestad y escribió los bandos y perdón en arábigo y los firmó de su nombre el señor Don Juan para que confiasen y trató en todos los dichos negocios con gran trabajo y peligro de su persona”: ibid., 36. 126 chapter five maintained relations with Castillo; after taking part in several negotiations with the rebels, he eventually became a canon of Granada Cathedral.16 In 1573 Diego Marín offered to negotiate the surrender of the famous bandit El Joraique, whom he had known for several months. Because El Joraique had been a slave he could not be exiled to Castile with his family, as he wished; therefore he had fled to the mountains with other brigands. An extraordinary document, signed by Marín himself, records the contact that he initiated with Pedro de Deza, using Marín as intermediary: it specified the conditions under which El Joraique would surrender.17 Most of these were not accepted and El Joraique, with thirty of his men, stole a boat in Vera one night and crossed over to Africa. What amazing figures these Morisco priests were: warriors, translators, soldiers and humanists, negotiators and vanquishers of rebels and high- waymen, traders in slaves. López Tamarid is perhaps the most interesting of them all. We already saw him in the previous chapter: once the war was over he became an interpreter for the Holy Office of the Inquisi- tion in Granada after Alonso del Castillo, and later, also like him, a royal interpreter. He wrote one of the first translations of the Torre Turpiana Parchment18 and was assigned to help Miguel de Luna with the latter’s translation, and to assist him in any way necessary. Luna and Tamarid worked together daily in March and April of 1588, and only when they had finished did Castillo begin to make his own version, without having read theirs.19 Tamarid, like Castillo and Luna, wrote reports defending the Parchment’s authenticity.20 Tamarid assembled a Compendio de algunos vocablos arábigos (Com- pendium of Some Arabic Terms) that Sebastián de Covarrubias drew on for his Tesoro de la lengua castellana (Treasure of the Castilian Language), and catalogued manuscripts of works confiscated by the Inquisition in Granada.21 Alonso del Castillo read and revised Tamarid’s Compendio

16 F. J. Castillo Fernández, “El sacerdote morisco Francisco de Torrijos . . .,” op. cit. 17 Transcribed by B. Vincent, “El bandolerismo morisco en Andalucía (siglo XVI),” in Minorías y marginados en la España del siglo XVI (Granada, 1987), 190–193. 18 Transcribed by G. A. Wiegers, “The ‘Old’ or ‘Turpiana’ Tower in Granada and its Rel- ics according to Ahmad b. Qâsim al-Hajarî,” in R. Gyselen (ed.), Sites et monuments disparus d’après les témoignages de voyageurs. Res Orientales, vol. VIII (1996), 193–207, esp. 200–203. 19 AASG, leg. V, fol. 34. The entire process of these first translations of the Parchment is carefully described and dated in ACDF, St. St. R7c, fol. 345 ff. 20 adcf, St. R7c, fol. 294 ff. 21 C. Ron de la Bastida, “Manuscritos árabes en la Inquisición granadina (1582),” Al- Andalus, 23 (1958), 210–213. alonso del castillo’s friends 127 before Covarrubias used it.22 This work, some twenty pages long, was also reproduced by Gregorio Mayáns y Siscar in his Orígenes de la lengua española, compuestos por varios autores (Origins of the Spanish Language, Composed by Various Authors),23 where it is praised and compared to those of Bernardo de Aldrete and Duarte Núñez de León; all these, according to Mayáns, took their inspiration from the works of Pedro de Alcalá, which we have discussed in an earlier chapter. It is particularly important to note that in 1565, Tamarid examined an Arabic copy of the Gospel of John; the Inquisition had seized it among the belongings of a Morisco doctor named Master Andrés, who was from Sorbas, Almería—that is, the very town where Tamarid had held his benefice.24 This incident shows us that Tamarid, a Catholic priest, had access to Christian Arabic sources—of Mozarabic origin, in this case— which the Moriscos preserved, copied, and read with polemical intent. We must pose a question that we cannot answer: how would this Arabic manuscript have come into the Inquisition’s hands? Could Tamarid have handed it over? Might he have taken possession of it himself, or betrayed its existence? The doctor and the priest of a town like Sorbas must have known and dealt with each other.25 Tamarid also wrote, in 1570, a series of reports directed to the Crown, composed in his capacity as “a native of the Kingdom of Almería and one with experience in the Kingdom of Granada.” In them he described the area’s geographic, economic, and military situation and made recommendations for how to repopulate it: by reestablishing a system for guarding the coast, deciding what tithes or taxes the new settlers should pay, and so on. He proposed that the goods of Moriscos who “have been schismatics and traitors to their King and Lord” should be ceded to the newcomers, but that Moriscos who “have been faithful and loyal” should be treated differently and allowed to keep their property.26 His discourse therefore matches that used by Castillo and Miguel de Luna in their writings, and shows a desire identical to the latter’s to have access to the king. This

22 D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 84. 23 (Madrid: Juan de Zúñiga, 1737). Tamarid’s work is on 235–256. 24 The manuscript was in El Escorial and later came to be owned by León Cathedral: P. S. van Koningsveld, “Christian Arabic Manuscripts from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa: a Historical Interpretation,” Al-Qantara, 15 (1994), 427–428. 25 Jerome Münzer, who visited the Kingdom of Granada before the war, affirmed that Vera and Sorbas were inhabited exclusively by Moriscos: see J. Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, op. cit., 117. 26 A. Gil Albarracín, “Francisco López Tamarid,” op. cit., 44. 128 chapter five fascinating document shows Tamarid seeking to act directly on the immediate future of the kingdom—a future that may have been, at the same time, his own.27 Other Morisco clergymen, like the aforementioned Torrijos and the Jesuit Albotodo, took an active part in the unraveling of the rebellion and the negotiations to end it, just as both had warned of the beginning of the conflict. It was in fact Francisco de Torrijos, the beneficed priest of Dar- rical in the Alpujarras, who was the first to warn the Archbishop of Granada that the Moriscos in the mountains were conspiring and planning to revolt.28 But there were other Moriscos as well who were clearly opposed to the rebellion or who had decided to gain personal advantage from the situation. We refer in particular to Francisco Barredo, a silversmith and merchant from Granada, whom Alonso del Castillo called his “special” and “intimate” friend29 and who was also a friend of Diego Marín. In the company of the latter, many years later, he would open a new chapter in both men’s careers, in Morocco; we shall speak of this below. Barreda was very likely a Morisco, according to several sources; in any case he was fluent in the Arabic dialect of Granada. Hurtado de Mendoza speaks of “Francisco Barredo, a silversmith, who was un grande arábigo (a great Ara- bist, someone who knows the Arabic language well), and Mármol claims that Barredo “used to have much friendship and contact with the Alpu- jarran Moriscos before they rebelled, and he would take silver and gold items to sell to them, trusting that because of this they would not harm him; he also went during the war to buy their silk and gold and pearls and other things.”30 Very late in the war, at the beginning of 1571 when the only remaining rebel was Aben Aboo and even his men disagreed on how to escape from a fight that was already lost, Barreda went up to the Alpujarras. There he was widely trusted and had many friends, one of whom, Gonzalo el Xeniz, he met; Barreda promised him a royal pardon if he could end the revolt

27 A. Gil Albarracín presents these highly interesting documents without, unfortunately, supplying the appropriate references to the Archivo de Simancas, where it appears that they are held. 28 J. Castillo Fernández, “El sacerdote morisco Francisco de Torrijos,” op. cit., 469 ff. 29 D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 85. 30 “Solía tener mucha amistad y conocimiento con los moriscos de la Alpujarra antes de que se levantasen, y les llevaba a vender cosas de plata y de oro, el cual, confiado en que no le harían mal por este respecto, iba también en tiempo de guerra a comprarles seda y oro y aljófar y otras cosas”: ibid., 170. alonso del castillo’s friends 129 by handing Aben Aboo over dead or alive. El Xeniz wrote to Pedro de Deza via Barredo, insisting that he receive the pardon first and that it be in Arabic in Alonso del Castillo’s hand. Barredo returned to Granada with this commission, and obtained a royal dispatch from Philip II in favor of El Xeniz. As a result Alonso del Castillo wrote to the latter in Arabic, just as he had asked, calling him “my friend and brother Gonzalo el Xenix” and informing him that the king had granted his request.31 Francisco de Barredo delivered this letter. In March, Aben Aboo was murdered and his body thrown into a ravine. After it was recovered, a procession led by Barredo and Gonzalo el Xeniz carried it to the Audiencia in Granada. Gonzalo el Xeniz, with his wife, children, and two nephews, was later able to live freely in Castile, bear arms, and enjoy the same privileges as Old Christians. Francisco Barredo also received favors and rewards. He was to take part in one more negotiation—this one unsuccessful—for the surrender of the bandit Andrés el Rindatí: he urged him to surrender through various intermediaries and, once again, with a letter written in Arabic by Castillo in November 1571. But El Rindatí not only did not wish to give himself up, but, like a “most clever Moor,” stole a boat near Almuñécar with a group of other ruffians and crossed to Barbary.32 The king awarded Barredo six thousand ducats (in the form of real estate that had been seized from exiled Moriscos) and a house in Águila Street in Granada that had also belonged to one of those “expelled from the kingdom.” Afterward he began to travel to Morocco, where Diego Marín was already living, to redeem captives. In 1579 the sharīf Muley Aḥmad al-Manṣūr gave him permission to trade freely in Morocco, doing so at the request of Father Marín, who “asked him a favor for a friend of his named Francisco Barredo.”33 The safe-conduct specified that Barredo could “go to Morocco from Spain and take whatever merchandise he wished and trade with it all over Africa, safe and sound.” This ẓahīr (safe-conduct) was brought by Diego Marín in person in 1580 and translated in Granada by Alonso del Castillo at Barredo’s request. Hurtado de Mendoza claims that Barredo died of poison in Morocco, during a dinner offered by some Mus- lim acquaintances; perhaps these were Morisco refugees who resented his

31 Ibid., 172. 32 Ibid., 181. 33 Ibid., 175, and J. Oliver Asín, Vida de don Felipe de África, príncipe de Fez y de Marruecos (Madrid-Granada, 1955; repr. Granada, 2009), 71–72. 130 chapter five past actions and took revenge.34 Both Barredo and Diego Marín (as well as many others) transferred to Morocco the contacts, negotiating skills, and ability to mediate and interpret that they had perfected during the Granadan war. Diego Marín arrived in Morocco in 1573 in circumstances to which we will now turn; but we must first say something about the relations between Spain and Morocco that formed the context for the next stage of his professional life.

Diego Marín in Morocco

Morocco at this time, as the only Muslim country that was not under Ottoman rule, played a uniquely important geostrategic role in the Medi- terranean. Maintaining good relations with Morocco was crucial for Spain in view of the rivalry between the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs that prevailed throughout the sixteenth century. It was essential also for Morocco, which used Spain’s support to counterbalance the constant threat of interference from the Ottoman states of Algiers and Tunis. Philip II’s relations with the various sultans of the reigning Moroccan dynasty, the Banū Saʿd, were good but cautious. After the conquests of Melilla in 1495 and the Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera shortly after, the frontier that had bordered the Muslim Kingdom of Granada for two centuries had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar. The relationship that the Spanish Crown maintained with the Saʿdī dynasty was like the one it had maintained with the sultans of Granada: it supported one candidate or another in the internal struggles that took place with every new succession to the throne. One of those internal quarrels forced a dethroned candidate to seek help from Spain in recovering the position of sultan: this was Muḥammad, son of the Sultan ʿAbdallah who had reigned during the Alpujarras War. The dynastic dispute arose from the differing criteria used in determining a successor in Morocco, for there were two principles in play: whether the

34 D. Hurtado de Mendoza: “The King granted Francisco Barredo six thousand ducats, to be given in the form of Morisco real estate, and a house in Águila Street that had belonged to a Mudejar expelled from the kingdom; then he crossed several times to Bar- bary to redeem captives. He was murdered at a banquet that Moors whom he knew offered to him” (“A Francisco Barredo le hizo el Rey merced de seis mil ducados, y que éstos se le diesen en bienes raíces de los moriscos, y una casa en la calle del Águila que era de un mudéjar echado del reino; después pasó en Berbería algunas veces a rescatar captivos. Le mataron en un convite que los moros conocidos suyos le hicieron”): in the ed. of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Chap. 21, 122. alonso del castillo’s friends 131 candidate should be the eldest son of the deceased sultan or the oldest male member of the family. At this moment the latter was ʿAbd al-Malik, a brother of Sultan Muley ʿAbdallah. ʿAbd al-Malik had in fact toppled his nephew from the throne with the help of a Turkish army, and as a result Muḥammad came to ask Philip II’s support. The king of Spain, who enjoyed good relations with the reigning sultan ʿAbd al-Malik, refused to become involved in the quarrel between uncle and nephew. But King Sebastian of Portugal did so: he would launch a great expedition to conquer Morocco that met defeat at the battle of Alcazarquivir in 1578. Diego Marín arrived in Morocco under the reign of ʿAbd al-Malik, while King Sebastian was preparing his incursion into Africa. The first sultan with whom Marín had contact was ʿAbd al-Malik, but he (together with King Sebastian and the pretender supported by Portugal) was killed in the battle of Alcazarquivir, after which Marín dealt with the successor to the Moroccan throne, Aḥmad al-Manṣūr (1578–1603). Marín came to Morocco as a captive, the result of a famous raid led in 1573 by an Alpujarran Morisco who had settled in Morocco. This man, Saʿīd al-Duʿaylī, deserves a closer look; he is documented in Alonso del Castillo’s Cartulario when he was governor of the city of Tetuan.35 Accord- ing to Mármol he was born in Órgiva in the Alpujarras to Morisco parents.36 Al-Duʿaylī emigrated to Morocco before the Granadan war; once settled in Tetuan he turned, like so many others, to piracy, seeking to take Moriscos from the Kingdom of Granada and to “do harm in the Christian lands.” In 1571 he led a famous raid on the Canary island of Lanzarote, sacking it and keeping possession of it for almost a month. At the same time, al-Duʿaylī had been charged by Sultan Muley ʿAbdallah with forming an army corps of Morisco arquebusiers; he recruited about four thousand of them among the various settlements of “Andalusis” or Granadans in the kingdom. The sultan gave them lands in the fertile plain surrounding Marrakech, where they built a neighborhood called Riyāḍ al-Zaytūn (the Olive Garden) or, according to Mármol, Órgiva la Nueva (New Órgiva). This corps, led by al-Duʿaylī, took part in actions of great significance for Moroccan politics: first, in the events that led Muley ʿAbd al-Malik to gain the throne in 1576, and second, just after the battle of Alcazarquivir, when al-Duʿaylī and other Morisco leaders attempted a coup d’état against the newly named Sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr. The plot

35 Sumario e recopilación, op. cit., 66. 36 L. del Mármol, Descripción general de África, vol. II (Granada, 1573), fol. 79v. 132 chapter five was discovered, and al-Duʿaylī and his followers were beheaded. It is fascinating to see these Granadan Moriscos trying to take power in Morocco, perhaps in order to create a new Kingdom of Granada there, perhaps only to gain the means by which to reconquer its former territory in Spain. But the events that involve Diego Marín had taken place years before this attempted coup and before the battle of Alcazarquivir. In 1572, with the Alpujarras War barely over, Pedro de Deza informed the Court that in Tetuan, al-Duʿaylī and his Moriscos were preparing to attack Spain from the sea. In November 1573 the residents of Almuñécar, on the coast of Granada, spotted twenty-three ships that had come from Tetuan; three days later, between 400 and 800 men (according to different sources) dis- embarked on one of the most deserted stretches of Almería’s coast, sacked the villages of Teresa, Cabrera, and Bédar, and reached Cuevas de Alman- zora. The Christian garrison was unable to prevent al-Duʿaylī and his men from acting with total freedom; they embarked for Tetuan with more than 250 captives, mostly women and children. Moreover, some forty Moriscos voluntarily joined al-Duʿaylī for the return trip. The audacity and reach of this operation, which was carried out with almost total impunity, caused great dismay, and its repercussions were reflected in the documents for several years. Repeated but fruitless attempts were made to rescue the captives seized in Cuevas de Almanzora; among them was Diego Marín, the beneficed priest of Bédar, who was taken with the other prisoners to Marrakech in irons.37 The Cuevas incursion had an immense impact, because it showed that the Spanish coast was defenseless and because of the number of women and children who were captured and were in danger of “losing their souls”: many prisoners, especially the weaker ones, made a swift conversion to Islam, hoping to better their circumstances in the place where they would now probably spend the rest of their lives. The Spanish Crown embarked on lengthy negotiations to redeem the Cuevas captives, and among its documents are letters written in Spanish by al-Duʿaylī himself. The Span- iards had a correspondent and informant in the person of Diego de Palma, a Spanish merchant settled in Tetuan, who was a Granadan like al-Duʿaylī and was friendly with him. During these years Palma was suspected of spying for Morocco, and it was considered prudent to call him back to the Peninsula.38

37 A. de Saldanha, Crónica de Almançor, sultão de Marrocos (1573–1603) (Lisbon, 1997), 12–24. 38 AGS, Guerra Antigua, leg. 85, fol. 25. alonso del castillo’s friends 133

Diego Marín’s Diplomatic Career

ʿAbd al-Malik, the sultan who came to power thanks to the help of Turks from Algiers and al-Duʿaylī’s change of loyalty, entered Marrakesh in July 1576. As we have explained, Muḥammad, son of his brother ʿAbdallah, whom he had deprived of the throne, took refuge in Portugal and sought the help of King Sebastian for his restoration. ʿAbd al-Malik immediately initiated several diplomatic moves—with Spain, among other places—in an attempt to thwart his nephew. During this process he learned, according to the chronicle of a Portuguese gentleman named Antonio de Sal- danha, of the existence of a Spanish captive who knew Arabic very well, and decided to use him. This person was, of course, Father Marín, who began at that moment his new career as a diplomatic agent and interpreter. Diego Marín met Philip II at Guadalupe, in Extremadura, when the king was on his way to Lisbon to see his nephew, and it seems that the Spanish monarch received a favorable impression of the Morisco priest’s conduct. When Philip, in the end, decided not to support or take part in the Por- tuguese incursion to Morocco, ʿAbd al-Malik supposed that Diego Marín had done his job well, and Marín rose in his opinion. The battle of Alcazarquivir took place while Diego Marín was still in Spain, in August 1578. At that point Aḥmad al-Manṣūr ascended the Moroccan throne, and continued and increased the high regard in which his brother had held Marín: after the battle and for the rest of his life Aḥmad employed him in his dealings with Spain, and showered him with benefits and honors. After the battle of Alcazarquivir, Philip II asked Marín to assemble the Spanish delegation that he wished to send to the new and powerful sharīf Aḥmad, who, among other things, was holding in captivity a good portion of the defeated Portuguese army and many Portuguese nobles. Pedro Venegas de Córdoba (not related to the aristocratic Moorish family of Granada) was named ambassador. Thus Father Marín returned to Morocco as a member of and interpreter for the Spanish legation, this time in the company of his nephew (or, as gossip would have it, his son), also named Diego Marín. Sharīf Aḥmad received him with honors and granted him many secret audiences, which Marín appears to have used to urge him to break off relations with the Ottomans and strengthen his ties with Spain. Both Turks and Spaniards wished to take possession of the port of Larache, a key stronghold on Morocco’s Atlantic coast; from there the Spaniards hoped to defend their West Indian fleet from pirate attacks, 134 chapter five and the Turks to create a bridgehead that might open their way to Amer- ica. From this point there began a lengthy series of negotiations between Spain and Morocco for ceding the site to Spain. These would continue throughout the reigns of the two monarchs, Aḥmad al-Manṣūr and Philip II, and are reflected in the correspondence that Alonso del Castillo translated.39 Saldanha, who had been captured at Alcazarquivir and was then in Marrakech, provided an account—detailed to the point of making the ambassador uncomfortable—of this first embassy by Philip II to Muley Aḥmad and the role played in it by Diego Marín. The sharīf, who (unlike his brother and predecessor ʿAbd al-Malik) spoke no Spanish, insisted that all matters related to the embassy pass through Diego Marín; in audiences that the sultan held with the ambassador, he spoke to Marín directly. Ambassador Pedro Venegas protested that Marín was nothing but his interpreter, to which the sharīf replied that on the contrary, Diego Marín “was a familiar of his own house, for whom he had always felt the highest esteem.”40 During and after this embassy, while Diego Marín remained in Morocco with his nephew, he began working to ransom Portuguese captives from the battle of Alcazarquivir; in this he was greatly helped by his cordial and intimate relationship with the sharīf.41 Because the ruler granted Marín everything that he wanted, it was essential for the noble prisoners to stay in his good graces, and all wished to flatter him and earn his services. He concerned himself in particular with the Count of Vimioso, who lived in high style in the Mellah (the Jewish quarter) and had incurred large debts. Marín himself, who was making good money in the ransoming business, also lived “with great liberality.” The truth is that this former Morisco priest from a village in Almería was now a rich man. Aḥmad al-Manṣūr had placed him in a high position and given him Christians to serve him, luxurious tents for his entourage, horses and mules to carry his baggage, and fine mounts for his nephew Diego Marín.42 In late 1581, Aḥmad al-Manṣūr sent Diego Marín to Lisbon; his mission was to negotiate the ransom of the “Moorish princes,” in exchange for

39 A. de Saldanha, Cronica, op. cit., 38. We will not deal here with the long and complex negotiations over Larache; see the information in D. Cabanelas, “Diego Marín, agente de Felipe II en Marruecos,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, 21 (1972), 7–35, and M. García-Arenal, F. Rodríguez Mediano and R. El Hour, Cartas marruecas, op. cit., 54 ff. 40 A. de Saldanha, Cronica, op. cit., 40. 41 Ibid., 30. 42 Ibid., 54. alonso del castillo’s friends 135 which the sharīf pledged not to make peace with the Turks. We should provide some detail about the princes because the incident shows how, in the last third of the sixteenth century, the formulas and modes of action that had been established during the long frontier period with the King- dom of Granada had simply been transferred to Morocco. After Alcazarquivir, two members of the Moroccan royal family had taken refuge in the Portuguese fortress of Mazagán with the remnants of the Portuguese army: they were Muley al-Shaykh, a son of the dethroned sultan (Muḥammad al-Mutawakkil) who had been supported by Portu- gal, and Muley Naṣr, the latter’s brother. The two then moved with the army to Lisbon; Muley Shaykh was at the time a lad of fourteen or fifteen. At the end of 1580, upon the death of Henry, the aged cardinal who had inherited the Portuguese crown after King Sebastian was killed, Philip II managed to have the Portuguese Cortes declare him the heir (over the rival pretender Don Antonio, “the Prior of Crato”). As soon as he arrived in Lisbon Philip took charge of the two Moroccan princes, well aware that having them in his power gave him a great advantage in negotiations with Morocco. During the decade of the 1580s these royal prisoners were to be hostages who played an important role in international politics: they were potential rivals capable of destabilizing the internal situation in Morocco. In fact, according to Saldanha, the sharīf asked Diego Marín many times to obtain Philip II’s permission for him, Aḥmad al-Manṣūr, to send someone to Spain to murder them. At first Spain made no use of the “Moorish princes” in its negotiations with the Moroccans. Through Diego Marín’s good offices the two were transferred to Utrera, far from the coast, thus diminishing the danger they represented. In 1593 Muley al-Shaykh converted to Catholicism and was baptized with great pomp in El Escorial; he lived out his life in Madrid, enjoying noble rank and the name of Don Felipe de África, Prince of Fez and Morocco; thus he ended as many nobles and members of the Nasrid royal family had done since the end of the fifteenth century.43 Also in late 1581, a twenty-year treaty was signed by which Spain agreed to help Morocco to defend itself against any Ottoman offensive. In return, Morocco would cede the port of Larache to Spain; for years Aḥmad al-Manṣūr had been promising and then postponing this step, depending on whether the Turkish menace seemed closer or more distant. When

43 There is an excellent monograph devoted to this individual: J. Oliver Asín, Vida de don Felipe de África, op. cit. 136 chapter five

Marín returned to Morocco after negotiating for the “Moorish princes” the sharīf welcomed him with great expressions of delight and affection, and enjoyed his presence so much that he had him at the palace every day. He was pleased that, thanks to Marín, Muley Naṣr was in Utrera. The sultan made Marín his favorite and confidant, and wished to have him always at his side. During the early 1580s Philip II maintained a friendly attitude toward Morocco, fearful that Muley Aḥmad might throw himself into the arms of the Turks. The abundant correspondence between Muley Aḥmad al-Manṣūr and the Spanish court in these years is cordial and respectful, though cautious; these letters were translated by Alonso del Castillo. They dealt with purchases of jewels, redemption of captives, ransoms for the Portuguese nobles, protection for the many Spanish merchants in Morocco, and the situation of Larache. Diego Marín was at the center of all these matters, and through him Francisco Barredo also took part in selling the sharīf precious stones, diamonds, emerald rings, silk brocades, and perfumes.44 Diego Marín’s last letters date from the end of 1584. Fray Marcos de Guadalajara states that he was murdered (poisoned at a banquet, just like Barredo) by “Xeque Rute.”45 This individual, Yaacob Ruti, was the head of the Jewish community of Fez; an adviser and personal friend to the sharīf, he was in charge of the court’s finances. Of Sephardic origin, Ruti spoke Portuguese well, and after the battle of Alcazarquivir he took part in ransoming prisoners, earning a good profit from this activity. Like his father before him, he had business dealings with the fortified Portuguese towns on the Moroccan coast and mediated in transactions between Morocco and their Portuguese governors. Brother Marcos is the only source for Rute’s poisoning of Marín, but the event is not unlikely. There must have been competition and rivalry between the two men, and Diego Marín would have emerged the winner when “Portuguese affairs”—Rute’s territory—turned into “Spanish affairs” after the two kingdoms merged in the person of Philip II. In any case Diego Marín served both the Spanish Crown and the Moroccan dynasty loyally, and both sides benefited from his mediation. Diego Marín’s nephew succeeded his uncle as both Spanish agent and interpreter. His story too symbolizes the variability and fluidity of loyal-

44 D. Cabanelas, “Diego Marín agente de Felipe II,” op. cit., 15–16. 45 M. García-Arenal, F. Rodríguez Mediano and R. El Hour, Cartas marruecas, op. cit., 61. alonso del castillo’s friends 137 ties and group identities, even among members of the same family. When the so-called Invincible Armada met its famous defeat at the hands of the English in 1588, the event was known at once in Marrakech. Aḥmad al-Manṣūr, in fact, had been awaiting the outcome of the conflict and had been putting off an embassy from Queen Elizabeth that was offering an alliance between Morocco and England. When news of the Spanish catas- trophe reached Marrakech, its English and Dutch residents organized a noisy celebration and took it to the home of the second Diego Marín; he emerged from his house, furious and humiliated, and stabbed to death several of the Englishmen who were insulting Spain. The sultan ordered Marín arrested and sent to prison, where he spent nearly six years. The approaches that Spain made through subsequent agents, especially Bal- tasar Polo, proved vain; Aḥmad al-Manṣūr’s interests were now taken up by his alliance with England. Al-Duʿaylī, executed by Aḥmad al-Manṣūr; Barredo and Diego Marín, poisoned; these were unluckier in the end than the “subdued” rebel Gon- zalo el Xeniz, or than Castillo, Luna, and Tamarid. The borderland in which they sought to move proved dangerous, and in the world of Islam they were not always thought to belong.

chapter six

diego bejarano al-ḥajarī and the morisco understanding of the lead books

It seemed that in the previous chapter we moved far from our original context, but the biographies that we presented there illuminate that of Alonso del Castillo and also, as we shall see, that of Miguel de Luna, who faced choices similar to those of some of the characters we have been examining. They bring us also to the important question of how the Moris- cos received and understood the Lead Books. To answer this question we shall now turn to a Morisco who was much better known and more relevant than those considered in the previous chapter, and whose connection with Castillo was particularly meaningful. With him we return to the Sacromonte forgeries and the Parchment from the Torre Turpiana.

Diego Bejarano or Aḥmad B. Qāsim al-Ḥajarī

His Christian name was Diego Bejarano and his Muslim one Aḥmad b. Qāsim b. al-Shaykh al-Ḥajarī al-Andalusī, though he also used hybrid forms of his name such as “Ehmed ben Caçim Bejarano.” He was born in Hornachos, Extremadura, in 1569 or 1570; therefore he was younger than the persons we have been discussing, a full decade younger than Miguel de Luna. He himself informs us that Arabic was spoken in his home town, but that only later, when he lived in Madrid, was he taught to read and write by a Morisco doctor.1 Could this physician have been Alonso del Castillo himself, whom al-Ḥajarī could have met during one of Castillo’s stays in Madrid and El Escorial? It is an attractive hypothesis, but it is difficult to make the dates agree, and al-Ḥajarī never remarks that this doctor was one of the translators that he met later in Granada. A second manuscript of his work has recently been found in the library of al-Azhar in Cairo, and in a chapter that is not included in the edited manuscript we use here, al-Ḥajarī recounts that when he was ten years old and could

1 Aḥmad b. Qāsim al-Ḥajarī, Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn ʿalā l-qawm al-kāfirīn (The Supporter of Religion Against the Infidel), study, critical edition, and translation by P. S. van Konings- veld, Q. al-Samarrai, and G. A. Wiegers (Madrid, 1997), 20. 140 chapter six already read and write Spanish, a cousin of his father’s came to his house and taught him to read and write Arabic at marvelous speed, in only one day. Al-Ḥajarī could not help but see in this event a proof that he enjoyed God’s favor and was a vessel for divine illumination.2 We know little about al-Ḥajarī’s life in Spain, except that he spent time in Seville and Granada as well as in Madrid. It was in Granada that he came into contact with Pedro de Castro and Alonso del Castillo, unless, as we have just said, he had met the latter earlier in Madrid. Al-Ḥajarī enjoyed good relations with the ex-governor of the Moroc- can port of Arzila (when it had been a Portuguese possession); this man, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Tūda, had fled to Spain with the so-called infantes moros (the princes Muley al-Shaykh and Muley Naṣr), respectively the son and nephew of the candidate to the Moroccan throne routed at Alcazarquivir in 1578.3 During his long stay in Spain Ibn Tūda was in frequent contact with Moriscos, among whom he carried out an active campaign of political and religious propaganda; his missionary and polemical activity can be traced in the Inquisition trials of many Moriscos.4 (He spoke Spanish well and might, in fact, have been a Morisco himself.) He tried to poison Muley al-Shaykh when the prince was living in Andújar and was preparing to convert to Catholicism. Ibn Tūda returned to Morocco in 1599 with the permission of Philip III, who considered him a dangerous and seditious figure, but not before making friends with al-Ḥajarī, whom he would meet again across the Straits. Ibn Tūda may have helped al-Ḥajarī to flee from Spain or have given him advice and contacts, for the Inquisition documents specify that he aided other Moriscos in this way.5 Let us choose an example that proves not only that Ibn Tūda performed missionary activity among Moriscos and tried to help them cross over to Morocco, but also that he had heard of the Lead Books: the case of Jerónimo de Rojas. Jerónimo de Rojas was a Morisco from Hornachos, like al-Ḥajarī, but lived as a merchant in Toledo, where he came into contact with Moriscos from Granada. He was tried in 1601–1603 by the Holy Office

2 This manuscript is being edited by G. A. Wiegers and P. S. van Koningsveld, to whom we are grateful for this information. 3 D. Cabanelas, “El caid marroquí ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Tūda, refugiado en la España de Felipe II,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, 12 (1963–1964), 75–88. 4 The most notable are the trials of Jerónimo de Rojas, Hernando de Morales, and Fran- cisco Hernández: AHN, Inquisición, legs. 197–5 and 196–3. 5 See the cases in the previous note and also D. Hurtado de Mendoza, Guerra de Gran- ada, op. cit., 327 ff. diego bejarano al-ḥajarī 141 of his city, which condemned him to be “relaxed to the secular arm,” that is, burned at the stake. Rojas, as we learn from his trial, went regularly with other Moriscos to visit Ibn Tūda when he was in Carabanchel (near Madrid), always in hiding and by night, and Ibn Tūda taught them prayers and read to them in Arabic. The visits continued until Ibn Tūda received permission to return to Morocco, not before offering to take Jerónimo de Rojas along: “the said leader tried to take Jerónimo de Rojas with him, offering to give him a robe of his son’s and to shave off his beard; and Rojas expressed great regret at not having made the journey.”6 This incident parallels the one narrated by al-Ḥajarī himself about how Ibn Tūda had helped him to cross the Straits of Gibraltar. From the following declaration by Jerónimo de Rojas in his Inquisition trial, it is clear that he was acquainted with the Sacromonte Lead Books. As we shall see, Ibn Tūda’s friend al-Ḥajarī defended the Books vigorously and believed it his mission to proclaim their existence and their message; therefore he must have spoken to Ibn Tūda about them. Rojas had also learned from Ibn Tūda what the Church decides, and where it is in error and without foundation; because every day, to obscure and conceal the truth, they convoke councils and conclaves, and for this purpose invented Latin, so that the reality— which is in Arabic, from the mouth of God—could not be known. And [he said] that in certain books written in Arabic that had been found some- where it was said that God had no son, and that a certain prelate had been teaching himself Arabic because he had grasped this truth; and that the said Ibn Tūda, the wisest man in Barbary, had lifted the veil from his eyes and revealed to him the true path to Heaven and the knowledge of God.7 It was Ibn Tūda, therefore, and the Lead Books of Granada that had allowed him to see the light.

6 “[T]rató el dicho alcayde de llevar a Jerónimo de Rojas ofreciéndole que le daría un vestido de su hijo y raparía la barba y que el dicho Rojas mostraba mucho sentimiento de no haber hecho esta jornada.” 7 “[L]o que la Iglesia determina y tiene errado y sin fundamento porque cada día para escurecer y deslumbrar la verdad hacen concilios y juntas y que para este efecto han inventado el latín, para que no se sepa lo cierto, que está en arábigo dicho por boca de Dios [. . .] y que en unos libros que se había hallado en cierta parte scriptos en arábigo se decía que Dios no tenía hijo y que cierto prelado se iba enseñando el arábigo porque había entendido esta verdad y que el dicho alcayde Abentuth que era el mayor letrado de Berbería le había sacado la ceguera en que estaba y declarado el verdadero camino del Cielo y conocimiento de Dios”: AHN Inquisición, leg. 197–5. 142 chapter six

We must wonder why al-Ḥajarī decided to go into exile; there is no evident reason for it, even though he was a fervent Muslim. Was Ibn Tūda the impulse for his decision? He was not a Granadan trapped in a hopeless situation after the war, but rather a Castilian who was religiously and intellectually distinguished in his community, and who could travel without hindrance between Seville and Madrid. Were his religious feelings strong enough to make him embark on a complicated and risky adventure? Was he threatened by the Inquisition? Could his involvement with the Lead Books have led him into trouble? Al-Ḥajarī embarked from Puerto de Santa María (implying that he may have passed for an Old Christian) for the Portuguese port of Mazagán on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, and from there entered Moroccan territory.8 It was Ibn Tūda who provided him with contacts at Aḥmad al-Manṣūr’s court, where he arrived in July 1599 and where he began to work at once as a secretary and translator. He married a daughter of El Partal, one of the most famous Alpujarras rebels exiled in Morocco, and had several children with her. El Partal had been a prisoner of the Inquisition in Granada before the uprising, and pending his trial had been allowed to leave prison on condition that he not leave the city. Asking permission to go to the Alpujarras to sell his property, he took advantage of the leave to cross to Barbary. He returned from there to join the rebellion, at the same time negotiating Moroccan help for the rebels.9 Al-Ḥajarī played an important role at the court in Marrakech after Muley Zidan, the son of Aḥmad al-Manṣūr, came to power in 1608; he continued to serve as secretary and interpreter through the consecu- tive reigns of Zaydan’s two sons. He then left for the East, and on his return settled in Tunis, where he lived for many years translating Arabic texts into Spanish and writing his own book. He must have died shortly after 1640. Al-Ḥajarī was a good poet and prose stylist in Spanish, had close contacts with Archbishop Pedro de Castro of Granada, and came to be a respected figure at the court in Marrakech; he also dealt with the principal religious men, ʿulamāʾ, of that city.10 The work that earned him fame, Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn, includes an account of his journey to Europe, where he

8 Many Moriscos from Hornachos followed this itinerary: to Granada, then to Puerto de Santa María and embarkation for Morocco. AGS, Estado, leg. 2639. 9 L. del Mármol, Historia del rebelión, op. cit., Book IV, Chap. 3. 10 P. S. van Koningsveld, G. Wiegers, and Q. al-Samarrai, “Historical Study,” in al-Ḥajarī, Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn, op. cit., 29. diego bejarano al-ḥajarī 143 was sent by the sultan; his object was to negotiate the recovery of goods belonging to exiled Moriscos who had been robbed aboard the French ships that carried them to Morocco. The trip also had the aim of organizing the departure of Moriscos from Spain and settling them in different Muslim countries; this aspect was administered from St. Jean de Luz in France. We know also that al-Ḥajarī had arranged to help Moriscos leave Hornachos before the expulsion, via Seville but also, in particular, via the route that he himself had taken: going first to the Kingdom of Granada and then embarking from the ports of Cádiz, Puerto de Santa María, Gibraltar, or Tarifa, which were the closest to the Moroccan coast.11 In his extraordinary Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn, at once a travelogue, an autobiography, and above all an anti-Christian polemic, al-Ḥajarī describes his meetings in Paris with Étienne Hubert, a famous physician and Arabist who owned a small collection of Arabic manuscripts. He goes on to tell of his contacts with the Leiden Arabists, principally Thomas Erpenius and Jacobus Golius, with whom he entered into intellectual dialogue.12 He appears to have felt entirely at home in the learned worlds of Paris and Leiden, where he was much respected; he certainly was not among the Moriscos who felt great resentment toward Spain, nor did he display a strong liking or nostalgia for Spanish culture, as did some of his contemporaries.13 During his stay in Holland al-Ḥajarī worked at length with Erpenius on lexical problems, and also elucidated obscure passages of the Qurʾān, explaining them to the Dutch scholar in Spanish. In September 1611 Erpe- nius wrote him a letter14 that shows the respect Erpenius felt for Aḥmad and his attempt to reconcile doctrinal differences between Islam and Chris- tianity: avoiding any mention of the Trinity or Jesus’s divine nature, the letter is dated “in the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ Son of Mary 1611.”15 Arabic manuscripts that al-Ḥajarī copied for Étienne Hubert are preserved in Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale. One of them includes a brief comment by al-Ḥajarī on the Arabic that was spoken in Jesus’s time, in the first century ce; he believed that the Lead Books of Granada were authentic, and deployed this argument against those who doubted them

11 AGS, Estado, leg. 2939. 12 G. A. Wiegers, A Learned Muslim Acquaintance of Erpenius and Golius. Ahmad b. Kasim al-Andalusi and Arabic Studies in the Netherlands (Leiden, 1988). 13 J. Oliver Asín, “Un morisco de Túnez, admirador de Lope de Vega,” Al-Andalus, 1 (1933), 409–450. 14 P. S. van Koningsveld, G. Wiegers, and Q. al-Samarrai, “Historical Study,” op. cit., 36. 15 Ibid. 144 chapter six on linguistic grounds. We have not seen this passage, but it cannot be very different from one written by Miguel de Luna that we will discuss in the next chapter. In the same manuscript al-Ḥajarī pens a poem in Spanish that expresses his longing for his loved ones and especially for his wife, whom he calls “the white dove”: this is one of the phrases often directed to the Virgin Mary, particularly in Seville. In Paris, al-Ḥajarī conducted debates and discussions on religious matters with various scholars who, he tells us, were amazed at his manner of argumentation. He replied: They must understand that I am the interpreter for the sultan of Marrakech. One who holds that position is obliged to study the (religious) sciences, in the books of both the Muslims and the Christians, so that he knows well what he is saying when he translates in the sultan’s court. But when I am in the presence of scholars of our own religion, I cannot speak of it as an expert.16 He seems sorry to give up this opportunity to discuss religion. In Holland he also met members of the Jewish community of Amsterdam, with whom he conducted religious disputations in Spanish. In 1622 the Dutch Estates- General sent a diplomatic mission to Morocco charged with exploring the possibility of building a port on its coast.17 One member of the delegation was Jacob Golius, Erpenius’s successor in the Chair of Arabic at Leiden; al-Ḥajarī contacted him at once, for personal as well as diplomatic reasons. Afterward they corresponded and Golius sent him books in Arabic, including a copy of al-Masʿūdī’s historical work Kitāb murūj al-dhahab.18

Al-Ḥajarī and the Parchment and Lead Books

In Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn, al-Ḥajarī provides a full account of his relations with Pedro de Castro and of how he took part in translating the Torre Turpiana Parchment; an autograph copy of his translation survives in the archives of the Chancellery of Granada and is the subject of a recent study.19 Al-Ḥajarī

16 “Deben comprender que soy el intérprete del sultán de Marrakech. El que ocupa tal puesto está obligado a estudiar las ciencias, tanto en los libros de los musulmanes como en los libros de los cristianos a fin de compender bien lo que está diciendo cuando traduce en la Corte del sultán. Pero cuando estoy en presencia de los sabios de nuestra propia religión, no puedo hablar de las ciencias religiosas”: ibid., 42. 17 M. García-Arenal and G. Wiegers, Un hombre en tres mundos: Samuel Pallache, un judío marroquí entre la España protestante y la Católica (Madrid, 2007), 172 ff. 18 P. S. van Koningsveld, G. Wiegers, and Q. al-Samarrai, “Historical Study,” op. cit., 43. 19 I. Boyano, “Al-Hayari y su traducción del Pergamino de la Torre Turpiana,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), ¿La historia inventada? Los libros plúmbeos y el legado sacromontano (Granada, 2008), 137–157. diego bejarano al-ḥajarī 145 himself claimed that a copy of the translation was sent to the Vatican, but we have been unable to trace it there. Al-Ḥajarī believed that the Parchment was a genuine document, not a falsified one, and that it presented a vision of “pure Christianity,” that is, of the religion before it became corrupted and, therefore, while it was still in accord with the principal dogmas of Islam. He claims that his translation is superior to those made by other Moriscos, and as we saw in a previous chapter he mentions several of these, including the famous al-Ukayhil. Since we can prove that al-Ukayhil was none other than Alonso del Cas- tillo, and since al-Ḥajarī was involved with the Parchment, al-Ḥajarī must have known Castillo, the key character in the present chapter. Al-Ḥajarī emerges from the pages of Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn as an ardent defender of the Lead Books and the Parchment, convinced that they were in perfect accord with Islamic orthodoxy. It appears that he even thought that he had a role to play in spreading the message they contained.20 In June 1598, while al-Ḥajarī was in Granada working on translating the Parchment, the first lead sheets began to appear; he did not, however, collaborate in their translation. He states in Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn that there were twenty-two of them, and he appears to have discussed several of them with al-Ukayhil in Granada, especially the so-called “Silent Book” or Libro mudo and the Libro de la esencia del Evangelio (Book of the Essence of the Gospels). He reproduces, from that book, the diagram of one of the Seals of Solomon (see Illustration 3).21 He claims to have asked Arch- bishop Pedro de Castro’s permission to study and translate the Libro de la esencia del Evangelio, but the prelate told him that “the time has not yet come for this book to be deciphered.”22 Are we to perceive here an eschatological undertone, the suggestion by al-Ḥajarī that this book will achieve its real meaning at the End of Days? Al-Ḥajarī was able to examine this text later on, in Morocco and Tunis. A Moroccan military commander named Fāris al-ʿIlj showed him a personal copy that he, Fāris (a deeply religious person) had preserved, based on al-Ukayhil’s version of the Libro de los dichos de Santa María (Book of the Sayings of Holy Mary).23 Later on in Tunis al-Ḥajarī discussed several of these maxims with the Sūfī jurist Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rāfiʿ

20 P. S. van Kongingsveld, G. Wiegers, and Q. al-Samarrai, “Historical Study,” op. cit., 57. 21 Al-Ḥajarī, Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn, op. cit., 84–85. 22 Ibid., 87. 23 Ibid., 83. 146 chapter six al-Andalusī; according to the latter, one of them contained seven of the names of the Prophet. After his years as a translator in Morocco al-Ḥajarī left the court and his duties there to move to Salé, which contained a large community of Moriscos from Hornachos, his hometown. There he took up other translation projects: in particular, at the request of local Moriscos, he translated an Islamic refutation of Judaism into Spanish. Soon after that he performed the Pilgrimage, and we meet him again on his return from it, in Egypt and Tunis, in 1637. He lived in Tunis for several years, and there made new translations: one into Arabic of a treatise on artillery written by another exiled Morisco, and one into Spanish of the Kitāb al-shifāʾ of Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, for the use of Moriscos who had not yet learned Arabic. He also wrote a Spanish autobiographical narrative that summarizes much of what he had previously written in Arabic. This brief memoir is included in the collection of texts that Mohamed Rubio, a Morisco resident of Tunis, ordered assembled and copied: “with his own money he had the book translated from Arabic into Spanish so that it could be enjoyed by those of his party,” that is, by Morisco exiles in Tunis.24 Penella’s analysis of the text reveals that the entire second part of Mohamed Rubio’s manuscript is the work of al-Ḥajarī. It includes, aside from the autobiography, the Spanish translation from Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Libro de los milagros de Mahoma; a small treatise on the virtues of the Arabic language; and a collection of eschatological sermons. Much still remains unknown about al-Ḥajarī, but it must be significant that he abandoned an apparently comfortable position at the court in Marrakech to live first in Salé and later in Tunis, both cities with dense Morisco populations. It was in Tunis, in contact with its Morisco milieu, that al-Ḥajarī held in his hands a copy of the transcription and translation of the Lead Books made by al-Ukayhil (otherwise known as Alonso del Castillo), whom he had met in Granada. The copy was owned by Yūsuf Qalbu al-Andalusī, who had brought it with him in his exile to Tunis. This Morisco was no doubt the same person as Juan Calvo, a scribe in the Chancellery of Granada.25 Letters have survived between Calvo and Luis Zapata, the chief bailiff

24 “Sacó el libro con su dinero de arábigo en castellano porque se holgasen los de su tayfa”: Bologna University Library, ms. D. 565. It is the subject of a doctoral thesis by J. Penella: see his “Introduction au Manuscrit D. 565 de la Bibliothèque Universitaire de Bologne,” in M. de Epalza and R. Petit (eds.), Recueil d’études sur les morisques andalous en Tunisie (Madrid, 1973), 187–198. 25 P. S. van Koningsveld, G. Wiegers, and Q. al-Samarrai prove his identity in “Historical Study,” op. cit., 53. diego bejarano al-ḥajarī 147

(alguacil mayor) or shaykh al-Andalus, that is, the leader and representative of the refugee Morisco community in Tunis. Curiously, one of these letters refers to “the licenciate [Castillo?], and Miguel de Luna, who had just died.”26 The manuscript passed from Calvo’s hands to those of another Morisco in Tunis. This was the person who showed it to al-Ḥajarī, together with a copy of Cipriano de Valera’s Bible translation published in 1602. Al-Ḥajarī quoted from the latter, turning it into Arabic, in Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn, a work that he completed and polished during his stay in Tunis. It is an important point because it shows how converts from both Judaism and Islam preferred—if one can use the term—the Protestant or Reformed version of Christianity. Al-Ḥajarī recounts that, wishing to spread the message of the Sacromonte finds, on arriving in Morocco he showed Sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr a copy of the Parchment. The two lingered over the passage that announced how a figure from the East would conquer the City of the Sea and wreak disaster on the Christians. One of Muley Aḥmad’s commanders (perhaps a Morisco) then said to al-Ḥajarī, “Why don’t you replace the q with an f, so that instead of saying that Sharīq [one from the East] will conquer the City of the Sea, it will say Sharīf [the sultan]? That would make the sultan very happy.”27 At that time the sultan was inclined to make a raid on Cádiz, as his counselors and Morisco troops were urging him to do. Al-Ḥajarī tells us that he did not make the editorial change, but this is a fine example of how “biased translation” was not a problem for the Arch- bishop of Granada alone. We need to ask ourselves whether al-Ḥajarī should be considered one of the possible forgers of the Lead Books or if he was in contact with Miguel de Luna through Ibn Tuda, who knew Luna, as will be shown in next chapter. He had the necessary education and intellectual tools, and he defended and publicized the contents of both the Parchment and the Lead Books as if their cause were dear to him. He was in Granada at the right time, and we have no good explanation for his departure from Spain. The texts that he translated for Mohamed Rubio’s collection are among those that several scholars of his time saw as possible Islamic inspiration for the Lead Books. We know that he was drawn to magical and cabalistic texts and to amulets: he believed himself to possess curative and prophy- lactic powers, and he tells of several miraculous cures that he personally

26 “El licenciado y a Miguel de Luna, que acababa de morir”: ibid. 27 Al-Ḥajarī, Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn, op. cit., 82. 148 chapter six brought about.28 But above all he was convinced that God had shown him His grace, and he devotes Chapter 13 of Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn to his own experience of enlightenment. Divine grace became clear to him after he had read the books of the three religions; these readings called him to his true vocation, that of dispelling any possibility of error. What he means by “error” is clear from his biographical note in Spanish, contained in the Bologna manuscript compiled by Mohamed Rubio: once again he speaks in detail of the Parchment, the Lead Books, and the truth that their message contains.

How the Moriscos Read the Lead Books

Al-Ḥajarī’s case is an interesting example of how the Moriscos might have received and understood the Lead Books. We know a great deal about the Books’ reception on the Christian side and about the polemics that the discoveries inspired. But we know very little about what the Moriscos thought of them and how widely they circulated among them—that they did so to some extent is shown in al-Ḥajarī’s book, since he saw copies in Tunis and Morocco that had been taken there by exiled Moriscos. They must have valued those writings greatly to have preserved them throughout their dangerous flight. Naturally, the question also arises of what sort of audience and readership the falsifiers had in mind when they created the texts. A polemical manuscript written in the eighteenth century, Errores de los moriscos de Granada (Errors of the Moriscos of Granada), confirms that Moriscos accepted the Lead Books as authentic.29 The manuscript contains a passage that deserves to be quoted in full: They refused as well to worship carved and painted images, because they said that they were only sticks of wood that should not be venerated. They say that the only ones who are in heaven are Abraham, Isaac, and a few saints that are worshiped in four churches in this city, who are believed to be the saints of the Sacromonte. These and no other images or paintings should be prayed to, because their descendants followed the sect of Moham- med and suffered martyrdom for him on the Sacromonte. And there is a stone in that church in which we Christians fervently believe that there is buried a book about the Immaculate Conception of Most Holy Mary; they

28 Ibid., 230 ff. 29 M. de Epalza and S. Carrasco Urgoiti, “El manuscrito ‘Errores de los moriscos de Granada’ (un núcleo musulmán del siglo XVIII),” Fontes Rerum Balearum, 2 (1980), 235–247. diego bejarano al-ḥajarī 149

say that the stone is there, but that it contains the true explanation of the Koran. And this book will not be made known until a certain year (which is mentioned in the texts), when a council will be called in Cyprus to which all the Arabs will be summoned; then, through the Prophet’s great providence, said stone will be opened, revealing the book that it has held concealed for so many years; thus will the Christians be confounded and it will be known that only their [Muslim] sect is the true one.30 An illuminating example is again Jerónimo de Rojas. Rojas believed, as we have seen, that the Scriptures had been corrupted and that evidence of this corruption was in the Lead Books, through which even the Arch- bishop himself had realized that he was mistaken. He goes on to speak about the Granada discoveries: “in the books that the Archbishop has found on the Sacromonte there, where it says that God had no son, for that is a falsehood. And that Archbishop has begun to teach himself Ara- bic, because he has realized that he is in error.”31 Here the Lead Books are apprehended through a polemical prism, one that places the truth on the side of Islam—much as several exiled Moris- cos did, as we have seen. The Books could be read as an example of the Islamic doctrine of taḥrīf (deformation or corruption), one of the chief instruments that Muslims used in their anti-Christian polemics. They maintained that the Church Fathers and decisions of early Church councils had twisted the Revelation, that Jesus had never claimed to be the Son of God, and that God could have neither son nor father—He was one, not three.

30 “Negaban asimismo la adoración de las imágenes de talla y pintura porque dicen ser éstas unos palos, a quien no se debe venerar. Dicen que solo están en el cielo Habraham, Isaac y algunos santos que se veneran en quatro templos de esta ciudad, los quales se cree ser los santos del Monte Santo y a éstos y no a otros ni a sus imágenes y pinturas se deben dar oración, por haver sido observantes de la secta de Mahoma sus descendientes, y que por él padecieron martirio en dicho Sacromonte, y que en una piedra que está en la dicha Iglesia, en la qual los Christianos creemos piadosamente que está enterrado un libro que trata de la puríssima concepción de María santíssima, dicen ellos que en dicha está y contiene la verdadera explicación del Alcorán, y que en este dicho libro no se manifestará hasta cierto año que en las causas se cita, en el qual se juntaría un concilio en la Chipre, al qual serán convocados todos los árabes; entonces, por alta providencia de su profeta, se abrirá dicha piedra, entregando el dicho libro, que tantos años ha tiene encerrado para desengaño de los Christianos y que reconozcan que sola su secta es la verdadera”: ibid., 240. 31 “[Q]ue miren las hojas que se han hallado en Granada en arábigo en los libros que el Arzobispo allí ha descubierto en el Monte Santo donde dice Dios que no tubo hijo porque es engaño y que allí el dicho Arzobispo se va enseñándose el arábigo porque ha entendido está errado”: AHN, Inquisición, leg. 197–5. 150 chapter six

There is another Inquisition trial that unfortunately is not recorded in full, for all that survives is a transcription of its relación de causa or summary: it is that of Alonso de Luna, an interesting character whom we have already discussed (some historians have thought him to be the son of Luna and grandson of Castillo, whereas we have shown that he could not be both at once). Among the motives for the Inquisition’s con- demning him to life imprisonment in 1619 were the prophetic revelations that Alonso de Luna claimed to have received through divine inspiration. These announced the imminent and total triumph of Islam over all Christendom, and the conversion—by means of the Arabic language—of all mankind to the one Truth. He further claimed that the truth of the Gospels was to be found precisely in the Sacromonte Lead Books, and he alluded to a gospel that would soon be revealed, one that was included in the so-called “Silent Book.”32 His escatological position was therefore not distant from the one assumed by al-Ḥajarī. Al-Ḥajarī, when he writes about the Parchment, mentions another Morisco, Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Asi, a grandson of El Chapiz. He has been identified with Muhamed Vulhaç, a Morisco who lived in Istanbul (as a licensed physician named Pérez Bulhaç), and Gerard Wiegers has proposed that he was the same person as Alonso de Luna.33 Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Asi was a licenciate and a doctor, like Castillo; he was a member of the illustrious family of the Banū Abī al-Asi, related to the Umayyads and emigrés to Tunis.34 Al-Ḥajarī corresponded with him while he himself was in Paris and Bulhaç was in Istanbul seeking Ottoman support for the Moriscos.35 At about that time the Dutch envoy, Cornelis Haga, arrived in the Ottoman capital seeking a treaty of cooperation with Holland, and it appears that the al-Ḥajarī-Vulhaç link, together with the existing Morisco networks between Holland and Istanbul, helped to bring about a successful outcome.36 Undoubtedly al-Ḥajarī was a key figure in this entire affair.

32 The first to study this trial was B. Vincent, “Algunas voces más: de Francisco Núñez Muley a Fátima Ratal,” in El río morisco, op. cit., 97 ff. 33 Diario, op. cit., fol. 272v. 34 A. Turki, “Documents sur le dernier exode des Andalous vers la Tunisie,” op. cit., 125. 35 Al-Ḥajarī wrote a letter in May 1612 to the Moriscos settled in Istanbul in which he addressed the Licenciate Pérez Bolhaç: G. Wiegers, A Learned Muslim Acquaintance, op. cit., 88. 36 G. Wiegers, “Nueva luz sobre Alonso de Luna, alias Muhammad b. Abi l-Asi, y su proceso inquisitorial,” op. cit., 406 ff. Another Morisco who was in Istanbul in 1612 was Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rāfiʿ; in Tunis, he had written a defense of the sharīfī lineage of diego bejarano al-ḥajarī 151

Just as Alonso de Luna had done, al-Ḥajarī affirms when he speaks of the book Ḥaqīqat al-Injīl (The Truth of the Gospel) that thanks to it [the Christians] will abandon the errors and heresies that they used to hold. And it is clear that this gospel will be different from the one they use today, because if it were the same it would be superfluous, useless, and ineffective. And thus one should understand that the names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit will not occur in it, but only one God [. . .] and that the Arabic language will be present at the end of the world [. . .]. And [. . .] he will reap a great reward [. . .] who believes what is declared in said book, and will receive great indulgences. And on the other hand, [. . .] he who contradicts what is agreed [. . .] about the gospel that is called in Arabic Haquicatu elynchil, found on the Sacromonte, will be cursed by God.37 A true gospel, an Islamic gospel. In recent years several scholars have demonstrated the close relationship between the Moriscos—both those from Granada exiled to Tunis, and those in Istanbul—and the genesis of the famous text called Evangelio de Bernabé (Gospel of Barnabas).38 The most reliable hypothesis places its creation in Istanbul in about 1600.39 One possible link would be the presumed identification of Muḥammad Abū al-Asi and Alonso de Luna, and the family relationship of the latter to Castillo and Luna. But that identification is not needed to establish a connection between the milieu of influential Moriscos from Granada and the exiles in Istanbul: we must recall that Muḥammad Abū al-Asi was the grandson of El Chapiz, that Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rāfiʿ was also present

Moriscos and Andalusis who lived in exile there and to whom the Tunisian sharīfs did not wish to grant the privileges they merited. Kitāb al-anwār, Rabat, Bibliothèque Générale, ms. K1238; partial French translation by Abdelmajid Turki, “Documents sur le dernier exode des andalous vers la Tunisie”: see 125 on the Banū Abī al-Asi. 37 “Dexarán los herrores que de antes tenían y herejías. Y está claro que aquel evangelio será diferente del que oy tienen porque si fuera como él, fuera sobrado, ynútil y de ningún efecto, y ansí se a de entender que no avrá en él nombre de padre y del hijo y del espiritu sancto sino solamente de un Dios [. . .] y que la lengua aráviga avía de servir en el fin del mundo [. . .]. Y [. . .] tendrá galardón muy grande [. . .] el que creyerá con lo que se decla- rará en dicho livro tendrá grandes indulgencias y por el contrario [. . .] el que contradijera lo que se conformará en ello [. . .] acerca del evanjelio que en arávigo se llama Haquicatu elynchil hallado en el monte sacro, que tendrá maldición de Dios.” 38 M. de Epalza, “Le milieu hispano-moresque de l’Évangile islamisant de Bernabé (XVI–XVII siècles),” Islamochristiana, 8 (1982), 175–183; L. Bernabé Pons, El Evangelio de San Bernabé. Un evangelio islámico español (Alicante, 1995), 190–196; G. Wiegers, “Muhammad as the Messiah,” op. cit., and id., “Nueva luz sobre Alonso de Luna,” op. cit., 412 ff. 39 P. S. van Koningsveld, “The Islamic Image of Paul and the Origin of the Gospel of Barnabas,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 20 (1996), 200–221. 152 chapter six in Istanbul, and that al-Ḥajarī had other contacts in that city: with Fran- cisco Toledano, the Lasartes from Guadalajara, and Moriscos from Pas- trana, about whom we shall speak in Chapter 12. In any event, there are only two extant manuscripts of the text called the Gospel of Barnabas, one in Spanish and one in Italian, both from the early seventeenth century. It is an anti-Christian polemic, written in the form of an Islamic gospel that retains the true message of Jesus, not corrupted by the Christians. Several scholars, in particular Luis Bernabé Pons, have suggested a connection between the writing of this Gospel and the Lead Books; the link has not yet been proven, but is based among other factors on the so-called “Silent Book.” It could only be deciphered and the truth established thanks to Arabic and the Arabs; this would happen during a council on the island of Cyprus, as is specified in the Lead Book titled Certidumbre del Evangelio (Certitude of the Gospel).40 Barnabas is the patron saint of Cyprus. The Gospel of Barnabas presents what is, for a Muslim, the true account of Jesus’s life and teachings; it denies his role as the Messiah and transfers it to Muḥammad, of whom Jesus was the herald. Jesus himself affirms his human nature and his prophethood. The Gospel also insists on the unicity of God rather than the Trinity. No matter who its author may be, the Gospel of Barnabas enjoyed some currency, as a continuation of the Sac- romonte texts, among Spanish Moriscos exiled to North Africa;41 it is yet another work that tells us much about the Morisco religious and cultural atmosphere in which the Lead Books were written and later accepted as an Islamic message. And it throws into even higher relief the careful ambiguity of the Lead Books, which might be either a syncretic text (in the sense of a version of Christianity that could be accepted by Muslims) or an anti-Christian polemic. The messianic idea of one faith prevailing at the End of Days pervades both readings. Now that we have glimpsed how the Moriscos read the Lead Books, we can also conclude that the Books were written for them. As a text written in a pseudo-archaic language and

40 L. Bernabé Pons and G. Wiegers both identify Alonso de Luna with Muhamed Vul- haç, but interpret differently the relation between the Gospel of Barnabas and the Lead Books. See G. Wiegers, “The Persistence of Mudejar Islam? Alonso de Luna (Muhammad Abu-l-Asi), the Lead Books, and the Gospel of Barnabas,” Medieval Encounters, 12/3 (2006), 498–518. 41 L. Bernabé, “Los mecanismos de una resistencia: los Libros Plúmbeos del Sacromonte y el Evangelio de Bernabé,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal, Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 440. diego bejarano al-ḥajarī 153 calligraphy mixed with the contemporary Granadan dialect, in a vocabulary deeply imbued with the Qurʾān and Islamic theology, their polemical bias points to the conclusion that this forgery had been written by, and especially for, those Moriscos who were still keeping their original faith. We will return to all these issues in the next chapter.

chapter seven

miguel de luna: historian, novelist, physician

Miguel de Luna was one of the most prominent and multifaceted Moriscos who will appear in this volume. A man of enormous energy, the author of an extensive and varied body of work, and a participant in both Christian and Islamic culture, Luna was undoubtedly one of the forgers of the Turpi- ana Tower and Sacromonte texts—probably, in fact, the principal one. He was certainly one of the Lead Books’ translators and a particularly active apologist in defense of their authenticity. Miguel de Luna, a member of an important Morisco family of Baeza (like the Chapiz clan),1 was born in Granada around 1550.2 It is important to stress the hidalgo status of his family, which must have avoided on those grounds being expelled in 1570. Being an hidalgo places him halfway between the old Nasrid aristocracy and the group of Moriscos that we studied in the previous two chapters. With him we return to the families of noble origin and the defense of their ancestry. Miguel de Luna himself, as late as 1610, had a petition open in Granada to be declared an hidalgo,3 and we know that he was married at the time to María Berasategui, an Old Christian,4 so that he was fairly well integrated into the Christian society of his age. Luna learned Arabic as a child and studied medicine at the Univer- sity of Granada, from which he graduated. Like Alonso del Castillo, he practiced medicine as well as acting as a translator of Arabic documents into Spanish. In contrast to Castillo, however—Luna was a generation younger—we know almost nothing about his life and activities before the appearance of the Torre Turpiana Parchment. We are ignorant, for example, of where he was or what he did during the war. We have only one piece of news about him prior to the discovery of the Parchment: in

1 RAH, Salazar y Castro, B-85, “Libro de los linajes de Baeza así ganadores como pobladores della, compuesto por Antonio de Barahona y aumentado por otros.” See fol. 53, lineage of the Lunas. 2 Biblioteca Francisco de Zabálburu, Altamira, D. 119. 3 L. Bernabé Pons, “Estudio preliminar,” op. cit., IX. 4 A letter survives signed by her and addressed to the Archbishop after her husband’s death: ASG, leg. V, fol. 738. 156 chapter seven

March 1584 he was in Madrid. He had gone to Court intending to present the king with a report on the income from the Kingdom of Granada and how it could be increased—a document probably very similar to that offered by López Tamarid, to which we referred in Chapter 5.5 We do not know if he managed to have his report reach the king or a member of the Council, but this is the first indication of Luna’s continual desire to have access to the king, which we will see throughout the present chapter. In fact Luna does not begin to appear in the records until 1588, when he was entrusted with translating the Parchment. His activity reached its real peak around 1592: in that year he sent Philip II his treatise petition- ing for the restoration of baths and steam baths in the kingdom, and also published the Historia verdadera del Rey Don Rodrigo (True History of King Rodrigo). This was a false chronicle, halfway between a history and a novel of chivalry, supposedly translated from an Arabic manuscript by a (fictitious) historian called Tarif Abentarique that Luna had found in El Escorial. It is an account of the Muslim conquest of the Peninsula in which the land is saved by the newcomers from the evil and corruption into which the Visigoths had fallen.6 It is at the same time a “mirror of princes” that urges rulers to distinguish between their good and bad subjects irrespective of the religion that these profess, or rather of their parents’ and grandparents’ faith. In the Historia verdadera Luna makes use of the traditional narrative device of an occult volume that is discovered and that—just like the Lead Books—requires an expert translator who is also an author.7 Miguel de Luna’s actions have a remarkable consistency. His strategy and objectives vis-à-vis Christian society and the Christian authorities were to defend and preserve Morisco cultural identity independently of the religion of Islam, most particularly in regard to the Arabic language. He liked to style himself an “Arabic Christian.” His writings attempt to re- imagine the origins and history of Christianity in the Peninsula such that

5 AGS, Consejo y Juntas de Hacienda, leg. 303, 19–7. We thank Javier Castillo for this reference. 6 M. García-Arenal and F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Médico, traductor, inventor: Miguel de Luna, cristiano arábigo de Granada,” Chronica Nova, 36 (2006), 187–231; and M. García- Arenal and F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Miguel de Luna, cristiano arábigo de Granada,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal, ¿La historia inventada? Los libros plúmbeos y el legado sacromontano (Granada, 2008), 83–136. The present chapter provides new documentation and different conclusions from the ones proposed in those articles. 7 F. Delpech, “El hallazgo del escrito oculto en la literatura española del Siglo de Oro: elementos para una mitología del libro,” Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares, 53 (1998), 5–38. miguel de luna: historian, novelist, physician 157 its inhabitants of Arab origin may be seen as “natural” or “native” (one element of “our people”); therefore they cannot be expelled as alien invaders (an issue to which he does not refer explicitly), but rather, and above all, may aspire to honors and privileges. This strategy coincides with that of Fernando Núñez Muley in the Memorial, and with that of other Moriscos from the social and intellectual elite: they sought to maintain the honor inherent in their social class, and to enjoy the privileges and prestige that they felt they deserved by virtue of their lineage. A notable example is the Granada Venegas family, whom we have mentioned above as possible promoters of the Sacromonte forgeries. But at the same time Luna, like many other members of the Christianized Morisco elite, maintained ties and obligations to his own community that may not be far removed from an adherence to Islam. Thus we find ourselves once again in the presence of a character who shows many faces and a high degree of ambivalence.

The Historia Verdadera Del Rey Don Rodrigo

Luna’s Historia verdadera is one of the most singular texts to emerge from the problematic nexus formed by the Lead Books, Morisco culture, and Spanish historiography. The book was phenomenally successful: first published in 1592 (just when the Lead Books were appearing) by René Rabut in Granada, it was followed by the Segunda parte de la Historia de la pér- dida de España y Vida del Rey Iacob Almançor: en la qual el autor Tarif Aben- tarique prosigue la Primera parte (Second Part of the Lost History of Spain and Life of King James Almançor, in which the Author Tarif Abentarique Continues the First Part). With this second part the book became a sensa- tion, reprinted in Granada (1600), Saragossa (1603), Valencia (1646), Madrid (1654 and 1676), and beyond.8 As we have noted, the work purported to be an Arab chronicle, contemporary with the Muslim conquest of Spain, which Luna had discovered in El Escorial. At bottom it constitutes a new interpretation of the Arab conquest and Spain’s Islamic period. This unusually successful “history” played a unique role: ambiguous in status, it appeared at a moment when a debate was beginning in Spain about the use of Arabic sources in writing the nation’s history. In the larger framework, there had begun to be a general interest in Spanish antiquities

8 For the work’s many editions and translations see Luis F. Bernabé Pons, “Estudio preliminar” to Miguel de Luna, Historia verdadera del rey Don Rodrigo (Granada, 2001), xxxiv–xxxvii. 158 chapter seven that provoked even more falsifications and various other kinds of ancient chronicles. Luna’s book belongs in a literary tradition that contains two important touchstones: Pedro de Corral’s Crónica del rey don Rodrigo, and the much-disputed and much-criticized Crónica del Moro Rasis. These two interconnected works, particularly the second, are essential for understanding the historiography of the Muslim conquest of Spain and of King Rodrigo; both of them straddled the boundary between the real and the imagined. As Garibay put it, the Crónica del rey don Rodrigo consisted of “well-made poetic fictions, which their author could have sold as such, for he showed a talent for them”;9 in that sense they resembled that other genre, the novel of chivalry, in which the poetic, the supposedly historic, and the exemplary were melded together. The chevalric novel, too, had recourse to the motif of an old Oriental manuscript as the basis for its narrative.10 The work’s very title, Historia verdadera, harks back to a long tradition influenced by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo,11 author of the greatest Spanish novel of chivalry, Amadís de Gaula. Introducing his book and seeking to clarify the ambiguous concepts of “histories” and “chronicles,” Rodríguez de Montalvo established a distinction between historias de afición (histories of admired figures from the past), historias verdaderas (true histories), and historias fingidas (pretended histories). The latter two stood in radical opposition to each other as to what was “true” and what was “pretended,” but were not opposed on a doctrinal or didactic level. It is a complex argument that is best understood as part of a reconfiguration of the historical genre in the Early Modern era. One of the best examples may be the most renowned “true history” of the sixteenth century, Bernal Díaz Castillo’s account of the conquest of New Spain; we know that it was deeply influenced by novels of chivalry, particularly Amadís de Gaula.12

9 “[F]iciones poéticas, bien ordenadas, si por tales el autor las huviera vendido, pues tuvo talento para ello”: Esteban de Garibay, Los quarenta libros del compendio historial de las chrónicas y universal historia de todos los reynos de España (Barcelona, 1628), I, 315. 10 El caballero Zifar (fifteenth century) claimed to be translated from Chaldean; Alonso de Salazar’s Crónica de Lepolelmo, llamado el caballero de la Cruz (1521) was said to have originated with a Muslim chronicler named Xartón; and Palmerín de Oliva (1515) had a certain Muça Belín as its supposed author. See Francisco Márquez Villanueva, Moros, moriscos y turcos de Cervantes. Ensayos críticos (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2010), 128–129; also Sylvia Roubaud-Bénichou, “La vérité du roman fondée sur une source antique,” in Le Roman de chevalerie en Espagne. Entre Arthur et Don Quichotte (Paris: Champion, 2000), 129–136. 11 James D. Folgelquist, El Amadís y el género de la historia fingida (Madrid, 1982). 12 See, for example, Alberto Rivas Yanes, “La narración de hechos bélicos en el ‘Amadís’ y en la ‘Historia verdadera’ de Bernal Díaz del Castillo: nueva aproximación a las relaciones miguel de luna: historian, novelist, physician 159

The reception of Miguel de Luna’s work, which might be taken as either a historical chronicle or a chevalric fiction, falls into just this ambiguous territory. A long historiographic tradition draws on the Historia verdadera as a genuine source: it extends as far as Le Roux’s French translation of 1680, which concludes with a “Dissertation sur la vérité de cette Histoire, comferée avec celle d’Espagne, & quelques manuscrits Arabes, Turcs & Persans, pour y servir de préface & de preuves”13 that attempts to prove that the book is a true history rather than a “Spanish novel” or an “Arab novel.” Jaime Bleda, an anti-Morisco historian, paradoxically also held it to be true: The Moorish historian Abulcacim Tarif, though a barbarian, demonstrates by his style of writing that he is not recounting falsehoods or second-hand stories, but events that he either witnessed and saw with his own eyes, or heard from serious and reliable individuals who named people, times, and places. All this can be deduced from his straightforward manner of relating the events of the loss of Spain, not letting love, passion, envy, or ambition prevent him from telling the truth of everything that took place. Because of these guarantors, I venture to follow him in this chapter.14 But doubts about the Historia verdadera’s authenticity arose from an early date, eventually resulting in its being criticized as an “Arab novel of chivalry,” as José Pellicer, for one, called it.15 Later, Father Martín Sarmiento subsumed both Pedro de Corral’s Crónica del Rey don Rodrigo and Luna’s Historia verdadera into the same category of chevalric fiction.16

entre crónicas de Indias y libros de caballerías,” in Actas del XXIX Congreso del Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (Barcelona, 1994), 595–602. It is a commonplace of historiography that the mental and intellectual universe of the conquistadores was strongly imprinted by chevalric literature. 13 Histoire de la conqueste d’Espagne par les mores, composée en arabe par Abulcacim Tariff Abentariq de la ville de Medine, un des Capitaines que furent à cette expedition, traduite en espagnol par Michel de Luna de la ville de Grenade, Interprete de Philippe II en la langue arabe [. . .] (Paris, 1680), 226 ff. 14 “El historiador moro Abulcacim Tarif, aunque bárbaro, en su manera de escrivir muestra con evidencia que no escribe patrañas ni consejas oýdas, sino las cosas en que se halló presente y vido por sus ojos, o oyó a personas graves y fidedignas, nombrando las personas, tiempos y lugares, lo qual se infiere de la llaneza con que trata los acaecimientos de la pérdida de España, sin que le mueva amor o pasión, invidia o ambición, para dexar de contar la verdad de todo lo que passó. Con tales fiadores me atreveré a seguirle en este capítulo”: J. Bleda, Corónica de los moros de España (Valencia, 1618); facsimile ed. with prelim. study by B. Vincent and R. Benítez Sánchez-Blanco (Valencia, 2001), 134. 15 José Pellicer, Annales de la Monarquía de España después de su pérdida (Madrid: Francisco Sanz, 1681), 10. 16 Martín Sarmiento, De historia natural y de todo género de erudición, obra de 660 pliegos, ed. Henrique Monteagudo (Santiago de Compostela-Madrid, 2008), vol. IV, 209. 160 chapter seven

These criticisms reflected the attempt by scholars to draw the line between what was true and what was false; there was also a tendency to equate Arabic writing with fabrication, making it even more difficult to rely on Arabic sources for the history of Spain. In the face of “Arabic” fantasies like Luna’s, some wondered whether the Arabs might even have invented literary fiction and created the novels of chivalry. After all, was not the Islamic religion itself an invention? Luna’s work shows how profoundly he understood, and how deeply he had internalized, the contemporary genres of literature and historiography. Therefore we can better understand the aims of the Historia verdadera if we view it in tandem with other contemporary works with which it was in dialogue, or which shared its desire to find common ground. Such, for instance, was the work of Ginés Pérez de Hita, an associate of the literary circle of the Granada Venegas family in Granada, which we have already mentioned. The year 1582 saw the publication of Juan Rufo’s Austriada,17 an epic poem with a rhetorical/ideological cast on the theme of the part that Don John of Austria played in the Alpujarras War. This work, which purports to be a true history, was written at Court under Philip II’s sponsorship and achieved a wide readership. It cast the Moriscos in the most negative possible light, and presented the Alpujarras War as an epic conflict between the native Christian population and a foreign Muslim enemy that had penetrated Spanish territory.18 Specialists in Ginés Pérez de Hita agree that he seems to have written his Guerras civiles de Granada (Civil Wars of Granada) as a refutation of the Austriada—whose veracity he occasionally questions—and in response to chronicles of the war that began to appear around 1573. We do not know exactly when Pérez de Hita’s work was composed, except that it was roughly contemporaneous with Luna’s.19 The Guerras civiles, like Miguel de Luna’s work, has been dismissed as fraudulent and as pure fiction.20 Undoubtedly it was trying to make a rhetorical point (like the

17 We have used the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles edition (Madrid, 1854). 18 E. Davis, Myth and Identity in the Epic of Imperial Spain (Columbia, MO, 2000), 97 ff. 19 Part I was published in Zaragoza in 1595; Part II was completed in 1597 but not published until 1619. The standard edition is that of P. Blanchard-Demouge (Madrid, 1915). Part I (Historia de los vandos de los Zegríes y Abencerrajes) was re-issued by the Museo Univer- sal (Madrid, 1983), and Part II (La Guerra de los moriscos) with a study by J. Gil Sanjuán (Granada, 1989). 20 The first scholar to point out its value as a source and to evaluate it positively was J. Caro Baroja, Los moriscos, op. cit., 48. miguel de luna: historian, novelist, physician 161

Austriada and other works of the time that were considered “historical”), but it had a double purpose: to defend the noble lineages of Granada, and to convince its readers that the expulsion of 1570 was wrong.21 Like Luna, Ginés Pérez de Hita based his account on a supposed translation of an Arabic manuscript, and his motivations for writing are familiar to us, since they are those that underlie genealogical works like the Casa de Granada. Let us return now to the Historia verdadera, which is divided into two distinct parts. The first is a history not only of the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula but also of certain Muslim rulers and kingdoms, both Eastern and North African. The second (Segunda parte de la historia de la pérdida de España y vida del rey Iacob Almançor) devotes a few chapters to praise of Spain; at the beginning of these there is a reference to Noah and his descendants, among whom was the founder of Spain, Shem, son of Japheth. Luna’s purpose is to prove that Chaldean-speaking people from the East arrived in Spain in ancient times; in this we can trace similar inventions by Annius of Viterbo (of whom we shall speak in the next chapter), but with an Oriental overlay.22 According to the supposed chronicler Tarif Abentarique, when Mūsā b. Ṭufayl entered the city of Mérida he found, near the main gate, a fallen stone bearing a Chaldean inscription that told of this migration of peoples from the East: “And in order to read and understand the text I brought three interpreters who were experienced in that language, and in it I found this whole story set down.” The second part of La historia verdadera is furthermore, as Márquez has shown, a mirror for princes whose aim is to influence the vision and the aims of the king (and of Spanish society) with respect to Muslims. The example offered is the Muslim monarch Iacob Almançor, who is so tolerant toward Christians that he almost seems to be one himself: he shows the exemplary course that the Spain of the time should follow, but does not.23 Those who had arrived in the Peninsula before him had behaved in the same estimable manner. Thus, when Abdelaziz disembarks in Algeciras he promises noble rank to all those who will join him, on the

21 As D. Williams-Sieber argues convincingly in Beyond the Limits of Genre: The Rheto- ric of History in the “Guerras civiles de Granada,” Ph.D. diss. (Princeton, 1993). We thank Fernando Bouza for drawing our attention to this excellent thesis, and the University of Michigan for making a copy available to us. 22 J. Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones de la historia, op. cit., 62 ff. 23 F. Márquez, “La voluntad de leyenda,” op. cit., 80. 162 chapter seven model of the Catholic Monarchs. His supporters are granted the privilege “to be held and considered from that day forward hidalgos, and to enjoy all the preeminence, freedoms, and liberties enjoyed by that rank.”24 The political example of Abdelaziz is the one that Núñez Muley had appealed to when he recalled that the Moriscos of Granada had supported the Crown against the Comuneros; that Morisco families who had served the king had sought to be ennobled; and that honor should result from these acts, if one recognized that nobility was a path to integration and assimilation for the Moriscos. Miguel de Luna would take up these arguments once again in a letter he wrote to the archbishop of Granada from Madrid in February 1610, at a time when he and his family were threatened with expulsion. There he protests that anyone in Spain who knows Arabic is labelled Muslim. This unpublished letter deserves to be read in full; the anger, pain, and humiliation that it reveals recall those expressed by nobles of Moorish origin whom we have seen in earlier chapters, in relation to the Alpujarras War. Luna shows himself here as an aristocrat and a man of honor because of his services to the king: Reverend Sir: My wife and Licenciate Vega have written to me about recent events in that city [Granada] that affect its native-born citizens; they tell how the authorities entered my house to seize my weapons and extort other things, from which I feel such rage that I cannot sleep at night for thinking of these insults. I, Reverend Sir, have lived in the manner that Your Lordship well knows: my father was a native of Baeza, where there are hidalgos and knights who are in my debt and who today acknowledge me and write to me; let anyone go there to report on my purity and nobility. No proclama- tion or decree directed toward Moriscos ever applied to me, nor did I pay any tax or fee that was levied on them; none of that is true. There are documents and papers proving my hidalgo status, gained in the year [15]54 by my grandfather; I have given service to the Monarchs, as Your Lordship can bear witness better than anyone. Justice means nothing if it is sufficient to say “He knows the Arabic language, he is a Morisco, arrest him without hearing him out.” It is a hard thing; my Lord, place your hand upon your breast and feel what I must be feeling. I have no one but Your Lordship who can stand up for me, and I beseech you with all my strength to write at once to my Lord Cardinal and to Don Juan de Ydiáquez, for they belong to the Junta of the Sacromonte and the Council of State, where these affairs are handled. Please put my case before them and let them know how much service I have given in the Sacromonte matter; if I do not have it recognized now

24 “De que fuessen avidos y tenidos de allí adelante por hombres hijos dalgos y que gozasen de las preheminencias, franquezas y libertades que los tales gozauan”: Historia verdadera, op. cit., vol. II, fol. 27v. miguel de luna: historian, novelist, physician 163

it will be null and void, for no one else can understand [those texts]. And let them make a statement about it very soon, and in case I do not receive justice let me go to Rome with my wife and son; there I will raise a cry to Heaven and complain to all the world that they wish to take away unjustly my patrimony, my lineage, my honor, and my services. For even if I were an Arab just arrived from Moorish lands, considering all the services that I have given and still give, I should be shown courtesy, even more because I possess the qualities that I have recalled for Your Lordship. As for my wife and son, I have no one to commend them to except Your Lordship; they are not miscreants, nor have they committed any offense against God or the King that would deserve such great offense and insult. The corregidor knows me well and is fully aware of the outrage that is being done to me in this court. And though His Majesty gave him the order to expel the Moriscos, all normal justice having been suspended, he is doing no more than to carry out this order; but it should not serve to expel one who cannot be proved to be [a Morisco] or to be included among them.25

25 “Ilmo. Sr.: mi muger y el Licenciado Vega me escriven las novedades que ay en aquella ciudad acerca de los naturales della y de cómo la Justicia avía entrado en mi casa a quitar las armas y hacer otras extorsiones de que e recivido tanto corage que no duermo de noche pensando en estos agravios. Yo, Señor Ilustrísimo, e vivido de la manera que Vuestra Señoría sabe, mi padre fue natural de la ciudad de Baeça donde tengo mis deudos hijosdalgo y caballeros que oy día me reconocen y escriven; que vayan a hacer allí infor- maciones de limpieza y nobleza. Nunca habló conmigo vando ni premática de moriscos ni pagué con ellos pechos ni servicios ni tales son verdad. Se hallarán ynformaciones y papeles de hidalguía ganada en el año de 54 en favor de mi abuelo, tengo en mi poder servicios a los Reyes, buen testigo es Vuestra Señoría dellos mejor que nadie, si no vale justicia más de solamente dezir sabe la lengua Arábiga, es morisco, atropéllenle sin o‎ýrle. Rezia cosa es, ponga Su Señoría su mano en su pecho y sienta lo que yo puedo sentir, no tengo de quién poder favorecerme si no es de Vuestra Señoría a quien suplico quan encarecidamente puedo mande escrivir luego al Sr. Cardenal y a don Juan de Yidiáquez pues son de la Junta del Santo Monte y del Consejo de Estado donde se trata de los negocios, pidiéndoles mi negocio y dándoles a entender lo mucho que e servido en lo del Santo Monte, y que si yo no lo acabo de poner en razón quedara desierto pues no ay otro que lo entienda, y declaren sobre ello con brevedad lo que conviene y en caso en que justicia no se me guardase, me den licencia para poder pasarme en Roma con mi muger e hijo a donde iré pidiendo al cielo y quexándome al mundo que injustamente me quieren quitar la hazienda, el linaje, la honra y los servicios, pues aunque yo fuera un Alarbe venido de tierra de moros, bien considerado lo mucho que e servido y sirvo, se me avía de hazer cortesía quanto más teniendo las calidades que he referido a Vuestra Señoría. “Lo que toca a mi muger e hijo no tengo otra persona a quien encomendarlos sino a Vuestra Señoría, pues no son malhechores ni an cometido delitos contra Dios ni contra el Rey para recibir agravios y afrentas tan grandes, y el señor corregidor bien me conoce y sabe muy bien la que me hacen en esta corte, y Su Magestad, aunque le dio comisión para sacar a los moriscos, inibidas las justicias es mero executor de su comisión mas no para echar con ellos a quien no se le probare bien serlo y ser comprendido en ellos.” AASG, leg. VII–1, fol. 889. This letter is not among those published by D. Cabanelas, which come from AASG, leg. XIII: “Cartas del morisco granadino Miguel de Luna.” 164 chapter seven

A note in the margin states: “It would be a fine payment for his services [. . .] to send Miguel de Luna and his wife and son off to Barbary to have the Moors stab them with their lances, because he cannot be a Moor himself, what a mad idea.”26 The letter needs no further comment. They wish to take away his possessions, his lineage, his honor, and his service to the king, and they have removed his arms from his house. On the same date of February 2, 1610, Luna sent a similar letter to the Licenciate Luis de Vega, the Archbishop’s chamberlain, saying that there were only 38 days left before his expulsion and asking that he be allowed to go to Rome with his family.27 Note his comment that if it had not been for him, no one could have understood the Sacromonte texts. In the end, Luna was not expelled. On December 10, 1615, the Licenciate Núñez de Valdivia y Mendoza wrote to His Majesty announcing Luna’s death in Granada. In the answer the court asks if he died in Christian fashion, for there were doubts, and rumors that he had not done so; therefore a certificate was sent from Granada by the priest who attended his death, asserting that “Dr. Luna died well and his manner of burial was even better.”28 Luna’s Historia verdadera was cited also by Fray Agustín Salucio in the report that he wrote urging reform of the purity-of-blood statutes, in support of the following argument: Thus scholars of history take it to be true that when the Moors entered and conquered Spain many of the Christians became Moors, with the people following their princes in this, as they usually do. We know how many Moors vanquished the Goths, and they were not a large number, as is shown in the chronicle that has been newly translated from Arabic. The Christians they encountered were either Goths, or natives of the land; they threw almost all of the Goths out of the land, and the natives remained where they were, because the cities were not left empty; later the Christians became Moors, and in the same fashion the Moors became Christians when they were conquered, because the Old Christians really consisted only of the soldiers. Of these Moors none were considered Moriscos any longer except those of Ara- gon, Valencia, and Granada, who remained in their villages with their own

26 “Bien sería en pago de sus servicios [. . .] echar a Miguel de Luna y a su muger e hijo a Berbería a que le lanceen los Moros porque él no puede serlo, lindo disparate.” 27 Luna had traveled in 1609 to Rome, where his son lived and where he thought that he might find “a way to live comfortably,” as he wrote to Pedro de Castro on November 4 of that year. In the same letter he confesses himself “sick of the affairs of Spain, because life is hard there and gets worse from day to day”: see D. Cabanelas, “Cartas del morisco granadino Miguel de Luna,” op. cit., 38. 28 “El doctor Luna murió bien y se le hizo mejor entierro”: AASG, leg. V, fols. 737 ff. miguel de luna: historian, novelist, physician 165

language and dress, never mixing with other Christians. Later all those who were descended from the Moors of Toledo, Cordova, Seville, and a thousand other places . . . soon were taken for Old Christians, because, in mixing with the others, they forgot their original language and dress; after a few generations the memory of their infidelity was forgotten, like the apostasy of many of them who, after having been converted, abandoned the Faith. For to believe that none of the Moors and Jews who converted a hundred years before the founding of the Holy Office became apostates is to ignore what is clear from the histories and some chapters of the law.29 Salucio’s argument, for which he relied on Luna but went much further, was that clearly the successive conversions and apostasies of the “natives” of Spain made it useless to try to establish any “purity of blood” based on tracing one’s ancestors and their adherence to the Christian faith.

Physician: The Tratado De Los Baños (Treatise on Baths)

We can see that many documents sought to defend Morisco lineages, and to distinguish those “good” Moors who had been loyal to the king and thus deserved privileges, irrespective of the religion that their grandfathers practiced; this was the strong argument that underlay both the Sacromonte forgeries and the works of Miguel de Luna. We have known much less about Luna’s devotion to medicine; therefore a letter that he addressed to the king on May 25, 1592, is of great importance. In it he

29 “Así que los doctos en historia tienen por llano, que al tiempo que entraron los moros en España y la ganaron, muchísimos de los Cristianos se hicieron moros, siguiendo (como suele) el vulgo a los Príncipes. Porque los moros que vencieron a los Godos, sabido es el número, que no fue en mucha cantidad, como se ve en la historia que de nuevo se ha trasladado de arábigo. Los Cristianos que hallaron o eran Godos, o naturales de la tierra; a los Godos casi a todos los echaron de la tierra; los naturales en ella se quedaron, porque no quedaron las ciudades yermas; luego los Cristianos se tornaron moros, y de la misma manera los moros se hacían Cristianos cuando eran conquistados, porque los Cristianos viejos eran pocos más que los soldados. Pues destos moros claro está que no quedaron tenidos por moriscos, sino éstos de Aragón, y Valencia y Granada, que se quedaron en sus pueblos sin mezclarse con los otros cristianos y aun con diferente lengua y hábito. Luego todos los que descienden de los moros de Toledo, y Córdoba y Sevilla y de otras mil partes . . . todos fueron en breve tiempo tenidos por Cristianos viejos, porque mezclándose con los demás y olvidando su lengua y hábito, a pocas generaciones se olvidó la memoria de su infidelidad, y de la misma manera se olvidó la apostasía de muchísimos que después de la conversión apostataron de la Fe. Porque creer que ninguno de los moros y judíos que se convirtieron cien años antes de la institución del Santo Oficio apostataron, es ignorar lo que consta claro de las istorias y de algunos capítulos del derecho”: Fray A. Salucio, Discurso sobre los estatutos de limpieza de sangre (1600?) (Cieza, 1975), fols. 4–5. We are grateful to Antonio Feros for bringing this passage to our attention. 166 chapter seven devotes six pages to the therapeutic qualities of bathing, and also alludes metaphorically to what should be preserved in the “body” and what should be expelled.30 We do not know if this missive was published or circulated, nor even if the king ever read it; it was produced in the context of the decree of 1567, to which we have so often alluded, that prohibited speaking or writing in Arabic, using Arabic first or last names, dressing in Moorish style, using henna on the hair or hands, bearing arms, keeping slaves, frequenting bathhouses, and so on.31 This decree is the one that provoked Núñez Muley’s Memorial addressed to Pedro de Deza, president of the royal Audiencia and the Chancellery of Granada, in which the Morisco aristocrat tries to argue against such measures, calling the practices cultural traits that have no religious significance. Miguel de Luna’s letter—in which he urges the monarch to reestablish the bathhouses and heated chambers simply for medical and public-health reasons—differs from Núñez Muley’s text in that it does not deal with the issue of religion at all.32 Luna proposes to install baths and hypocausts for public use in the cities of the kingdom; his text is a treatise on hygiene and preventive medicine, and at the same time a metaphor— one couched in scientific terms—that conflates the human body with the body of society. In the sixteenth century, concepts of health and illness were shaped by an intricate system of rational interpretation based on treatises attributed to Hippocrates and Galen, and on texts by many Christian, Muslim,

30 BNE ms. 6149, fols. 292r–294v. This work of Miguel de Luna’s has been edited and studied by R. Iversen, “El discurso de la higiene: Miguel de Luna y la medicina del siglo XVI,” in W. Mejías López (ed.), Morada de la palabra: homenaje a Luce y Mercedes López Baralt, vol. I (Puerto Rico, 2002), 892–907. We have published it in an appendix, Chronica Nova, 32 (2006), 226–230. 31 “We order that now and hereafter in the Kingdom of Granada there may be no bathhouses, and that those that now exist be removed, pulled down, and closed. And may no person of any degree or station use such baths nor bathe in them; and likewise the newly converted must not possess such bathhouses nor visit them, either in their homes or elsewhere” (“Mandamos que agora, i de aquí adelante en el dicho Reino de Granada no aya ni pueda haber baños artificiales i se quiten, derriben i cesen los que de presente ai, i no pueda ninguna persona de qualquier estado ni condición que sea usar los dichos baños, ni bañarse en ellos: i que otrosí no puedan los dichos nuevamente convertidos tener los dichos baños, ni usar dellos ni en su casa ni fuera”): Decree of December 10, 1567. 32 “Can it be proven that people bathe as part of a ceremony? Certainly not” (“¿Podráse averiguar que los baños se hacen por cerimonia? No por cierto”). See the Memorial in M. García-Arenal, Los moriscos, op. cit., 53. There is a complete version of the Memorial in the “Introducción” by B. Vincent to A. Gallego Burín and A. Gámir Sandoval’s re-edition, Los Moriscos del Reino de Granada según el Sínodo de Guadix de 1554 (Granada, 1996), XXXV–LII. miguel de luna: historian, novelist, physician 167 and Jewish authors who throughout the Middle Ages had commented on those treatises; the result was known as Galenism or Galenic medicine. Galenism framed good health as a state of perfect balance among the four bodily humors, each of which corresponded to a constituent element of matter. Galenists maintained that illness was in essence an imbalance of the humors, brought about by a series of external and internal events that existed within a permanent relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm. In consonance with the concepts of humoral balance and imbalance, the chief aim of Galenic medicine was to expel the “peccant matter,” the excess humor that caused the symptoms of any given illness. This matter could be expelled by either purgation or bloodletting. So enthusiastically did Galenist doctors recommend the latter technique to their patients that they were criticized by some who saw excessive bloodletting as the main argument for doubting the whole Galenic system. Luna’s treatise is strongly critical of those who practice phlebotomy with too much haste and persistence; he, on the contrary, recommends hot steam baths as the best way to expel noxious humors. Galenic medicine produced in the Peninsula, from the Renaissance onward, an enormous body of texts through which physicians sought to control every aspect of their patients’ lives, both in sickness and in health—turning medicine virtually into a way of life.33 The wide circulation of Galenic texts, and their notions of purgation and bloodletting, came to serve as a metaphor for the social practices associated with the concept of “purity of blood”; they seemed to be reflected in a society that was determined to purge itself of “peccant matter.” Luna’s contemporaries employed this metaphor often, insisting that a society could be purified just as a human body could be. Thus the Granadan chronicler Bermúdez de Pedraza, on relating the expulsion of Granada’s Jews and their flight from the city, added: “this poison was eliminated, and a great clot of bad blood left the body of the kingdom; may God grant that not a drop of it remain.”34 Luna’s text is a polemical one: although he respects Galenic principles, he takes a stand against purges and especially bleedings, and against those

33 L. García Ballester, “A Marginal Learned Medical World: Jewish, Muslim and Chris- tian Medical Practitioners and the Use of Arabic Medical Sources in Late Medieval Spain,” in Medicine in a Multicultural Society, Chap. 7. 34 “Cortó esta ponzoña y salió del cuerpo de sus reinos un golpe grande de mala sangre; pluguiera a Dios no le hubiera quedado gota de ella”: B. de Pedraza, Historia eclesiástica de Granada (Granada, 1638, facsimile ed. Granada, 1989), fol. 176v. 168 chapter seven doctors who, fearful of losing clients and their fees, will not hear any talk of the preventive medicine that Luna espouses. Luna points out that bathing opens the pores and allows bad humors to leave the body without weakening the patient, unlike the bleedings and purgings that so many physicians in “our Spain” employ. In our eyes, this passage continues the metaphors associated with the body of society: “bad humors” should be removed without recourse to bloodletting and debilitation. Luna would use the same argument in his Historia verdadera in defense of the “good Moors” who should not be confused with, or treated like, bad ones. The issue is not to free society’s body from “bad blood,” as Bermúdez and many others would have it, but to distinguish between good and bad individuals (the latter being the “bad humors”). Only then can the body recover its balance of humors—that is, its health—without losing its blood, which constitutes, after all, its strength. Luna’s text is a brief medical treatise in which the author defends experience as “the mother of science” and refers to his own practice as a working physician. He shows himself to be completely up to date on the medical concerns of his time, particularly the “French disease” or “buboes,” the venereal malady that was ravaging society in the sixteenth century.35 Like all early-Modern European doctors, he interprets this disease in providentialist terms and associates it with sin and its necessary punishment. He is aware of the theory of contagion (which had arisen in Europe only in the 1520s)36 and of the malady’s sexual transmission (“one man infects a hundred women, and one woman a hundred men”), an idea that was very recent. He again recommends steam baths to prevent and cure it, considering them more effective than “wood of the Indies” (guaiacum or lignum vitae, the subject of such famous treatises as that of Francisco Delicado, author of La lozana andaluza),37 sarsaparilla, or mercury. It is clear that Luna was perfectly current in medical matters. Unlike Núñez Muley, Luna does not bother to protest that baths do not constitute a “Muslim rite and ceremony”—he does not even mention the issue. He does argue, on the other hand, against those who claim that

35 J. Arrizabalaga, “ Medical Responses to the ‘French Disease’ in Europe at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century,” in K. Siena (ed.), Sins of the Flesh. Responding to Sexual Disease in Early Modern Europe (Toronto, 2005), 33–55. 36 V. Nutton, “The Seeds of Disease: an Explanation of Contagion and Infection from the Greeks to the Renaissance,” Medical History, 27 (1983), 1–34. 37 J. Pardo Tomás, El tesoro natural de América. Colonialismo y ciencia en el siglo XVI (Madrid, 2002), 46 ff. miguel de luna: historian, novelist, physician 169 bathing weakens and feminizes men and takes away their will to fight: “He who believes this is obviously mistaken, for it is clear that the presence of baths in Spain did not keep our people [notice whose side Luna places himself on], who used them, from reconquering the land from the Moors who occupied it. Nor were the Turks, who bathe in order to maintain their health, kept from conquering and widening their territories; up until today they are still widening them, for our sins, with such great harm to our Christian religion.”38 We stress that Luna makes not the slightest connection between bathing and Islamic practice, since the Turks do it only “to maintain their health.” The only religious reference in the text— and it is certainly an important one—is to the Prophecy of St. John from the Torre Turpiana Parchment, which, according to Luna, alludes to the buboes that were the scourge of his age. Luna further affirms that Saint Caecilius willed his relics to appear as a remedy for these ills, and “so that Princes may be warned (and such is the truth) to seek measures against these persecutions.” Therefore, to the multiple uses to which the relics and the Parchment may be put is added a new one: to cure the “French disease,” the plague of the times. He quotes an Arabic prophetic verse from the Parchment that says, “in running waters shall sores be cured,” explaining it as: “this infectious disease [buboes] will be cured by clear running waters. And these, without any doubt, are the baths to which we have referred.”39 No matter what Luna is writing about, he always brings in the Parchment and the relics—their authenticity and, above all, their providentiality. He uses the Parchment to support his arguments, while that support in turn proves the supposed validity of the Parchment. And he also, in this passage, explains clearly that those discoveries have the same purpose as his Historia verdadera del Rey Don Rodrigo: to warn or advise princes that they must seek remedies against such ills. Luna concludes his treatise with an estimate of the number of baths and hypocausts that would need to be built in Spain, how much they would

38 “Y el que esto dudare se engaña manifiestamente pues se ve muy claro que no por aver avido vaños en España dexaron los nuestros quando los usavan de recuperalla de poder de los moros que la tenían ocupada. Ni los turcos, que los usan para preservar su salud, dexaron de conquistar y ensanchar sus estados, como los ensancharon para nuestros pecados y ensanchan hasta oy en tan gran daño de nuestra cristiana religión.” 39 “En aguas corrientes será la cura de las llagas”; “esta enfermedad contagiosa será curada con aguas claras corrientes. Y éstas sin duda alguna son los vaños que auemos referido.” 170 chapter seven cost, and how they might be financed. Naturally this text was unsuccessful, but it must have testified to his experience and knowledge as a medical man: we do not know if it was by coincidence, but in 1596 Luna was ordered to translate a treatise on gout from the Arabic.40 We have been unable to locate that translation.

40 IVDJ, Envío 92, vol. I. chapter EIGHT

miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author

The Parchment

Miguel de Luna had indeed been involved in “translation matters,” as he calls them, at least since 1588. When the Torre Turpiana Parchment first appeared, the first person summoned was the Licenciate José Fajardo, who had been a professor of Arabic at the University of Salamanca; he excused himself, however, saying that his knowledge of the language was not sufficient for reading such an arcane text. By the authority of the Licenciate Francisco López Tamarid, then an interpreter for the Inquisi- tion and rationer of Granada Cathedral, Miguel de Luna and then Alonso del Castillo were asked to examine the document. Luna requested permission to study the Parchment at home, and did so from March 26–30, 1588, assisted by Fajardo and Francisco López Tamarid. Later, and presumably independently of Luna, Alonso del Castillo studied the Parchment in April of the same year.1 In 1592 a copy of the Parchment, signed and certified by Tamarid and probably made by Luna, was sent to Madrid to be inspected by the Court; it is kept today in the library of El Escorial. The cathedral Chapter wrote to the court that “the Christian Arabs of this kingdom, Licenciate Miguel de Luna and Licenciate Alonso del Castillo, physician”2 had been ordered to make two separate translations, neither one having seen the other’s version. Note that they are called “Christian Arabs,” a term of respect that was unusual: the normal ones were “New Christians formerly Moors” (cristianos nuevos de moros) or “Moriscos.” Most likely it was a form that pleased them both. Luna, for his part, had said that because St. Caecilius had written the Parch- ment for princes, he wanted to speak of it in person, alone, to the king.3 Perhaps the Parchment had the same purpose as La historia verdadera: to

1 P. S. van Koningsveld and G. Wiegers, “El pergamino de la Torre Turpiana,” op. cit., 117. Different versions and copies of these translations by Luna and Castillo are extant: see, for example, D. Cabanelas, El morisco granadino, op. cit., 241–249. 2 AHN, Universidades, lib. 1179, fol. 116. 3 Letter of June 17, 1588. AASG, leg. V, fol. 29. 172 chapter eight give guidance and counsel to princes, and therefore to allow Luna direct access to the king. In any event—and although the Parchment’s text, in its various versions, still presents many obscure passages and problems to be solved—it does seem clear that from the first, the supposed Prophecy of St. John and its translations were a device for addressing “Arab Christians,” who supposedly had been living in Spain before the Muslim conquest. In the manuscript version that modern scholars attribute to Luna, now in Madrid’s Biblioteca Nacional, St. Caecilius pens the words: “and then I translated it into the common Spanish tongue, and we made upon it a full commentary that contains the secret already present in the Arabic; [it is in these two] languages used in Spain and in the surrounding lands so that the Arab Christians will not be without it. And in doing this we did not corrupt the phrasing nor the secret words that are in Hebrew and Greek.”4 As we shall see below, this question of whether Arabic had been used in Spain before the Muslim invasion would become one of the key points in the arguments over the Parchment’s authenticity; we believe that it was also one of the issues that most interested Luna himself, determined as he was to defend Spain’s “Arab Christians.”5

Miguel de Luna, Pedro Guerra de Lorca, and Benito Arias Montano

It was considered very important that Benito Arias Montano, the famous scholar of the Bible and Oriental languages, should come to examine the Parchment and the relics from the Torre Turpiana; the matter was discussed in the Chapter of Granada Cathedral from February 1593 onward,

4 “Y luego la traduxe en lenguaje común español y sobre él hizimos cumplido comento que en sí comprehende el secreto ya dicho en Arávigo, lenguajes usados en la tierra de España y las tierras occidentales circunveçinas para que no caresçiesen della los cristianos arávigos y no por eso corrompimos el frasis ni el modo secreto así hebreo como griego”: BNE, Papeles varios, ms. 5685, fol. 156r. The other version contained in the same manuscript, which appears to be by Castillo, reads: “and I translated it into the common Spanish language and we commented on it in Arabic, including the secret directed to the Arab Christians of Spain, so that kings may know it in its present form; and we did not corrupt the phrasing on translating it from Hebrew nor Greek” (“y la traduxe en lengua común española y la comentamos en aráviga que comprehende el secreto nombrado para los cristianos arávigos de España para que los reyes lo sepan de la forma que aquí se verá ques ésta y no corrompimos la frasis en traduçirla de hebreo ni griego”), fol. 156v. 5 Curiously, in a third translation of the Parchment these “Arab Christians” are turned into “Mozarabs” (moçárabes), a term apparently used to mean “Arabic-speaking.” miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 173 as is abundantly recorded in minutes of its meetings. Several letters were sent to Arias Montano between February and April of that year,6 but he declined to make the journey, citing ill health. The Chapter, seeing that Arias Montano would not come to Granada, decided to send the Licenci- ate Pedro Guerra de Lorca and Miguel de Luna to interview him in person, taking the Parchment and a report on the relics made by Lorca. Luna shared in writing the report, and thus became, from the first, an apologist for as well as a translator of the Torre Turpiana finds. Arias Montano then wrote a letter to the dean of the cathedral, Juan Fonseca; it was read out in a meeting of the Chapter and stated that he had examined in detail “the original Parchment itself that I received from the hands of Mr. Lorca, together with the prefaces, copies, and translations that the Licenciate Luna has made diligently and exactly,” as well as Lorca’s report on the relics. In this report, Luna’s role and the arguments he puts forth coincide with one of the principal claims of his Historia verdadera: that the Moor- ish kings had let the Christians live in peace. He also repeats an anecdote from his treatise on baths, about a holy shrine that providentially cured both Christians and Muslims of the plague. This place, which had existed in Moorish times, was dedicated to St. Anthony, while Granada’s parish church was dedicated to St. Caecilius.7 The person who went with Luna to see Arias Montano, the cathedral Canon Pedro Guerra de Lorca, has already been mentioned in earlier chapters and deserves an excursus here. He was a converso of Jewish origin. The son of a bureaucrat of the Alhambra, he was beneficed in Tendilla, the home town of the Mendozas, and in the Alhambra itself. In 1588 he

6 Archive of Granada Cathedral, Actas capitulares, lib. 9, sessions between February 26 and April 26, 1593. Replies by Arias Montano were read out on March 18, 1593. 7 See Tratado de la defensión y verdad de las Santas Reliquias halladas en la Torre Anti- gua de la Iglesia Catedral de Granada, AHN, Universidades, lib. 1179, fol. 19r: “The Licenci- ate Luna has told me that in St. Caecilius’s time there was not only a parish church in Granada, but also a shrine dedicated to St. Anthony; it is the one above the River Genil, a building that looks very ancient today and is still standing because it is built on a rock. [. . .] A miracle took place in Moorish times: there was a plague and the Christians went and were cured, and the Moors went also [. . .] and therefore the Moorish king from that time forward allowed the Christians to live with greater freedom and to enlarge their church and their shrines” (“Ame dicho el licenciado Luna que no solo ubo iglesia parrochial en Granada en tiempo de San Cecilio sino que tambien ubo hermita dedicada al Sr. Sancto Antón que es la que está encima del rio Genil que oy se ve su edificio ser muy antiguo y estar en pie por estar fundado sobre peña [. . .] sucedió en tiempo de los moros un milagro que es que hubo peste y los christianos iban y les curaba y también iban los Moros [. . .] y por esto el rey Moro de allí adelante dexó libremente a los christianos vivir con más libertad y ampliar su yglesia y hermitas.”) 174 chapter eight joined the Chapter of Granada Cathedral, in which he remained until his death in 1597.8 He was a graduate in theology and also a well-known poet. But what makes him of special note is his documented interest in hagi- ography and in Granada’s religious roots even before the Parchment was unearthed: in 1584 he wrote a work, preserved in manuscript, called La historia de la vida y martirio de San Çecilio y sus seis compañeros llamados los apóstoles de Nuestra Hespaña (History of the Life and Martyrdom of St. Caecilius and his Six Companions called the Apostles of our Spain).9 After the discovery of the Parchment and the Lead Books, Guerra de Lorca wrote in defense of their authenticity, as we have said, and penned another work that survives in manuscript, Memorias eclesiásticas de la ciudad de Granada (Ecclesiastical History of the City of Granada).10 We believe that Guerra de Lorca was more likely than López Tamarid to have participated in some way in fabricating the finds; if not directly, then at least by feeding the demand for Church histories and setting forth what was needed to connect Granada’s Christian present with a sacred past. We can only speculate about his possible collaboration, but we can at least show that Luna was in close contact with persons who possessed the Christian theological and ideological tools needed for reconstructing Granada’s religious history. He was well aware of what lines of argument would be most welcomed by the clergy of Granada Cathedral.

The Lead Books Translated

From the time that the Lead Books appeared, Luna worked with them in the same way that he had done with the Parchment. On May 20, 1595, Archbishop Pedro de Castro and the Licenciate Jerónimo de Herrera, the apostolic secretary and notary, summoned Miguel de Luna into their presence. They told him that there was a series of Arabic books that needed to be interpreted and translated, but that before he could see them he would have to swear that he would act as a faithful translator and keep their contents secret. The language of the oath shows clearly what sort of accurate and unbiased translation was expected:

8 P. Gan Giménez, “Los prebendados de la iglesia granadina,” op. cit., p. 191; and K. Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada, op. cit., pp. 55–59. 9 BNE ms. 1499. M. García-Arenal, “De la autoría morisca a la antigüedad sagrada,” op. cit., 557 ff. 10 AASG, C 48, fols. 166–377. miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 175

. . . that he would, according to his knowledge and understanding, tell the truth of what occurred in the books; and that he would translate them faithfully and truly, with all possible rigor and correctness; and that he would translate them faithfully, word for word and verbum ex verbo, such that the Spanish words of the translation would correspond to the original, word for word, in the same order in which they are written in Arabic, without preposing or postposing any phrase or word; nor would he add any further interpretation, comment, or gloss, but [express the content] simply as it appears in the books. And that whether or not he understood the books, he would keep the secret, and in no way, directly or indirectly, on his own or through another person, would he tell anyone anything that is contained in the books.11 Luna translated the first books, those titled Fundamentum Ecclesiae and Liber de Essentia Dei, between May and July of 1595; these are the ones that circulated in manuscript, were copied most frequently, and achieved the widest circulation. The archbishop, on receiving them, requested in writing a report on the age of the Lead Books; Luna composed and signed this report and under oath, on July 8 of that year, answered a series of questions about it.12 After that date Luna wrote to the king requesting “help with expenses” to support him as he made the translations, or that he be named inspector of the royal works at the Alhambra so as to be able to continue to translate. At the same time he sent insistent requests for loans of Arabic books from the El Escorial library, claiming that he had great need of them and could not do without them.13 He asked the king himself for al-Jawharī’s Arabic dictionary, “which Your Majesty has in El Escorial, and once the

11 “[Q]ue diría la verdad a todo su saber y entender de lo contecido en dichos libros y que los traduciría fiel y verdaderamente con todo rigor y propiedad en cuanto le fuera posible y que los traduciría palabra por palabra verbum ex verbo fielmente, de manera que las palabras castellanas de la traducción vayan correspondiendo al original palabra por palabra por la orden que en el original arábigo están escritas sin postponer ni ante- poner dictión ni palabra ninguno ni dar otra mas interpretación, commento ni glossa sino llanamente como está en los dichos libros y que tendría secreto de todo entendiendo o no los dichos libros y que directa ni indirecta por sí ni por otra persona no diría a nadie cosa ninguna que se contenga en los dichos libros”: Archivo Real de la Chancillería de Granada, caja 2432, pieza 14, fol. 63. 12 Archivo Real de la Chancillería de Granada, caja 2432, pieza 14, fols. 71–74. 13 Biblioteca Francisco de Zabálburu, Altamira, D. 161, 1, 2, 3; in D. 135, March 12, 1596, Pedro de Castro asks the king to satisfy Alonso del Castillo and Miguel de Luna, because they are carrying out very useful work made difficult by the fact that the Lead Books are in a form of Arabic that is not the one currently spoken. 176 chapter eight translation is done it shall be returned.”14 In October 1595 Luna wrote again to the king, insisting on the providential and miraculous nature of the Lead Books’ discovery and on the nearly miraculous character of his own translation, since only divine inspiration had allowed him to understand the texts. His emphasis on having received illumination and divine grace is similar to what we saw in Diego Bejarano (al-Ḥajarī). He repeats that he wishes to give the king a personal account of the task, because he would not dare to continue without royal support, and because the king should decide how he would best be served.15

The Solomonic Letters

Luna naturally argues, in his report, for the Books’ authenticity. He considers them “older than the Mohammedan sect,” because they contain nothing in any way like the Qurʾān from a theological point of view, and because both the writing and the vocabulary reflect a language older than the Qurʾān’s. The characters themselves are of the “Solomonic” type, which Luna recognizes from having seen them in other ancient tomes well known to the Arabs, such as the Clavícula de Salomón (Key of Solomon),16 the “seals of natural magic art” of Solomon himself, and other texts that he has handled in El Escorial library. Learned Arabs call such characters “zirri al harfi” (sirru l-ḥarfi), that is, “secret letters.”17 On being asked who those “learned Arabs” were, Luna replied that they were “Tantam [sic, for Tamām?] and El Boni and Melich, Benisac and El Xamri regarding the Clavícula de Salomón, and one of them is in El Escorial

14 Biblioteca Francisco de Zabálburu, Altamira, D. 125, letter from Miguel de Luna to the king, March 15, 1596; and D. 133, 134, 135. Luna continued to write letters asking to be made an inspector at the Alhambra and to be sent books from El Escorial. 15 Biblioteca Francisco de Zabálburu, Altamira, D. 107, October 12, 1595: “And I thank God that they should have been found in the most happy days of Your Majesty’s reign, and that I should have been granted the capability to translate them, because having understood them is a miraculous event, as was the fact of their discovery” (“Y alabo a Dios de que se descubriessen en los felicíssimos días de Vuestra Magestad y a mí me diesse talento para la traducción dellos porque el averlos entendido a sido caso milagroso como lo es el de su invención”). 16 One of the best-known and most legendary treatises on magic, much consulted in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See (as part of a large bibliography) J. Caro Baroja, Vidas mágicas e Inquisición, vol. I (Barcelona, 1991), esp. Chapter VII, “El libro mágico (la ‘Clavícula de Salomón’).” 17 See P. Roisse, “La Historia del Sello de Salomón en los Libros plúmbeos,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 141–171. miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 177 in San Lorenzo el Real.” These names bear witness to Miguel de Luna’s Islamic learning: among them it is easy to identify Mālik (founder of one of Islam’s chief legal schools) and Ibn Isḥāq (author of one of the best- known and most influential biographies of the Prophet), both of them of great importance in the history of Islam and of Arab culture. It is equally easy to identify al-Būnī, the renowned author of works on magic, divination, and the magical character of letters of the alphabet.18 We know that copies of his works existed in Spain at this time: curiously, Diego de Urrea wrote a brief report on a manuscript by al-Būnī in 1603, scornfully calling it a work of necromancy and witchcraft.19 The issue of Luna’s level

18 One may compare Miguel de Luna’s reference to al-Būnī here with a marginal note that appears in another translation of the Lead Books, the Spanish version of the Libro de las excelencias de Jacob: “this whole page and the next one, from the letter bā’ to the beginning of the second page, deals with the nature of God. It is very difficult, it cannot be translated without a book called el Boni, who wrote about divinis nominibus. It is in El Escorial” (“esta hoja toda i la que sigue, que es la bāʾ hasta el principio de la 2a plana, trata del ser de Dios. Es mui dificultoso no se podrá traducir sin un libro que se llama el Boni, que escribió de divinis nominibus. Está en El Escorial”): Papeles del señor Conde de Miranda, BNE ms. 6637, fol. 18v. 19 Documentos del Conde Gondomar, Biblioteca Real de Palacio, ms. II/2154, doc. 27: “I, Diego de Urrea, servant of our lord King and interpreter of papers in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, attest and certify that by order of His Majesty I have seen the book titled Luz resplandeciente, composed by Ahmed from the city of Bône, in Africa. It deals in a very learned manner with all that concerns the magic arts, witchcraft, and other superstitions; and the book is such that I believe it is of no use for anything except feeding the chimney, because it speaks only of spells, magic arts, and superstitions, which they pronounce with words from the Koran. And in order to tell what it contains and fulfill His Majesty’s orders, I have set down some of its topics . . . [a long list of the book’s subjects follows] First, to call on evil spirits and make them present and visible in order to command them and deal with them;/To have familiars./To draw women’s attention toward oneself./To make a person ill and thereby cause his death [. . .] These, and other similar matters, are what this book contains, and I have signed it truthfully with my name. In Valladolid on the 17th of June, 1603. Diego de Urrea” (“Certifico, y hago fee yo Diego de Urrea Criado del Rey N.S. é intérprete de los papeles Arábigos, Turquescos, y Persianos, que por mandado de su Md. he visto el libro intitulado, Luz resplandeciente, compuesto por Ahmed natural de la Ciudad de Bona en Africa. Trata muy doctamente todo lo que es arte mágica, hechicerías, y otras supersticiones; y el dicho libro es tal, que no hallo pueda aprovechar para ninguna cosa, si no es para una chimenea, pues todo lo que trata son hechicerías, arte mágica, y supersticiones, que hazen con palabras del Alchorán: y para que se sepa lo que contiene y cumplir con lo que Su Magestad me manda, he puesto parte de las cosas que trata, que son las siguientes [. . .] Primeramente para llamar los spíritus immundos, y tenerlos pressentes visiblemente para mandarlos, y tratar con ellos; / Para tener familiares./ Para atraer a sí la voluntad de las mugeres./ Para enfermar a alguna persona, y que muera de la tal enfermedad [. . .] Esto y otras cosas semejantes à éstas es lo que contiene este libro, y por la verdad lo firme de mi nombre. En Valladolid à diez y siete días del mes de Julio de mill y seiscientos y tres años. Diego de Urrea”): see F. Rodríguez Mediano and M. García- Arenal, “De Diego de Urrea a Marcos Dobelio, intérpretes y traductores de los ‘Plomos’,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal, Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 297–333. 178 chapter eight of Arabic-Morisco culture is of course crucial, as is that of Castillo, whom their contemporaries considered to be the “more learned” of the two.20 Luna also argues in his report about the physical composition of the Lead Books: sheets “covered with a sulphurous lead grime,” with letters engraved in a certain way, all of it impossible to imitate “in our day” without special materials and tools that would be impossible to secrete in the caves, since these had been “sealed and smoothed over” a long time ago. On the archbishop’s asking if it were possible for someone acquainted with the Key of Solomon to have imitated its script, six-pointed stars, and so on, Luna replied: No one could have composed or fabricated them, for the undersigned does not know, nor has he heard of, anyone in all of Spain living now or in the past hundred years who could have falsified them or made them up. Their composition requires a man of parts: he must be very learned in theology and philosophy, and in Arabic grammar and the ancient Arabic language; and he must be a scribe who writes a good hand, for the writing is very accomplished, as I have said. A Moor in other [i.e., our] times would not do it either, because the text is all theology and the Moor knows nothing, and he would mix in something about Mohammed just to deceive the reader.21 Miguel de Luna is being less than truthful in the first part of this argument, because there were contemporary Morisco texts of magic and divination that used the same letters as the Lead Books, as well as the six-pointed stars and the crosses “with spectacles” or with dots inside each arm. This evidence can be found upon a first glance into the Libro de dichos maravillosos (Book of Magical Sayings), the Miscelánea de Salomón (Solomonic Miscellany) discovered in Ocaña, or the amulets and talismans that figure in Inquisition trials.22 Luna’s report and his replies to the interrogation form a very interesting text; it was written before the polemic about the

20 Biblioteca Francisco de Zabálburu, Altamira, D. 161, 114, letter by Pedro de Castro, November 18, 1595. 21 “No puede averlos compuesto ni fingido nadie porque éste que declara no conoce en toda España ni a oýdo decir, que haya hombre ni lo aya avido de cien años acá que los pudiese componer ni fingir porque para componerlos quiere muchas partes en un hombre: quiere que sea muy docto en Teología y Philosophía y en la gramática y lengua arábiga y en antigüedades y lengua arábiga; y en la letra avía de ser buen escribano porque es la letra muy acavada como tiene dicho y que tampoco lo haría moro en tiempos otros porque todo lo que tienen es teología y el moro no sabe nada y mezclaría en ello algo de Mahoma para engañar.” 22 See A. Labarta, Libro de dichos maravillosos, op. cit., and J. Albarracín and J. Martínez Ruiz, Medicina, farmacopea y magia en el “Misceláneo de Salomón” (Texto árabe, traduc- ción, glosas aljamiadas, estudio y glosario) (Granada, 1987). miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 179 falsified Lead Books became heated, at which point new arguments had to be constructed to counter the critics. What we wish to focus on now is Luna’s insistence that this type of script has no diacritical marks, and must therefore predate the Qur’ān, because Arabic developed those signs precisely in order to extablish the correct reading of the Muslim holy book. Thus the lack of vowels and dots would be one more piece of evidence to prove that a text was earlier than Muhammad’s preaching. This was the first argument for legitimizing the Arabic language: that it existed before the Prophet’s time, and that it was used continuously by Christians, before, during, and after his time. It is fascinating to see the determined attempt to move the Lead Books back in time so as to connect them to Solomon. This “Solomonic” script would be debated by both the opponents and the defenders of the Books’ authenticity. For their opponents the letters, far from being sacred and ancient, were the work of necromancers and impostors; the proof was their manner of mixing “characters from Solomon and Arabic and caves,” and besides, Solomon wrote in Hebrew and would never have used Arabic letters in any case.23 For their defenders, the fact that the Solomonic letters resembled epigraphic ones was proof of their great antiquity.24 The Marquis of Estepa himself compared Solomonic characters to the inscription engraved on “a ring that was given to his [the Marquis of Mondéjar’s] family when the Alhambra was conquered, written with those letters, which are known to be very old.”25 The polemical pamphlet published at the Sacromonte against “the interpreter,” i.e., Francisco de Gurmendi, also

23 In the words of Juan Bautista Pérez, bishop of Segorbe, in Parecer sobre las planchas de plomo que se han hallado en Granada escritas con nombres de algunos santos este año de 1595, ed. G. Magnier, Appendix to P. de Valencia, Sobre el pergamino y láminas de Granada, op. cit.; quotation on 82. 24 “The Arabic language was introduced into Spain—into part of it, and the part of Africa that is closest to Spain—many hundreds of years before Mohammed was born; Punic was a form of Arabic, and the coasts of Andalusia were Punic colonies. And the writing that they call Solomonic characters is also recognized as a type of Arabic, and can be read and understood, and [it is known?] that it is very old by the medallions and ancient stones that are inscribed with it” (“La lengua Aráviga se introduxo en España en parte della y en África en la parte que corresponde a España muchos centenares de años antes que naciese Mahoma, y la Púnica era Aráviga y las costas de Andaluzía poblaciones suyas. Y la letra que llaman caracteres de Salomón es también especie de Aráviga y se ha conocido y que se dexa leer y entender y está entendida y consta [?] son antiquísimas por medallas y piedras antiguas que se hallan en ella”): marginal note to the “Discurso de Gonzalo de Valcáçar,” Discursos, relaciones y cartas tocantes a las çenizas, láminas y libros hallados en el Monte Sancto de Granada, sacados de sus originales, BNE ms. 7187, fol. 10v. 25 Marqués de Estepa, Información, op. cit., fol. 95r. 180 chapter eight insisted on the ancient nature of the language and the letters, on Miguel de Luna’s authority: “For the distance between these Books and modern Arabic ones is like that between heaven and earth; there is no comparison; they have no vowels, and in some places the dots that distinguish the letters are absent. This writing has not been used by anyone for many years.”26 Pedro de Castro was certainly completely convinced by Luna’s arguments. He accepted them in a letter of 1608 in which he further used the Books’ text to claim that Solomon had been saved because he ordered the removal of idols, an issue that had been in dispute.27 Thus the Books could be applied in various ways and could enter into different polemics. In a collection of scholarly letters and reports by the Marquis of Mondéjar,28 there is a detailed discussion of the origins and features of Solomonic writing. He cites opinions by some of the most distinguished European Orientalists of the day: Joseph Scaliger, Brian Walton, Athana- sius Kircher, and the Maronite Abraham Ecchellensis, a professor of Ara- bic at La Sapienza in Rome and a figure of great weight in the recently created Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide). In this learned correspondence, two hypotheses are proposed in regard to this script. In the first, Solomon offered it as a special gift to Hiram, king of Tyre, and therefore king of the famous Phoenicians who built the tower of Babel and reached the Iberian Peninsula with the descendants of Noah, as the first colonizers of Andalusia.29 Several passages of the Bible refer to the relations between Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, as well as to the ships of Tarsis. According to the version of the Fleming Johannes Goro-

26 “Y que ay diferencia entre los libros, y los Árabes modernos, como del cielo a la tierra: y que no ay comparación; y que no tienen vocales: y en algunas partes les faltan puntos sustanciales de las letras. Que la letra no es usada por nadie muchos años a”: Papeles varios del Sacro Monte, BNE ms. 6437, fol. 26v. 27 “The questions that everyone raises about Solomon’s salvation depend on whether he removed the idols or not; if not, he could not have repented. This doubt is resolved through the exact Arabic words about the matter that he [Luna] sent. He did not send the title of the book in which they occur, for it is not necessary; sufficient to say that it appears in the holy books from the Sacromonte in Granada” (Las dificultades que todos ponen en la salvación de Salomón es si quitó los ídolos o no y que así no hizo penitencia, esta duda se determina por las palabras expressas en esto que ymbió en arabigo, no ymbió el título del libro en que esto está porque no es necessario, vasta dezir que está assí en los libros Sanctos del Sacromonte de Granada”): letter of Don Pedro de Castro, “Si Salomón se salvó” (If Solomon was saved), April 19, 1608. RAH 9-18-5 9/3742, fol. 24. 28 Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fols. 110r ff. 29 J. Alvar, “El descubrimiento de la presencia fenicia en Andalucía,” in La Antigüedad como argumento. Historiografía de arqueología e historia antigua en Andalucía (Seville, 1993), 153–170. miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 181 pius Becanus (1580), these ships arrived in the West; this edition was very popular among historians of Andalusia.30 A second story, defended by Ecchellensis, was that the script was created by Solomon himself and then offered to the Queen of Sheba. The notable feature of this version is that Ecchellensis was promoting the translation of works of Arabic science at the time,31 and was determined to “cleanse” this science of its Islamic connections by tracing its origin back to the Queen of Sheba and Solomon.32 The famous Jesuit Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, author of several chronicles of the origins of the city of Toledo, its saints, and its Mozara- bic lineages, also entered the polemic about the Solomonic language and script of the Lead Books. In a report, he showed his preference for the Phoenician variant: “The Phoenicians were of the same branch as the Arabs, and in their language and dress [emphasis ours] they were all one people and one family.”33 This claim served to answer another of the chief objections made by the Books’ attackers, namely that Arabic was not spoken in the Peninsula before the Muslim invasion. The contemporary chronicler Luis de la Cueva maintained that Gran- ada, and the Torre Turpiana in particular, were built by Arab Phoenicians; as an aside he defended the antiquity and Christianity of the Moriscos, descendants of those first Arabic-speaking Christians. He too linked the Phoenicians with Solomon: their king had sent him wood and carpenters to build his famous ships, as well as Phoenician pilots to man them.34 Ignacio de las Casas, although he railed against the veracity of the Lead Books,35 in his treatise in defense of the Arabic language also claimed that it was brought to Spain by the Phoenicians, who were Arabic-speaking. Thus he employed the same arguments as Luna and all the others who divorced

30 Ibid., p. 55. 31 The first of them was his al-Suyūṭī, De proprietatibus, ac virtutibus medicis, animalium, plantarum, ac gemmarum, tractatus triplex, auctore Habderrahmano Asiutensis Aegyptio (Paris, 1647): V. G. Bobillot, “Abraham Ecchellensis, philosophe et historien des sciences,” in B. Heyberger (ed.), Orientalisme, sciences et controverse: Abraham Echellensis (1605–1664) (Paris, 2009). 32 P. Rietbergen, “A Maronite Mediator Between Seventeenth-Century Mediterra- nean Cultures: Ibrahim al Hakilani, or Abraham Ecchellense (1605–1664),” Lias, 16 (1989), 13–42. 33 AASG, leg. 2, fol. 47. 34 L. de la Cueva, Diálogos de las cosas notables de Granada, op. cit., fol. G. 35 See R. Benítez, “De Pablo a Saulo, crítica y denuncia de los Libros Plúmbeos por el P. Ignacio de las Casas,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal, Los Plomos del Sacromonte, invención y tesoro, op. cit., 217–251. See also the letters and reports that De las Casas sent to the Vatican in the early years of the seventeenth century: ACDF, St. St. R6–a, fols. 238 ff. and 383 ff. 182 chapter eight the presence of Arabic in the Peninsula from the Muslim invasion. He quotes Philip II’s chroniclers, the royal librarian Esteban de Garibay (1533– 1599) and Juan de Mariana (1537–1624), to certify that Arabic was used at the Council of Seville in 619, and that the Bible was translated into that language in the same city so that Christians could read it in their mother tongue.36 De las Casas drew on these two supreme historiographi- cal authorities of his day, citing them on the same level as Abentarique, the supposed author of Miguel de Luna’s Historia verdadera; the latter was his source for proving that Arabic “from that day to this has not ceased to be used in these lands.”37 Thus are the Mozarabs transformed into an inescapable source of legitimacy: they were Arabic-speaking Christians who connected the Christi- anity of the age before the Muslim conquest to the present time, in an unbroken line. It is true that Mariana, in his influential and pioneering Historia General de España (VII, 3), spoke of John, the Sevillian prelate who translated the Bible into Arabic to help both Christians and Moors, because Arabic was the dominant language at a time when Latin was scarcely known or used. Mariana added that there were several of these translations still extant in different parts of Spain. These views justified and defended the use of Arabic—as opposed to Latin, traditionally the Church’s sacramental language—by Andalusi Christians as the vehicle for Revelation and Scripture.

36 Y. El Alaoui, Jésuites, Morisques et Indiens, op. cit., 594–595. 37 “In the church of San Marcos, which belonged to the Mozarabs, in the city of Toledo, a holy prelate of that imperial city is buried in the wall. And on his Latin tombstone [. . .] are placed four verses in Arabic language and script as an ornamental border to the Latin stone. I learned from them that this sainted archbishop was Oriental and a patriarch, and he must have shepherded in that city both the Mozarabs of his own people and the other Christians; and they did not couch the stone or adornment of that holy prelate in Latin . . . , the language of his great enemies. From all of which we deduce clearly how much this [Arabic] language has been used in Spain, not only by Mohammedans but by the most respected Christians, before and after the loss of these kingdoms” (“En la iglesia de sant Marcos de la ciudad de Toledo que es una de las de los muçárabes, está sepultado en la pared un sancto perlado de aquella imperial ciudad y en su lauda o piedra [. . .] en latín tiene alrededor por orlo y adorno desta mesma piedra latina quatro versos en letra y lengua arábiga de los quales collegí que este sancto arçobispo era oriental y patriarcha y devía de presidir en aquella ciudad assí a los moçárabes de su nación como a los demás christianos, ni la pusieran en lauda de sancto perlado ni por orlo . . . del latín, siendo lengua de sus insignes enemigos. De todo lo qual se collige claro quan usada ha sido esta lengua en España no solamente de los mahometanos sino de los muy preciados christianos antes y después de la pérdida destos reinos”): Ibid. miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 183

Friendship with Joan de Faría

We have already spoken of Joan de Faría, an attorney and court reporter at the Royal Chancellery of Granada, who wrote several sonnets for Las lágri- mas de Angélica of Barahona de Soto, a member of the Granada Venegas’s literary circle. Faría also composed two introductory sonnets for Miguel de Luna’s Historia verdadera del rey Don Rodrigo. His relationship to Luna becomes more explicit in his work preserved in manuscript in El Esco- rial, Dialogismo y lacónico discurso: en defensa de las reliquias de San Ceci- lio que se hallaron en la Iglesia mayor de la ciudad de Granada (Dialogue and Brief Discourse in Defense of the Relics of St. Caecilius Found in the Principal Church of the City of Granada);38 it is couched in the form of a dialogue between Faría himself and his great friend Miguel de Luna. This small but fascinating manuscript was composed at an unknown date after the Torre Turpiana Parchment was found, and defends the authenticity of the relics against the many attacks that they had suffered.39 Faría and Luna are represented in the Dialogismo as intimate friends. The text has a three-part structure: it reviews the discoveries of the Parch- ment and relics at the Torre Turpiana, relates the circumstances of their early translation, and deals with the arguments that had begun to be made against their genuineness.40 Thus Luna (whose “great Christianity” his friend Faría praises) sets out to defend his work in translating the Parch- ment; he describes the text that it contains, including the words included in the “chessboard,” whose boxes could be read in a total of 14,400 different ways in all directions. He also recalls the history of St. Caecilius as it was recorded in the Parchment, including his blindness and its cure thanks to “the Virgin’s handkerchief,” and the successive translations of St. John’s prophecy, first from Hebrew to Greek by Dionysius the Areopagite and then into Spanish and Arabic by Caecilius himself. The bulk of the work, however, is dedicated to expounding and refut- ing the serious objections that had begun to be made to the Parchment’s authenticity. Some of these were important, because they dealt with issues in which the Granadan forgeries touched on crucial aspects of Granada’s

38 J. Lara Garrido, Las lágrimas de Angélica, op. cit., 91; and J. Zarco Cuevas, Catálogo de los manuscritos castellanos, op. cit., I, 128. 39 On these polemics see, for example, R. Benítez, “El discurso del licenciado Gonzalo de Valcárcel,” op. cit. 40 For some of the first translations of the Torre Turpiana Parchment, and particularly Aḥmad al-Ḥajarī’s role in them, see I. Boyano, “Al-Hayari y su traducción del pergamino de la Torre Turpiana,” op. cit. 184 chapter eight and Spain’s past. For instance, the Parchment claimed that Caecilius had hidden the relics to protect them from the “Moors.” But if Caecilius, “the bishop of Granada,” had been a disciple of St. James, how could he have hidden the relics from the Moors, who arrived in Spain six centuries later? Some people countered this objection by affirming that there had really been two men in Granada named Caecilius; but for Faría and Luna there had unquestionably been only one, the martyr, follower of St. James, first bishop of Granada, and signer of the Parchment. They explained away the chronological difficulty with the fact that some “Moors” (i.e., men from Mauritania) had entered Spain in the year 163; their authority was a citation from Ambrosio de Morales.41 This date made it possible for Caecilius, if he had lived as long as other patriarchs, to have been present when those first Moors came to Spain. The question of whether Moors were present in Spain before the Muslim conquest of the eighth century was a crucial one, because the answer could explain not only the chronological, but also the linguistic inconsistencies of the Parchment. If the supposed prophecy of St. John in the Parchment was composed in Spanish and Arabic, did that mean that both those languages had been spoken in Iberia in Nero’s time? This much-debated issue entered fully into the question of whether Spanish descended from Latin or, on the contrary, was one of the languages of Babel—as some maintained when they sought to defend the providential nature of Spain’s empire.42 The Parchment’s Arabic passages served to prove the presence of that language in Spain before the conquest, and therefore severed the link between language and religion. It is not surprising that Luna and Joan de Faría insist on this point in the Dialogismo: And because St. Caecilius said that he had translated the prophecy into Ara- bic so that the Christian Arabs of Spain and Western parts could understand it, it follows that this was not at the second time that Spain fell, but at the first. This is confirmed by St. Caecilius’s saying that there were more Arab Christian in Spain than native Spaniards; it is important to note that he would have written it for the larger number, who were of his own faith; and

41 A. de Morales, La Corónica General de España, op. cit., I, fols. 303v-304r: the passage speaks of an entry of Mauritanians into the Iberian Peninsula in the days of Marcus Aure- lius. In addition, Ambrosio de Morales had already recorded the stories about the seven Apostolic Men of Andalusia, among them Caecilius and Ctesiphon (La Corónica General de España, op. cit., I, fol. 261v). 42 See K. Woolard, “Bernardo de Aldrete, humanista y laminario,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 271–295, and accompanying bibliography. miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 185

at that time and long before it, all the Goths and the other natives of Spain were already Christians.43 Therefore the concept of arábigo refers in essence to one who speaks Ara- bic, and is a member of a group that entered Spain before the eighth century: “and in these many arrivals of outsiders to Spain, it is more likely that there were Christian Arabs rather than Spaniards, so we should not accuse St. Caecilius of using bad Latin.”44 Clearly the notion of “Arab Christians” was especially important to Miguel de Luna. The text of this work recalls a number of other polemical topics related to the Parchment. For example, there was the fact that Caecilius signs the Parchment “Cecilio, obispo granatense” (Bishop of Granada), when at the time of the Parchment’s supposed creation the city was called Illiberis. In reponse to this objection, Faría asserts that Illiberis and Granada were actually two different cities; but this question raised a further and more important one about the city’s age and origins. According to Luna, Gran- ada “is a very ancient settlement, as I have concluded from three walls that can be seen in it today: one from the time of the Jews, one from the Romans, and another from the Moors, each one showing by its construction what it is. And I have seen stones with inscriptions that attest to its antiquity, and have learned from dedicated scholars of ancient matters that its name comes from Hebrew and means the fertility and felicity of the earth”45—that is to say that Granada had been founded by Jews, as Faría also insisted. We shall return in the next chapter to the supposed Jewish origins of the city. The exchange between Joan de Faría and Miguel de Luna in the Dialo- gismo shows two things. First, it reveals the possible links between Luna

43 “I diziendo S. Cecilio que traduxo en arávigo la declaración de la prophecía para que la entendiessen los arávigos christianos de España y partes occidentales, bien se sigue que no era el tiempo de la segunda pérdida de España, sino en la primera, lo qual se confirma porque con aquello dio a entender S. Cecilio que avía más christianos arávigos en España que naturales españoles; pues lo que era más importante, lo escriviría para los que eran más de su fee; i en este tiempo i de mucho atrás, ia todos los Godos i los más naturales de España eran christianos.” 44 “I en estas tantas entradas de gentes estrangeras en España, es más verosímil que uviesse más arávigos cristianos que no españoles, para que no accusemos de mal latín a S. Cecilio.” 45 “Es población mui antigua, según io e considerado en tres murallas que oi se ven en ella, una de tiempo de Judíos i otra de Romanos i otra de Moros, que muestra el edificio de cada una lo que es; i algunas piedras e visto escritas que denotan su antigüedad, i de algunos curiosos investigadores de antiguallas e entendido que su nombre es derivado de hebreo, que significa fertilidad i felicidad de la tierra.” 186 chapter eight and some of the Granadan nobility of Nasrid origin, particularly the Gran- ada Venegas family; therefore it places Luna’s activities within a certain intellectual and sociological context, that of a group that sought total identification with the Old Christian society of the time and claimed an Arabic culture that was divorced from Islam as a religion. Second, the Dialogismo illustrates how the arguments and counter-arguments about the veracity of the Sacromonte texts succeeded each other; thus it sheds light on the cultural medium in which this group carried out its discourses of legitimacy, which rested on fundamental issues of Spain’s language, ancient history, connections to Church history, and so on. The official model—an aggressive insistence on genealogical purity and religious homogeneity— clashes here with evidence of a history and a society that retained traces of minority populations of different origins. It is in this light that we should understand the great success of another of Luna’s fabrications, his Historia verdadera del rey Don Rodrigo. The sources that we have explored in this chapter offer a coherent portrait of Luna and his activities. He probably was, in fact, involved in the forgeries of the Torre Turpiana and perhaps also those of the Sacromonte. His contribution in every case was to show the early presence of Moors (arábigos) who were good Christians; that is how he aspired to influence the authorities of the society in which he lived. Like so many other Span- iards of his time, Luna was seeking a way into a society that, dominated by the purity-of-blood statutes, had closed off access to honor and fame for many of its members. Luna, like his contemporaries, was trying to design an alternative history of his world, a history whose sacred roots rested in Christianity; this alternate world would give entry to those marginalized groups, Christians of Muslim or Jewish origin. In the next chapter we will see these views confirmed by his relationship with Jerónimo Román de la Higuera. It is equally clear that he was advocating a cultural heritage that was expressed in the Arabic language but unrelated to Islam. Everything in this chapter so far points to Miguel de Luna as a more- than-probable author of the Granadan forgeries. P. S. van Koningsveld and G. Wiegers, in a recent study, have made a detailed analysis of Alonso del Castillo’s and Miguel de Luna’s respective translations of the Parch- ment, comparing them to their own. They conclude that Luna fabricated both the Parchment and the Lead Books: he not only was able to decipher Arabic texts written in an almost illegible script, but also (unlike Castillo) knew the codes needed to interpret the commentary on the prophecy of St. John. They demonstrate that the Parchment’s pseudo-archaic script is confirmed and made comprehensible by the language of the Lead Books, miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 187 which began to appear after Luna and Castillo made their first translations (1588). The fact that Luna understood the Parchment while Castillo did not shows that Luna knew about the Books already; only he could understand a code that he himself had designed.46 Luna had made a revealing remark about the Sacromonte documents in a letter that we quoted above: “if I do not have [my service in the Sacromonte affair] recognized now it will be null and void, for no one else can understand [those texts].” The conviction that Luna was a principal author of the Parchment and the Lead Books also comes to us from another form of documentation.

Miguel de Luna and the Moriscos of Toledo: “There is No Better Moor in Spain”

Miguel de Luna turns up unexpectedly in the Inquisition trial of a Morisco shopkeeper and merchant from Toledo named Jerónimo de Rojas, who was tried by the Holy Office in his city between 1601 and 1603 and condemned to the stake.47 Among the testimonies that brought Rojas before the Inquisition there is one by an anonymous Morisco witness who declared that Rojas wanted to learn to write Arabic well, and had therefore sought out Francisco Enríquez, a Morisco from Granada, who knew the language “although he was not a great scholar of his sect.” Rojas used to join other cultured Moriscos of Toledo in the Alcaná, the city’s silk market, at the home of another merchant, also a Granadan Morisco, whose name is not recorded but who was a relative of Miguel de Luna. We offer here a transcription of the witness’s testimony, which deserves to be read in detail because it is the only document that shows Luna to us in a different light. Rojas had told the witness that this merchant who has a shop in the silk market is a very fine Moor; and he is extremely intimate with, and a very close relative of, the Licenci- ate Luna, the interpreter who lives in Granada. And during two periods that the said Luna spent in this city since Christmas and the following Easter, he stayed in the house of his relative the merchant, and there some good Moors

46 P. S. van Koningsveld, “Le parchemin et les livres de Plomb de Grenade: écriture, langue et origine d’une falsification,” in María Julieta Vega el al. (coords.), Nuevas apor taciones al conocimiento y estudio del Sacro Monte. IV Centenario Fundacional (1610–2010) (Granada, 2011), 171–196. See also in the same volume Gerard A. Wiegers, “El contenido de los textos árabes de los Plomos: el Libro de los misterios enormes (Kitāb al-asrār al-ʿaẓīma) como polémica anticristiana y antijudía,” 199–214. 47 AHN, Inquisición, Toledo, leg. 197–5. 188 chapter eight

came to see him and received him handsomely. And Luna told them how, on the lead sheets that have been found in the Sacromonte in Granada, it is written in the hand of Jesus Christ himself that he was neither God nor the son of God, and that God had no son. And let no one be fooled: on the Day of Judgment, the poor deceived Christians, finding themselves damned, will go to Jesus and say, ‘Why did you deceive us?’. And Jesus will defend himself by saying that nowhere is it written that he is the son of God, but that they themselves, with their Latin and in their Church councils, have said so. And he will say to the Nabi (who is Mohammed), ‘Nabi, go back and tell these people in my name what you learned when you were in the world about the people of truth,’ and the Nabi will proclaim that Jesus never said that he was God, but rather a prophet.48 This trial shows us a Luna who meets in secret with the most fervent Moriscos of Toledo, gives them lessons, and deploys the Lead Books to prove that Jesus had no divine nature and that it was the Christians, through their councils, who had twisted the message of Revelation— what Muslims would call taḥrīf. This argument of Luna’s underscores what we wrote in the previous chapter about the Moriscos’s reception of the Lead Books: they took them as an Islamic text that revealed the errors into which Christianity had fallen, and provided a cleansed version of that faith that was in accord with Islam. This reading of the Books is very different from the one that Luna had defended in the apologies that he sent to the Christian authorities. There Luna did not consider those “poor deceived Christians” to be “our people”—far from it. His reading also recalls the arguments of the Evangelio de Bernabé (Gospel of Barna- bas) that we spoke of at the end of the last chapter. This new aspect of Luna’s personality forces us to read the text of the Lead Books as a form of religious polemic. But let us recall how Luna strove to assert the right of some Morisco families to privileges and honors, and their right to remain

48 “Que este mercader que tiene tienda en el Alcaná es muy lindo moro y de muy gran confianza y secreto y pariente muy cercano del licenciado Luna intérprete que está en Granada y que en dos jornadas que el dicho licenciado Luna ha hecho en esta ciudad dende Navidad y próxima Pascua pasada acá, ha posado en casa del dicho mercader su pariente a donde se han juntado algunos buenos moros a verle y le han regalado mucho. Y el dicho licenciado Luna les declaró cómo en las hojas de plomo que se han hallado en el Monte Santo de Granada está escripto de mano de Jesucristo cómo el mismo dixo que ni era Dios ni hijo de Dios ni Dios tenía hijo, que no se engañasse nadie, y que en el día del juicio los miserables christianos engañados, quando se vean condenar, yrán a Jesuchristo a decir ‘¿por qué nos engañaste?’, y éste se descartará diciendo en ninguna parte está escripto que él dixesse que era hijo de Dios sino que ellos con su latín y en sus concilios lo han venido a decir y le dirá al nabi (ques Mahoma), ‘nabi, volved por mí y decidles a éstos lo que supiste en el mundo de la gente de la verdad,’ y el nabi dirá cómo Jesuchristo nunca dijo que era Dios sino profeta.” miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 189 as virtuous subjects in their native land. In trying to create a different view of Spanish history, one that would make all those ideals possible, was he not also trying to create a version of Christianity that Muslims who stayed in the Peninsula could accept? If that were the case, Luna’s aspirations would be even more ambitious. But let us continue with the trial: The said Rojas had told the accusing witness that while Luna was in Madrid during the recent Lenten season, he had learned from the President [of the Council] of Castile that a copy of a report on a lawsuit had arrived from Ceuta. A frigate full of Moriscos who were fleeing from Seville to North Africa had been captured, and the adult Moriscos had been taken to the Inquisition in Lisbon and imprisoned there, while the young children had been distributed as slaves to the squires and soldiers who had captured the fugitive ship.49 In this way Luna had learned of a young slave girl, fourteen years old, who had been given to a soldier. Luna asked the President to make the soldier sell him the girl for the amount she had cost him, because all of Luna’s own domestic servants had died of the plague in Granada. The President agreed, but the girl was in Cádiz serving in the house of the soldier’s mother. Luna was about to travel from Madrid to Sanlúcar to meet the Duke of Medinasidonia and discuss the translation of some North African documents, so he decided that it would be easy to go to fetch the slave girl from there. While still in Toledo, he had asked Rojas and the other merchants for money to help pay her ransom, so they pooled their resources and gave him eighty gold escudos, because they all wanted to take part in an action that was so pleasing to God. “And since that time Rojas says that they have received letters from the Licenciate Luna in Granada telling them that he has the slave girl in his house,” a motive of rejoicing for the Moriscos of Toledo. Luna, therefore, was participating in one of the most emblematic activities of the Moriscos’ networks of solidarity: ransoming captives, and soliciting the funds needed to accomplish it. These local collections were put to several different ends: we have already seen a Chapiz from Granada

49 “El dicho Rojas le había contado al testigo de la acusación que estando el dicho Luna esta Quaresma próxima pasada en Madrid hablando con el Presidente de Castilla tuvo noticia de un traslado de Ceuta conteniendo los informes sobre un pleito de una fragata de moriscos huidos que se pasaba de Sevilla a Berbería cuando fue apresada, y los mayores de los moriscos habían sido trasladados a la Inquisición de Lisboa donde estaban presos, y los hijos pequeños se repartieron como esclavos entre los escuderos y soldados que habían capturado a la fragata en su fuga.” 190 chapter eight gathering money to prevent or delay the installation of the Inquisition in that city, and another Chapiz soliciting to help penniless Moriscos escape from Spain. These same collections, as we learn from the Rojas trial, also served to help Moriscos who emerged from the Holy Office stripped of their employment and with their goods confiscated. An example was the licenciate and doctor Guevara, who had been released from the Inquisi- tion’s prison in Toledo barred from his profession and forced to wear the penitents’ habit. Rojas and other Morisco merchants from the silk market awarded him 200 ducats for his good conduct: he had not denounced anyone in spite of having been tortured, and had not even given the names of Moriscos who had already fled to North Africa (as many victims did under torture). “Because of this they gave him aid, and it is said in the city that they do the same for all those who emerge from the Inquisition without having named anyone, not even ones who are already in safety.” “This Guevara met Luna the last time that Luna came to the city and formed a deep friendship with him, and together they dealt with many matters that are important to the sect. For there is no better Moor in Spain than Luna, and although Guevara has some knowledge of the sect, it is not nearly so much.”50 It is remarkable how many Morisco doctors we have met in the chapters of this book; they were a true educated elite in the Morisco community, as well as a bridge to Christian society. Rojas told of another Morisco who had asked for books on Islam written in Spanish: “In Toledo he will find very learned men who will sell him books translated into Spanish so that he can understand everything in them perfectly. And if he is concerned about the quality of their writing, depending on how much money he has to spend, he will find wise and learned men who can correct them and explain to him everything that is written in them.”51 This trial opens a narrow crack that allows us to glimpse Miguel de Luna as one of several cultured Moriscos of his time whom we have seen in

50 “Por eso le hicieron la ayuda, que dicen en la ciudad que se la hacen a todos los que salen de la Inquisición sin haber delatado a nadie ni aunque ya estén a salvo.” “Este Gue- vara se vio con Luna la última vez que Luna vino a la ciudad y trabó con él grande amistad y trataron juntos muchas cosas muy hondas de la secta porque no hay en España mejor moro que el dicho Luna, y que aunque el dicho Guevara sabe de la secta, no sabe tanto.” 51 “Que dentro de Toledo hallará éste hombres muy sabios que le vendan libros trasladados en castellano de manera que lo entienda muy bien todo, y tratándole de si los habrá de muy buena letra dice que conforme al dinero que oviere para ellos, y que hay hombres muy doctos y sabios que los corrigen y questos le dará a éste a entender todo lo questá scripto.” miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 191 earlier chapters, like El Chapiz, López Tamarid, and Castillo himself. We can trace the public actions of these men, their ambivalent position vis- à-vis Christian authorities and their occasional dealings with them, their role as leaders of their community or at least participants in its networks, and their literary or scientific knowledge. But rarely do we have a hint of their true beliefs, their emotions, or their deep and complex notions of where they belonged; therefore we have never used the term “collaborationists” that is often applied to them. One more aspect of the Rojas trial is worthy of mention: Luna was never called to testify before the Holy Office, nor were any proceedings ever opened against him, as far as we can determine from the extant documents. Yet we know that he continued to visit Toledo: in 1607 its cathedral sought an official translation of a Mozarabic document (from Arabic), and Cristóbal de Villaroel, judge of the royal household, arranged for Luna to translate it; his version survives, dated in the summer of that year.52 Perhaps the Inquisition was held at bay by his close relationship to the Council of Castile, which he served as official translator, or by the members of the cathedral Chapter. It is impossible not to end this chapter with a quotation from Cervantes that seems to illustrate part of the story that we have just told. In Part I of The Ingenious Gentleman don Quixote of la Mancha (Chapter 9), Cervantes writes: One day when I was in the Alcaná market in Toledo, a boy came by to sell some notebooks and old papers to a silk merchant; as I am very fond of reading, even torn papers in the streets, I was moved by my natural inclinations to pick up one of the volumes the boy was selling, and I saw that it was written in characters I knew to be Arabic. And since I recognized but could not read it, I looked around to see if some Morisco who knew Castilian, and could read it for me, was in the vicinity, and it was not very difficult to find this kind of interpreter, for even if I had sought a speaker of a better and older language, I would have found him.53 The rest is familiar: this is the Arabic manuscript that contains the history of Don Quixote, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian. It is as if Cervantes had known Miguel de Luna, or had known or heard about his travels, his false Arab historians, better and older languages, Spanish-speaking Morisco interpreters, Toledo’s Alcaná—in short, about

52 A. González Palencia, Los mozárabes de Toledo en los siglos XII y XIII, vol. I (Madrid, 1926), 2–3; Luna translated the document Árabe n. 1, 250. 53 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote, trans. Edith Grossman (New York, 2003), 67. 192 chapter eight an ancient chronicle written by a supposed Arab historian, the author of which is really only its translator. Perhaps Miguel de Cervantes was giving the nod to a story that was already making the rounds, or that was better known at the time than it now seems to us, since we have needed to work so hard to reconstruct it. The passage continues: I bought all the papers and notebooks from the boy for half a real [. . .]. I immediately went with the Morisco to the cloister of the main church and asked him to render the journals, all those that dealt with Don Quixote, into the Castilian language, without taking away or adding anything to them, offering him whatever payment he might desire. He was satisfied with two arrobas of raisins and two fanegas of wheat, and he promised to translate them well and faithfully and very quickly. But to facilitate the arrangement and not allow such a wonderful find out of my hands, I brought him to my house, where, in little more than a month and a half, he translated the entire history, just as it is recounted here.54 It now appears that Cervantes was aware of Miguel de Luna’s life, of his role as a translator/author of feigned discoveries, and of his relationship with Pedro de Castro, in whose house he had worked on the translations. Further, there is evidence to suggest that Cervantes not only knew of the discoveries in Granada but had also read Luna’s Historia verdadera: this evidence consists of his use of the “hairy mole” motif. Several writers have pointed to a passage in Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter 30, in which we are told that the Knight had a mole on his right shoulder blade that marked his identity and valor. Likewise in Islamic tradition, the proof that Muhammad was the Seal of the Prophets resided in a birthmark that he bore on his right shoulder blade. According to Luna, Tariq, the conqueror of Spain, had a hairy mole the size of a chickpea on his left shoulder blade; it fulfilled the prophecy that a man of extraordinary courage and strength would subdue the Iberian Peninsula, and that he would be known by that mole. It is noteworthy that this hairy birthmark was also present in the Lead Books’ descriptions of Jesus. Cervantes must have been inspired by this claim while writing Don Quixote.55 Our next passage clearly makes reference to the Torre Turpiana Parchment:

54 Ibid., 67–68. 55 François Delpech, “Les marques de naissance: physiognomie, signature magique et charisme souverain,” in A. Redondo (dir.), Le corps dans la société espagnole des XVI et XVII siècles, Paris: Publications de La Sorbonne, 1990, 27–49, esp. 42–43. miguel de luna: translator, apologist, author 193

Nor could [the author of this history] find or learn anything about Don Quix- ote’s final end, and never would have, if good fortune had not presented him with an ancient physician who had in his possession a leaden box that he claimed to have found in the ruined foundations of an old hermitage that was being renovated; in this box he discovered some parchments on which, in Gothic script, Castilian verses celebrated many of the knight’s exploits [. . .]. These were the verses that could be read; in the others, the writing was worm-eaten, and they were given to an academician to be deciphered. Our best information is that he has done so, after many long nights of laborious study, and intends to publish them, hoping for a third sally by Don Quixote.56 This elderly doctor, who possessed a lead box that had appeared during the demolition of a church—a lead box containing a parchment written in an illegible script, whose meaning the doctor could only guess at— could he be Miguel de Luna? It does seem as if Cervantes, who had been in Granada in 1594, was making an ironic commentary on the Sacromonte forgeries and on their author, Miguel de Luna.

56 Cervantes, op. cit., 445 and 449.

Chapter nine

jerónimo román de la higuera: the false chronicles and the sacromonte lead books

On May 4, 1588, two months after the discoveries at the Torre Turpiana, Philip II wrote to the archbishop of Granada rejoicing at the appearance of such a precious treasure, and grateful that it should have taken place in his lifetime. This treasure—miraculously appeared, discovered, invented—was a sign of God’s favor to the sovereign.1 The real treasure was not so much the Parchment itself as the relics of the holy martyrs to which it bore witness; these began at once to produce miraculous events in Granada such as will-o-the-wisps, nocturnal lights, and other wonders. The discovery or “invention” of sacred corpses in unexpected places, with accompanying rumors of marvels, has a long tradition: Peter Brown has studied it magisterially for Late Antiquity, and has shown how the ownership or custody of these bodies afforded political legitimacy and also created a strong nucleus of civic solidarity.2 This is just what happened in Granada: the finds were not only a source of political legitimacy but also a sign of divine grace. The royal confessor, Diego de Yepes, affirmed as much in a letter to Archbishop Pedro de Castro: I cannot exaggerate for Your Lordship the joy that I feel at the great boon that has appeared in your city, for I see clear proofs of the good fortune that God has promised to your Church and to these kingdoms. The sign that the Children of Israel received—that the Temple destroyed by Nebuchadnez- zar would be restored, as is told in the Chapter II of Maccabees—was the appearance of the Ark of the Covenant, and fire and incense on the altar [. . .]. It is a token of God’s mercy that he should now have brought to light this treasure that was hidden for so many years; and since He concealed it to save it from desecration by Gentiles and Moors, it is obvious that it has been discovered now so that it may be worshipped for years to come by Christians.3

1 I. Gómez de Liaño, Los juegos del Sacromonte (Madrid, 1975), 220. 2 P. Brown, The Cult of Saints (Chicago, 1981), 12 and 94. 3 “No puedo encarecer a V.S. la alegría que tengo del bien tan grande que en esa ciudad ha parecido, porque veo evidentes indicios de la prosperidad que Dios promete a su Iglesia y a estos Reinos. La señal que tuvieron los hijos de Israel de la restauración del Templo que destruyó Nabucodonosor, como se cuenta en el Capítulo II de los Macabeos, 196 chapter nine

Here Yepes expresses clearly the role of Imperial Spain as a people chosen by God, and equates it with the original Chosen People, the Jews, with their Ark of the Covenant and their Temple. From this time onward it would be proposed that the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark, and the restored Temple were the three pillars on which human history in general, and Spanish history in particular, were built, thus legitimizing the Chosen People of the modern age. We saw in the previous chapter how Miguel de Luna argued that Chaldean had been the first language spoken in Spain. He had surely read Florián de Ocampo (1495–1558), whose Crónica general de España, dedicated to the Emperor Charles V,4 upheld the same idea. Ocampo drew on the Chaldean chronicler Berosus, whose writings had been invented by Annius of Viterbo; the latter linked Spain’s past with the myths about Noah’s descendants, who had scattered and repopulated the earth after the Flood. Ocampo’s chronicle was quoted and deployed by all the defenders of the genuineness of the Parchment and the Sacromonte Lead Books; it was the chief means by which Annius’s work became known in Spain. Ocampo was essential, too, for the historians of Granada who began to publish soon after the appearance of the Lead Books, especially Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza.5 Luna had also read Esteban de Garibay (1525–1590),6 another enthusiastic partisan of Berosus and Annius of Viterbo, who followed Ocampo and extended his work. For Ocampo, Garibay, and many others who were seduced by Annius, the first patriarch and king of Spain would have been Tubal, son of Japheth and grandson of Noah, who arrived in the Peninsula forty-two years after the Flood.7 Tubal’s line continued with Nimrod, who became the architect

fue la manifestación del Arca del Testamento y fuego del altar e incienso [. . .]. Sacar Dios a luz ahora este tesoro tantos años escondido, prendas son de su misericordia; y pues lo escondió porque no lo profanasen los Gentiles y Moros bien se deja entender que ahora que se descubre es para que en muchos años sea reverenciado de los Cristianos”: I. Gómez de Liaño, Los juegos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 220. 4 On Ocampo see J. Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones de la historia, op. cit., 84 ff. 5 V. K. Harris, “La historia inventada. Los Plomos de Granada en la Historia eclesiástica de Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), ¿La historia inventada?, op. cit., 189–214. 6 E. de Garibay, Los XL libros del Compendio historial de las chrónicas y universal historia de todos los reynos de España (Antwerp, 1571). 7 There is an immense bibliography on Tubal: see, for example, M. R. Lida de Mal kiel, “Túbal, primer poblador de España,” Ábaco, 3 (1970), 9–48. Ocampo and his followers also promoted Egyptian influence, citing the war that Gerion (based in Tartessos) waged against Osiris; it caused the latter to send his son, the Egyptian Hercules, to whom the founding of several Spanish cities was attributed. On Egyptian Hercules see A. Redondo, jerónimo román de la higuera 197 of the Tower of Babel, in whose construction he employed Phoenicians— those indispensable Phoenicians whom we met in the previous chapter and who proved that there was a connection among Solomon, ancient learning, and the “Solomonic” writing of the Lead Books. In Book 5 of his chronicle Garibay, in speaking of Nebuchadnezzar, affirms that Toledo, the New Jerusalem,8 had been founded by Jews; he alleges evidence based on toponymy, citing as one of his sources Arias Montano, who seems to have been his friend.9 We will return soon to this tale of Nebuchadnez- zar and the Jews, because it was a favored theme of the Jesuit Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, historian and falsifier, forger of the false chronicles of Dextrus and Maximus, and author of a monumental Historia eclesiás- tica de Toledo. The present chapter is dedicated to his connection to the Sacromonte affair and its protagonists. It goes without saying that Román de la Higuera was one of the most fervent followers and imitators of Annius of Viterbo.

Annius of Viterbo and Spain

There was much about the Italian Dominican Annius of Viterbo that would have attracted the forgers of the Lead Books. In 1480, after the Turks took Otranto, he produced an ancient prophecy based on both the Book of Revelation and readings of the stars: it predicted that Muslim domination was nearing its end and that the definitive and total triumph of Christian- ity was at hand. It was remarkably similar to the prophecy found in the Torre Turpiana Parchment. But above all, Annius created at the end of the fifteenth century a chronicle by an ancient author, a Chaldean named Berosus—a documented historical figure, although Annius invented his work. In his chronicle Berosus amplified the Biblical text about Moses and the origins of peoples, providing detailed lists of patriarchs and kings. The connections thus established between the Biblical East, Troy, and the European nations of the late

“Légendes généalogiques et parentés fictives en Espagne au Siècle d’Or,” in A. Redondo (ed.), Les parentés fictives en Espagne (XVI–XVIIème siècles) (Paris, 1988), 15–35; and J. Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones de la historia, op. cit., 87 ff. 8 P. Renoux-Caron, “Une terre Sainte espagnole? La région de Tolède dans Historia de la muerte y glorioso martirio del Santo Inocente de La Guardia (1583) de Fray Rodrigo de Yepes,” in F. Delpech (ed.), L’imaginaire du territoire en Espagne et au Portugal (XVI–XVII siècles) (Madrid, 2008), 171–191. 9 J. Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones de la historia, op. cit., p. 94. 198 chapter nine fifteenth century opened the way for the most extravagant conjectures. Every country, every city felt the need to provide itself with a national history that would match or outdo the ancient histories of Greece and Rome to which the humanists gave so much importance. Annius’s work, in fact, made it possible to integrate the Old Testament into the cultures that had predated the Greco-Roman world. Annius paid considerable attention to the Etruscans, but he also showed a special interest in the history of Spain (the homeland of his patrons, the Borgias). He dedicated a whole book, a commentary on the supposed Berosus, to the Catholic Monarchs, because they had expelled the Moors. This was reason enough for a dedicated enemy of Islam like Annius, but he further claimed that the texts that he published (and had invented) had been discovered in tombs and other hiding-places when Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada.10 In Book XII of his Commen- taria he traces their royal line back to Egyptian Hercules, son of Osiris and grandson of Noah, who had brought ancient learning to Iberia directly, without Greco-Roman intermediaries. Annius’s emphasis on Egypt as the cradle of civilization, and on the journeys and triumphs of Osiris, proved attractive and convincing to the many contemporary scholars afflicted with “Egyptomania,” the collectors of hieroglyphics and emblems whom we will discuss later on in this book. He certainly displaced Greek culture from its position at the center of human history, and joined the modern West directly to the Biblical East.11 What we have just briefly described reveals the context of both the Sac- romonte forgeries and the false chronicles, both of which existed within a movement to reinvent and rewrite history that did not affect only Spain. The Lead Books, a fraud that sought to exploit the outlines of Granada’s sacred history, cannot be fully understood if we do not place them in a framework of all the similar discoveries that were occurring at the same time: saints’ relics and ruined churches, martyrs’ bones and crumbling buildings that were found in many cities and towns and suggested a connection between Spain and a sacred past. All this occurred within a heated rivalry among kingdoms and cities that were in competition to flaunt the best Christian pedigree, against the backdrop of the belief that

10 Ibid., 57. 11 A. Grafton, “Invention of Traditions and Traditions of Invention in Renaissance Europe: The Strange Case of Annius of Viterbo,” in A. Grafton and A. Blair (eds.), The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, 1990), 16–17. jerónimo román de la higuera 199

St. James, and other Apostles, had preached in Spain.12 The case of the neighboring diocese of Guadix is worthy of mention: like Granada, it had a dense Morisco population and a long Muslim history, and in 1593 saw the appearance of relics of St. Torquatus, reinforced in subsequent years by the “recovery” of the martyrs Fandila, Apollo, Isacius, and Crotates, who were reimagined as sons of the diocese. All these discoveries were synthesized in Pedro Suárez’s Historia of 1696, which was framed by the rivalry between Toledo and Santiago de Compostela for the ecclesiastical primacy of Spain.13 The parallelism with the Sacromonte events is evident when we consider how close the discoveries were to each other in both space and time. This process of constructing a sacred past for Spain and its cities is profoundly connected to the obsessive interest in recovering lost antiquities and tracing the stages of the country’s ancient history. It was especially necessary in the case of Granada, which had been reconquered barely a century before and bore many more traces of its Muslim character than other cities did. Unlike Cordova or Toledo, it had not had a Christian population. There had been no bishops known by name who could connect the present to an earlier Christianity; unbroken generations of bishops, testifying to a city’s age and its adherence to the Faith, were an indispensable element of urban history. On the other hand, Granada could present itself as the definitive site of Christ’s triumph over Islam, as the New Jerusalem that had been rescued from the infidels. In newly Christian Granada, Charles V’s cathedral and palace formed part of an architectural program meant to enhance the imperial ideal of a Caesar, as a dynastic expression of the new Hapsburg monarchy.14 The emperor had not only made the city a bishopric but had decided to convert its new cathedral into a pantheon for the imperial family. In 1554, Charles V decreed in his will that he should be buried in Gran- ada next to the empress, who was already interred there (although he

12 St. James’s role had been studied since early times. For references to scholarship from Kendrick to O. Rey Castelao, see F. Márquez Villanueva, Santiago, trayectoria de un mito (Barcelona, 2004). 13 C. J. Garrido García, El paradigma contrarreformista de la diócesis de Guadix (siglos XVI–XVII): San Torcuato, San Fandila y los mártires de Abla y la Historia de Pedro Suárez (Guadix, 2009). 14 J. Calatrava, “La catedral de Granada: Templo y Mausoleo,” in Jesucristo y el Empera- dor cristiano: Catálogo de la Exposición (Catedral de Granada) (Cordova, 2000), 67–86. 200 chapter nine altered this clause with a codicil written at Yuste in 1558.)15 Empress Isa- bella of Portugal had been buried in Granada in 1539, and the city had honored her with a magnificent burial and a period of mourning in which all the inhabitants took part.16 Later interments there included those of Mary of Portugal (Philip II’s first wife) and the princes John and Ferdi- nand, in 1540. In 1572, however, it was decided to move these four royal corpses to the new imperial mausoleum of San Lorenzo at El Escorial.17 Therefore Granada Cathedral lost its role as the pantheon of the Haps- burg dynasty, and the departure of the bodies was felt as a harsh blow by the cathedral Chapter and the city at large. It was a further setback for a city and kingdom that had already undergone the Alpujarras War—a new victory over Islam—and the deportation of its Morisco population. The Lead Books, whose miraculous appearance occurred suspiciously soon after these events, provided “sacred bodies” that could replace those “royal bodies.” The opportune discovery of the Torre Turpiana relics gave Granada a badly needed legitimacy. The city petitioned Philip II with a Memorial written on September 22, 1640: it asked that the Lead Books, which had been taken to Madrid, not leave Spain but be returned to Granada, thus showing how badly the city needed this holy validation. The petition recalled that, when the Parch- ment and relics were found, Granada “lacked any sacred treasures and saints’ relics; and because it hoped to grow in piety and religion, it decided to ask His Holiness for one body, out of the many that he had in Rome, to enrich the city and be adopted as its patron. But God, who sees the desires of all hearts, saw fit to bring forth on the Sacromonte not a body

15 The document of April 1567 that founded and endowed the monastery of San Lorenzo el Real at El Escorial made explicit Philip II’s wish to fulfill Charles V’s codicil: now San Lorenzo would be the imperial mausoleum, associated with the siting of the new capital in Madrid, while the Royal Chapel in Granada Cathedral would continue to house the remains of his parents and grandparents, who had been merely kings and queens. A. Bustamante, La octava maravilla del mundo (estudio histórico sobre El Escorial de Felipe II) (Madrid, 1994), 11; M. D. Parra Arcas and L. Moreno Garzón, “Granada: panteón real de los Reyes Católicos y de la Casa de Austria,” in Jesucristo y el Emperador cristiano, op. cit., 395–407. 16 A. Gallego y Burín, La capilla Real de Granada (Madrid, 1952), 24 ff.; this work records all the transfers of bodies involved. It reproduces, on pp. 197–205, a brief chronicle of great interest: El triunfo que Granada hizo al recibimiento de la Emperatriz. 17 Duque de T’Serclaes, “Traslación de cuerpos reales de Granada a San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Siete cartas inéditas del Rey Felipe II,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 60 (1912), 5–24. jerónimo román de la higuera 201 but a trove of relics of the Apostle St. James’s sainted followers, the first preachers of the Gospel in Spain.”18

Jerónimo Román de la Higuera and the False Chronicles

Like Luna’s case, like the Sacromonte forgeries, the project of the Toledan Jesuit Jerónimo Román de la Higuera was a rereading of Spain’s sacred history in order to convert it into a Christian narrative. We cannot, in fact, understand his work if we do not grasp the subject that underlies and sup- ports it: the Mozarabs of Toledo (descendants of Christians who had lived under Islamic rule). These were, without any doubt, one of the reasons for his enthusiasm for the Sacromonte finds, which pointed to the existence of ancient, primordial Christian Arabs. Among Román de la Higuera’s many works was a false chronicle attributed to Dextrus and Maximus, two recognized Latin authors. He claimed to have discovered it in the monastery of Fulda, together with another by Liutprand, a Lombard who had been bishop of Cremona; he promoted all three as ancient writers who had written the history of the Church in His- pania. Higuera invented these supposed Latin chronicles to show that certain pious traditions, of the greatest importance for the religious history of Spain, were absolutely true: they made it possible to establish, through a chain of bishops unbroken in spite of the Arab conquest, the ancient and sacred origins of certain Peninsular sites. They were very similar in intent to the Sacromonte Lead Books: basing themselves on certain key events, like the arrival of St. James, they sought to adapt Spain’s ecclesiastical history to that of Toledo, in particular. A report requested by the Pope, prepared at the Vatican, and signed by Cardinal Geronimo Casanate established the link between the chronicle of Dextrus and Maximus and the Lead Books: both were written “as a consolation for the people,” and in both, “they imagined that they had found a great treasure and a proof of the story that they longed to see authenticated, to verify that the Apostle St. James had preached in Spain.”19

18 “[C]arecía de tesoros sagrados y de reliquias de santos y como quisiesse favorecer en piedad y religion, determinó pedir a Su Santidad un cuerpo de los muchos que tiene Roma para enriquecerse y tenerlo por patrón. Dios, que mira los desseos del coraçón, fue servido manifestar en el Monte Sacro no un cuerpo sino una mina de Santos discípulos del Apóstol Santiago, primeros predicadores del Evangelio en España”: AASG, leg. VI, part 2, fol. 1193. 19 “Consolatione di quella natione”; “S’imagino d’haver trovato un gran tesoro et un’evidenza di quell’historia che desiderava piu autentica per verificare la predicatione dell’Apostolo San Giacomo nella Spagna”: ACDF, St. St. I 3.i, fol. 177. 202 chapter nine

Román de la Higuera’s work produced, just as the Lead Books had done, a huge wave of religious and patriotic fervor and local pride.20 The Books had sought to prove that Arabs had lived in Granada in St. James’s time. The Jesuit “proved” that there were Jews in Toledo before the death of Christ (thus exonerating Spanish Jews of the crime of “deicide”), and presented documents that showed Spain’s Jews sending delegations to the Apostles, asking for teachers who could instruct them in the new faith. We know that Román de la Higuera was seeking to “cleanse” and ennoble the lineage of Toledan converso families of Jewish origin just at the time when the purity-of-blood statutes were coming into force in the city. In 1556 the king ratified the statutes at the request of Cardinal Juan Mar- tínez Silíceo, thereby placing the seal of authority on what was already an accepted practice: investigating the racial purity of candidates to benefices in Toledo. From that date onward, the adoption of the purity-of- blood statutes by the See of the Primate of Spain, which imposed them with exemplary rigor, marked a decisive step in prohibiting conversos from holding public office.21 It appears that Román de la Higuera himself was of converso origin. It is certainly the case that the “innocence” and ancient character of the Jews of Spain is a fundamental theme of his work, and he has Dextrus expound upon it: once St. James had come to Spain at the Jews’ request, they received instruction from him joyfully.

Saint James

If, as Nicolás Antonio claimed, the defense of “pious traditions” was governed by private interests, then in principle Higuera’s defense of Toledo as the Primate See of Spain was more in conflict than in conjunction with the project that the Lead Books of Granada represented. But in fact, the Books’ revelations bore witness to St. James’s presence in Spain; this tradition, ardently supported by Higuera, had reached a low point in its history at the time. St. James’s supposed arrival in Spain was important for the competition among various Spanish cities for the privilege of becoming the Pri- mate See, a title that was sought after by Toledo, Santiago de Compostela, Seville, Tarragona, and Braga (in Portugal); the latter city was also the site

20 J. Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones de la Historia, op. cit., 164. 21 A. Sicroff, Los estatutos de limpieza de sangre. Controversias entre los siglos XV y XVII (Madrid, 1985), 170 ff. jerónimo román de la higuera 203 of well-known falsifications. Toledo obtained Papal bulls confirming its Primacy, and also denying that St. James had gone to Spain or had inspired its soldiers at the battle of Clavijo. Important figures in Rome doubted the event: one was Cardinal Roberto Belarmino (1542–1621) and another was Cardinal Cesare Baronio, who headed a commission founded in 1592 by Pope Clement VIII to revise Pius V’s Roman Breviary. Baronio based his doubts in part on García de Loaysa’s Collectio conciliorum (1593). Rome’s official rejection of the Jacobean myth was received in Spain as an insult, and even provoked Philip III’s personal intervention in February 1600.22 The Lead Books appeared at just the right moment to provide the St. James myth with historical underpinnings that were now indispensable, in view of Rome’s attitude. They furnished the longed-for documentary proof of the Apostle’s preaching: St. James had offered, in Granada, the first Mass ever celebrated in Spain, and had done so surrounded by Arab future martyrs who, in Sacromonte iconography, would come to be represented wearing elaborate turbans.23 Not only Higuera but several other authors would hasten to take advantage of this confirmation. That first Mass of St. James’s in Granada, surrounded by his Arab disciples— according to what rite was it performed? As we shall see, this point interested Higuera intensely. Many other historians cared about the issue as well. Among them was the Constable of Castile, Don Juan Fernández de Velasco, in his Dos discursos en los que se defiende la venida y predicación del Apóstol Santiago en España (Two discourses that defend the presence and preaching of the Apostle St. James in Spain) (Valladolid, 1605). He alludes to the discoveries in Granada and “this archive from the Turpiana Tower and the caves of Sacromonte,” whose providential appearance seemed to obey a divine decree: “For God has granted this favor to these kingdoms in these very times, revealing the relics and pathways of the Sacromonte in Granada, which have already been approved by order of the Most Reverend Don Pedro Vaca de Castro, Archbishop of that city.”24 The finds are called an “archive” because they constitute irrefutable documentary proof of the kind that learned historians and critics demand. Father Juan de Mariana

22 F. Márquez Villanueva, Santiago, op. cit., 315 ff. 23 J. M. Pita Andrade, “La iconografía de Santiago en el Sacro Monte,” op. cit., 893 ff., quoted by F. Márquez Villanueva, Santiago, op. cit., 313. 24 “Pues esta merced ha hecho Dios a estos Reynos en estos mismos días descubriendo las reliquias y caminos del Monte Santo de Granada, las quales ya están aprobadas por sentencia del reuerendissimo don Pedro Vaca de Castro, Arzobispo de aquella ciudad”: Dos discursos, op. cit.; in F. Márquez Villanueva, Santiago, op. cit., 320. 204 chapter nine

(1535–1624) spoke scornfully of Fernández de Velasco’s book, calling it error-filled, but a few years later he followed its reasoning closely in his treatise De advente Jacobi Apostoli Maiori in Hispaniam, included in his Tractatus Septem (Cologne, 1608). When the Granadan forgeries appeared Mariana had avoided committing himself to a technical decision about them, but informed Archbishop Castro that he was prepared to support any course that the churchman decided to take. In a letter to the Arch- bishop—who had asked for his assessment—on June 26, 1597, Mariana did not hide his negative feelings, but hastened to add that he had been impressed by the positive arguments of certain reasonable persons, although none of them allayed his doubts altogether. Thus he managed to avoid a direct response, asserting that God would provide guidance to the Archbishop, “and I personally will take to be best and most accurate whatever Your Lordship decides in such a serious matter.” Pedro de Valencia, who maintained resolutely that the Lead Books were a fraud,25 said that this defense of St. James placed a patriotic desire to be seen as a chosen people above considered knowledge and erudition: “[Catholics of other nations] will say that we are so shamefully fond of praising and boasting about our own people that we are happy to accept any flattery, no matter how naked and foolish it may be. And we will be fortunate if those of Italy and Rome do not point out that we have invented witnesses to the arrival and preaching of St. James; and they can even say that in trying to invent them we have made ourselves ridiculous through our lack of intelligence and scholarship.”26 According to Valencia, Spaniards had been not only counterfeiters, but clumsy ones to boot. But every argument came accompanied by a cloud of documentary, epigraphic, and archeological revelations. As Grafton has said about falsifiers who were contemporaries of Román de la Higuera, they deployed the most sophisticated philological and historiographic techniques not to reconstruct a past reality, but to create it. A good example of their techniques, and Higuera’s, is the episode of the cult of St. Thyrsus (Tirso) in Toledo.

25 P. de Valencia, Sobre el pergamino y láminas de Granada, ed. G. Morocho Gayo, Pedro de Valencia, Obras Completas, vol. IV (León, 1999). See the “Estudio Introductorio.” 26 “Dirán que somos tan culpablemente aficionados a jactancia y loor de nuestra nación, que admitimos de buena gana cualquiera lisonja por descubierta y desvariada que sea, y harta onrra nos harán los de Italia y Roma si no dicen que fingimos para testigos de la venida y predicación de Sant Yago y aún pueden decir que queriéndolo fingir fuimos ridículos componedores por falta de ingenio y erudición”: P. de Valencia, Tratado acerca de los moriscos de España (Málaga, 1999), 12. jerónimo román de la higuera 205

Toledo and the Cult of San Tirso

In 1595, in the course of excavating near the main square of Toledo where the Royal Hospital was to be built, diggers uncovered the ruins of an ancient temple together with many human bones and other relics. Among them was a copper cover for a vessel, engraved with the letters “S. C.” topped with a crown. The find attracted little attention until Román de la Higuera produced a Latin letter that he claimed to have found inside a Visigothic volume in Toledo’s cathedral library. In it King Silus, writing to Archbishop Cixila, told of his difficulties in building a shrine to the martyred St. Thyrsus, because the Moors ruled Toledo at the time. The letter spoke of a chalice and of a basin whose cover showed a crown and the initials of the king and the archbishop, Silus and Cixila;27 therefore it proved that the freshly discovered ruins were those of St. Thyrsus’s church, and that the city could count a new Apostolic Man among its founders. It also testified to the heroic courage of the Mozarabs, Christian heirs to the Visigoths who had remained firm in their faith throughout the Islamic period. Toledo’s corregidor, Alonso de Cárcamo, was awestruck by this discovery and its suspicious confirming document. At Higuera’s urging he sent Philip II an account of the find—drafted by Higuera himself—and a copy of the letter. The people of Toledo, finding a new saint in their midst, proclaimed San Tirso their patron in an outburst of religious fervor. But another party formed that held the letter to be a fraud; its members published their doubts, and asked help from champions like Juan Bautista Pérez and Esteban de Garibay, the chronicler of whom we have already spoken. Higuera was evasive whenever he was asked to produce the original letter, and in defending it he sometimes wrote passages that actually seemed to confirm the fraud, like the following: “Why should San Tirso not be from Toledo; how does it harm the faith, or do violence to pious customs? And even if there should be an error in the matter it would not be a harmful error.”28 Nicolás Antonio appears to be referring to Higuera’s chapter on San Tirso when he writes that “truth should be sought and

27 See A. Godoy Alcántara, Historia crítica de los falsos cronicones (Madrid, 1868, re-ed. 1981), 39 ff.; and N. Antonio, Censura de historias fabulosas, ed. G. Mayáns y Ciscar (Valencia, 1742), 525 ff. 28 “¿Qué inconveniente se sigue que San Tirso sea de Toledo, o qué daño se sigue a la fe, ni qué perjuicio a las buenas costumbres? Y que hubiera en esto algún yerro, no era un yerro perjudicial”: in A. Godoy Alcántara, Historia crítica, op. cit., 42. 206 chapter nine defended even when it violates other laws of piety; these, which respond to a private good, should yield to the public good of seeking to banish and overcome a general deceit, and of distinguishing light from shadows and truth from falsehood.”29 Higuera defended his pious forgeries, which created or confirmed legends that were equally pious, against attacks by those who were determined to seek historical truth and construct a “critical history.” He went on to include the whole San Tirso episode in his Historia de Toledo,30 with a transcription of the letter and full details about how it was discovered, within what set of documents, and by whom; and he did so in connection with the history of Toledo’s Mozarabs, the subject of his greatest interest, about which we shall speak below. Higuera did not understand the struggle by scholarly historians and chroniclers to disprove false claims; but that did not keep him from trying to authenticate such claims by the very methods that true scholars used. His “evidence” was a series of ancient chronicles and documents, falsified by himself in support of his finds, and offered with creative zeal.

Román de la Higuera and Alonso del Castillo

Let us return to San Tirso. The round metal cover incised with mysterious letters appeared in Toledo in 1595, just when circular sheets of lead were beginning to be found in Granada’s Sacromonte; all of them lay next to saints’ bones and ashes. Likewise, in the ruins of the Torre Turpiana a few years earlier, a Parchment had been unearthed in its metal box, just as other metallic, sealed boxes containing prophecies had turned up elsewhere in caves and underground.31 As we have mentioned, the Lead Books touched on several points of doctrinal and political interest, as well as establishing a common origin for the Christians and Arabs of Spain. Higuera followed the Lead Books affair closely from its inception, and defended the Books’ authenticity with vigor. We know that he was well

29 “[Q]ue la verdad debe buscarse i defenderse aunque se salte a otras leyes de piedad, que como governadas de bien particular, han de ceder al público bien a que se atiende en querer desterrar y convencer el común engaño, i distinguir la luz de las tinieblas, lo verdadero de lo falso”: N. Antonio, Censura de historias fabulosas, op. cit., 524. 30 Historia eclesiástica de la imperial ciudad de Toledo, op. cit., III, fols. 420r ff. 31 For example, J. Román de la Higuera refers to the finding of the Torre Turpiana Parchment in one of his chronological excursuses, to show that dates had been calculated according to the Hispanic Era from very early times: see Historia eclesiástica de la imperial ciudad de Toledo, op. cit., II, BNE ms. 8193, fol. 127v. jerónimo román de la higuera 207 informed of everything that took place in Granada. In 1595, the same year that saw the San Tirso finds and those of the first Lead Books, he was in contact with Alonso del Castillo. In his Historia de Toledo (Book III, Chapter 1) he refers to his correspondence with the Morisco from Gran- ada, calling him “a learned gentleman, so discreet that he would never sign his name to anything that he had not personally seen [a reference to several Arabic manuscripts that Castillo had found in El Escorial in 1584], who spoke to me very modestly about some other materials that I discussed with him.”32 We do not know what those materials were, but suppose that they were varied in nature.33 In 1594 and 1595 Bishop Juan Bautista Pérez of Segorbe had written his two statements against, respectively, Higuera’s work and the Lead Books.34 The bishop may have been a link between Higuera and Castillo.

Román de la Higuera and Pedro de Castro

Higuera was also in constant contact with Archbishop Pedro de Castro, to whom he wrote often in support of the Lead Books, offering arguments and reasons for defending their genuineness. Castro received Higuera’s most vigorous backing for his defense of the lead sheets, including information from the Jesuit’s false chronicles. We know that in a letter dated December 7, 1595, Higuera had offered to write “an Apología and an Anti- apología in defense of the relics,” and that in a later missive of January 7, 1596, he informed the archbishop “that he had completed the two proposed treatises and responded to 55 difficult questions.”35 In the Maximus chronicle Higuera had already shown the antiquity of the Spanish language, and had then deployed the supposed chronicle of Liutprand to fix its age with more precision, noting its use during the time of Augustus. He also cited Liutprand on the presence of other languages in the Peninsula in ancient times, particularly Arabic, which needed to be there as early as

32 “Docto varón, téngalo por tan bien mirado, que no dijera, firmado de su nombre, lo que no había visto, hablándome en la misma carta, con harto recato, de otras materias que con él traté.” 33 J. Martínez de la Escalera, “Jerónimo de la Higuera, S. J.: falsos cronicones, historia de Toledo, culto de San Tirso,” in Tolède et l’expansion urbaine en Espagne (1450–1650) (Madrid, 1991), 69–97. 34 G. Mayáns y Siscar, Obras completas, vol. I (Valencia, 1983), 355. 35 P. de Valencia, Obras Completas, IV, Escritos sociales, 2, Escritos políticos (León, 2000), in the “Comentario” to a letter from Arias Montano to the archbishop of Granada, 384. 208 chapter nine

Spanish in order to certify the Lead Books as authentic.36 His chief aim was always to assert the arrival of St. James in Spain, “which foreigners always denigrate.”37 Higuera found in the Lead Books many echoes of his own favorite themes: martyrs and Apostolic Men, but also the Mozarabs and the supposed origin of the Spanish Jews. He could see that the Books proved the presence of Christian Arabs among Spain’s earliest inhabitants, a crucial fact for the study of genealogy, liturgy, and ritual. Not only Higuera’s His- toria de Toledo, but also his fertile output of treatises, attest to his fascination; many of them survive in autograph form in the Real Academia de la Historia. They include a treatise on whether San Tirso was a native of Toledo, genealogies of Toledan families, Mozarabic lineages, and a disquisition on the arrival of St. James in Spain.38 His many pages dedicated to the Mozarabs deserve a separate study.39 Román de la Higuera had invented the work of one more chronicler: the purported Julián Pérez, a Toledan Mozarab, archpriest of the church of Santa Justa and a vicar of the archbishopric at the time that the city was reconquered in 1085. Julián Pérez, as an eyewitness to the reconquest, served Higuera’s purposes by describing the city’s Mozarabic population and the preservation of its liturgy, which, shaped by canticles to the saints and hallowed by the blood of many martyrs, had consoled the local Christians throught the four centuries of their captivity. It was important to provide proof of the Mozarabic rite, because it was St. James who had supposedly established it. Julián Pérez’s chronicle supported, above all, Higuera’s obsession with genealogy: it traced the histories of the chief Mozarabic families, to one of which Higuera himself would have belonged. The fact that Higuera, possibly of Jewish converso origin, should try so hard to prove that he came from Mozarabic stock is dramatic in itself and tells us a great deal about the society in which he lived. It is the theme of

36 A. Godoy Alcántara, Historia crítica, op. cit., 191. 37 In a letter to Pedro de Castro of December 7, 1595, in which he also requests that books be sent to Toledo to help him document his defense. The most important would be that of Theseus Ambrogius (1469–1540), which mentions Salomonic characters: AAS, leg. IV, fol. 622. On Ambrogius, a noted linguist and Orientalist, see M. L. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, Prophet of the Restitution of All Things. His Life and Thought (The Hague-Boston- London, 1981), 27. 38 RAH, Colección Salazar y Castro, vol. 38, nos. 60.172, 60.173, 60.174, 60.180, 60.188, and 60.202. 39 J. Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones de la historia, op. cit., 172 ff. jerónimo román de la higuera 209 his genealogical treatise, Tratado del linaje de Higuera, in which he again stresses how the Mozarabs adopted the Arabic tongue, “dressed as Moors, and borrowed the kunya, which is the use of the father’s given name as the son’s surname, which the Moors took from the Hebrews and these from the Egyptians . . .”.40 We see here once again how similar were Higuera’s arguments to those of Miguel de Luna and other Moriscos; the latter were determined to rewrite the history of Granada so that its Arab and Morisco families became legitimate Christian ones, not only pure but deserving of honors and privileges—all this in spite of their Arab style of dress, their surnames, and their use of Arabic, a language that they represented as independent of the Islamic faith. In 1598 several members of the Higuera family, Jerónimo among them, petitioned to establish the facts about the purity and antiquity of their bloodline.41 In his letters to Archbishop Pedro de Castro Higuera put forward, in defense of the Lead Books, all the lines of argument that he had used abundantly elsewhere. One of these letters to Castro, dated July 27, 1596, is found in the Chancellery of Granada, among the documents related to the Sacromonte that were noted in the eighteenth-century travel narrative that we have already cited, the Diario de viaje desde Valencia a Andalucía hecho por Don Francisco Pérez Bayer en este año de 1782.42 In it Higuera mounts an empassioned defense of the Books, claiming that they prove that “this province was the first, after Jerusalem, to be bathed in the blood of many martyrs, as the lead sheets announce.” Higuera was writing in order to provide Castro with arguments in favor of the Lead Books and to counter those of their denigrators (Juan Bautista Pérez in particular, though he is not explicitly named): “So great is my love for the saints that I would be happy to pay for their honor and praise with my own blood; and any help that I can give, no matter how small it may be, I place at the feet of Your Lordship.”43 Even though saints, martyrs, and relics inflamed

40 “Usaban del hábito morisco, tomaron de aquí el usso de alcuñas que es el nombre del padre por sobrenombre del hijo que tomaron los moros de los Hebreos y estos de los egipcios”: Tratado del linaje de Higuera, op. cit., fol. 13r. Higuera actually has the kunya backward: in fact, it is the practice of addressing the father by the eldest son’s name (e.g., Aḥmad Abū ʿAlī “father of ʿAlī”), still current today. 41 J. Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones de la historia, op. cit., 173. 42 BNE ms. 5953, fols. 185 ff. 43 “Es tanto el amor que tengo a los santos que compraría de buena gana con mi sangre su honra y ensalzamiento y así qualquiera cosa que pueda para esto ayudar aunque no sea mucho lo ofreceré a los pies de V.S.”. 210 chapter nine

Higuera’s enthusiasm, it was still the Jews and Mozarabs who were the chief focus of his concern. In the letter to Castro Higuera claimed that the Arabian Peninsula was inhabited almost entirely by Jews at the time of Christ, since the Nabate- ans and Idumaeans were Arabic-speaking Jews, and Arabic is the language most closely descended from Hebrew. Therefore the saints of Granada were “Arabs by nation and Hebrews by profession.” The “Phoenicians were of the same stock as the Arabs, and in both language and dress they were all one nation and one people”; “now the Jews are the most despised people, but long ago they were the most honored, for God, from whom [Jesus, a Jew] was incarnated, gave them the treasure of the Scriptures.”44 Higuera cites Strabo and Pliny, and has recourse to the Nabateans and the Idumaeans, to prove—as he had done with the chronicle of Liutprand— that there can be saints who are of Arab origin and profess Judaism. Some of his arguments are clearly directed at Juan Bautista Pérez. Pérez had denied that the “Solomonic characters” of the Lead Books could be genuine, on the grounds that Solomon would have written in Hebrew; Higuera counters that Arabic descends from Hebrew, and explains over many pages, among other things, how both alphabets represent vowels with lines or dots above and below the consonants. Most of Higuera’s letters to Castro are concerned with matters of language, because he needed a defense against the question posed by the Lead Books’ critics: how could Arabic have been spoken in Spain before the Arab conquest?45 In the letter in question Higuera again cites the authority of Pliny, Strabo, and Herodotus to show how the Arabic language, as commonly spoken as Spanish, had spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula, “and therefore wise men had written the lead sheets in it, it being a common tongue in Andalusia.”46

44 “[De] nación árabe y de profesión hebreos”; “[los] fenices eran del mismo tronco que los árabes y en su lengua y trage eran todos un pueblo y una gente”; “ahora los judíos son la gente más abominada pero antiguamente era la más honrada puesto que les dio Dios los tesoros de sus escrituras, de quién tomó carne”: AASG, leg. 2, 47. 45 See B. Ehlers, “Juan Bautista Pérez and the Plomos de Granada: Spanish Humanism in the Late Sixteenth Century,” Al-Qanṭara, 24 (2003), 427–448: “And if he [St. Caecilius] was writing his book for the people of Spain, it would be ridiculous to write it in a language that no one there could understand” (“Y si él escribía su libro para los españoles, era cosa de burla escribirlo en lengua que nadie la entendiese de Espana”). Gonzalo de Valcárcel used this same argument, that it was impossible for anyone in Spain to have preached in a language that did not arrive until the Muslim conquest: see R. Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “El Discurso del licenciado Gonzalo de Valcárcel,” op. cit., 161. 46 “[Y] así como en lengua muy corriente en el Andalucía escribieron los sabios en ella las Láminas.” Higuera claims to have learned from his sources that the wars between jerónimo román de la higuera 211

A further connection that Higuera established, one of great psychologi- cal import for the people of Granada, was one between two sets of martyrs: those who had met their deaths at the hands of Morisco rebels in the Alpujarras War, and those whose relics had appeared on the Sacromonte. He developed it in another manuscript work (Higuera published nothing during his lifetime) that is preserved in the Real Academia de la Historia: Historia del levantamiento y marcha de los nuevamente convertidos en el Reino de Granada y algunos ilustres martirios que en ella padecieron algunas personas por la confesión de su Fe Católica (History of the uprising and expulsion of the newly converted in the Kingdom of Granada, with some famous martyrdoms that certain persons suffered there for confessing their Catholic faith).47 Here he gave further proof of his remarkable ability to enter into his readers’ religious sensibilities, and to tap into traditions that were especially beloved or of great symbolic power; and it should not surprise us that he refers in this work to writings of “the Licenciate Luna.”48 Don Pedro de Castro replied to Román de la Higuera on June 15, 1597, in a letter that is respectful but whose lukewarm tone contrasts with Higuera’s fervent one. It even suggests that Castro would prefer not to count Higuera among his defenders.49 He begins by explaining that he is answering Higuera’s many missives from July of the previous year (that is, almost a year earlier) and declares himself “much obliged” for Higuera’s efforts, but seems to say that these matters are too serious to be the subject of dubious imaginings: You, Sir, will see in the account that I now send you what a weighty story is this one that you write about; and if you saw the Books you would find that they are priceless, nor do I know of any more distinguished discovery from the time of the Apostles until now; for although the relics are holy and very

Caesar and Pompey had brought soldiers to Spain from Arabia, and that the Arabs were great traders and had travelled all over the Mediterranean, including to Spain, where many of them would have settled. In any case, the Phoenicians had arrived already; they had built Cádiz and spread to the kingdom of Granada, and as Ptolemy and Homer had shown, Phoenicians and Arabs were closely related. The Phoenician language was as similar to Arabic as Galician is to Portuguese. 47 RAH, Salazar y Castro, 9–749, esp. fol. 114r. 48 RAH, Salazar y Castro, 9–749, fol. 117r. 49 AASG, leg. III, fol. 298 (a copy of the sent letter): reproduced in Epistolario español. Colección de cartas de españoles ilustres antiguos y modernos, 5 vols. (Madrid, 1958–1965), vol. II, 46–47. 212 chapter nine

important, the most important of all are the Books, an honor for Spain and for Granada, for which the whole world must envy us.50 Castro rejects Higuera’s insistence that these saints were Jews: “There is nothing to be said about that, Sir; neither were they of the Hebrew nation, nor did they ever receive Moses’s Law, nor were they circumcised.” He answers succinctly several points made in Higuera’s letters, about San Tirso (“I never thought that what was found in Toledo was of much importance [. . .] I did not pay much attention to it”) and about the Mozarabic rite: The liturgy of the Mozarabic Mass that you wished to send me, Sir, I had already known of several years ago; because, as a boy in Salamanca, I heard it several times in Dr. Talavera’s chapel in the principal church; but it is not the same as the one that we have found here in Granada, nor did our saints compose it.51 Castro shows little eagerness either for fixing a date for a visit to Granada by Higuera, who had proposed one in his letters, or for examining an ancient sheet of metal that Higuera claimed to have found: You say, Sir, that an ancient metal sheet, showing careful calculations, has come into your possession. I would be happy for Dr. Herrera to see it and to bring me a transcription. I will write no more, for I must put these papers into the hands of the messenger. May God preserve you, Sir, for many years.52 The messenger was his secretary, Dr. Herrera, who was departing for Madrid in that summer of 1597 with a whole series of documents certify- ing the Sacromonte finds, together with an engraved copy of the Lead Books. He was to present them to Fray Diego de Yepes, Philip II’s confessor; Fray Martín de Villanueva of the Hieronymite order; Fray Gaspar de Córdoba, confessor to Prince Philip; Don Francisco de Aguilar Terrones;

50 “Vmd. verá en la relación que envío ahora cuán grave historia es ésta para la que Vmd. escribe; y si viere los libros, hallaría que no tiene estimación ni sé que haya habido invención mas insigne desde los Apóstoles acá; que aunque las reliquias son santas y tan principales, lo principal es los libros, honra de España y de Granada, de que nos debe tener envidia todo el mundo.” 51 “El oficio de la misa mozárabe que vmd. me quería enviar, ya lo he visto años há; porque en Salamanca, siendo muchacho, la oí algunas veces en la capilla del doctor Tala- vera, en la Iglesia mayor; pero no es ésta la que hemos hallado en Granada, ni la compu- sieron estos santos.” 52 “Dice vmd. que ha venido a su poder una lámina antigua que cuenta por puntos. Holgaré mucho que la vea el doctor Herrera y que me traya traslado de ella. No tengo más que escribir porque me remito a los papeles y al mensajero. Guarde Dios a Vmd. muchos años.” jerónimo román de la higuera 213 and Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara, who he hoped would help to validate the relics. Letters survive from all of them, acknowledging Her- rera’s visit and receipt of the documents that he brought in support of Castro’s case.53 It seems clear that Castro did not trust Higuera, whose reputation must have been in question. Nevertheless he speaks in the same letter of other Arabic engravings “that were found in this kingdom of Granada before now, very ancient, from Romus’s time,” and that were destroyed because the authorities who found them believed that anything written in Ara- bic must be Islamic. (Romus was one of the kings invented by Annius of Viterbo.)54 At least Castro himself no longer thought that all Arabic writing was of Islamic origin; this was the position for which Fernando Núñez Muley had argued in vain in his famous Memorial of 1567, and for which Miguel de Luna continued to argue.

Román de la Higuera, Miguel de Luna, and the Tower of Hercules

At one point in his Historia eclesiástica de Toledo, Jerónimo Román de la Higuera quotes from Miguel de Luna’s Historia verdadera del rey don Rodrigo. The quoted passage comes from one of the legends surrounding King Roderick and the loss of Spain to the Arabs: the episode in which the so-called Tower or Cave of Hercules, near Toledo, was opened. According to the early version of the story that Román de la Higuera cites, the king entered the cave and “found a chest, and within it a piece of cloth; this, once unsewn, revealed many figures that in their faces and their garments represented Arabs from Africa. The cloth had letters on it that said that once it had been unsewn, men of that appearance would seize Spain and become its lords.”55

53 Preserved in AASG, legs. III and IV, and reproduced in Epistolario español, op. cit., 45–49. 54 J. Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones de la historia, op. cit., 133. 55 “Halló un arca y en ella un paño que descosido mostró muchos rostros, que en su figura y trage representavan los aláraves de África. Tenía el paño unas letras, que deçían que quando aquel paño se descoxiesse hombres de aquel talle y figura se apoderarían de España y quitarían con el señoría della”: J. Román de la Higuera, Historia eclesiástica de la imperial ciudad de Toledo, op. cit., vol. III, BNE ms. 8194, fol. 363r. 214 chapter nine

This version of the story actually goes back to Arabic sources;56 it is not, however, the one offered by “Tarif Abentaric in the history of the Arabs that was recently translated from Arabic, whose original, they tell me, is in the library of San Lorenço el Real,” that is, Miguel de Luna’s La historia verdadera del rey don Rodrigo. In the latter work the tale is much more dramatic: a few brave men broke into the enchanted cave, but fled at once, “terrified by a horrible sight that they had seen.” Eventually the king himself entered the cave, his men bearing torches that guttered in the outrushing air. Inside he found a large bronze statue, armed with a mace that it beat loudly against the floor, and wall inscriptions that foretold the king’s unhappy end: “Unlucky king, you will regret having entered here”; “you will be conquered by a foreign people, and your subjects will suffer for it”; “I invoke the Arabs”; “I am doing my duty.” From a sphere that stood at the entrance to the cave there “came a loud noise that sounded like a rushing torrent.”57 Román de la Higuera cites the names of other historians who had also mentioned this legend and argued about its authenticity, and then he makes a curious comment: he does not consider the incident to be impossible, because in histories of the Indies “one can read that the Devil had caused them [native Americans] to paint figures of Spaniards riding on mules, dressed in our style of clothing and with long beards, with the claim that men like these would conquer the Indies. I saw such a book in 1590 when I was in the College at Madrid.”58 It is not surprising that Román de la Higuera should quote Miguel de Luna’s work, which had circulated widely.59 But beside the cave of Hercules, there is another point on which Jerónimo Román de la Higuera and Miguel de Luna coincide in

56 For instance, Ibn Ḥabīb: see J. Hernández Juberías, La Península imaginaria. Mitos y leyendas sobre al-Andalus (Madrid, 1996), 200. 57 “[M]uy despavoridos de alguna espantable visión que habían descubierto”; “Rey des- dichado, por tu mal has aquí entrado”; “por estrañas naciones serás desposseído, y tus gentes malamente castigados”; “a árabes invoco”; “mi oficio hago”; “salía un grande estruendo, que parecía golpe recio de agua”: M. de Luna, Historia verdadera, op. cit., 24. 58 “Se lee que el demonio les havía hecho pintar rostros de españoles a mula con el bestido que acá usamos y barvas largas, diçiéndoles que hombres como aquellos sujetarán las Indias. Yo vi un libro destos estando el año de 1590 en el Colegio de Madrid”: Historia eclesiástica de la imperial ciudad de Toledo, op. cit., vol. III, fol. 364v. On Spanish versions of this legend see F. Ruiz de la Puerta, La Cueva de Hércules y el Palacio Encantado de Toledo (Madrid, 1977). 59 This is not the only time that Jerónimo Román de Higuera quotes from Luna’s work: see, for example, Historia eclesiástica de la imperial ciudad de Toledo, op. cit., vol. III, fols. 389r ff., on the civil war between the Moorish kings of Cordova and Toledo. jerónimo román de la higuera 215 a significant way, arriving by a fairly tortuous route: the apparition of the Holy True Cross at Caravaca.60

The True Cross of Caravaca

This episode may be narrated briefly as follows: although a True Cross had been worshipped at Caravaca since the late Middle Ages, a new account of its history—an ambitious and falsified one—had been created in the early seventeenth century by Juan de Robles Corbalán in his Historia del mysterioso aparecimiento de la Santíssima Cruz de Carabaca, e innumerables milagros que Dios N. S. ha obrado y obra por su devoción (History of the mysterious apparition of the most Holy Cross of Caravaca, with innumerable miracles that Our Lord God has worked and continues to work through devotion to it) (Madrid, 1615). In his book Corbalán gave a complicated account of the miraculous event, containing most of the elements that would later gain such wide currency. In this version the Moorish King of Caravaca, Zeyt Abuceyt, had captured Chirinos, a monk from Cuenca. The monk, wishing to say Mass, asked that all the vessels and supplies for it be brought from that city; but just as he was about to begin he realized that he was missing the most important item of all, the cross. At that moment angels flew in through the window carrying the Cross of Caravaca, fashioned from a fragment of Christ’s True Cross; they had taken it from the breast of the Patriarch of Jerusalem himself. On beholding this miracle Zeyt Abuceyt became a Christian, followed shortly by his wife Queen Heyla. Corbalán elaborates on this tale, and on the miracles attributed to the sacred relic, in ways that would leave traces in the literature of later times.61 Certain of its elements are easy to trace: the Moorish king Zeyt Abuceyt recalls the Almohad sayyid Abū Zayd ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who really

60 We deal with this matter at length in M. García-Arenal and F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Miguel de Luna,” op. cit., 124–133. 61 See, for example, M. de Cuenca Fernández, Historia sagrada de el compendio de las ocho maravillas de el mundo, del non plus ultra de la admiración y de el pasmo, de el emporio donde se hallan los portentos más singulares, de un lignum-crucis que se compone de quatro brazos, de la quintaesencia y más principales partes del sacrosanto madero y dulce leño en que murió el Rey de los cielos y de la tierra y el segundo Adán, nuestro redemptor Jesu Christo, de la santíssima cruz de Caravaca (Madrid, 1722). J. M. Villanueva Fernández has reviewed local histories from Caravaca on this subject, and the influence exerted by Corbalán’s work: Historia de Caravaca de la Cruz (Cartagena, 1999), with bibliography. 216 chapter nine did convert to Christianity in the thirteenth century.62 But for purposes of this chapter we will focus on another detail that links Jerónimo Román de la Higuera and Miguel de Luna: the deciphering of the mysterious inscriptions on the walls of the chamber where the apparition took place. The strange characters appeared (and may still be seen) written in a circle around the window through which the Cross-bearing angels flew; others were on the walls above a series of frescoes that depicted, in order, a Moorish king on horseback; a king surrounded by his alfaquíes or men of Islamic learning, disputing with a Christian monk; and the same king’s baptism, witnessed by his queen on her knees.63 Corbalán recounts the efforts that were made to interpret these unusual inscriptions: For years they had been taken to Valencia, Aragon, Portugal, Salamanca, and other places, to intelligent men who might translate them, even to places in Barbary; but no one was ever found who could explain them. Until, after Our Lord God revealed the divine treasures that he had concealed in the Sac- romonte of Granada, the most expert Licenciate Miguel de Luna, physician and interpreter of languages, went to the city to study the lead sheets and books that had been found there. And he told me, in two autograph letters that I have in my possession and plan to deposit in the Archive of the Holy Cross (one of September 29, 1603, and the other of March 8, 1604), that these are Arabic characters, similar to the ones that we call Gothic.64 In effect, if we are to believe Corbalán’s account, he had found in Miguel de Luna the ideal interpreter for the strange letters that, explained at last, served to confirm in the Arabic language the apparition of the Cross and the conversions of Zeyt Abuceyt and his wife Heyla. According to Luna, the inscriptions read: In the year 594 of the Arabs of the time of Mohammed, the most powerful King Abuzeyt and thirty men of this house were converted to the true law

62 On this individual see, among others, E. Molina López, Ceyt Abu Ceyt. Novedades y rectificaciones (Almería, 1977). 63 J. de Robles Corbalán, Historia del mysterioso aparecimiento, op. cit., fols. 46v–48v and 50v–56r. 64 “Que aviéndolas llevado los años atrás a Valencia, Aragón, Portugal, Salamanca y otras partes de España a hombres inteligentes para que las traduxessen, y assí mismo a lugares de Berbería, nunca se pudo hallar persona que las declarasse, hasta que, descubriendo Dios nuestro Señor los tesoros divinos que tenía escondidos en el Monte Santo de Granada, fue a ella para la exposición de las láminas y libros que allí se hallaron, el peritíssimo Licenciado Miguel de Luna, médico, intérprete de lenguas, el qual declara por dos cartas suyas que originales están en mi poder, y pienso dexar en el Archivo de la santa Cruz: la una de 29 de septiembre de 1603, y la otra de 8 de março de 1604, que éstas son cifras árabes, semejantes a las que acá llamamos góticas.” jerónimo román de la higuera 217

of salvation by the grace of God, by means of a cross with four arms that was brought by angels, in the presence of many others who witnessed the celebration; in memory of which these letters were engraved here. In memory of my conversion, and for the glory of God, I offer this royal cloak to be carried on the day of the Holy Cross, as part of its solemn feast. With this horse I exalted the Law of God and defeated His enemies in battle many times. I, Queen Heyla (now Elena), wife of King Abuzeyt, and my two children were converted by divine grace to the holy Faith, in memory of which I am drawn here.65 These mural paintings of Arab-like figures, with their cryptic messages, strongly evoke the legend of the Cave of Hercules as it is told in the His- toria verdadera de don Rodrigo. But in fact the letters in the inscriptions, which Corbalán reproduces in his book, are not Arabic at all; and if we are to believe Corbalán, the whole story was another invention of Miguel de Luna’s. (Corbalán must have destroyed the letters from Luna that provided interpretations of the inscriptions.)66 This circle of frauds was closed by Corbalán himself, who was a favored pupil of Román de la Higuera’s. He confesses that he took from the Jesuit most of the documentation for his work, including a manuscript text by his teacher that he consulted at the Jesuit house in Toledo: My most beloved teacher, a great inquirer into matters of Spain, illustrious in virtue and learning, well known among the learned men of our time, and of great reputation, took it from [that manuscript], and since there was no printing in those days, and [pages] have been mistreated in the course of time, and no one was available to undertake the work, they have remained unpublished [. . .] and we use many parts of them in this history, since he was a man of such great erudition.67

65 “El año de 594 de los Árabes del tiempo de Mahomat, Abuzeyt rey potentíssimo, y treynta hombres en esta morada fueron convertidos a la verdadera ley del salvamento por la gracia de Dios, mediante una cruz de quatro braços que traxeron los Ángeles, acompa- ñados de otros muchos que ayudavan a la celebración, para memoria de los quales fueron aquí esculpidas estas letras”; “en memoria de mi conversión, y a gloria de Dios, ofrecí esta vestidura real para traerla el día de la S. Cruz por solenidad de su fiesta”; “con este cavallo ensalzé la Ley de Dios y vencí sus enemigos en batalla muchas vezes”; “Yo, la reyna Hayla (aora Elena), muger del rey Abuzeyt, y mis dos hijos fuimos convertidos por la divina gracia a la sante Fe, en cuya memoria estoy aquí dibujada”: ibid. 66 A. Marín de Espinosa, Memorias para la historia de la ciudad de Caravaca (y del aparecimiento de la Sma. Cruz) desde los tiempos remotos hasta nuestros días, e ilustradas con notas históricas (Caravaca, 1856), 74. 67 “[G]rande escudriñador de las cosas de España, mi maestro dilectíssimo, ilustre en virtud y letras, bien conocido en nuestros tiempos entre los hombres doctos della, y de gran reputación, de donde él lo sacó, que como en aquellos tiempos no avía impressión, 218 chapter nine

Jerónimo Román de la Higuera had a personal interest in the story of the Cross of Caravaca on several grounds. First, he claimed that as a child he had been cured miraculously of a serious illness by a cross that had touched the one in Caravaca.68 Second, in tracing the genealogy of the monk Chirinos he appears to suggest a link between that family and his own: both sprang from the Mozarabs of Toledo, who had left that city to settle in other parts of Castile, including Cuenca. In a reference that is not very clear, Higuera seems to affirm that one of his ancestors had married a woman of the Chirinos family;69 the monk was said to have been “descended from the conquerors of the city, Archpriest of its holy church and a disciple of the blessed St. Julian, who, recognizing his virtues, had given him that position and also the office of canon.”70 It is difficult to trace the origins of this story among so much false information, yet we can discern in it an image of Luna that is consistent with his overall project. By involving himself in the apparition of the True Holy Cross at Caravaca, Luna was seizing the opportunity to associate a Muslim king’s conversion to Christianity with a popular and important local cult, one that was, moreover, associated with what would be called the “Reconquest.” Luna’s insistence on voluntary conversion and on the Christianophilia of certain Muslim rulers of al-Andalus was of a piece with the ideological battle that he was waging. Once more the Arabic language, written in mysterious letters, became the vehicle for expressing a notable Christian event in the Peninsula; once more Arab culture was presented as de-Islamized, and as a constituent part of the sacred history of Spain. It is no wonder that Luna’s name appears in this context associated with Jerónimo Román de la Higuera’s; the latter was intent on a similar goal, to prove that the ancestry of Jew- ish converso families in the Peninsula predated the death of Christ. The convergence of Luna and Román de la Higuera in the Caravaca affair,

y después con la antigüedad se han maltratado, y aver faltado quien se encargue del trabajo, hanse quedado sin imprimir [. . .] y en esta Historia nos valemos en muchas partes dellas, como de hombre de tanta erudicción”: J. de Robles Corbalán, Historia del mysterioso aparecimiento, op. cit., fol. 2r. 68 Ibid., fol. 11r. 69 J. Román de la Higuera, Tratado del linaje de Higuera, RAH, ms. 9–5566, fol. 16r. 70 “Descendiente de los conquistadores de la ciudad, Arcipreste de la santa iglesia y discípulo del bienaventurado San Julián, que, conociendo sus virtudes, le avía dado esta dignidad y un canonicato en ella”: V. J. P. Mártir Rizo, Historia de la muy noble y leal ciudad de Cuenca (Madrid, 1629; facsimile ed. Barcelona, 1979), 55–56. Mártir Rizo is merely repeating, slightly expanded, the version of Juan de Robles Corbalán. jerónimo román de la higuera 219 mediated by Juan de Robles Corbalán, shows that the two had similar interests, but there were differences between them as well. Doubtless the Jesuit sifted through and manipulated Spanish sacred history with a pious intent, but he also had a clear genealogical motive: to link Caravaca, via Cuenca and the monk Chirinos, to the Toledan Mozarabs. This was a crucial theme in his writings and in his life: he dedicated his scholarly research to connecting his own family to those Mozarabs who, by his account, eventually spread across Castile. As for Luna, in inventing translations of the incomprehensible characters at Caravaca he was maintaining that Arab culture could be integrated into Spain. This view also had powerful implications for genealogy: Luna was arguing that many Arabs had become Christians long before the forced conversions of the sixteenth century.

The Influence of Higuera: Jews and Phoenicians

We have already seen several aspects of the project of Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, principal fabricator of the famous false chronicles. He advanced all possible arguments to prove that Jews from the Ten Tribes of Israel had been present in Spain; that they had arrived before the death of Christ, and were therefore innocent of deicide; and that they had been the first inhabitants of the Peninsula to convert to Christianity. All these arguments sought to legitimate the status of the Jewish conversos of Toledo, a group to which Higuera probably belonged.71 He also wished to compare and equate Toledo to Jerusalem.72 We can trace Higuera’s influence in a theme that recurs constantly in sources of the period, and that is put to various ends: that Granada was founded by Jews, and that Jews were present in Iberia from the earliest times. For the humanist Pablo de Céspedes, the Hebrew element showed that Spain’s past could be connected directly to the Bible and to sacred history; the Classical world, with its corruptions, could be passed over.73 Céspedes made the sons of Noah the founders of Cordova, thereby creating a link between a temple in that city (subsequently a mosque and a cathedral) and Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The effect was to obliterate the Islamic character of Cordova’s mosque:

71 J. Gil, “Judíos y conversos en los falsos cronicones,” in A. Molinié and J.-P. Duviols (eds.), Inquisition d’Espagne (Paris, 2003), 21–43. 72 P. Renoux-Caron, “Une Terre Sainte espagnole?”, op. cit. 73 J. Rubio Lapaz, Pablo de Céspedes y su círculo, op. cit., 32 et passim. 220 chapter nine

I can present another kind of proof, consisting of true architecture. For although the whole temple, with its Arab style, appears to be constructed by Moors, those who look at it carefully and examine the walls built by the ancients will see how different are those of this temple: all of them are made of very large square stones, of the type that cannot be put in place without the most powerful tools and machines.74 We may compare this passage by Céspedes with the declaration made to Archbishop Pedro de Castro of Granada by the architect Ambrosio de Vico, master of works of the cathedral, about the construction of the Torre Turpiana, which had been the minaret of a mosque: The tower appears to have been built by Jews. This witness, who has been to Oran, saw buildings by Jews there, and they were constructed in just the same manner as this tower; the tower’s plan and technique are different from those of buildings by Gentiles and Moors, because Moors and Gentiles did not build in this way. He knows this because he has seen many buildings and has read about many building styles, and because he is a master of this technique.75 There existed, therefore, a body of textual and archeological evidence to support this linkage of Spain’s ancient history with a sacred past, affirming the presence in Spain of early Oriental peoples. There were other contemporaries of Higuera and of the Sacromonte finds who wrote new histories of Granada and adopted some of the riski- est theories of the Jesuit from Toledo. The first of these was Pedro Guerra de Lorca (d. 1597), of whom we have already spoken, with his Memorias eclesiásticas de la ciudad de Granada;76 he also wrote Cathecheses mystagogicae pro aduenis ex secta Mahometana. Ad Parochos et Potestates (Madrid, 1586). He was a witness to the discovery of the relics and the

74 “Quédame otra manera de prueba que consta en verdadera arquitectura, que cier- tamente aunque todo el templo parece fábrica hecha de moros con aquella su manera arábica, considerándola bien i examinando las paredes fabricadas por los antiguos, verán la gran diferencia que ai en las deste templo, aunque todas labradas de piedras cuadra- das i mui grandes de aquellas que si no es con máquinas i fortíssimos instrumentos no se pueden asentar”: ibid., p. 101, and M. García-Arenal, “Orígenes sagrados y memoria del Islam: el caso de Granada,” op. cit., 64. 75 “Que el edificio de la torre le parece ser edificio de Iudíos porque este testigo a estado en Orán donde vio algunos edificios de judíos y estaban edificados a la traza y manera que el edificio desta dicha torre, y la traza y edificio desta dicha torre es diferente en el obrar y travar que los edificios de gentiles y moros, porque los moros y gentiles no edificavan de la suerte que estava edificada esta torre, lo qual sabe por aver visto muchos edificios y aver leído muchas maneras diferentes de diferentes edificios y ser maestro en esta arte”: ACDF, Stanze Storiche, R7C, fol. 302v. 76 AGS, C48, varios, fols. 166–377; the manuscript is preserved in AASG. jerónimo román de la higuera 221

Parchment, and an enthusiastic defender of their legitimacy. The manuscript of Memorias eclesiásticas is undated, but internal evidence points to its composition between 1595 and 1597. In it Guerra de Lorca maintains that Granada was founded by Jews who had been expelled by Nebuchad- nezzar, that is to say Jews from the lost tribes of Israel, also known as the “Ten Tribes.” Like Guerra de Lorca, Luis de la Cueva insisted that Spanish was an ancient language; this was a basic premise for claiming that the Parch- ment and the relics were authentic. He also believed the Moriscos to descend from those early Christians who spoke Arabic and for whom St. Caecilius was writing; Granada would have been founded by Arabic fenices, i.e., Phoenicians. Like Guerra and Velarde, he claimed that “Gran- ada contains the oldest Spanish writing that exists in the world,” in the Torre Turpiana Parchment. Spanish did not descend from Latin; on the contrary, it was the mother of Latin, because Spaniards had conquered Italy centuries before the rise of the Roman Empire.77 For Cueva, Granada was the same as ancient Illiberis, a Christian city inhabited by Arabic- speaking Phoenicians. Pedro Velarde de Ribera, a canon of the Granada’s collegiate church of San Salvador, dedicated his Historia eclesiástica del monte Santo to Philip III.78 In it he explains that many Jews from the Ten Tribes, among them the tribe of Gad, were exiled to Granada long before the coming of Christ: “These glorious saints who wrote in the Arabic language with Solomonic letters were among the Jews who were sent to Samaria, or from the tribes of Gad and Reuben; they were in Spain, where they could be converted by St. James the Apostle.”79 The lost tribes spoke Arabic. Velarde de Ribera quotes St. Thomas, according to whom “St. Paul went to Arabia because it was a land of unbelievers. And it seems that he went to Arabia also, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to spread the Arabic language because it was so badly needed: to convert the ten tribes that were scattered through different parts of the world, and to meet and converse with our blessed Saints Caecilius and Ctesiphon.”80 Ctesiphon had been named Aben Hatar

77 L. de la Cueva, Diálogos de las cosas notables de Granada, op. cit., 54 ff. 78 BNE ms. 1583. 79 “Estos gloriosos sanctos que escrivieron en lenguaje arábigo y characteres de Salomón eran de los hebreos que fueron enviados a Samaria, o de los de las tribus de Gad y de Rubén que estavan en España donde pudieron ser convertidos por el señor Santiago Apóstol”: ibid., fol. 90v. 80 “San Pablo fue a las Arabias porque era tierra de infieles y assimismo parece que fue a las Arabias spirado por el espíritu santo para comunicar el lenguaxe de los árabes que 222 chapter nine before his conversion, so he “was obviously of Hebrew origin, of the line and descent of Aaron.”81 Meanwhile, the false chronicles of Dextrus and Maximus were being copied and circulated in manuscript throughout the Peninsula; bishops, cathedral Chapters, and curious individuals asked for copies, thus all becoming in a sense accomplices of the counterfeiter from Toledo. Juan Calderón was the first to publish Flavius Dextrus’s chronicle in Saragossa in 1619. But it was the humanist scholar Rodrigo Caro who gave the texts their biggest impetus when he issued a new annotated edition of Dextrus’s work and appended those of Maximus, Heleca, and St. Braulius, with supporting historical and epigraphic evidence. Since parallels were inevitably drawn between those chronicles and the Lead Books, there began to be doubts about their authenticity also; in 1630 it was rumored that Rome would prohibit both sets of documents. One partisan of the chronicles was Cardinal Baltasar Moscoso y San- doval, bishop of Jaén; in his diocese, too, a hoard of saints’ relics had been found. During his trip to Rome to receive his cardinal’s hat he spoke in favor of the chronicles, because elements in them testified to the genuineness of the recent finds in Jaén.82 The story of those finds is as follows: a professor at the University of Baeza, Dr. Francisco Yáñez Herrera, had read in the chronicle of Dextrus that Saints Bonosus and Maximilian had been martyred in Urgabona; he was able to identify Urgabona with Arjona, a town in Jaén, through an inscription in its church of St. Martin, cited by Ambrosio de Morales. The identification was confirmed by Rodrigo Caro (in his commentary on Dextrus, already mentioned) and by Pedro Díaz de Rivas. At that point, both saints were named patrons of the town and a search was begun for their remains; naturally, these were soon found and held up as proof that the two had been Christian martyrs, making Arjona’s founding predate the Romans. Furthermore, “the main tower of the castle is the work of Phoenicians.”83 tanto era menester para la conversion de las diez tribus que estavan repartidas en diversas provincias del mundo y para tratar y conversar con nuestros benditos santos san Cecilio y San Tesifón”: ibid., fols. 11r–11v. 81 Ibid., fol. 163r. 82 A. Godoy y Alcántara, Historia crítica, op. cit., 227 ff.; C. Vincent-Cassy, “Los santos re-fundadores. El caso de Arjona (Jaén) en el siglo XVII,” in F. Delpech (ed.), L’imaginaire du territoire en Espagne et au Portugal (XVI–XVIIe siècles) (Madrid, 2008), 193–211. 83 Memorial del pleito sobre el reconocimiento, aprobación y calificación de los milagros, veneración y colocación de las reliquias de los santuarios que se descubrieron en la villa de Arjona desde el año de mil y seiscientos y veinte y ocho hasta el de quarenta y dos [. . .], n.d., n.p., 388–389. jerónimo román de la higuera 223

Clearly Moscoso y Sandoval had an interest in defending the chronicles, or at least in keeping them from being declared anathema. Their Span- ish partisans feared that they might be banned on the grounds that they recorded the celebration of the Immaculate Conception in the Apostles’ time; they also contained stories that could be traced to the apocryphal Gospels. This proved to be a false alarm; nothing was decreed against the chronicles, but in 1682 Rome declared the Lead Books to be fraudulent. Naturally the Books were of far greater significance than the chronicles, and had had a much wider impact; yet Pedro de Castro was right not to want to be associated with Higuera. Both Higuera and Luna were thoroughgoing counterfeiters, convinced that their forgeries had led to good, never to evil. Thanks to them their respective native cities could swell with patriotic pride and boast of a sacred, ancient identity, one that might lead to special privileges. Their falsifications aspired to bring into society all the peoples that had been marginalized, and kept from honor and glory, by the purity-of-blood statutes and a long series of civil and religious prohibitions. The Lead Books and the false chronicles showed Arabs divorced from Islam and Jews freed from the guilt of Christ’s death; both groups were among Spain’s earliest inhabitants, and forged a link with the era in which mankind had been closest to its Creator. Higuera’s and Luna’s existential and personal struggle tells us a great deal about the society in which they lived, one in which the lack of “pure blood” was painful, shameful, and dangerous. They must have felt that falsification alone—if it succeeded—could remove the stain that had marked them from birth. Nonetheless their inventions brought repercussions, interpretations, and conclusions that did not necessarily match their creators’ original intent. The Count of Mora, for example, a fervent follower and apologist of Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, seemed bent above all on proving the primacy of Toledo, and referred to the Sacromonte finds with a rival’s casual disdain: “For although we might mention the holy martyrs who suffered in Granada, and whose ashes were found on its Sacromonte, together with certain books and sheets of lead, in 1595—their authenticity is now being studied in Rome—we shall not do so, for [we prefer] the history of a city that merited that St. James establish in it the primacy of all the churches of Spain . . .”.84 In the context of this crude competition among Spanish

84 “Pues aunque se pudiera dar noticia de los santos mártires que padecieron en Gra- nada, cuyas cenizas se hallaron en su Monte Santo, con ciertos libros y láminas el año de 224 chapter nine cities to claim the holiest past, it sometimes appears that the struggle by Higuera, Luna, and their fellow forgers to burnish some aspects of their own dubious genealogy was relegated to the background. During the unearthing of the Lead Books, which began in 1595 and continued for three years, Higuera and Luna were in touch with each other, and enlightened critics did not fail to notice the parallelism between the Books and Higuera’s false chronicles. A polemic arose in 1744 between Mayáns (a critic of Higuera) and another Jesuit, Andrés Burriel, over opinions that Mayáns had expressed in his Vida de Don Nicolás Antonio (Valencia, 1742).85 Burriel felt deeply offended by Mayáns’s suggestion that Román de la Higuera had been the author of, or at least a participant in, the conspiracy to fabricate the Lead Books. Mayáns justified his actions in a letter to Burriel: If the Lead Books appeared in 1595, and the chronicles the year before; and if Father Higuera was the creator of the latter, as the wisest men in the world believe; and if we find in them the same novelties that were hidden in the lead sheets; and if everyone was in ignorance except their forger and his accomplices; how can we not think that Father Higuera took part in the deception, or knew of it, or added to the Chronicles what he found in the lead sheets after they came to light? Your Reverence may judge, after comparing the lead sheets with the earlier and later fragments of Dextrus, which of these things should be said. I do not wish to press my argument further.86 Nor shall we press the argument any further.

mil y quinientos y noventa y cinco, que están en Roma a la determinación de su verdad, lo dexamos de hazer, pues en la historia de una ciudad que mereció que Santiago assentasse en ella la primacía de las iglesias de España . . .”: P. de Rojas, conde de Mora, Historia de la nobilísima, ínclita y esclarecida ciudad de Toledo (Madrid, 1654). 85 On this affair see R. Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “Gregorio Mayans y las Láminas y libros de Plomo de Granada. Los límites de la crítica ilustrada,” in M. Barrios and M. García- Arenal (eds.), ¿La historia inventada?, op. cit., 375–393. u 86 “Si los libros de plomo se descubrieron año 1595 I los chronicones un año antes, I si el P. Higuera fue el formador de ésos, como lo están creyendo los hombres más eruditos del mundo, I si vemos que en ellos se hallan las mismas novedades que las que estavan ocultas en las láminas I todos ignoravan excepto su fraguador I sus cómplices, ¿cómo podemos dejar de pensar que el padre Higuera intervino en el engaño, o era sabidor dél, o añadió a los Chronicones lo que vio en las Láminas después de que aparecieron? Quál destas cosas deva decirse, V. Rma. lo juzgará cotejando las láminas con los primeros i postreros fragmentos de Dextro. No quiero apretar más el argumento”: G. Mayáns y Siscar, Epistolario, ed. A. Mestre, vol. II (Valencia, 1987), 14–24. chapter ten

diego de urrea

Up to now we have concerned ourselves chiefly with the first Morisco translators of the Sacromonte texts, pointing out some of the principal features of the world from which the documents sprang. We will now begin to describe a different type of person: one who came on the scene as the requirements of the translations became broader, and whose profile was very different from those of Luna, Castillo, and al-Ḥajarī. These were interpreters and translators who were not Moriscos and who had been formed outside of the cultural context that produced the Lead Books; their linguistic and intellectual backgrounds were diverse, and inclined them better to perceive the contradictions and inconsistencies of the texts. The work of these individuals helps us to see how the Books began to be read outside the immediate environment of Granada, and what kinds of problems arose from this new angle of vision. Among the earliest of this group of translators, and certainly the most complex and fascinating of them all, was Diego de Urrea.

Diego de Urrea between Italy and North Africa

We have fairly reliable information, from accounts that Diego de Urrea gave late in his life, about his earliest years, before he entered the service of the Spanish Crown.1 He was the son of a certain Captain “Moreto, a Calabrian,” who was a native of Tropea in Calabria,2 and was captured by Turks at the age of five or six. Educated, at least in part, in the madrasa of Tlemcen, he adopted the name Morato Aga, and learned, according to

1 For a more detailed study of his life and work see F. Rodríguez Mediano and M. García- Arenal, “De Diego de Urrea a Marcos Dobelio, intérpretes y traductores de los ‘Plomos’,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal, Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 297–333. 2 There are several sources that deal with this first stage of Diego de Urrea’s life, with some variations and more or less detail. Here we cite J. L. de Rojas, Relaciones de algunos sucesos postreros de Berbería (Lisbon, 1613), fol. 63v; AHN, Inquisición, Sicilia, lib. 898, fol. 359; a letter of Diego Enríquez de Guzmán, Count of Alba de Liste, May 25, 1591, AGS, Estado, Sicilia, leg. 1157; and a letter of Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, April 8, 1596, in Conde de la Viñaza, Los cronistas de Aragón (Saragossa, 1904, facsimile ed. 1986), 95. 226 chapter ten

Juan Luis de Rojas, “the Arabic and Turkish tongues, which he made more his own in writing and reading than if they had been native to him; and he studied Arabic grammar, logic, and philosophy to good effect, understanding very well the Koran and its cursed theology, to the point where no Moor could have done better.”3 This tribute points to something that would always be noted about Diego de Urrea: that he was a man of excellent education in both languages and the Islamic sciences. The Count of Alba de Liste would write that Urrea was “one of the best-read and most learned men in Barbary,” according to witnesses who had known him while he was still called Morato Aga. These aptitudes were doubtless what allowed him to occupy high posts in the service of several Ottoman rulers: he was, it seems, secretary to Uluj Ali and Hasan Aga (“Ochalí” and “Çenaga” in Christian sources). From this exalted post he was able to take part in important episodes of North African diplomacy. Later, in a report that he prepared as a letter of introduction on returning to Christian lands, he claimed to have known of Turkish plans to seize the Kingdom of Fez, among other places, to obtain wood for building galleys. We should recall that Morocco had become at this time a strategic site in the confrontation between Spain and the Ottomans. In fact Diego de Urrea, when he was still Morato Aga, had been sent as ambassador to the Moroccan Sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr to deal with the very issue of wood and other materials for shipbuilding; in the course of that embassy he had met the Spaniard Diego Marín, a favorite of al-Manṣūr. Urrea returned to Christianity at about the age of thirty, in 1589, under somewhat cloudy circumstances. Years later, he would recount that he had turned voluntarily to the faith after reading Fray Luis de Granada,4 and had escaped from North Africa on his own initiative, tired of living “in constant fear for my life, like all of those who are close to that tyrannical court,” as Rojas related. But it is most likely that a galley in which he was traveling to Constantinople put in at the island of Pantelleria, where he was captured. From there Morato Aga was taken to Sicily, where the Viceroy Alba de Liste at once realized his importance: he possessed many secrets related to the Turks, and had a wide range of contacts in North

3 “La lengua Arábiga y Turca, que escreviéndolas y leyéndolas las hizo más suyas que si fueran naturales: y estudió Gramática Arábiga, la Lógica y Philosophía con muchas ven- tajas, enterándosse muy bien del Alcorán y su maldita Theología, por tanto estremo, que no uvo Moro que lo aventajasse.” 4 According to a document in AASG, leg. III, fol. 421. diego de urrea 227

Africa.5 Morato Aga appeared before the Inquisition of his own accord, and was eventually baptized with the given name of his patron, Viceroy Diego Enríquez de Guzmán, and the surname of the patron’s wife’s family, Urrea. Under this exalted protection Diego de Urrea studied the Gospels and learned Latin with the Jesuits.

Urrea in Spain

In about 1591 Diego de Urrea crossed to Spain to enter the king’s service as a translator and interpreter of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. Shortly afterward an event occurred that would be especially significant for his career: a Chair of Arabic language was created for him at the Trilingual College of the University of Alcalá de Henares, an appointment that he held from 1593 onward.6 We do not know exactly how the chair came to be founded; it was an unusual proceeding, inasmuch as all efforts to establish the teaching of Arabic in sixteenth-century Spain had met with obstacles.7 Almost simultaneously, in 1595, the king had rejected, on Arch- bishop Juan de Ribera’s advice, the creation of a Chair of Arabic in Valen- cia; it had been proposed by Juan Bautista Pérez, bishop of Segorbe, in an initiative much in harmony with the efforts and ideas of the Jesuit Ignacio de las Casas.8 Therefore it is unusual that scarcely a year after this denial, in 1596, Philip II himself should wish to continue Urrea’s appointment, saying “that from his dedication to teaching from the said Chair there results great benefit and usefulness for service to God and to me and to all Christendom, particularly now that many books of saints have appeared in Granada that will help to extirpate the Mohammedan sect.”9

5 Urrea knew a great deal about Ottoman affairs, beyond the plans to expand toward Morocco and the West. According to Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola “he not only was secretary to the Grand Turk and had all the papers from Persia, Slavonia, and other places, but in everything having to do with interpretation he was the best, being so learned in languages, and thus he has great authority” (“No solamente era secretario del Turco y tenía todos los papeles de Persia y Esclavonia y de otras partes, mas en todo lo que toca a inter- pretaciones era el mayor, como tan docto en las lenguas, y así es grande su autoridad”): Conde de la Viñaza, Los cronistas de Aragón, op. cit., 97. 6 For the approval of this chair by the university faculty on August 8, 1593, and its later history, see AHN, Universidades, book 1128-F, fols. 53–54, 76v, 89v–90r, 102, 103v, and 119r. 7 On Salamanca, for example, see M. Bataillon, “L’arabe à Salamanque au temps de la Renaissance,” Hespéris, 21 (1935), 1–17. 8 See F. de Borja de Medina, “La compañía de Jesús y la minoría morisca,” op. cit., 49. 9 AHN, Consejos, lib. 4, fol. 68v. 228 chapter ten

Nonetheless this Chair of Arabic did not enjoy a long life. The university faculty valued Urrea as a teacher, for he had formed many students (including one who was now prepared to teach Arabic himself) and had brought many Arabic books to the library; but they also complained about his frequent absences, attributable no doubt to his duties in the king’s service. In the last notice that we have about the Chair, on February 20, 1597, the faculty heard a complaint by students that they never read anything but “the basics of Arabic, and though we beg him to go on to higher levels, he always wants to return to the beginning”10—an interesting comment about the very imperfect methods of teaching Arabic at the time, starting with the obvious lack of language manuals. It is true that Diego de Urrea was pursuing several kinds of work as an Arabist in addition to his teaching at Alcalá. In the first place he was serving as a traslator for the Inquisition in Cuenca,11 where he may have met Sebastián de Covarrubias, who was a member of the cathedral Chapter. It is well known that Covarrubias drew on two informants for the words of Arabic origin that he included in his dictionary, Tesoro de la lengua caste llana. One was Fray Diego de Guadix, author in turn of a Recopilación de algunos nombres arábigos que los árabes pusieron a algunas ciudades y a otras muchas cosas (Collection of some Arabic names that the Arabs gave to some cities and to many other things), about whom we shall speak below. The other informant was Diego de Urrea, to whom Covarrubias always gave greater credit because he was “more doctrinal” (in the sense of more academic) and knew “the Arabic language profoundly.”12 A testament to Urrea’s excellent linguistic preparation was the work that he carried out in the library of El Escorial. As he himself recounted in a report to Philip III,13 he had left the University of Alcalá in 1597, at the urging of Philip II, to go to El Escorial with two aims: “to help others to understand the large number of valuable Arabic books there, written by serious authors on all manner of subjects,” and “so that there might be in the library men of religion who are eloquent in this language, so that

10 AHN, Universidades, lib. 1128–F, fol. 119r. 11 M. García-Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos. Los procesos del Tribunal de Cuenca (Madrid, 1978), 153. An example of the tasks that Urrea performed for the Inquisition in Cuenca was the translation of some magic talismans during the trial of Román Ramírez: ADC, Inqui- sición, leg. 343, no. 4876; see L. García Ballester, Los moriscos y la medicina, op. cit., 126. 12 S. de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. F. C. R. Maldonado, revised by M. Camarero (Madrid, 1994), 68 and 78. 13 Ed. N. Morata, “Un catálogo de los fondos árabes primitivos de El Escorial,” Al- Andalus, 2 (1934), 87–181, esp. 102–103. diego de urrea 229 if I were not present someone would be on hand to assist His Majesty in matters that might arise concerning it. And because it is a vast, elegant, and ingenious language, if learned and pious men know it, that might be a basis for extirpating the Mohammedan sect, bringing [its members] into the knowledge of our Holy Catholic Faith.”14 Urrea’s justifications include a defense of Arabic as an evangelizing influence (an argument that we have already seen advanced in relation to the Sacromonte texts) and as an elegant language in which precious knowledge may lie hidden. We shall see that this apology for Arabic would eventually become a commonplace of European Orientalism, but it is curious to see it attributed to Philip II. Urrea had composed a “very complete Arabic vocabulary” for teaching the language, and according to the document he had also “begun to translate the first volume of the Thesauro aráuigo en Lengua Castellana (Arabic Treasure in the Castilian language), which, when it is finished, will be one of the best books in the library, because there has never been one before and it is important that one should be found there.”15 These were two important projects, particularly if we view them in the context of a European Arabism that had begun to be seriously concerned about access to Arabic books and the tools necessary to study the language. Another important piece of work that Urrea produced at this time was a bilingual Arabic-Spanish catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts in the library of El Escorial. Nemesio Morata has edited the catalogue and attributed it, with a high degree of probability, to Urrea.16 The document contains 448 entries, and constitutes a good (though not a complete) sample of the state of the library prior to the incorporation of the library of Muley Zidan; to this day these Arabic manuscripts make up the nucleus of El Escorial’s collection.

14 “Para [que] se entendiesse gran cantidad de libros Aráuigos de grandíssimo precio que están en ella de graues autores en todo género de ciencias”; “para que obiese en ella religiosos eloquentes en esta lengua, para que si acaso él faltase, obiese quien pudiesse servir a su magestad en los negocios que se ofreciessen della, y por ser lengua muy amplia, elegante y artificiosa, que saviéndola personas religiosas y doctas sería principio para la extirpación de la secta Mahometana, reduziéndolos al conocimiento de Nta. Sta. Cathólica Fe.” 15 “Comenzó a traduzir el primer tomo del Thesauro aráuigo en Lengua Castellana, que después de acabado será vno de los mejores libros que ay en la librería, porque no lo ha hauido jamás y es muy importante que lo aya en ella.” 16 “Maʿrifat al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya allatī fī khizānat Sant Luʾrandu al-sulṭānī ʿalā tartīb al-ḥurūf” (Information about the Arabic books that are in the library of San Lorenzo el Real, in [Arabic] alphabetical order): ibid., 101–185. See also B. Justel, La Biblioteca de El Escorial (Madrid, 1978), 221. 230 chapter ten

Urrea performed several other duties of translation and interpretation for Philip II and Philip III that have left their traces in the archives and of which we shall soon speak in greater detail.17 We have shown that he also prepared reports about Arabic books, like the one that he wrote about al-Būnī’s work on magic, sent by the king of Cuco to the king of Spain. But first we shall turn to his part in the affair of the Lead Books.

Diego de Urrea and the Lead Books

Diego de Urrea became acquainted with the Sacromonte Lead Books barely a year after the first ones had appeared. In October 1595, García de Loaysa had written to the archbishop of Granada requesting “that Arias Montano be called in, as well as the Arab who serves the Count of Alva de Liste; and that each be asked separately to translate the books, without showing them the existing translation [by Miguel de Luna and Alonso del Castillo], nor should either one know about the work of the other, so that it may be seen if their translations agree.”18 Urrea spent at least two different periods in Granada working on the translations: from July 11 to October 2, 1596, and from May 5 to August 16, 1597. During these sojourns he was involved in constant quarrels with Arch- bishop Pedro de Castro. Documents in the Sacromonte Abbey attest to Urrea’s repeated requests for money, but more important were the differences of opinion about his translations and the value that he placed on the Books. In answer to financial demands that Urrea presented to the Court, the archbishop replied that the Books were couched in “strange letters that are not used, which Urrea says he has never seen until now, and because the writing is very small” he cannot read them; as a result, the archbishop goes on to say, he has employed Urrea in other tasks, paying him out of his own pocket.19 It is clear that Pedro de Castro preferred the

17 J. M. Floristán Imízcoz, “Intérpretes de lenguas orientales en la Corte de los Austrias: tres notas prosopográficas,” Silva. Estudios de Humanismo y Tradición Clásica, 2 (2003), 41–59. 18 “Que se llame a Arias Montano y al arábigo que tiene el conde de Alva de Liste y se ordenasse a cada uno de por sí que traduxessen dichos libros sin mostrarles la traduction que está hecha ni que el uno sepa del otro para que se vea si conforman las traducciones”: Biblioteca Francisco de Zabálburu, Altamira, D. 109. 19 “Está en characteres peregrinos no ussados, y el Urrea dize que no los a visto hasta agora, y que por ser letra muy menuda . . .”: AASG, leg. IV, fol. 165. We thank M. Hagerty for allowing us to see the text of his lecture “Traducción y sobornos en la Corte de Felipe II. El caso del catedrático Diego de Urrea y el arzobispo Pedro de Castro,” in which he makes diego de urrea 231 translations of Luna and Castillo, about whom he always said that their work was meritorious, since the Arabic of the Lead Books was very different from the spoken dialect of the time; but the truth is that, at bottom, he distrusted all three men. Urrea “has not managed to read one letter nor to interpret anything up to now”; Luna, “though he is a good scholar, skilled enough in both the Arabic and Castilian languages, one cannot trust because I understand that he does not know Arabic grammar”; and as for Castillo, “he knows the [Arabic] language better than the others, and knows Latin and Spanish fairly well [. . .] but left alone, he would produce nothing but nonsense.”20 In spite of what the Archbishop claimed, surviving copies of Urrea’s versions of the Lead Books show that the professor from Alcalá did tran- scribe the text (see Illustration 4).21 The fact is that Archbishop Castro wanted to bring Urrea back to work on the Books even after his second stay in Granada; he was convinced that he needed to win Urrea over to the Books’ cause “at any price.”22 To that end his agent in Madrid, Jerónimo de Herrera, began in late 1597 to try to convince Urrea to return; but Urrea was always reluctant, suspicious, and constantly asking for more money,23 and there is no evidence that he was ever in touch with the Lead Books again. There is no question that a principal motive for this distrust of Urrea was his conviction that the Lead Books were a fraud. Although he never entered the polemic in the public arena, Urrea seems to have expressed his opinion to a few close friends. Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, writing to the Marquis of Estepa in 1633, conveyed Urrea’s thoughts:

extensive use of correspondence on this subject from the Sacromonte. See also M. Hagerty, “La traducción interesada: el caso del Marqués de Estepa y los libros plúmbeos,” Homenaje al Prof. Jacinto Bosch Vilá, vol. II (Granada, 1991), 1179–1186. 20 “No ha acertado a leer letra ni interpretado cosa de momento”; “con ser buen letrado, hábil y suficiente en las dos lenguas Arábiga y Castellana, no se fía por tener entendido que no sabe la grammática Arábiga”; “sabe más la lengua que los demás y sabe la latina y castellana medianamente [. . .] pero dexado solo diría disparates”: correspondence of Ignacio de las Casas with the Archbishop of Granada and with the Inquisition on the Sacromonte affair, British Library, Add. 20915, vol. I, fols. 73 and 77r. 21 See, for example, copies of several Lead Books made in Arabic cursive, from originals in “Solomonic” letters, certified by Miguel de Luna and Diego de Urrea, and also translations signed by the latter in October, 1596. Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Papeles de José Temprado, no. 506. 22 AASG, leg. III, 97, fol. 342. In M. Hagerty, “Traducción y sobornos,” op. cit. 23 AASG, Abadía del Sacromonte, leg. III, fols. 351, 356, 360, and 380. 232 chapter ten

For over fifteen or twenty years I was in intimate contact with Diego de Urrea, a great Arabist and former interpreter of Arabic to His Majesty. He went to Granada to prepare a translation of the lead sheets, and after he returned to this court, ill, from Naples, he told me many times what he had kept silent about before: that when he was interpreting [for the Archbishop] exactly what the sheets said, whenever he came to a wicked Mohammedan doctrine—and there were many of them—the Archbishop would grow angry and and say that he couldn’t understand it and that it was impossible that the texts should say that, and would give the passage a meaning that made it seem more like Catholicism. Urrea never believed that, but because it was in his interest to do so he finally silenced what he knew in order to please the Archbishop, although he did it with a bad conscience.24 Another friend of Diego de Urrea’s, Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola (the famous poet and dramatist, and also the official chronicler of the Kingdom of Aragon), expressed very similar feelings when, drawing no doubt on what Urrea had told him, he wrote, “I hold this matter of the lead sheets to be a mockery, and I have more reason for it than Zurita had when he said the same about the bell of Velilla;25 the Archbishop of Granada has taken it up and forced the issue, and some agree with him who are serving rather their [lacuna] than the truth.”26 Argensola, like his brother Bartolomé, must have been well acquainted with Urrea’s ideas about the matter, because Urrea was their friend and Arabic teacher. The two, especially Lupercio, were studying the language for their research into medieval Aragonese history;27 they were already convinced that knowing Arabic would be important for anyone who planned to write the history of Spain.

24 “Traté más de quinze o veinte años familiarísimamente a Diego de Urrea, grande Arábigo y que fue intérprete de esa lengua de Su Magestad, y fue a Granada a la Versión de las Láminas, y después de aver buelto de Nápoles enfermo a esta corte, me dixo muchas vezes lo que antes avía callado, y es que quando le interpretava lo que las láminas dezían puntualmente, en hallando una mala doctrina de mahometanismo, que las avía muchas, el Arzobispo se enfadava con él y dezía que no lo entendía, ni era posible que aquello dixesen, y él le dava el sentido que benía bien para que pareziesse Cathólica, cosa que Urrea nunca tuvo por tal, aunque llevado del interés, disimuló al fin, correspondiendo con el gusto del Arzobispo, pero con bien poca conciencia”: L. P. Harvey and G. Wiegers, “The Translation from Arabic of the Sacromonte Tablets and the Archbishop of Granada: an Illuminating Correspondence,” Qurtuba, 1 (1996), 559–578, esp. 564–565. 25 A reference to the legend of a bell that miraculously tolled by itself when tragic events were about to happen, tolling for the first time in 711 to announce the Arab conquest of the Peninsula. 26 Letter by Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, September 22, 1598, in Conde de Viñaza, Los cronistas de Aragón, op. cit., 77. 27 O. H. Green, Vida y obras de Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola (Saragossa, 1945), and F. Márquez Villanueva, El problema morisco, op. cit., 60 n. 18. diego de urrea 233

Urrea the Historian

We learn from remarks scattered through Urrea’s correspondence about his interest in history, first manifested with regard to Miguel de Luna and his Historia verdadera del rey don Rodrigo. Bartolomé Leonardo de Argen- sola revealed Urrea’s conviction that it was fabricated: . . . I am sure that you will hear the following about the book [. . .] about the loss of Spain [. . .]: that although its author claims that it is a true account translated from Arabic, it is obviously a famous lie and a ridiculous invention, at least if it is considered as history. And he betrayed himself by writing in the margins the Arabic words that he was translating, for he came later to this Court and met Urrea, who caught him out in eight hundred falsehoods with which he confounded him.28 A second letter by the same writer is couched in similar terms: Urrea, whom the king is now sending back to Granada to finish assessing the saints, told Lupercio and me about how he confounded the man who calls himself the translator of this book. After [Urrea] had told [Luna] that he was ignorant of Arabic, and that what he wrote in the margins was absurd and false (a pack of lies, as we say in these parts), he asked him where the original manuscript of the book was. He replied that it was in El Escorial; and since Urrea is the one who, on the king’s orders, arranged and catalogued all the books there, he knows that it contains no such book. So he pinned the fraud on him to the great amusement of all of Spain, as has now become generally known.29 Urrea’s criticism of Luna was savage, but he held a similarly low opinion of other Spanish historians like Blancas and Mariana, who made multiple

28 “El libro [. . .] de la perdición de España [. . .] estoy cierto de que sentirá dél lo siguiente que aunque su autor dize que es historia verdadera traduzida de arábigo, se echa de ver su famosa mentira e invención despropositada, á lo menos en consideración de historia, y hase echado á perder poniendo por las márgenes los vocablos arábigos que traduze, porque él vino á esta corte donde luego se topó con Urrea, el qual lo cogió en ochocientas mentiras con que lo confundió”: letter by Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, April 8, 1596, in Conde de Viñaza, Los cronistas de Aragón, op. cit., 95. 29 “Urrea, á quien ahora vuelve el Rey á enviar a Granada para acabar la averiguación de los Santos, nos contó á Lupercio y á mí cómo confundió al que se llama intérprete de este libro; porque después de haberle dicho que no sabía arábigo y ser disparate y mentira quanto él pone por las márgenes y bernardina que dizen por acá, le preguntó que dónde estaban los originales del libro, respondió que en el Escorial, y como Urrea es quien por el Rey ha ordenado y reconecido los libros del Escorial y sabe que allí no hay tal libro le probó la mentira, no sin risa de toda España, por donde esto se ha entendido”: letter by Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, May 6, 1597, ibid., 97. 234 chapter ten errors about medieval history through their ignorance of Arabic and their inability to use sources in that language: [Urrea] laughs at almost every historian we have when they translate into Spanish: one of them is Blancas, who says that Muza means ‘Christian’; another is Father Mariana, in a thousand places. And he points out that just as in Europe we learn Latin in order to study matters of religion and other aspects of life, in Asia and Africa the followers of Mohammed learn the true Arabic language that was spoken at the time of the conquest of Spain, and was later lost just like Latin.30 No doubt the Argensola brothers hoped to correct these errors with the Arabic that Urrea was teaching them; they sincerely admired his clever- ness and skill, which had made him a recognized authority throughout Spain. Urrea himself had written a history based principally on Arabic sources, as Bartolomé announced: Urrea has completed the first and second parts, translated from this same history of Spain from the time of its conquest by the Arabs and Moors; the division into petty kingdoms led to its decline in power. And although he often lamented the collection of books that he had left in Constantinople, this book of his is based on chronicles owned by the Grand Turk and the king of Morocco. It is now in the hands of Secretary Francisco Idiáquez, waiting for permission to be printed.31 As far as we know, this history of Spain by Urrea, based on Arabic sources, has been lost or has gone astray. Nonetheless the news of a chronicle drawn from Arabic and Turkish sources is of great interest, and stands as a unique example of Orientalist production in Spain at the end of the sixteenth century, in perfect consonance with what was beginning to take place in Europe.

30 “Se burla casi de cuantos historiadores tenemos que traduzen en castellano y uno de ellos es Blancas, que dice que Muza quiere dezir christiano y del Padre Mariana en mil partes, y él advierte, que así como en Europa aprendemos la lengua latina para saber por medio della las cosas de la religión y las demás de la vida, ansí en Asia y Africa los que siguen a Mahoma aprenden la arábiga verdadera que se hablaba en la invasión de España y se perdió como la latina”: ibid. 31 “El mismo Urrea tiene hecha la primera y segunda parte, digo traduzida de esta misma historia de España desde que se ganó, por los Arabes y Maurusies; la división della en régulos fué causa de menguar sus fuerças, y aunque él lamenta mucho la librería que dexó en Constantinopla, está este su libro sacado de las Chronicas que guarda el turco y el rey de Marruecos: están ahora en poder del Secretario Francisco Idiáquez para dar licencia para la impresión”: letter by Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, April 8, 1596, ibid., 95. diego de urrea 235

Diplomatic Missions

As we have noted, many traces can be found in Spanish archives, particularly that of Simancas,32 of Urrea’s work as an interpreter for the Crown. He was more than a mere translator: ever since coming to Spain he had held a prominent position as a possessor of valuable information about the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Possibly his most important diplomatic mission had to do with the arrival in Spain of the Moroccan Sul- tan Muḥammad al-Shaykh al-Maʾmūn,⁠ called “Muley Xeque” in Spanish documents. We are well acquainted with the circumstances of this voyage. Muley Xeque was the son of the great Saʿdī Sultan of Morocco Aḥmad al-Manṣūr, the victor in the Battle of the Three Kings and unquestionably the most distinguished member of the whole dynasty. On his death in 1603 his sons and heirs became entangled in a cruel and prolonged civil war that forced all sides to find political and military allies: thus Muley Zidan, who con- trolled Marrakech, received help from the Turks, while Muley Xeque, who ruled Fez and northern Morocco, sought an alliance with the Spaniards. An offensive mounted by Muley Zidan forced Muley Xeque to flee to the north and then to cross over to Spain, where he hoped to negotiate with Philip III for military aid in exchange for the town of Larache. In March 1609 Muley Xeque landed in Portugal, proceeding in July to Carmona, where he remained for several months. Several significant events marked the sultan’s progress to that Andalusian town, not least that it coincided with the edict of expulsion of the Moriscos. For purposes of this book we will mention only that, according to the Marquis of Estepa, Archbishop Pedro de Castro took advantage of Muley Xeque’s presence in Andalusia to show the Lead Books to some of his Moroccan followers, who dismissed them as “Christians’ affairs.”33 In the meantime, Diego de Urrea had left the Court in 1607 and, at his own request and having taught an assistant to translate letters from Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, had gone to Málaga to serve the Duke of Medina Sidonia.34 According to Juan Luis de Rojas, Urrea had by this time

32 M. García-Arenal, F. Rodríguez Mediano, and R. El Hour, Cartas marruecas, op. cit., passim. For Muley Xeque’s stay in Spain and the negotiations over Larache, see esp. 95–127. 33 Letter from the Marquis of Estepa to Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, February 22, 1633; in L. P. Harvey and G. Wiegers, “The Translation from Arabic,” op. cit., 69. 34 Letter from Philip III to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, March 12, 1607: Archivo Ducal de Medina Sidonia, leg. 2407. In the letter Philip begs the Duke to “honor and favor him 236 chapter ten conceived the wish to move to Naples, but had had to postpone the journey because of the Larache matter. He was, in fact, the best person to approach Muley Xeque as a diplomat for everything that concerned the Larache negotiations, especially in light of the fact that Urrea and Muley Xeque were old acquaintances. Indeed, one of the letters that the Moroccan sultan sent from Car- mona states: “I inform Your Majesty that your servant Diego de Urrea was brought up with me in Tlemcen and we studied together, and the love that he felt for me then is much greater now, and can be clearly seen in what he revealed to me about the Turks and other things.”35 In other words, after Urrea’s capture as a child he had arrived in the same madrasa in Tlemcen as Muley Xeque, whom he now met again in Carmona after more than forty years. Urrea must have relied on this old friendship, together with his knowledge of Ottoman politics and Turkish plans for conquering Morocco, to convince the Moroccan sultan at last that he must relinquish Larache.36 In the end Urrea translated the sixteen points of the Larache treaty for Muley Xeque and accompanied him back to Morocco, to the Peñón de Vélez and Tangier. Nonetheless, he had wished for several years to return to Italy, and he managed to do so in 1611, when he was about fifty-five years old.

Diego de Urrea in Naples

What made it possible for Urrea to return to Italy was the arrival in Naples of the new Viceroy, Don Pedro Fernández de Castro, Count of Lemos, in 1610.37 Lemos was perhaps the most important literary Maecenas in Spain in the early seventeenth century, and a great many writers sought

[Urrea] in everything, as he deserves for having served me long and well, for his zeal for continuing to do so, and for his good qualities; by this you will do me a particular favor and service” (“honrarle y favorecerle en todo como lo merece su persona por lo mucho y bien que me ha servido, el zelo que tiene de continuarlo y sus buenas partes, que de ello receviré de vos particular gusto y servicio”). 35 Letter from Muley Xeque to Philip III, December 12, 1609: AGS, Estado, leg. 256, 74. 36 AGS, Estado, leg. 213. 37 See, for example, O. H. Green, “The Literary Court of the Conde de Lemos at Naples, 1610–1616,” Hispanic Review, I.4 (October, 1933), 290–308; and F. Fernández Murga, “El Conde de Lemos, virrey-mecenas de Nápoles,” Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale. Sezione Romanza, IV, 1 (January, 1962), 5–27. There is a full bibliography in I. Enciso Alonso-Muñumer, Nobleza, poder y mecenazgo en tiempos de Felipe III. Nápoles y el Conde de Lemos (Madrid, 2007). diego de urrea 237 his patronage and dedicated their works to him—including Cervantes for the second part of Don Quixote.38 As soon as it became known that Lemos was going to Naples as Viceroy, many important authors, including Gón- gora and Cervantes himself, aspired to go with him. In the end most of those hopes were disappointed, and only a few, like Mira de Amescua, succeeded in joining him; these aspirations became almost a literary cli- ché among the poets of the time. Among the principal figures in the Count of Lemos’s circle were the brothers Bartolomé and Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, especially the latter, who became the Count’s secretary in 1608. It is natural to suppose that the brothers’ friendship with Urrea, of more than ten years’ standing, played a role in Urrea’s transfer to the Viceregal court in Naples, where his presence is documented from 1611.39 Lemos’s time in Naples represents an important chapter in the period of Spanish rule, especially from a cultural point of view. His “literary court” has been the object of several studies that have attempted to analyze its cultural meaning and impact. One of its signature moments was the foundation of the Accademia degli Oziosi, which met for the first time on May 13, 1611;40 this academy sought to integrate Hispano-Neapolitan literary society into the court, as part of a general project of Spanish hegemony in both culture and politics. We have been unable to determine if Diego de Urrea became a member of the Accademia, like his friends the Argensolas.41 We have better knowledge, thanks to the works of Giuseppe Gabrieli on the Accademia

38 J. Simón Díaz, “Libros dedicados al gran Conde de Lemos,” El Museo de Pontevedra, 44 (1990), 247–266. 39 The Count himself was aware of the royal favor that Urrea enjoyed: “I shall also take care to pay and accomodate Diego de Urrea, knowing the regard in which Your Majesty holds him”: letter of the Count of Lemos to Philip III, December 6, 1612, in E. Pardo de Guevara y Valdés, in collaboration with P. Rodríguez Suárez and D. Barral Rivadulla, Don Pedro Fernández de Castro VII conde de Lemos (1576–1662), II, Colección documental (San- tiago de Compostela, 1997), 203. 40 On the Accademia degli Oziosi see V. Comparato, “Società civile e società letteraria nel primo seicento: l’Accademia degli Oziosi,” Quaderni Storici, 23 (May–August, 1973), 359–388; T. Cirillo, “Letterati italiani e spagnoli nell’Accademia degli Oziosi,” in M. Bosse and A. Stoll (coords.), Napoli viceregno spagnolo. Una capitale della cultura alle origini dell’Europa moderna (sec. XVI–XVII), 2 vols. (Naples, 2001), vol. II, 169–181; and I. Inciso, Nobleza, poder y mecenazgo, op. cit., 649–679. 41 His name does not appear on the list of members provided by C. Minneo Ricci in Accademie fiorite nella città di Napoli (Naples, 1879), 83 ff. 238 chapter ten dei Lincei,42 of his activities as an Arabist, on which he sought to embark from the time of his arrival in Naples. Thus on October 4, 1611, he wrote an important letter to Cardinal Federico Borromeo of Milan, announcing that he had been in Naples for two months, and offering to help the cardinal with the search for Arabic books that the latter had already begun in the East. (The cardinal had founded the Biblioteca Ambrosiana only two years earlier.) Urrea noted that it was a good idea to look for the Camus (that is, al-Fīrūzabādī’s famous dictionary al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ), because it was “one of the best and most beneficial books that exist in those parts,” and that if he had known of the Cardinal’s wishes he would have sent him a list of desirable books to find. In the meantime he offered to translate the Qāmūs, “which will be a work of great benefit to the Church of God and for the extirpation of the Mohammedan faith” (note the constant repetition of the same argument, using almost the same words); he thought that there was a copy in the Medici Library. Finally he added that he had met a gentleman named Francesco Piazza, who had given an excellent report of the library that the Cardinal had founded.43 In effect, Piazza had been sent to Naples by Cardi- nal Borromeo to seek out books for the collection, and there he had met Urrea and been struck by his “discourse, prudence, pragmatism, humanity, gentility, and knowledge.” He added in a letter to the cardinal that at a gathering at the home of Giovan Battista della Porta, Urrea had astonished those present by commenting on some of the places named in an Arabic geographical work, “translating it into Spanish with great erudition.”44 This contact with Giovan Battista della Porta would be crucial for another important incident during Diego de Urrea’s stay in Italy. Della Porta was a central figure in the Neapolitan culture of the time, a magi- cian, playwright, and member of the Accademia degli Oziosi. But he was significant too for other reasons: he was a friend of Prince Federico Cesi, whom he must have met during the latter’s only visit to Naples. It is well known that Cesi’s position as a patron had led him to found in Rome in 1603 the Accademia dei Lincei, one of the most important scientific centers of the day, to which Galileo himself belonged. A few years later,

42 V. Sagaria Rossi, “Il gusto bibliofilo di Leone Gaetani e l’interesse per l’Oriente di Federico Cesi: due Lincei a confronto,” Bibliotheca, II:1 (2003), 156–175. 43 G. Gabrieli, “Federico Borromeo e gli accademici lincei,” in Contributi alla storia della Accademia dei Lincei, 2 vols. (Rome, 1989), vol. II, 1464–1486. The letter appears on 1483–1484. 44 Ibid., 1470–1471. diego de urrea 239 in 1612, the long acquaintance of Cesi and Della Porta would bear fruit with the founding of a Colonia or branch of the Accademia dei Lincei in Naples. Among the interests of its academicians was the study of the Arabic language. As we shall see in the next chapter, Cesi himself had learned some Arabic, and there are examples of Arabic letters that members of the Academy wrote to each other. In this connection, Della Porta had already told Cesi in December 1611 that there was a secretary to the king of Spain present in Naples who was an expert in Oriental languages;45 and when a mere two months later, on February 2, 1612, the Colonia Napolitana of the Lincei was founded, Diego de Urrea appeared among the members, signing his appointment in both Latin and Arabic.46 It may seem strange to find among the Lincei a man like Urrea who, contrary to what the Academy’s statutes required, had no training in either natural philosophy or mathematics. There were probably several reasons for his inclusion. On the one hand, Cesi always showed himself very prudent as to the presence of the Lincei in Naples; he tried to ensure that their activities not be perceived as being in opposition to the Count of Lemos’s cultural goals. In that delicate situation, accepting Diego de Urrea might have been a way to satisfy Giovan Battista della Porta, the key figure among the Lincei of Naples.47 But on the other hand there was a more immediate motive: Urrea, with his reputation as a gifted Arabist, could translate and make accessible some of the works that were of interest to the Lincei. The day after his admission to the Lincei, Urrea wrote in Arabic to Prince Cesi offering his services to the Academy in whatever it might ask of him.48 For his part Cesi, in his report to Galileo about the new members from Naples, told him that Diego de Urrea was a “noble gentleman and of no common learning; for, in addition to philosophy and a good understanding of other sciences, he is a complete master of the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish languages. He was once secretary for those languages to the

45 G. Gabrieli, “Giovan Battista della Porta linceo da documenti per gran parte inediti,” ibid., 635–685. 46 G. Gabrieli, Contributi, op. cit., vol. II, Table II; and id., Il carteggio linceo (Rome, 1996), 201. 47 G. Olmi, “La colonia lincea di Napoli,” in F. Lomonaco and M. Torrini (coords.), Galileo e Napoli. Atti del convegno Galileo e Napoli. Napoli, 12–14 aprile 1984 (Naples, 1987), 23–58, esp. 37. 48 G. Gabrieli, Il carteggio, op. cit., 201; and id., Contributi, vol. II, Table VII. 240 chapter ten king of Fez, and is now the same to the king of Spain . . .”.49 Cesi proposed elsewhere that Urrea should exchange letters in Arabic with other members of the Academy.50 While there are occasional brief references in correspondence among the Lincei to certain translations that Urrea wished to make, we have information about only one project in particular. In 1614 Cesi informed Galileo of the death of Giovanni Battista Raimondi, unquestionably the most renowned Italian Arabist of the period, whom we shall have occasion to meet later on. Raimondi had promoted one of the most interesting typographical ventures of the time, the Tipografia Medicea Orientale, and was also the owner of an important collection of Oriental manuscripts. In the letter in question Cesi told Galileo of his hope that some of the principal volumes of Raimondi’s library might be translated into Latin and published; he asked him to think about which of those volumes might be copied, since they had with them in Naples “Don Diego de Urrea, who would do it magnificently.”51 One of the manuscripts of greatest interest to these two academicians consisted of the final three books of the Conics of Apollonius of Perga, which survived only in Arabic translation.52 The importance of this text was recognized in the seventeenth century by European scientists and Orientalists, who made several attempts to obtain and edit it. Raimondi owned an Arabic copy that had been brought from the East by the Jaco- bite Patriarch of Antioch, Ignatius Niʿmatallah; he had announced an edition before his death.53 Eventually, the first Latin translation of the three books was published in Florence in 1661 by Abraham Ecchellensis and Alfonso Borelli. It can be deduced from the above that Urrea did not, after all, translate the three books of the Conics that Cesi and Galileo had hoped to entrust to him. Nonetheless, we find him here involved in the early stages of an important project in which renowned European scholars took part over the course of decades, as they zealously sought sources that would allow

49 “Caballero noble y de doctrina no ordinaria, porque, además de la filosofía y de una buena comprensión de otras ciencias, domina cumplidamente la lengua árabe, persa y turca. Antes fue secretario del rey de Fez, y ahora del de España, de dichas lenguas”: letter from Federico Cesi to Galileo, March 17, 1612; G. Gabrieli, Il carteggio, op. cit., 209. 50 Ibid., 344. 51 Letter from Federico Cesi to Galileo, February 15, 1614; G. Gabrieli, “I primi accademici lincei,” op. cit., 338 ff.; and id., Il carteggio, op. cit., 417. 52 G. Gabrieli, “I primi accademici lincei,” op. cit. 338 ff. 53 See, for example, G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, vol. I (Baltimore, 1927), 173–175; and G. J. Toomer, Eastern Wisdom and Learning. The Study of Arabic in Sev enteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1996), 235–242. diego de urrea 241 them to prepare a reliable edition of a crucial text. The incident summarizes nicely Urrea’s singular trajectory, especially during these last years of his life, in which he made contact with leading figures of early Ital- ian Orientalism and was able to influence them; such was the case with Mario Schipano, whom he must have met at the home of Giovan Battista della Porta. Schipano was also one of the Lincei (in response, once again, to Cesi’s continued interest in Arabic and in Apollonius of Perga); it is possible, as Gabrieli supposes, that it was Urrea who taught him Arabic.54 He corresponded with another illustrious Orientalist, Pietro della Valle, a renowned Italian traveler, whose role in seeking out and collecting Ori- ental manuscripts was decisive at this crucial moment at which the great Italian libraries were being formed. Perhaps Della Valle formed his plan to travel to the East during evenings at the home of Giovan Battista della Porta, in the company of Urrea and Schipano.55 Urrea’s influence went beyond carrying out particular projects that, as we have seen, did not come to fruition: it extended to what we might call an educational role. We have already noted documentation that shows him leaving behind in Spain skilled pupils of the Arabic language who could continue his work on behalf of the Crown. One of those disciples was Francisco de Gurmendi.

Francisco de Gurmendi

Francisco de Gurmendi also played a prominent role in the Lead Books affair. Like his teachers Urrea and Dobelio (to be considered in subsequent chapters), he undertook to translate the Books, and also like them, he came to the conclusion that they were falsifications, a stance that opened him to violent criticisms coming from the Sacromonte. Gurmendi was an interesting character for a variety of reasons. Once again we are faced with an individual who was formed far from the world of the Moriscos: he was a Basque from Guipúzcoa, born in Zarauz, and

54 G. Gabrieli, “Il linceo di Napoli. Lincei e linceabili napolitani amici e corrispondenti della vecchia Accademia dei Lincei nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia,” Contributi, op. cit., vol. II, 1497–1548, esp. 1519. 55 E. Rossi, “Pietro della Valle orientalista romano (1586–1652),” Oriente Moderno, 33.1 (January, 1953), 49–64; R. Salvante, Il “Pellegrino” in Oriente. La Turchia di Pietro della Valle (1614–1617) (Florence, 1997); and J. D. Gurney, “Pietro della Valle: The Limits of Perception,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 49–1 (1986), 103–116. 242 chapter ten was a relative of Juan de Idiáquez, one of the most prominent members of Philip III’s court. It is not clear why he devoted himself to the study of Arabic. Juan de Pastrana dedicated a sonnet to him as a preface to his most important book, the Doctrina phísica y moral de príncipes, in which he wonders at the strange phenomenon of a Basque who studied that language: “It seems like magic, or a miracle, or a dream/ that a man from Guipúzcoa, whose home is Zarauz [. . .]/should be skilled in the Arabic language/ and understand the African, the Asian, and the islander.”56 Gur- mendi must have begun learning Arabic with Diego de Urrea, and have continued with Marcos Dobelio; he then entered the service of Philip III as a translator. It was Gurmendi who was involved in one of the most crucial events in the history of El Escorial. In 1611 the Spanish Navy intercepted and seized several ships owned by a Frenchman—a corsair, according to the Spanish authorities—which were transporting the library of the Moroccan Sultan Muley Zidan. The 4,000 captured volumes were incorporated into Spain’s royal library, and between 1612 and 1614, Gurmendi was in charge of making a first assessment of this valuable collection. In the course of it, in 1612, he requested “that he be given books in all fields of learning and science that he considered necessary for his study of Arabic, especially vocabularies and other works on the correctness and elegance of the language; then Gurmendi can translate into Spanish some books that seem to merit it, because they deal with morals or with history.”57 No doubt he was referring here in part to the work that he must have been translating at the time, which would be published with the title Doc trina phísica y moral de príncipes. It is a singular book; as Gurmendi himself wrote in the prologue, I undertook with great pleasure the translation of these maxims, putting them into a style and language that our courtiers and learned citizens could

56 “Parece encanto, y que es milagro o sueño/ que un guipuzcoano, de Zarauz vecino [. . .]/ sea en la lengua arábiga ladino/y entienda al afro, asio y al isleño”: sonnet by Juan Bautista Pastrana to Francisco de Gurmendi, in Doctrina phísica y moral de príncipes. Dirigido a don Francisco Gómez Sandoval y Roxas, Duque de Lerma [. . .]. Traduzido de arábigo en castellano, por Francisco de Gurmendi, criado de Su Magestad, natural de la Pro vincia de Guipúzcoa (Madrid: Andrés de Parra y Gaspar García, 1615). 57 “[S]e le dejen algunos libros de todas las facultades y ciencias, que él tuviese por necesarios para sus estudios de la dicha lengua arábiga, como son los vocabularios y otros de la propiedad y elegancia de la lengua: y el dicho Gurmendi podrá traducir en castellano algunos que parezcan merecerlo, por ser materias morales ó de historia”: letter from Fran- cisco de Gurmendi to Gregorio de Ciriza, Madrid, May 6, 1614. Cited in B. Justel, La Real Biblioteca de El Escorial y sus manuscritos (Madrid, 1978), 181–183. diego de urrea 243

enjoy, so that it be noted and seen what treasures are hidden beneath the Arabic language, and to satisfy those who question whether there are books and philosophers among the infidels. Let them learn from this to feel for them, and to ask God, who is wisdom itself, to bring them to knowledge of the truth.58 The work is a mirror for princes translated from Arabic; not literally, but rather with modifications of style to make it acceptable to Christian tastes. Another of the prefatory sonnets to the volume, by Beatriz de Villanueva, tries to clarify this concept using the metaphor of a bee that turns the bitter broom-flower into sweet nectar; in just this way, she apostrophizes Gurmendi, “your philosophy transposed/ from its Arabic origin to Castile,/ makes the barbarous language courteous,/ a bitter flower transformed into purest honey.”59 In effect, Gurmendi presents a Christian re-creation of one or more Islamic mirrors for princes, and thus gives readers access to the hidden treasures of the Arabic language. Gurmendi does not mention what book or books he is translating, but in spite of the changes he introduces, the Islamic origin of his sources is clear from the characters he cites; they occur in well-known Arabic and Persian examples of the same literary genre, like al-Turtūshī’s Sirāj al-mulūk, which may have served as a source. Gurmendi dedicated the unusual result of his reworking to the Duke of Lerma. As we have noted, Gurmendi worked on the lead sheets from Granada, and produced translations of the books Fundamentum Ecclesiae and De essentia Dei, in collaboration with Martín Berrotarán y Mendiola. From the very first, as he revealed in marginal notes to his own translation, Gur- mendi was convinced that the texts were false, and argued that the language in which they were written was a “corrupt Arabic,” “Morisco,” and not the ancient Arabic tongue that their defenders claimed.60 His criticisms, which he published in at least two treatises or booklets between 1615 and 1617, brought virulent objections from the archbishop’s circle,

58 “Con gusto me ocupé en la traduzión destas sentencias, poniéndolas en estilo y lenguaje que gozassen dellas nuestros Cortesanos y Ciudadanos estudiosos, para que se advierta y note qué tesoros están escondidos debaxo de aquel idioma Árabe, y para satis- fazer a los que ponen en questión si ay libros y Filósofos entre aquellos infieles, porque saque de aquí el dolerse dellos, y pedir a Dios, que es la verdadera sabiduría, los traiga en conocimiento de la verdad”: F. de Gurmendi, Doctrina phísica y moral de príncipes, op. cit. 59 “Vuestra filosofía trasladada,/ del origen Arábigo en Castilla,/ buelve cortés el Bár- baro idioma./ Flor amarga en miel pura transformada.” 60 See, for example, AASG, leg. V, fol. 843. 244 chapter ten and he suffered the many inconveniences that faced all those who questioned the Books’ veracity.61 We should recall here that Gurmendi was associated with the humanist Pedro de Valencia, author of the treatise Sobre el pergamino y las láminas de Granada (On the Parchment and the sheets from Granada).62 Gur- mendi, Mendiola, and Valencia formed a well-defined group of opponents of the Books, and sent their writings to Rome in an attempt to influence the Papal decision about them.63 But beyond the virulent polemics that placed Pedro de Valencia and his friends in opposition to the Sacromonte and its defenders, and which have been studied in depth by Gaspar Morocho and Grace Magnier, we wish to situate Gurmendi in a separate intellectual context, the one that included his teachers of Arabic. Urrea, whose life we have just explored in detail, was very different from the first translators of the Lead Books, all of whom emerged from the Morisco world. With his deep knowledge of the East and of Arabic, Turkish, and Persian literature, Urrea was capable of viewing the Lead Book texts against a broader background. His work as a translator, interpreter, historian, and cataloguer in Spain, and his life in Italy surrounded by an important group of intellectuals, shaped him into one who could share in a phenomenon that was beginning to emerge in Europe: the need to learn about Oriental languages and cultures. The same could be said about another figure whose life moved between Italy and Spain, who was Gurmendi’s Arabic teacher, and whose role in the Lead Books affair was of the greatest significance, as we are about to see: Marcos Dobelio.

61 See G. Magnier, “Pedro de Valencia, Francisco de Gurmendi y los Plomos de Gra nada,” op. cit., passim. 62 See G. Magnier, “The Dating of Pedro de Valencia’s Sobre el pergamino y las láminas de Granada,” Sharq al-Andalus, 14–15 (1997–1998), 353–374; G. Morocho, “Estudio introductorio,” op. cit., passim; and P. de Valencia, Sobre el pergamino y láminas de Granada (Oxford, 2006). 63 G. Morocho, “Estudio introductorio,” op. cit., 326–332. chapter eleven

marcos dobelio

Marcos Dobelio is one of the most fascinating figures of all those who came into contact with the Lead Books. Both his biography and his intellectual and theological formation—not at all like those of the other translators and scholars who were involved in the Sacromonte events—give his work a singular and striking character. As an Eastern Christian who had passed through Rome and become a professor of Arabic at La Sapienza, he viewed the Books as a genuine aberration, not only linguistically or theologically but also for the type of religiosity that they inspired in the unusual atmosphere of Granada. How did Marcos Dobelio arrive there?

The Sacromonte Seeks Arabic Translators

From the first moment, the work produced by the translators of the Lead Books had proved problematic: either it was insufficient, or did not satisfy Don Pedro de Castro, or simply produced disbelief among those who were convinced that the discoveries were false. The search for experts that was launched from Spain was an operation on a truly grand scale, which came to touch such renowned individuals as Thomas van Erpen or Erpenius; he was the professor of Arabic at Leiden, and the founder of an Arabic press that produced some of the fundamental works of European scholarship. Erpenius, who as we have seen had studied Arabic with Aḥmad al-Ḥajarī, among others, had been on the verge of traveling to Granada at Pedro de Castro’s invitation to translate the Lead Books.1 At the beginning of the seventeenth century an active search was mounted in Italy for translators of Arabic. A document from the Sac- romonte Abbey, unsigned and undated but datable to 1608–1609,2 includes a report by an Italian who recommends several specialists who might travel

1 Erpenius’s correspondence with Pedro de Castro has been recovered by J. Martínez Ruiz, “Cartas de Thomas van Erpen (Thomas Erpenius) en un Archivo de Granada (1623–24),” Boletín de la Real Academia Española, 55 (May–August 1975), 267–306. 2 AASG, leg. VI, fol. 1191. See, for additional details, F. Rodríguez Mediano and M. García- Arenal, “De Diego de Urrea a Marcos Dobelio,” op. cit., 329. 246 chapter eleven to Granada; it is, in fact, a summary list of contemporary Roman Arabists, and contains a number of illustrious names. The first is that of Giovanni Battista Raimondi, famous for his sponsorship of the Tipografia Medicea Orientale. Next to his name appear those of Giovan Battista Vecchietti, an Italian scholar and traveler also connected to the Tipografia Medicea, who on his voyages to the East, among other activities, had copied many manuscripts; “Gioanne Cipriotto” and a “Sr. Giovanni,” both Maronites, who may possibly be identified with Yuhanna ibn Girgis of Vuno and John Hesronite;3 “messer Theodolo, of the Tartar nation,” a convert also linked to Raimondi’s circle; and “Francesco Capita [?],” a “Burgundian gentleman, a canon in Bisinzone [Besançon?].” The names of two Spaniards also appear on this list: Diego Pérez de Mesa, professor of mathematics at Salamanca and Alcalá de Henares, who was residing in Rome at the time and who, according to the document, “knows the Arabic and Latin languages”;4 and “Señor Luis Félix of Seville,” the same Luis Félix who formed part of Clement VIII’s bizarre embassy to Persia led by Diego de Miranda and Francisco da Costa.5 Thus what we find here is a varied catalogue, naturally centered on the strongest institutions of Arabic learning in Rome at the time: Raimondi’s Tipogra- fia Medicea and the Maronite College, founded in 1584. It is natural too that the document should allude to yet another expert scholar of Arabic named Marcos Dobelio, “a Kurd by nationality who resides in Rome, holds the Chair of Arabic language at Rome, and also knows Latin.” It was unlikely that these individuals would actually travel to Granada. A meeting among all or most of them could only have taken place in Rome, because it would cost too much to bring them all to Spain. Some of them were in difficult personal circumstances: for example, Vecchi- etti was a captive in Tunis at the time. Canon Juan de Matute, Pedro de Castro’s delegate to Rome for a visit ad limina, was charged with making efforts there to attract at least one of these men as a translator.6 On the

3 For the first see N. Gemayel, Les échanges culturels entre les maronites et l’Europe. Du Collège de Rome (1584) au Collège de ʿAyn-Warqa (1789), 2 vols. (Beirut, 1984), vol. I, 34 and 97; and I. Harfus, “Talāmīdhāt al-madrasa al-rūmāniyya al-mārūniyya al-qadīma,” Al-Manāra, 6 (1935), 661–673, esp. 662 and 664 (the article continues on 733–745 and 802– 812, and in vol. 7 [1936], 18–27, 184–187, 258–273, 424–432, and 543–550). For the second see P. Raphael, Le rôle du Collège maronite Romain dans l’orientalisme au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Beirut, 1950), 96. 4 On him see below, Chapter 16. 5 C. Alonso, “Una embajada de Clemente VIII a Persia (1600–1609), Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 34 (1996), 7–125. 6 AASG, leg. 1, Part 2, fols. 171–172. marcos dobelio 247 recommendation of Cardinal Ginnasi he contacted a sixty-six-year-old converted Turk named Pedro Aldobrandino (who had assumed the name of the cleric who had baptized him, Cardinal Aldobrandini); although the Turk knew Arabic well (and perhaps Greek and Aramaic also, according to the Cardinal), he was not versed in either Latin or Spanish. Matute, accompanied by the Spanish ambassador (who must have been Francisco de Castro), called on Raimondi in person to convince him to come to Spain. But Raimondi excused himself on grounds of age (in March of 1610 he was already seventy-four), although he would have liked to collaborate in the translations. In fact, he made a brief sample translation and offered a way to work at long distance: if the Lead Books could be printed and sent to him in Rome, “by this means the Pope and the world would be satisfied, and they would never leave our hands; for this affair is badly spoken of, since fifteen years have passed and not a single document has been seen in Rome that speaks in support of it, but rather with oppro- brium and criticism.”7 While making this approach to Raimondi, Matute also contacted Dobelio (“a famous Arab who teaches the language in the schools of La Sapienza,” “a Parthian by birth who teaches Arabic at La Sapienza, with explanations of grammar”); he gave him to translate some Lead Book texts that Aybar had sent him, and others that Miguel de Luna had sent to his own son, who lived in Rome, which Matute had been able to see. Dobelio was then thirty-eight years old, and must not have enjoyed good relations with Raimondi (“Marcos and Raimondi [. . .] are like cats and dogs, each one saying that the other knows nothing”). In the end, although at first he did not seem much inclined to go to Spain, Dobelio arrived in Granada on October 30, 1610, to begin his translation of the Lead Books. Gaspar Moro- cho has speculated that Dobelio was also performing a mission for Pope Paul V and the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rome, since they hoped to learn once and for all the true nature of the discoveries in Granada.8 As Dobelio relates in La nueva falsedad del metal (A new [treatise] on the falsity of metal sheets), he was to remain in Spain for twenty-seven years.

7 “Y con esto se daría satisfazión al Papa y al mundo, y no se soltarían de las manos; que no se habla bien deste negocio, que a quinze años que succedió y no se a visto en Roma papel ninguno que hable en su abono, sino en oprobio y en contra.” 8 G. Morocho, “Estudio introductorio,” op. cit., 308 and 335. 248 chapter eleven

An Arabist in Italy and Spain

Giorgio Levi della Vida has uncovered a few details of Marcos Dobelio’s life in Rome. He had entered the Pia Casa dei Neofiti on April 23, 1597 (if we are to believe Matute’s assertion that he was thirty-eight in 1610, he would have arrived in Rome at the age of twenty-five); he left it on Febru- ary 6, 1601, “with permission from no one.”9 In the same document he is called “Marco d obeli from Aleppo in Syria, of Turkish origin,” although, as Levi delli Vida points out, these data contradict others that were recorded about him: “Turkish” seems to be an error for “Kurdish,” as he is termed in other documents (sometimes also “Parthian,” as Canon Matute called him), and Aleppo does not appear to have been his native city, although he may have lived there while he was still in the East. In spite of these discrepancies, the coincidence of names makes it very likely that this was the same Marcos Dobelio that we are speaking of. If he is the same person, then his having passed through the neophytes’ college would indicate a conversion, perhaps from Islam or, more probably, from any of the East- ern Christian confessions that did not owe obedience to Rome. In any event he seems to have abandoned the neophytes’ house abruptly in order to begin a new life on his own. Between 1605 and 1610 he appears as a professor of Arabic at La Sapienza in Rome,10 under the name “Marco Dobelo di Nisibe.” We have already seen him teaching there at the time that Matute and the Spanish ambassador contacted him. His activities as an expert in Arabic left important traces in Rome. Levi della Vida identifies him, with considerable likelihood, as the author of an anonymous inventory of the Vatican Library’s Arabic manuscripts that was made early in the seventeenth century;11 this list left its mark on the brief Latin titles of about forty of the Arabic, Turkish, and Coptic codices. He also appears in a codex from the Barberini collection, now signing his name in Arabic as “Marqus al-Duʾabilī al-Kurdī” (i.e., “the Kurd”), as he made a compendium of various works of medicine12—as we shall see, his interest in medicine followed him to Spain, together with his

9 G. Levi della Vida, Ricerche sulla formazione del più antico fondo dei manoscritti orientali della Biblioteca Vaticana (Vatican City, 1939), 284–285. 10 Ibid., 280–281. 11 Ibid., 268 ff. 12 BAV Barb. or. 30, which contains a Majmūʿ min ṣanʿat al-ṭibb that includes the phrase: jamaʿa-hu Marqus al-ḥaqīr al-mutagharrib dāʾiman fī bilād al-Shām li-anna hākadhā arāda al-dahr[. . .] al-Duʿābilī al-Kurdī (“compiled by Marqus the wretched, eternal exile in Syria because fate wished it so [. . .], al-Duʿābilī al-Kurdī”), fol. 199r. marcos dobelio 249 personal library. Since this last manuscript is an autograph, it allows us to trace his work on other Vatican codices and in several activities related to its Oriental collection.13 Giuseppe Gabrieli has hazarded a guess that Marcos Dobelio was “l’Arabicho” whom Prince Federico Cesi cited as one of his teachers of Arabic.14 We have noted that Cesi had founded the Accademia dei Lincei, giving pride of place to learning the Arabic language—to the point where several academicians used it to write letters to each other—and promoting Diego de Urrea’s acceptance among the members of the academy’s Colonia Neapolitana. A connection with Cesi’s circle would explain how Marcos Dobelio could be the author of an Arabic epigram that prefaces a work by Giovan Battista della Porta, De aeris transmutationibus, where Dobelio appears as “Rom. Gymnasio linguae arabicae profess.”.15 The book’s dedication to Cesi is one more indication of a link between Dobelio and the Lincei’s founder, supporting the assumption that Dobelio might have been one of his Arabic teachers. This hypothesis is further supported by a series of manuscripts, now in the Vatican, that originated in Cesi’s library and were copied by Dobelio.16 Levi della Vida also provides us with a letter that Marcos Dobelio sent from Spain to the great Genevan scholar Isaac Casaubon, who had been in England since 1610.17 Casaubon was unquestionably one of the most learned men of his day; one of his greatest successes had been a denuncia- tion of the supposed ancient character of the Corpus hermeticum, which

13 Dobelio’s handwriting can be identified in several Vatican Library manuscripts, e.g., Barb. Or. 30, Barb. Or. 92, Borg. ar. 66, and Barb. Or. 93 (we owe this last reference to Valentina Sagaria Rossi). See also Levi della Vida Richerche, op. cit., 283. 14 Letter of Federico Cesi to Frencesco Stelluti, July 17, 1604, cited in G. Gabrieli, “I primi accademici lincei e gli studi orientali,” in Contributi alla storia della Accademia dei Lincei, vol. I (Rome, 1989), 331–345, esp. 344. 15 G. Battista della Porta, De aeris transmutationibus libri 4 [. . .] ad illustriss. principem [. . .] D. Federicum Cesi (Romae: apud Bartholomaeum Zennetum, 1610). See G. Gabrieli, “I primi accademici lincei,” op. cit., 341; id., Il carteggio linceo (Rome, 1996), 39, n. 2; and G. Levi della Vida, Ricerche, op. cit., 281. 16 For example, BAV Barb. or. 92, a miscellany of several Arabic works of which two (Kitāb miftāḥ al-ḥikma fī l-falsafa al-ṭabīʿa and Kitāb sulwān al-mutaʿ fī ʿunwān al-atbāʿ) bear the seal of the Bibliotheca Lyncea. It is known that Cardinal Barberini bought several dozen manuscripts from Cesi’s library after the latter’s death: see G. Gabrieli, “La prima biblioteca lincea o libreria di Federico Cesi,” Contributi, 79–96, esp. 84. 17 On Casaubon see A. Hamilton, “Isaac Casaubon The Arabist: ‘Video Longum esse Iter’ ”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 70 (2009), 142–168; and A. Grafton and J. Weinberg, I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship, Cambridge-London, 2011. 250 chapter eleven he included in a broad attack on Cardinal Baronio’s Annales ecclesiastici.18 In Dobelio’s letter, written in Arabic and dated July 23, 1613, he tells Casaubon how a few years earlier he had met Christophe Dupuy, who had praised Casaubon and his Arabic scholarship. Dobelio had arrived in Spain three years before, invited by the king’s confessor and by Cardinal Bernardo Rojas de Sandoval of Toledo, as a specialist who could translate the Lead Books unearthed in the Sacromonte. He had accepted (“I left the school where I taught, my work as a secretary in the Pope’s library and as a translator for the Eastern churches, my salary, my books, and I took ship . . .”) and had begun to translate the Books. When he realized that they were a fabrication, the Archbishop of Granada had withdrawn him from the task. He was now awaiting the result of a claim that he had made to receive his promised payment, and even if he were to be offered additional work as an interpreter, he would be happy to leave Spain and take up residence in England.19 In 1603, while he was still in France, Casaubon had begun to correspond with William Bedwell, considered the founder of English Arabism, because of their shared interest in the Arabic language. At that time Casaubon was reconsidering the rigid Calvinsim in which he had been raised, and was evolving toward a position that was closer to Anglicanism. Fearful for his safety as a Protestant in Paris, especially after the death of his protector Henry IV, Casaubon moved to England in 1610 and continued his friendship with Bedwell; in fact, it was the latter who helped him to read Dobe- lio’s Arabic letter.20 It seems that Dobelio was untroubled by the thought of living in an Anglican country, so great was his desire to develop as an Arabist and to meet Casaubon on an equal footing. His achievements in Arabic were considerable, as may be seen by his work in Italy and then in Spain, so that it may have seemed natural to him to aspire to enter the highest circles of European Orientalism. Dobelio never went to England; Casaubon died only a year after receiving his letter, in 1614. In late 1623 Dobelio petitioned the king for the position of translator that had been vacated by both Diego de Urrea and Francisco de Gurmendi, arguing that in El Escorial’s library there were “over 600 books of history, and it is important that they be translated,”

18 See, for example, G. Cipriani, Gli Obelischi egizi. Politica e cultura nella Roma barocca (Florence, 1993), 88–90; and A. Grafton, Falsarios y críticos. Creatividad e impostura en la tradición occidental (Madrid, 2001), 92–107. 19 G. Levi della Vida, Ricerche, op. cit., 283. 20 A. Hamilton, William Bedwell the Arabist (1563–1632) (Leiden, 1985), 18 and 33–34. marcos dobelio 251 and that he would be content with a “moderate” salary, “in proportion to his merits.” In his petition Dobelio, who was now called “Marco Obelio Citaroni,” recalled the circumstances of his arrival in Spain: he had been working in Rome, “earning a salary of 700 ducats, with benefits, and with an expectation of more,” and had come to Spain because representatives of the king and the Archbishop of Granada had persuaded him to make a translation of the Lead Books. He translated the lead sheets, working first in Granada and then in Seville, as the archbishop had asked; but then he found them to be false, and because the matter was so important as a service to the Faith he had declared his opinion, “not wishing to place my own interest above the truth.” The Books were a fraud, full of phrases and maxims from the Qurʾān: “neither the style, the phrasing, the language, nor the letters were the product of any Arab author, whether Christian or Mohammedan; because before Mohammed came to preach his false doctrine there were Christians and learned men already in the East and South, and he could see at once that the authors of the said sheets was some ignorant Morisco.” For having told this truth the Archbishop “had expelled him from his house with the excuse that he could not attend to the translation, and since then has thwarted his ambitions so that he has been lost and destroyed.”21 Dobelio had in fact followed Pedro de Castro to Seville, where he had worked on translating the Parchment and several Lead Books. But his versions, which differed greatly from the ones already made, soon displeased the Archbishop, and Dobelio himself became convinced that the texts were a forgery. To prove his thesis he wrote his pamphlet called Nuevo descubrimiento de la falsedad del metal (New revelation of the falsity of metal sheets),22 which has not come down to us. All that survives is an Introduction and the autograph drafts of several chapters, which Dobe- lio organized around the titles of certain Lead Books that he studied and commented on, e.g., Vida y milagros de Cristo NS. Por Thesiphon Abena- thar, discípulo de Jacobo el Apostol (Life and miracles of Our Lord Jesus

21 “Ni el estilo, frases, lengua ni caracteres, correspondía con ningún autor árabe christiano ni mahometano, porque antes que Mahoma predicase su falsa seta huvo en el oriente y medio día Christianos y hombres doctos, y echó de ver que el autor de las dichas láminas era algún morisco ygnorante”; “[el arzobispo] le mandó salir de su cassa con escussa de que no podía atender a la tradución, y después le ha contradicho en sus pretensiones, de modo que queda perdido y destruydo”: AGS, Estado, leg. 2645. 22 Its authorship has been proved convincingly by G. Morocho, “Estudio introductorio,” op. cit., 308–312. 252 chapter eleven

Christ. By Ctesiphon Abenathar, disciple of St. James the Apostle).23 These chapters are included in the volume from the Real Academia de la Histo- ria that bears the general title Tractados contra el Corán (Treatises against the Qurʾān), acquired by Gayangos in London in 1837.24 We shall discuss this work in more detail in the next chapter, as a highly interesting group of texts that reflects, among other things, Dobelio’s background in Arabic literature, so different from that of Spanish experts who dealt with the Lead Books. His intellectual interests placed him, in great measure, closer to the kind of Orientalist scholarship that was developing in Europe at the time. His introduction, in spite of its brevity, is one of the most important texts to be produced on the subject of the Books; in it, among other things, Dobelio points directly to Luna and Castillo as the perpetrators of the fraud. Deeply involved in the polemics about the Books, Dobelio suffered the vicious attacks of their defenders, who called him a “New Christian” and accused him of having been raised a Muslim or of having returned, before his death, to “his former cursed Mohammedan sect.”25 These are unprovable accusations, but we do know that Dobelio passed through the Casa dei Neofiti in Rome; it is possible, as Levi della Vida and Morocho suppose, that he had actually been a Jacobite or a Nestorian. After his estrangement from Pedro de Castro, Dobelio continued to work as an Arabist: he taught Arabic to Francisco Gurmendi and the Marquis of Estepa, studied Arabic contracts and documents from Granada and Toledo, and collaborated for many years with the Inquisition, whose protection he enjoyed.26 In fact it was his work with the Holy Office, as we shall see, that gave him access to Morisco texts that inspired his criticisms of the Lead Books. We have heard Dobelio several times lamenting his fate: it had led him to abandon a settled position in Rome only to undergo a bitter disappointment in Spain, especially after he had been forced to confront Pedro de Castro over the authenticity of the Lead Books. As he wrote to Casaubon, he had left his comfortable situation in Rome, where he had worked in the Vatican Library and translated for the Eastern churches. He had also left his books behind. But the latter claim was not entirely true,

23 RAH Gayangos, ms. 1922/36. 24 This bound volume corresponds to Saavedra’s description of one that had been lost from the collection of Madrid’s Biblioteca Nacional: see E. Saavedra, “Discurso,” in Memo- rias de la Real Academia Española, 6 (Madrid, 1889), Appendix, 314–315. 25 G. Morocho, op. cit., 308. 26 Ibid., 307–314. marcos dobelio 253 because in reality he had brought part of his library to Spain and, furthermore, once there he was able to examine many other Arabic books and manuscripts.

Marcos Dobelio and the Arabic Manuscripts of El Escorial

The Bodleian Library preserves two documents related to Marcos Dobelio: the first is a list of his books, with a title in both Arabic and Latin, Fihrist kutub Marqus al-Duʿābalī / Index librorum arabicorum qui sunt apud Mar- cum de Obelio; the second is a list of the Arabic volumes in the library of the king of Spain, Fihrist al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya allatī fī maktabat Sulṭān Isbāniyā.27 Although both titles are written in Arabic, the catalogues or lists themselves are composed in Latin. The index of Arabic books from El Escorial constitutes one of the first listings of Arabic manuscripts found in the royal library. We have already spoken of the first catalogue, made by Alonso del Castillo, and a second, drawn up by Diego de Urrea in Arabic and Spanish, which was certainly the most important document of its type to have been composed at the time. Dobelio’s list consists of 251 entries in (Latin) alphabetical order, arranged by the name of the author. If we consider that Diego de Urrea’s catalogue describes 449 manuscripts, and that in around 1600 the library must have contained no less than 500,28 we can deduce that Dobelio’s list is much more compact; it should not be considered a catalogue so much as a working document or summary, and the information it provides is, as a general rule, much less detailed and precise than Diego de Urrea’s. One wonders how useful this document was; it somewhat resembles the list included in the Índice alfabético of El Escorial manuscripts that was made after Urrea’s catalogue.29 It is possible to determine its date of composition if we take into account the limited number of entries it contains. Muley Zidan’s library was captured in 1611, and by 1612 was under the stewardship of Gurmendi; as we saw in the previous chapter he was charged with evaluating its contents, which arrived at El Escorial in 1614.

27 “Index [i.e., catalogus] librorum [manuscriptorum] Arabicorum qui sunt apud Mar- cum de Obelio,” followed by another similar list of mss. belonging to the King of Spain: Bodleian Library, Ushler Collection, ms. 27619, fols. 174–181. 28 By estimate of B. Justel, La Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, op. cit., 169. 29 Ibid., 224. 254 chapter eleven

The more than 4,000 volumes of the sultan’s library became the core of the royal library’s Oriental collection, increasing its size eightfold. It therefore seems clear that Dobelio drew up his list before the Muley Zidan trove was incorporated, that is, before 1614. Recalling that in 1613 Dobelio was corresponding with Casaubon in England, it is not unreasonable to suppose that at about the time when he was thinking of moving there, he might have sent the Genevan scholar both this list of El Escorial’s Arabic holdings and the one of his own personal books. If such an action took place, its significance is clear. In this period when modern European Arabism was taking shape, one of the chief obstacles that scholars faced, particularly in northern Europe, was a lack of access to Arabic texts, and searching for them had become a veritable obsession for men like Bedwell and Erpenius. They would have received with greatest enthusiasm someone like Dobelio, well educated in Arabic and the owner of a library of respectable proportions. But the list of the books in his private collection is important above all for what it reveals about the cultural world from which Dobelio came.

Marcos Dobelio’s Arabic Books

Almost at the end of Dobelio’s list of his own Arabic books he addresses an anonymous correspondent, to whom he is sending the document, telling him that he owns many more and will send him the list of those as well: it would include those he had with him in Seville and the ones that he had left behind in Rome, among them up to seventy-two books of Christian theology by the Church Fathers.30 We have mentioned that Dobelio’s unknown correspondent may have been Casaubon, or someone close to Casaubon, like Bedwell. The book list is written in Latin, and although many of its works are well known, others are more difficult to identify.31 At the beginning come several dictionaries, among them three outstanding ones: those by al-Fīrūzābādī,32 al-Jawharī,33 and Khalīl b. Aḥmad,34 three fundamental

30 Ibid., fol. 176r. 31 We are grateful to Manuela Marín for her help on this point. 32 “Dictionarium maior, cuius titulum est Alcamus, auctore Semseddin Mahamet Ben mahamet Beniacobo Alfairusabadi.” 33 “Aliud Dictionarium auctore Ismail Algiouari.” 34 “Dictionarum vocatum Chitabulahon,” i.e., Kitāb al-ʿayn. marcos dobelio 255 names in Arabic lexicography. The first two, as we shall see, also formed part of the basic corpus of Arabic texts that were known in Europe and in Spain, and served as sources for Arabists. Dobelio owned other dictionaries, among which we can identify Aḥmad al-Fayyūmī’s al-Miṣbāḥ al-munīrī.35 He also possessed several basic grammatical works: Ibn al-Ḥājib’s Kāfiy’a,36 Ibn al-Ajurrūm’s al-Ajurrūmiyya37 (again, two fundamental instruments for learning Arabic in Early Modern Europe), and Ibn Mālik’s Alfiyya.38 Beside these general grammars there are other works that deal with Arabic verb conjugations, rhetoric, and so on.39 One notable citation is that of Abū ʿUbayda, an eighth-century grammarian and philologist from Basra who collected many linguistic sources for Arabic.40 A work titled Ortus eloquenti[ae] auctore Abell Hadi Arra- tis de preceptis rethoricis might be a reference to Nahj al-balāgha by Abū l-Ḥasan Muḥammad al-Sharīf al-Rāḍī, an important Baghdadi intellectual and political figure of the Sharīf family from the late tenth to early eleventh centuries. His book, rather than a manual on rhetoric, is a compendium of sermons, letters, and maxims by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, the fourth caliph and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, ancestor of the Sharīfis and leader of the Shiite faction. It is considered an excellent model of style and rhetoric and a classic of Arabic literature. Other fields of knowledge amply represented among Marcos Dobelio’s books were medicine, pharmacology, and botany: Ibn al-Bayṭār’s Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ, an important work on medical simples;41 works of medicine

35 “Aliud dictionarium de declaratione vocum antiquarum quod vocant Almesbago Almaniro auctore Hahamd Alfamioni.” 36 “Alcafia cum expositione auctore Belhaji de rebus gramatices de coniugatione verborum cum expositione.” 37 “Tres expositiones supra grammaticam Gerumiam.” 38 “Alelfia carminibus conscripta cum expositione de rebus gramatices auctore Badred- dim Benmali.” 39 For instance, “Abyflamen tractatus de preceptis rectoricis”; “Centum actiones cum expositione de rebus dramatices”; “Mahamad Benmasud de coniugationes verborum”; “Alhojji [?] de coniugatione verborum”; “Alnachajani de rebus gramaticis”; “Alahawani de expositione coniugationum verborum”; “Expositio Asoaly eiusdem rei”; “Expositio Ben- qasim de eiusdem rei”; “alia expositione incerti auctoris”; “tota gramatica incerti auctoris,” etc. 40 “Abohubeda de origine proverbiorum ant Mahamete et post.” 41 “Sympliciarum universale auctore Belelbithar in quo scitantur omnis auctoris greci, latini, caldei, hebrei, indi, et fere omnis auctoris rei sympliciaris.” Similar works cited by Dobelio include one on “Preparatio medicamentorum mirabile ordine disposita in quo libro declarantur virtutes et qualitates [. . .]menta quingenta et quingenta simplicia,” and another on “sympliciarum Azarabi ordine alphabetico.” 256 chapter eleven by Averroes,42 al-Rāzī,43 and Avicenna;44 and the Kitāb al-Taṣrīf of Abū l-Qāsim al-Zahrāwī (known in the West as Abulcasis),45 among others.46 A variety of sciences is also present: mathematics (there appears to be a citation of the work of al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Haytham, the renowned mathematician of the late eleventh to early twelfth centuries, known in medieval Europe as “Alhasan”),47 physiognomy,48 and astronomy or astrology.49 A certain “expositio Isagogen auctore Alphatari” may perhaps be identified with the work of logic al-Īsaghūjī by Mufaḍḍal al-Abharī; there are additional philosophical works, including one by Aristotle.50 Dobelio also owned several works of poetry and other literary genres. Among those that can be identified readily are the poems of al-Mutanabbī, generally considered to be the Arabs’ greatest poet;51 those of Ṣafy al-Dīn al-Ḥillī, the most celebrated poet of the eighth century;52 the renowned cycle of verses that Jamīl al-ʿUdhrī dedicated to his beloved Buthayna, making the two of them the emblem of pure love;53 the Dīwān of the famed Egyptian mystical poet Ibn al-Farīd;54 works of the famed fourteenth-

42 “Averois medicina theorica et practica.” 43 “Rasis de symplicibus.” A second work may also refer to al-Rāzī: “Antidotarium regium seu preservatio vitae in quo declarantur cognitiones rerum veneno affectarum uti sunt cibi, fructus, flores, vestimenta et omnia quae sunt ad usum pertinentia & de virtute animalium et lapidum cum anthydotis et theriacis contra venina et de signis venenorum, auctore Mahamet Benabibac Alfarsi.” 44 There may be references to Avicenna in “canones universales de medicina composita et practica et de verijs medicamentis a vertice capitis usque ad plantam pedum et de mor- sum animalium venenosorum,” and “alij canones de theoricae medicinae.” 45 “Omnia opera Abylcati quae sunt triginta libri de medicina theorica, practica et manuale cum instrumentis pretis ad artem chirurgicam pertinentibus.” 46 “Taquinus hoc est medicamenta corporum quo declarantur omnia genera infirmi- tatum et medicamentorum cum expositione”; “de disciplina medicorum auctore Berra- faha”; “De secretis virorum et mulierum quo declarantur medicinalis omnia ad coitum pertinentia, hoc est, potus unctiones electuria pilola et quae faciunt gustare vehementer et quae faciunt membrum terribile, indomitum, grande et aspecto venerabile, et quo ad peregrinationem attinet et contra et quae dissiant et minunt opherma, et quae faciunt mulieres calidas, fa[. . .] et de medicamine facici. Capillorum, dentum, oris, et aliarum par- tum corporis muliebris et de physionomia mulierum et de mensura membrorum genita- lium”; and “Summa totius medicinae auctore Acetone quae non est traducta.” 47 One of the mathematical works cited is a “De arithmetica et algibra auctore Alhasan”; there are also “expositio algibre” and “alius liber arithmeticae cum expositione.” 48 “Benhabas de Physonomia omnium gentium.” 49 “Astrologia iudiciaria Ptholomei”; “Cadisada expositio Omar de rebus astronomicis.” 50 “Aristotles de natura animalium, interprete Chalip Patriarca Antiocheno.” 51 “Almothenabi poemata cum commento.” 52 “Saffyedin Aleli de poema cum commento de rebus amatorijs.” 53 “Giamilu Alodri de poemate de laudibus suae Butina quae erat mulier fermosissima, lepidissimus poeta.” 54 “Benelpharid egregius poeta de rebus amatorijs.” marcos dobelio 257 century philologist and poet al-Ṣafadī;55 and the oeuvre of the fifteenth- century popular poet ῾Alī b. Sūdūn,56 among others.57 In the maqāma genre we can recognize the Mughāyara bayna al-qalam wa-l-sayf (Dialogue between the pen and the sword) by the Egyptian Muḥammad Ibn Nubāta.58 This theme had become a commonplace of Arabic literature; in fact, Ibn Nubāta’s work was inspired by the Risālat al- sayf wa-l-qalam of Aḥmad Ibn Burd al-Aṣghar, which Dobelio also owned.59 The list contains a few moral fables, like the “Fabula viginti quinque de varijs mulieribus adulteris decepientibus suos maritos et obsequentibus suos amicos.” “Benflelag’b de arte metrica” may be identifiable as Kitāb al-maqṣad al-jalīl fī ʿilm al-Khalīl, the work that the great Arab grammarian Ibn al-Ḥājib devoted to the study of metrics. The system had come to be known as “the science of Khalīl” after its inventor, the first person to study and systematize the Arabic poetic meters. One of the authors most frequently encountered among Dobelio’s books is the Egyptian Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (1445–1505). An especially pro- lific author in Arabic, he wrote on nearly every field of knowledge, from Islamic sciences to geography, pharmacopoeia, and erotica, and the items in Dobelio’s library bear witness to that variety.60 The categories of religious and historical works owned by Marcos Dobe- lio deserve special mention. As for the first of these, we have seen how he alluded to the seventy-two volumes of Christian theology that he claimed to possess. His Islamic works included, first of all, a Qurʾān, and also a copy of the most important collection of traditional sayings (aḥādīth, sg.

55 “De nominibus equivocis auctore Assaphadi,” and “Assaphadi de rebus amatorijs.” 56 “Bensudun poeta ridiculus.” 57 “Pratum floridum in quo sunt varia poemata de rebus amatorijs et de laudibus mulierum, hortorum vinorum, velis temporis factijs et alijs rebus,” and “expositio carmi- num de rebus amatorijs auctore Benesechaalim.” 58 “Contentio inter calamum et ensem auctore Benabatha.” 59 “Alia contentio inter calamum et ensem auctore Benelbardi.” On the same theme Dobelio also owned “alia contentio auctore Abylhasan.” There are others of the same type on the list, like “contentio inter candelabrum et lampidam, auctore Adilhamin”; “epistola de laudibus calami incerti auctoris”; “alia epistola de laudibus calami auctore Geladeddim Alami [?]”; “de laudibus coloris negri”; and “de laudibus fructum.” 60 “Geladdidin Senti [sic, for Seuti?] de rebus amatorijs ad coitum attinentibus et de opinione medicorum philosophorum et parearum et de anathomia membrorum genita- lium”; “eiusdem de preceptis et varijs modis coheundi”; “contentio florum auctore Gela- ledim Seuthi”; “De laudibus ciborum auctore Gelalddim Asseuti”; “eiusdem de laudibus rerum aromateriarum”; “de preceptis gramatices auctore Gelaldin Assiciti [sic, for al- Assiuti?]”; “eiusdem de philosophia morali”; “eiusdem de medicina”; “eiusdem super Aris- totelem”; and “eiusdem de legibus et ritu Mahometano.” 258 chapter eleven

ḥadīth) of the Prophet, the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī.61 A third work was “de vita et moribus Mahometis,” that is, a biography of Muhammad, and although an author’s name is not mentioned we recall that the most famous example of this genre was the Sīra of Ibn Isḥāq. There are several biographies on Dobelio’s list: of Avicenna, al-Rāzī (perhaps, among the many famous scientists and historians who bore the name, the physician Abū Bakr al-Rāzī), Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and Apollonius of Perga; we find a “Vita Euclides et omnia opera ab illis composita sententia”62 and a “Vita et mores virorum Doctorum Grecorum Arabum et aliarum nationum.” While there is no author assigned to the latter work, we should remember the importance of biographical dictionaries in Arabic literature. One that might lie behind Dobelio’s description, since it includes biographies of famous persons from different countries, is Ṭabaqāt al-umam by the qāḍī Saʿīd of Toledo, a celebrated Andalusi author of the eleventh century. A few interesting volumes on history and geography were included in Dobelio’s collection. One that seems in principle to be significant was “Liber geographiae et corographiaem auctore Abi Zacharia Benamolia quo discribuntur habitus, ritus, mores diversarum gentium et res mira- bilis fontium fluminum, arborum, animalium et multa alia elegantissimo sermone.” The name given for the author makes it difficult to identify, although the description corresponds to the work of Abū Yaḥyā Zakariyyā al-Qazwīnī, the famous thirteenth-century Persian astronomer. Dobelio describes three histories of the Umayyad caliphs of Damascus and the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad: “Historia Regum Persarum,” “Historia Regum Dimasci,” and “Historia Regum Babiloniae qui fuerunt triginta sex”; also, a “Historia terrae santae et de bello sabito inter Saladinum et Gallos cum descriptione machinarum bellicarum.” His interest in engines of war can be traced in other works in the catalogue, such as “Hesmedim Arrama de machinis, armis et alijs rebus bellicis cum picturis et coloribus et de arte equitandi et de tormentis bellicis et de machinis Indijs,” which can be identified as al-Ḥasan al-Ramma’s al-Furūsiyya wa-l-manāsib al-ḥarbiyya.63

61 “Expositio Alchorani auctore Albochari.” The work “alia expositio [Alchorani] auctore Benmasud” may refer to Ibn Masʿūd, one of Muhammad’s earliest and closest Com- panions and a crucial link in the oral transmission of the Qurʾānic text and the traditions of the Prophet. Dobelio also cites “alia expositione [Alchorani] auctore Bemnescham.” 62 As well as a “Vita Mezhiae.” 63 Dobelio also cites works on the taming of horses (Ar. al-furūsiyya) and their care, like “De domandis equis” and “De medendis equis.” marcos dobelio 259

Three items on the list merit closer attention. The first is a “Tractatus de enigmis et cifris” which, though it cannot be otherwise identified, is of interest in the light of Dobelio’s skepticism about the letters of the Lead Books, which we shall discuss in the next chapter. The second is a copy of al-Ṭurṭushī’s Sirāj al-mulūk,64 one of the most important “mirrors of princes” in Arabic literature. We recall that Diego de Urrea, by his own admission, had wished to translate an Arabic mirror of princes, and that Dobelio’s and Urrea’s student Francisco de Gurmendi had actually completed and published a modified translation of examples of that genre under the title Doctrina phísica y moral de príncipes; one of its sources may have been this very work of al-Ṭurṭushī. The third historical work that Dobelio mentions is “Annales a Maha- mete utque ad tempus Saladini de rebus successis in universo mundo tantum de bellis, tonitruis, terrimotis et pestilentijs quantum de morte et vita Principum et virorum illustrium et summa rerum gestarum a tempore Ade usque ad annum septengesimum decimum quintum alecgire,” undoubtedly a reference to the Ta⁠ʾrīkh (History) of Abū-l-Fidāʾ, whom we shall discuss in the next section because, as we shall see, Dobelio made a partial translation of the book. Dobelio’s library was unquestionably of great importance, especially given the circumstances of the time. It was a crucial moment in the development of truly modern Arabic studies in Europe, one that coincided with the assembling and cataloguing of the first great collections of Oriental manuscripts in Italy, Spain, the Low Countries, and England. As we have shown, European Arabists like Bedwell and Erpenius were avid for access to Arabic books; in Rome, in the circle of individuals like Giovanni Battista Raimondi—of whom more below—a valuable collection of manuscripts was taking shape thanks to the activities of travelers like the Vecchietti brothers and Pietro della Valle; the great English Arabist Edward Pococke, who lived for some years in Aleppo, would form a library comparable in importance to Dobelio’s. News of newly discovered manuscripts circulated throughout Europe, and specialists often journeyed to obtain access to a copy of one book or another, and exchanged both texts and ideas. In fact this document about Dobelio’s library, sent perhaps to his Eng- lish correspondents, places him squarely within a scholarly milieu of

64 “Abi Baquer Obtartusi liber vocatus Lucerna Regum et Principum de gubernandis regnis, exercitibus, et de disciplina Regum Arabum Persarum, Graecorum, Romanorum et aliarum nationum et de moribus et rebus gestis illorum.” 260 chapter eleven

Continental dimensions in which Dobelio could measure himself against the European Arabists of his time; everything that we know about his work confirms his standing. In Spain, Dobelio was working in a context in which the central question was that of the Lead Books, and in which possibilities for making one’s mark as an Orientalist scholar were limited. Furthermore, the enmity of the Books’ defenders must often have placed him in uncomfortable circumstances. Nonetheless, as we shall see, some of his work carried weight and left its mark on Spanish scholars of the following generation.

A Partial Translation of Abū L-Fidāʾ’s History

Dobelio’s library contained, as we have noted, a copy of an Arabic historical work that may have been the Mukhtaṣar ta⁠ʾrīkh al-bashar by the Syrian prince, historian, and geographer Abū l-Fidāʾ. This writer was not unknown to European Arabists, who at least from the first half of the seventeenth century were aware, in particular, of his geographical work Taqwīm al-buldān; in 1650 it was finally edited in part, with a Latin translation, by the English mathematician, Orientalist, and astronomer John Greaves (or Gravius). It was an important work that was recognized as such by European scientists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; nonetheless, Abū l-Fidāʾ’s historical writings were less known in Europe. Giorgio Levi della Vida noted that it was the Maronite Michael Casiri, in his great Arabic-Latin catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts of El Escorial, who first revealed a key connection: the diplomat and historian Antonio d’Amico had taken from Dobelio a Latin translation of passages related to Sicily in the Escorial manuscript of Abū l-Fidāʾ’s Ta⁠ʾrīkh, and Agostino Inveges had later published those passages in his Annali della felice città di Palermo.65 In the same catalogue Casiri affirmed that the Count of Campomanes66 also owned a summary of the very translation of Abū l-Fidāʾ made by Dobelio. The text had been cited at least once as a Suma que trata del tiempo cuando los mahometanos ganaron a África, y cómo después pasaron

65 M. Casiri, Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis, reprod. of the 1760–1770 ed. (Osnabrück), II, 15; G. Levi della Vida, Ricerche, op. cit., 281; and F. Rodríguez Mediano and M. García-Arenal, “De Diego de Urrea a Marcos Dobelio,” op. cit., 325. 66 Campomanes (d. 1802), an Enlightenment politician and economist, was Secretary of Finance in the reformist government of Charles III of Spain. marcos dobelio 261 a España, vuelta de arábigo en romance (Summary that deals with the time when the Mohammedans conquered Africa and how they later crossed to Spain, rendered from Arabic into Romance).67 Levi della Vida points out that d’Amico was in Spain in 1618 and could have met Dobelio at that time; this chronological reference could fix with some accuracy the date when the translation was made. The said Suma is indeed found among the papers of the Count of Campomanes,68 and is the very partial translation of Abū l-Fidāʾ’s history made by Marcos Dobelio. The exact title of the manuscript is Suma que trata del tiempo quando los mahometanos ganaron a África, y cómo después pasaron en España, y de las guerras que en la dicha Provincia tuvieron con los Christianos, y de otros succesos en varias partes del mundo mui útiles y curiosas. Sacada de la suma universal de las Chrónicas de Amadeddín Abu Mahamed Almayad Ismael, Rey de Amano [in the margin, in Arabic: malik Ḥamāh], Chronista docto y célebre, por Marco de Obelio Citeroni, y buelta de Arábigo en romance por él mismo. Con las anotaciones a la margen de el mismo Intérprete (Summary that deals with the time when the Moham- medans conquered Africa and how they later crossed to Spain, and of the wars that they waged in that province with the Christians, and of other very useful and curious events in various parts of the world. Taken from the complete summary of the Chronicles of ʿImād al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad al-Muʾayyad Ismāʿīl, King of Hama, learned and celebrated chronicler; by Marco de Obelio Citeroni, and turned from Arabic into Romance by himself. With marginal notes by the same interpreter). It is unquestionably the work of Dobelio of which we have been speaking. On the first folio a note specifies that the manuscript was “taken from the Library of [. . .?] of the Royal Monastery of Monserrate in Madrid, by action of Don Pedro R. Campomanes.” Then Campomanes himself adds the following comment: In this work, and in that of Rasis, the marginal notes are in a different script from the text’s, and both are from the same hand. /Of this Marcos Dobelio, who was in Spain, I find a notice in the library of Don Nicolás Antonio./ I also note that Inveges, in the History of Sicily, published something by Amad eldin about the chronology of the Saracens in Sicily, about which there is nothing in this translation./ Therefore I believe that this work is not

67 See, for example, J. T. Monroe, Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship (Sixteenth Century to the Present) (Leiden, 1970), 25, where the reference is taken from M. Menéndez Pelayo, La ciencia española, ed. E. Sánchez Reyes, 3 vols. (Santander, 1954), vol. III, 124. 68 Ms. 4–1. See J. Cejudo López, Catálogo del Archivo del Conde de Campomanes (fondos Carmen Dorado y Rafael Gasset) (Madrid, 1975), 18–19. 262 chapter eleven

complete, but rather a literal translation of what has to do with Spain or has a particular connection with its Arab history. Its usefulness is so well known that it needs no recommendation, as will be seen in my Arab Chronology, which I am writing at the request of my Royal Academy of History./ Madrid, November 30, 1754/ Campomanes.69 Clearly, the fragment in question is a partial translation of the passages related to al-Andalus of the Ta⁠ʾrīkh by Abū l-Fidāʾ. Since d’Amico and Inveges published other passages related to Sicily,70 we should ask just how much of the Ta⁠ʾrīkh Dobelio translated. Among the papers of the scholar Martín Vázquez Siruela, from Malaga, there is a brief fragment titled “De la forma de la toga que solía el Califa enbiar a los Reyes: quien los declarava verdaderos reyes y los confirmava” (On the shape of the cloak that the Caliph used to send to the Kings, he being the one who declared and confirmed them as true kings) with a marginal note that states: “Ismāʿīl King of Hama in the Complete Summary of the Chronicles.”71 This fragment, a translation from Abū l-Fidāʾ, leads to two conclusions. First, because its text concerns neither al-Andalus nor Sicily, it suggests that Dobelio translated more portions of the Ta⁠ʾrīkh than what is preserved elsewhere. Second, as we shall see, Vázquez Siruela took an interest in Dobelio’s papers after the latter’s death, and wished to draw

69 “Las notas marginales están en esta obra y en el Rasis de distinta letra que el texto y ambas son de una misma mano./ De este Marcos Dobelio, que estubo en España, hallo memoria en la Bibliotheca de Don Nicolás Antonio./ También prevengo que Inveges, en la Historia de Sicilia, publicó algo de Amad eldin tocante a la Chronología de los Sarra- cenos en Sicilia, de lo qual nada ay en esta traducción./ Por lo qual me inclino a que esta obra no es íntegra, sino una traducción literal de lo que pertenece a España o tiene precisa conexión con la historia Árabe de ella. Su utilidad es tan notoria que no necesita recomendación, como se verá en mi Chronología Árabe, que estoy escribiendo de orden de mi Academia Real de la Historia./ Madrid y noviembre 30 de 1754/ Campomanes”: see F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Fragmentos,” op. cit., 261–262. 70 See Agostino Inveges, Annali della felice città de Palermo, prima sedia, corona del re e capo del regno di Sicilia [. . .] (Palermo), vol. II, 634: “Ma D. Antonino d’Amico, da Mesina e canonico di Palermo desideroso di arrichire questo impoverito secolo nel suo libro: Dissertatio Historica, et Chronologica de antiquo Urbis Syracusarum Archiepiscopatum promette dar’alle stampe una Chronologia ó Breve Historia delle cose fatte in Sicilia per 200 e più Anni dagli Amiri ò Duchi Maometanni, che in quella tirannicamente regnarono, rica- vata dal Codice Arabico della Chronologia Universale, raccolta per Ismaele Almuayad Abul- pheda Rè d’Amani: adesso la prima volta dall’Arabico tradotta nel Latino da Marco Dobelio Citerone, professore peritissimo della lingua Arabica dal Codice M.S. della Regia Libraria di S. Lorenzo dell’escurial. Ma dal fato prevenuto, lasciò la promessa in fiore: il cui M.S. Originale venendo in mio potere quì riporto dal Latino tradotto nel Toscano; ma ripieno di molte curiose memorie; per arrichire un era povera d’Historia.” 71 “Ismael Rey de Amano en la Suma Universal de las Corónicas”: Papeles varios. Del señor Conde de Miranda, BNM ms. 6256, fol. 82. marcos dobelio 263 on them in his own scholarship; this fact shows that Dobelio’s work as an Orientalist continued to be valued in learned circles in the seventeenth century and even into the eighteenth, when Campomanes recovered this text and stressed its importance. It was particularly useful for establishing the chronology of the Arabs in Spain, an issue that concerned many Span- ish historians in the seventeenth century and beyond.

A Translation of a Medical Work and a Grammar

There remain at least two additional works that testify to Dobelio’s Ori- entalist activity in Spain. The first is a manuscript from the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid that bears the title Libro yntitulado las Margaritas cogida[s] donde se trata de los remedios experimentados curiosos y fáçiles de gran provecho y poca costa con todos los remedios del començando desde la planta de la caveça hasta llegar a las plantas de los pies. Com- puesto por el Doctorísimo Philósopho y Phísico y singular hombre único en su tiempo Abbuferquer Mahomed. Dirixido = Al muy poderoso señor amigo de los savios y de la saviduría el Rey David hijo del Rey Almodfer señor de Amano (Book entitled the Plucked Daisies, which concerns remedies that are tried, curious, easy, of great use and low cost, with all of the remedies in it, beginning from the crown of the head down to the soles of the feet. Composed by the most learned doctor, philosopher, physician, and exceptional man, unique in his time, Abbuferquer Mahomed. Dedicated to the most powerful prince, friend of wise men and of wisdom, King David son of King Almodfer, Lord of Hama).72 This brief medical treatise contains a summary list of treatments for various ailments, in anatomical order from head to foot (a well-established custom in works of this kind). The work is almost certainly a copy, to judge by the deformation of the personal names that are cited, beginning with that of the translator, who is called “Marcos Aurelio Citero, a man most learned and experienced in the secrets of Nature, a great historian and interpreter of the Arabic language to King Philip IV, our Lord (may God preserve him and all his loyal vassals for many happy years).”73 As we have shown elsewhere,74 this

72 BNE ms. 2021, fols. 32r ff. 73 “Marcos Aurelio Citerón, hombre muy doctto y experimentado en los secrettos de natura, grande Istórico e intérprete de la lengua aráviga del Rey Don Feliphe [sic] quarto, Nuestro Señor, que Dios guarde largos y felices años y a todos sus fieles vasallos”: ibid., fol. 32v. 74 F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Fragmentos,” op. cit., 259. 264 chapter eleven translator of Arabic to Philip IV can be identified, in all probability, with Marcos Dobelio Citero, whose name would have been altered by an inat- tentive copyist, converting it into the more familiar “Marcos Aurelio.” We have already noted the large number of medical works that Dobelio had in his possession. There is a second manuscript in the library of the Hospital Real in Granada: “an Arabic grammar in Latin, thought to be anonymous.75 It was composed with the Lead Books of the Sacromonte in mind: on one of the unnumbered early folios there is a “Solomonic” alphabet with the legend: “istud alphabetum repertum est in laminis montis sancti in Granata.” The 253 folios of this large volume were penned with care in an Arabic hand that reveals real skill on the part of its scribe. It is certainly one of the most complete grammatical works produced in Spain at a time when linguistic materials for learning Arabic were in ever greater demand. We propose that Marcos Dobelio was the author of this grammar, based on the similarity of its script (both Arabic and Latin) to that of other documents that can be firmly attributed to him: for instance the Vatican manuscripts already mentioned, and the “Traslado y traducción del comento de la prophecía de S. Joan que está en el pergamino, por Mar- cos Dobeli” (Copy and translation of the commentary on the prophecy of St. John that is in the Parchment, by Marcos Dobeli) found in the archive of the Sacromonte Abbey.76 The identification is further guaranteed by the excellent education that the author of this grammar can boast; in this regard Dobelio had few competitors in Spain in the early seventeenth century, with the possible exception of Diego de Urrea, whose hand we know well and who can be eliminated as a possible author of the volume in question. If we are correct on this point, Dobelio’s professional profile undergoes a change. We have already stated that the contents of his library make him comparable to other European Arabists of his age. We can now expand that first observation: he translated a work of medicine; he composed a great Arabic grammar, just at the moment when Arabic studies in Europe were demanding more profound and precise instruments of this type; he also translated, at least in part, an important Arabic historical chronicle, and did so before modern European presses, like that of Erpenius, had

75 BHR, caja C-097. 76 AASG, leg. VI, 2a Parte, fols. 177–198. We are grateful to Isabel Boyano for her assistance on this point. marcos dobelio 265 issued works of significance such as that of Georgio Elmacino. Dobelio’s activity was therefore of considerable moment, especially in comparison with that of his Arabist contemporaries in Spain. This productivity, combined with the broad literary background of a cultivated Eastern speaker of Arabic, make Dobelio a singular personage in the Spain of his time and bring him closer to the ranks of other Euro- pean Arabists. His uniqueness will stand out even more sharply when we discuss his other principal work, the Nuevo descubrimiento de la falsedad del metal (New revelation of the falsity of metal sheets), a criticism of the Sacromonte Lead Books. Although only its introduction and drafts of some chapters have survived, it is an unusual work of great value that deserves a chapter of its own, which will follow the present one.

Dobelio’s Papers

In his Nuevo descubrimiento Dobelio recalls over and over the “travails, persecutions, calumnies, and infinite disturbances” to which he was subjected, “insulted by all” and forced to hear “a thousand offensive words” from the men he calls laminarios (defenders of the láminas or sheets of lead).77 He did not cease to be the object of these attacks by his enemies even after his death. Fray Bartolomé Pectorano, a vehement defender of the Lead Books’ authenticity, gave the following description of his demise: Marco de Obelio, a Turk by origin, was baptized in Madrid at the age of thirty; he was the author of falsehoods and impostures concerning the sacred doctrine of the lead sheets of Granada. He died in Madrid reduced to extreme poverty, assailed by ferocious pains and eaten up by worms in the hospital; and he ended his miserable life, unfortunately, having returned to being a Turk and to following the false sect of Mohammed at the end and at the time of his death.78 We have already seen how this reference to his supposed Muslim origins was one element of the battery of slanders and insults that were heaped

77 Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fols. 67–68. 78 “Marco de Obelio turco de nacion se bautizo en Madrid, siendo de edad de treinta años, autor de falsedades y imposturas contra la santa doctrina de las dichas laminas de Granada, murio en Madrid reduçido a gran miseria, asaltado de gravíssimos dolores y comido de gusanos en un hospital, y acavó su miserable vida desgraciadamente aviendo vuelto a hacerse turco, y seguir la ley falsa de Mahoma en lo último y al tiempo de su muerte”: AASG, leg. 198. 266 chapter eleven on him during the polemic about the Lead Books. In another reference to his death, the Marquis of Estepa wrote to his friend Martín Vázquez Siruela: They say that Marcos de Obeli has died; I have not learned when or where, nor whether he left any books or papers; if he died in some tavern and the papers were torn up for rolling tobacco they would have received what they deserved, although something may be left that it would be important for us to see. For truly, though he was a man of bad habits and worse intentions, he was well versed and informed in the Arabic language; I hope that God gave him a good death and the enlightenment that he needed in order to be saved.79 We have also seen how the Books’ defenders were merciless in their criticisms of Dobelio. It is possible, of course, that Dobelio was not a wholly virtuous man, at least in the eyes of his contemporaries; nonetheless they were capable of recognizing the virtues that he did possess, like his education and his gifts as an Arabist. It seems that Vázquez Siruela continued to probe to see if he could find something useful among Dobelio’s papers; he must have entrusted this task to Nicolás Antonio, who wrote to him from Madrid in 1656: “I have not found anyone so far who can tell me more about Marcos Obeli. I will do my best to carry out your wishes, Sir, both for that and to learn where his books may be.”80 In December of the same year, Nicolás Antonio wrote again about his researches into Dobe- lio’s library: I did my very best to find information about Marcos Obeli, just as I promised you, Sir; and because I did not find anything satisfactory, I did not write to you. I met someone very close to him who often saw him and spoke with him, and he assured me that the good man lived in such a disorderly state that there is no way to know who carried away what was in his house, which must have been little or nothing; and this book must have gone the way of others, about which nothing is known. I spoke with the current interpreter

79 “Dicen que murió Marcos de Obeli, no e savido quándo ni dónde ni si quedaron dél algunos libros o papeles, y si uviese sido en alguna taberna y los gastasen en papeli- llos de tabaco tendrían su merecido, aunque algo podría aver quedado que nos fuese de importancia ver, y realmente el hombre, aunque de malas costumbres y peor intención, era entendido y noticioso de la lengua Arábiga, áyale Dios dado buena muerte y la luz que avía menester para salvarse”: letter from the Marquis of Estepa to M. Vázquez Siruela, February 11, 1654, Papeles varios of Martín Vázquez Siruela, Biblioteca Real de Palacio, ms. II/158, fol. 153r. 80 “No e encontrado hasta agora quien me sepa dar razón del tal Marcos Obeli. Haré la diligencia que Vuestra Merced desea, tanto en eso, como en saber dónde quedaron sus libros”: letter from Nicolás Antonio to Martín Vázquez Siruela, April 25, 1656, ibid., fol. 85r. marcos dobelio 267

of Arabic and Turkish, a Ragusan named Vincenzo Bratuti, to see if the book had come into his hands, but he has neither seen it nor knows of it. If you wish to tell me, Sir, in strict confidence, the secret of the geographical name that needs to be found in the History of Ishmael, you can make a note of it so that I may inquire among those here (if any there be) who are skilled in the Arabic language.81 We find in this letter—beside an allusion to Dobelio’s chaotic life—a reference to one particular work, the “History of Ishmael,” in which Vázquez Siruela was seeking some point of geographical information. This was the Ta⁠ʾrīkh of Abū l-Fidāʾ, which Vázquez Siruela was trying to locate among the collection of books that had been dispersed after Dobelio’s death. The two figures who appear in this correspondence are Nicolás Antonio, a famous intellectual from Seville, and his friend Martín Vázquez Siruela. Each of them had connections both to the Sacromonte and to the select circle of learned Spanish critics of the seventeenth century. Why would they have been interested in Dobelio’s Arabic books? How did they think that they could use them in their own work? One of our chief aims in the latter chapters of this book will be to understand how knowlege of Arabic worked its way into the world of Spanish scholarship.

81 “Yo hize la diligencia posible por descubrir noticia de Marcos Obeli, quando ofrecí a Vuestra Merced el hazerla; y quiçá porque della no resultó cosa que pudiese descansar a Vuestra Merced no se lo escriví. Encontré persona mui suia que le conoçía mucho y comu- nicava, i me asegura que era tal el desorden con que vivía el buen hombre que no puede saber quién se llevó todo lo que avía en casa, que sería bien poco o nada, y este libro avrá parado en lo que otros que no se entienden. Hablé al intérprete que es oy de la lengua Arábiga y Turca, que es un ragusés llamado Vincencio Bratuti, por ver si avía llegado a su poder el libro, y no le a visto ni le conoçe. Si Vuestra Merced quiere comunicar en toda confiança el secreto que dize del nombre geográfico que se avía de buscar en la Historia de Ismael, podrá apuntarlo para que io haga alguna diligencia con los que huviere aquí diestros (si ay algunos) en esta lengua Arábiga”: letter from Nicolás Antonio to Martín Vázquez Siruela, December 5, 1656, ibid., fol. 104v.

chapter twelve

marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana: the islamic content of the lead books

Marcos Dobelio, the Kurdish-born Christian who became a professor of Arabic at La Sapienza in Rome and traveled to Spain to translate the Lead Books, relates, in his magnificent treatise on their falsity, an extraordinary story that for him was the supreme example of the indescribable evil that the Lead Books had brought upon Granada.1 In Dobelio’s account, in 1603 there was a woman in Granada who was possessed by demons, from which a thousand attempts at exorcism had been unable to free her. She was well known to be devoted to God’s service, which was why the demons had declared war upon her. The Archbishop, on learning of her case, asked to be informed the next time the woman again suffered demonic possession. At the next instance, therefore, the Archbishop was notified and the afflicted female was brought to a cave on the Sacromonte, where Don Pedro de Castro produced the Lead Book called Oración y nómina de Jacob el Zebedeo (Prayer and invocation of James son of Zebedee); it was the third in the series, unearthed just a short while before. With it the Archbishop made the sign of the cross over the sufferer, from her forehead to her breast, while intoning the Arabic words of the prayer: “le y lehe yle Alahu, Jesuu, Ruhu Alahi,” which Dobelio translated as “There is no God but the true God. Jesus [is] the spirit of God.” The Devil howled aloud and left the possessed woman’s body for good. Dobelio considered it inconceivably scandalous, a true aberration, that Archbishop Pedro de Castro should have used Arabic words for his exorcism, and that those words implicitly negated both the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. He wondered sarcastically if the Devil was “a Spanish Arab,” since the words were spoken “in the dialect that the Moriscos use” and seemed to include “a verse of the Koran,” which would be pronounced only by those who were ignorant of the Gospels and held them in disdain. The anecdote suggested that the archbishop and his followers believed

1 M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento de la falsedad del metal, ACDF, St. St. R7-c, fols. 7–176. Our quotations are from the copy from the Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo, ms. 285. There is another copy in the archive of the Abbey of Sacromonte. 270 chapter twelve that “the Mohammedan creed and the Arabic language are more effective than the Gospels spoken in Latin or Greek.” The Devil did not even wait to hear the entire formula. Those words, according to the text of the Lead Book as translated by Castillo, were a brief invocation against all adversities, illnesses, agonies, spirits, and demons, for whomever wished to invoke it on himself and bless himself with it, and it is as follows: There is no other God but the true God, Jesus is the spirit of God, the shining faith that saves. The blessed prayer is fulfilled, and God alone will endure forever.2 The prayer appeared on a circular seal that bore a star of Solomon, on each point of which were the words “there is no God but God.” It was therefore a talisman like so many of the Moriscos’ curative and preventive amulets, as we recalled in the chapter on Alonso del Castillo. A great many of these talismans have come down to us: they may be engraved on lead, sometimes showing squares or stars inscribed within a circle or Qur’ānic verses written in an angular, epigraphic script; they may contain unintelligible phrases and even Hebrew words. They were extremely common among the Muslim population of the former Nasrid Kingdom of Granada and among the Moriscos.3 It seems that these talismans were now circulating among Christians as well, as Dobelio went on to relate: for, in his opinion, the evil produced by the Lead Books was so general and so entrenched that in his time (the first two decades of the seventeenth century) it was common to find in Grana- dan houses those same characters and signs painted on the walls (and indeed, some of them can still be seen today).4 The prayer was incised on metal, as a preventive, by all kinds of persons who liked to wear it: “some people insist on carrying with them, to protect their souls and their bodies, the formula attributed to the great Apostle James, incised on sheets

2 “Breve oraçión contra todas las aduersidades, Enfermedades, Angustias, Espíritus y Demonios para qualquiera que la traxere sobre sí y se quisiere bendeçir con ella, es ésta que se sigue: No hay otro Dios sino el verdadero Dios, Jesús es el espíritu de Dios, clara fee que salva. Cumplióse la bendita oraçión y sólo Dios es el que ha de quedar para siempre”: M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fols. 52–53. 3 V. Martínez Enamorado, “Una primera propuesta de interpretación para los plomos con epigrafía árabe a partir de los hallazgos de Nina Alta (Teba, provincia de Málaga),” Al-Andalus-Magreb, 10 (2002–2003), 91–127; and J. M. Millás Vallicrosa, “Un amuleto musul- mán de origen aragonés,” Al-Andalus, 6 (1941), 317–326. See also A. Labarta, “Supersticiones moriscas,” op. cit. 4 J. I. Barrera Maturana, “Grafitos históricos en la casa morisca de calle San Martín, 16 (Granada),” Arqueología y Territorio Medieval, 15 (2008), 91–126. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 271 of gold, silver, and lesser metals according to the wealth of the individual; and they recite it two thousand times a day.”5 As late as 1626, the Holy Office arrested one Don Pedro Arce (who was not a Morisco, but a native of Burgos assigned to oversee borax mines in Granada) for having ordered from a jeweller eight silver crosses, each engraved on one side with the star of Solomon and other magical signs.6 It was an extraordinary phenomenon: a mixing of Arabic magic with Catholic religion, embodied in a profession of faith that was clearly imbued with Islam but that also reduced belief to its most basic and universal assumptions. It presupposed a newly revived presence of the Arabic language in Granada: the Lead Books had led the local Christians to pray sometimes in Arabic, or at least to believe that certain Arabic texts had holy as well as magical properties. The unheard-of success of this Arabic prayer of St. James frightened Dobelio, who wrote: “I wish to know, how can we extirpate a devotion that has entered their very skulls and the mar- row of their bones?”. He feared this incursion of what he called “superstition,” but above all its accompanying exaltation of the Arabic language, which for him had clear Islamic overtones: Here we see great supersition, as if the words of God, written or pronounced in any other language, lack enough force and virtue to allow God to hear us and the Devil to depart from us: so it becomes necessary to pray in Arabic so that our prayers may be heard, and to abandon Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and other languages. This superstition makes me think of a deceit of the Mohammedans, who claim that God and his angels speak in Arabic, and that in the next life we shall all speak in that language; they insist that no one shall enter Paradise who cannot speak Arabic.7

5 “Quanto más algunos professan de lleuar consigo por resguardo del ánima y del cuerpo la Oraçión y Nómina empuesta al Glorioso Apóstol Jacobo, esculpida en láminas de oro, plata y otro metal inferior, conforme a la possibilidad de las personas, rezándola al día dos mil vezes”: M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fol. 57. 6 R. Martín Soto, Magia e Inquisición en el Antiguo Reino de Granada (Málaga, 2000), 182. 7 “En esto se hecha de ver la superstiçión grande, como si las palabras de Dios, escritas o referidas en otras lenguas no tienen fuerza ni virtud para que Dios nos oyga, y el Demo- nio nos dexe: por esto será necessario rezar en Arábigo, para que se escuchen nuestras plegarias, y no hazer más caso de la lengua Griega Hebrea, Latina, ni de otras lenguas. Esta superstiçión me reduçe a la memoria una patraña de los Mahometanos, que diçen que Dios y sus Ángeles hablan en Arábigo; y que en la otra vida, nuestra habla será en la dicha lengua, antes quieren que nadie pueda entrar en el Paraýso si no saue hablar Arábigo”: ibid., fol. 58. 272 chapter twelve

After Arabic speakers left this world, which had been so hard on them, at least Paradise would be theirs. In the Lead Book titled Certidumbre del evangelio (Certainty of the Gospel), Peter asks the Virgin: “O Our Lady, speak to us about the virtues of the Arabs who will defend our religion with the truth of the Gospels in times to come, and their rewards, and the superiority of their tongue over other tongues,” to which the Virgin replies, “The Arabs will be the defenders of our religion in times to come. And the superiority of their language over others is like the dominion of the sun over the stars in the sky. God chose them for this, and granted them victory.”8 In another passage of the same book, she insists: “I say to you that the Arabs are one of the most excellent of peoples, and their language one of the most excellent of languages. God chose them to help him support his religion in the Last Days, after they had been its great enemies. And to that end God gave them power and judgment and wisdom, because God, through his mercy, chooses among his servants whom he wills.”9 The Arabs—a new and definitive Chosen People—would bring about the redemption of the world through their language, the most exalted one of all. And this was declared by no less than the Virgin Mary, who in the Lead Books is elevated into almost a replica of the Prophet Muhammad: she is the privileged vehicle for revelation, and like the Prophet in the Miʿrāj she also experienced a miraculous “night journey” to Heaven and Hell.

Writing and Necromancy

Dobelio also insisted repeatedly on the “necromantic” character of the ill- named “Solomonic” writing; he had found it in books that dealt with seals, planets, and “enchantments and superstitions” by diviners who wanted to keep their formulas a mystery. These men attributed the letters to Solomon “because the Koran and its followers believe in the great power

8 “Dinos de la excelencia de los árabes defensores de la ley con la Verdad del Evangelio en el tiempo venidero y de los galardones de ellos y de la excelencia de su lengua sobre las lenguas, Oh Señora nuestra”; “Los árabes han de ser los defensores de la ley en el tiempo venidero. Y la excelencia de su lengua sobre las lenguas es como la excelencia del sol sobre las estrellas del cielo. Eligiólos Dios para este efecto y confirmólos en la victoria”: in the Marquis of Estepa’s translation, see M. J. Hagerty, Los Libros Plúmbeos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 141. 9 “Dígoos que los árabes son una de las más excelentes gentes y su lengua una de las más excelentes lenguas. Eligiólos Dios para ayudar su ley en el último tiempo después de haberle sido grandísimos enemigos. Y darles Dios para aquel efecto poder y juicio y sabiduría, porque Dios elige con su misericordia al que quiere de sus siervos”: ibid., 130. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 273 that he held over demons by virtue of those letters,”10 as can be seen “in the book The Key of Solomon, and so many others.” Dobelio was not the first to link the writing of the Lead Books, with their hexagons and stars, to works of Arabic magic. We saw that Miguel de Luna had needed to answer this charge, and naturally the first scholars who cast doubt on the Books drew the parallel before Dobelio did so. The Licenciate Gonzalo de Valcárcel,11 for instance, thought that the Solomonic letters looked like a form of magic “that necromancers and diviners are wont to use; so that no one will understand what they write in their spells, they employ characters that are unknown and unfamiliar,” this aside from the fact that no one could prove that Solomon had actually invented them.12 To Juan Bau- tista Pérez the Solomonic letters also seemed to come from the realm of magic and magicians, like The Key of Solomon and another book cited by Sprenger in Malleus maleficarum, in which “it says that necromancers use a book that they call Solomon’s, written in Arabic, which Virgil found in some caves in the mountains of Arabia; and I believe that this touches on our case, because it also concerns Solomonic characters and Arabic and caves.”13 A further element was the chessboard pattern of the parchment, which was undoubtedly related to magical grids found in manuscripts from al-Andalus.14 Dobelio developed his argument further, supporting it with citations from a variety of books that were known to the Moriscos. The first of these had been shown to him by Don Francisco de Eraso, Count of Humanes, a learned man, scholar, and bibliophile who owned a fine library. It was a “book in Arabic about seals, signs, and planets” that was no more than

10 “Porque el Alcorán y sus sequaçes le atribuye gran poder que tuuo sobre los Demo- nios, y por virtud destos Caracteres”: M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fol. 31. 11 R. Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “El discurso del licenciado Gonzalo de Valcárcel sobre las reliquias del Sacromonte,” in M. García-Arenal and M. Barrios (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, invención y tesoro (Valencia-Granada-Zaragoza, 2006), 173–199, esp. 196. 12 “Que suelen usar los nigrománticos y hechiceros que, porque no se entienda lo que escriben en sus nóminas, usan de caracteres no sabidos ni conocidos”: ibid., 197. 13 “Diçe que los nigrománticos usan de un libro que llaman de Salomón escrito en lengua Aráviga, y que lo halló Virgilio en unas cavernas de los Montes de Arabia, y cierto me pareçe que esto frisa con nuestro caso, pues se nombran caracteres de Salomón y Arávigo y cavernas”: “Pareçer del Obispo de Segorve, D. Juan Baptista Pérez, sobre las planchas de plomo que se an hallado en Granada escritas con nombres de algunos sanctos este año de 1595,” Discursos, relaciones y cartas tocantes a las çenizas, láminas y libros hallados en el Monte Sancto de Granada, sacados de sus originales, BNE ms. 7187, fol. 28v; and J. Caro Baroja, Vidas mágicas e Inquisición, op. cit., 163. 14 See M. Comes and R. Comes, “Los cuadrados mágicos matemáticos en al-Andalus,” Al-Qantara, 30 (2009), 137–169. 274 chapter twelve forty years old, that is, clearly of Morisco provenance.15 He might have had access to another book confiscated by the Inquisition, that of “the Moor- ish King Sulaymān [Solomon],” with which a Morisco on trial in Cuenca claimed to cure any ailment.16 Dobelio stated that in the matter of the Sacromonte hoaxes he was able to prove their origin and elements, and determine the true texts of the Lead Books, only after the Inquisitor Gen- eral Don Pedro Pacheco, bishop of Cuenca, had placed at his disposal an important cache of Morisco manuscripts. These had been abandoned during the expulsion, shortly before Dobelio wrote his treatise in 1610, in the cellar of a house in Pastrana—a town very near Humanes, in the province of Guadalajara in New Castile. One of them was a Pentateuch in Arabic. This Pentateuch is very ancient, and because two leaves are missing at the end, I cannot put a date to it; it was found with different Mohammedan books and others on philosophy, geometry, medicine, grammar, and different vocabularies, and I was ordered to select the best of them for the Oli- variense Library. At that time the Inquisitor General was the Most Reverend Don Pedro Pacheco, Bishop of Cuenca, uncle of the Don Pedro Pacheco who at present sits on the Council, whose great integrity is accepted by all; he is in charge of the matter of the lead sheets, and defends the truth responsibly and with care. And because this book, and the other Mohammedan ones that we cite in this treatise, were owned by Moriscos, who on their expulsion from Pastrana left them buried in a cave, it appears that the author of the lead sheets followed the style of these books and took from them all of his doctrine, as we shall show and have already shown.17 These are the texts that allowed Dobelio to apprehend the origins and the context of the Sacromonte forgeries; the works were previously unknown to him because they were neither in the Vatican Library nor in his own

15 “Libro en árabe de los Sigilos, Signos y Planetas”: M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fol. 37. 16 M. García-Arenal, Inquisición y Moriscos. Los procesos del tribunal de Cuenca (Madrid, 1978), 133. 17 “Que este Pentateuco, es muy antiguo y como le faltan dos hojas a la postre no puedo poner la fecha; el qual se halló con differentes libros mahometanos y otros de filosophía, Geometría, Medecina, Gramática, y defferentes vocabularios, que tuue orden de escoger los mejores para la Biblioteca Oliuariense siendo Inquisidor General el Ilmo. Sr. Don Pedro Pacheco Obispo de Cuenca tío del Sr. Don Pedro Pacheco que al presente reside en el dicho Consejo con grande integridad y satisfaçión de todos a cuyo cargo está este negocio de las láminas, el qual con grande vigilançia y cuidado defiende la verdad. Y como este libro con los demás Mahometanos que çitamos en este discurso estauan en poder de los Moriscos, los quales en el tiempo de su expulsión dexaron enterrados en Pastrana dentro de una Cueua, pareze que el Autor de las láminas sigue el estilo destos libros de donde tiene sacado toda su Doctrina, como lo demostraremos y tenemos demostrado”: M. Dobe- lio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fols. 73–74. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 275 private collection, which we reviewed in the previous chapter. “I was ordered to select the best of them for the Olivariense Library.”18 What was this collection of Arabic and Morisco manuscripts doing in Pastrana? This question obliges us to pause briefly, not so much to establish a connection between Pastrana’s Moriscos and the creation of the Lead Books as to explore what these events tell us about Arab culture and the literary culture of the Moriscos of Granada—which, as we shall see, is a great deal.

Pastrana

The fact is that Pastrana, after Moriscos were resettled there in 1570, had become a sort of miniature Granada. Duke Ruy Gómez de Silva, husband of Ana de Mendoza and son-in-law of Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, managed to have 200 Morisco families allotted to him in Pastrana, and their numbers continued to grow as conditions in the town attracted new exiles: by 1573 there were 1,215 Moriscos.19 Pastrana boasted an important silk industry (including production of cloth of gold), for which it had imported skilled workers from Milan. As the town became an important textile center it also came to contain a large population of converso merchants of Jewish origin. It was in effect a kind of microcosm of all the religious tendencies current in the Peninsula: there were contacts with Protestants, and also sermons by a famous Illuminist lay preacher, Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz.20 Therefore it enjoyed a relatively high cultural and economic status, and was bubbling with activity under the protection of its dukes. Pastrana was located in the midst of rich, irrigated farmland planted with vines and olives, and many Moriscos worked the land there, some acquiring plots of their own. But its most significant influence was that Pastrana belonged to the part of Guadalajara where the Mendozas had

18 Ibid., fol. 73. Don Pedro Pacheco had given other books to the Count-Duke of Oliva- res: in particular, in 1624, a beautiful Bible in Latin translation known today as the “Biblia de la Casa de Alba,” which was owned by the Holy Office. G. de Andrés, “Historia de la biblioteca del Conde-Duque de Olivares y descripción de sus códices,” Cuadernos Biblio- gráficos, 28 (1972), 4. 19 A. García López, “Moriscos andalusíes en Pastrana. Las quejas de una minoría mar- ginada de moriscos, con noticias sobre su paralelismo en el reino de Granada,” Sharq al- Andalus, 12 (1995), 42. 20 M. Serrano Sanz, “Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz, iluminado alcarreño del siglo XVI,” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 3rd series, 8 (1903), 1–16 and 126–139. 276 chapter twelve their origins and held the lordship of lands and towns. It must have been an obvious place to relocate Moriscos who were dependents of the lords of the Alhambra; among them were notable dyers and silk merchants like Álvaro Hermez, Felipe Hernández el Chapiz,21 and Alonso de Raya,22 all residents of Pastrana. Two leagues outside the town, in an area called La Pangía, the Princess of Eboli settled thirty or forty Moriscos who lived according to their own customs (i.e., as Muslims), without any church or priest, a fact that scandalized the parish priests of Yebra and Pastrana.23 The Moriscos founded their own neighborhood, “el Albaicín,” outside Pastrana’s walls; they elected representatives to the city council and advocates to defend them in the courts, and employed their own schoolmaster.24 They formed a strong and united community: in 1602, the “representative of those born in the Kingdom of Granada” demanded of the mayor and city council that their members be called not “Moriscos or other insulting terms,” but rather exactly what they were, “natives of the Kingdom of Granada.”25 “Natives” (naturales) was, of course, the name that they had long claimed, the one that appeared over and over in Núñez Muley’s Memorial. Likewise these “natives of Granada” petitioned success- fully for the power of assembly and the right to name their own advocate in lawsuits. But in counterpoint, in that same year of 1602, the council issued a decree that forbade residents to speak Arabic; it appears that the Moriscos of Pastrana used the language habitually and in public.26 It is remarkable how rarely these Moriscos were pursued by the Holy Office, with the exception of a few trials after the final expulsion; as on other noble estates, they enjoyed the protection of their dukes. More than 2,200 Moriscos (30% of the local population) were expelled from Pastrana in 1610, but a good proportion of them must have either stayed or returned, on the evidence of Inquisition trials of Moriscos who were still living in the town years later. For instance, a suit was brought in 1617 against a family of Morisco dyers—Alonso de Mendoza, his mother, his sisters, and a niece—all accused of speaking Arabic and owning

21 B. Vincent, El río morisco, op. cit., 197. 22 J. Martínez Millán, “Los moriscos de Castilla: ‘bienes raíces’ de los moriscos en la villa de Pastrana,” in Les morisques et leurs temps, op. cit., 413–430. For the merchant Gaspar de Raya and his family connections see B. Vincent, El río morisco, op. cit., 189. 23 A. García López, “Moriscos andalusíes en Pastrana,” op. cit., 166. 24 See ibid., 163–177, which draws on documents from the municipal archives and the Archivo de Protocolos of Pastrana. 25 Ibid., 64. 26 E. Alegre Carvajal, La villa ducal de Pastrana (Guadalajara, 2003), 138. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 277

Arabic books; the charge was brought by Alonso’s wife and his niece Ana’s husband, both of whom were Old Christians.27 It provides a good lesson in the limits and dangers of integration and above all of mixed marriages. The members of this family were accused, among other things, of association only with “persons of their own nation,” implying that there were other Moriscos in the area.28 During an Inquisitorial visit to Pastrana in 1631 it was affirmed that the town held fifteen households of Moriscos who had avoided expulsion; the visitor declared that he would not investigate them without a direct order.29 In the whole Alcarria region, and nearby in the five villages in La Mancha that belonged to the Order of Calatrava, a significant number of expelled Moriscos managed to return. One resident of Pastrana was Muhammad Alguazir, whom we find at the court in Marrakech in 1627;30 there he must have coincided with al-Ḥajarī, who calls him “our Alguaçil” in a letter to the Moriscos of Istan- bul.31 We shall return to the ties among Pastrana, Morocco, and Istanbul woven by Granadan Moriscos, which we have already observed in previous chapters. Muhammad Alguazir earned his fame when he wrote in Spanish, by his own account at the request of Sultan Muley Zidan, an anti- Christian polemic titled Apología contra la ley cristiana (Apology against the Christian faith), which achieved wide circulation in both Spanish and Latin versions. Its profoundly anti-Trinitarian stance, and its invec- tive against the Papacy, made it popular in Protestant circles in northern Europe. Muhammad Alguazir would have belonged to the Alguacil family, several members of which are documented in Pastrana. At the start of the expulsion, when Moriscos’ goods were put up for sale in the town, three Alguacils were selling their houses and vineyards.32 In 1613 Diego Alguacil

27 AHN, Inquisición, legs. 2106, exp. 17, and 195, exps. 25–26. 28 The members of this family saga who suffered the most were Isabel and Ana, mother and daughter, who were both reconciled to the Church. The complete records of their trials survives: AHN, Inquisición, leg. 195, exps. 25–26. 29 AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3105, April 1, 1631. 30 According to Ibrahim al-Taybili, who claims that Alguazir inspired his own work: “and having seen a book that came into my hands whose author was Muhamad Algua- çir, formerly a resident of Pastrana and now of the noble city of Marrakech, in which he contradicts the false Christian doctrine” (“y abiendo visto un libro que a mis manos bino cuyo autor fue Muhamad Alguaçir, beçino que fue de Pastrana, y al presente de la ynsigne çiudad de Marruecos en que contradiçe la falsa ley cristiana”): L. Bernabé Pons, El cántico islámico del morisco hispanotunecino Taybili (Zaragoza, 1989), 140. 31 G. A. Wiegers, “The Andalusi Heritage in the Maghrib: the Polemical Work of Muham- mad Alguazir,” Orientations. Poetry, Politics and Polemics. Cultural Transfer between the Ibe- rian Peninsula and North Africa, 4 (1996), 107–132, esp. 110. 32 J. Martínez Millán, “Los moriscos en Castilla,” op. cit., 417. 278 chapter twelve was denounced for having claimed that he knew how to write prayers in Arabic and “transfer” them (trasladarlas), which might have meant either translate them into Spanish or put them in writing.33 We will speak again shortly about Muhammad Alguazir’s work and Diego Alguacil. But let us return now to the books. In 1623 Bernardo de Aldrete wrote from Cordova, where he was a canon in the cathedral, to Cristóbal de Aybar, secretary to Archbishop Pedro de Castro of Granada, about a sheet of paper written in Arabic that had come into his hands and that had come from a cache of Arabic books recently discovered in Pastrana. In his words, There was a large number of Moriscos in Pastrana. After they were expelled Old Christians moved into their houses, and in a certain house, so many years had passed that no one had noticed one chamber because it was so well sealed up and disposed that it was not clear that it existed; until, after they suspected and began to search, they broke open a wall and found a good-sized room lined with shelves that held the well-bound volumes of a library, with clean sheets of paper in between the volumes, everything of Arabic origin. This is what they have told me, and I have as a sample a fragment of one sheet written in a clear hand, with some letters that differ from those shown in the manuals. The paper is of good quality and the texts appear to be prayers. Just as this sheet made its way to Cordova, others must have gone elsewhere. In Baeza, as they were tearing down a wall another Arabic book appeared and was sent to the Inquisition. Every day more of these, hidden by Moriscos, will continue to be found. The residents of Pas- trana say that they have a great many.34 In the same letter Aldrete showed great interest in obtaining books from a dealer in Seville named Juan Bellero, particularly the works of Drusus “and of that great heretic Guillielmo Postelo [Guillaume Postel], De Phoenicum Literis.” Elsewhere in the course of his correspondence with

33 AHN, Inquisición, leg. 2106/13. 34 “En Pastrana avía gran número de moriscos. Con su expulsión entraron a havitar sus casas cristianos viejos, y con aver tantos años, en una casa no avían echado de ver un aposento, tan bien cerrado estava i dispuesto, que no se entendía que lo avía allí hasta que por coniecturas fueron buscando, i rompieron la pared i hallaron una pieça buena con sus estantes y librería mui bien enquadernada, i entre libro i libro sus papeles blancos, todos en gran número árabes. Hasta aquí me an dicho, i para señas un pedaço de hoja de uno de buena letra, en las que las diferencian algunas de las que ponen las artes. Buen papel, parecen oraciones. Como vino a Córdoba esta hoja, irían otras a otras partes. En Baeça, derribando una pared también apareció otro libro árabe que enviaron a la Inquisición. Cada día se irán descubriendo tantos como tenían los moriscos escondidos. Los de Pas- trana dicen que es mucha cosa”: J. Rodríguez Mateos (ed.), Un epistolario de Bernardo José Aldrete (1612–1623) (Seville, 2009), letter no. 67, 215. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 279

Cristóbal de Aybar, Aldrete, on hearing of the death of the prebendary Luis de San Llorente of Seville Cathedral, wondered at once about the fate of the man’s books and hoped that he might find among them a manuscript by Flavius Dextrus. Anxious and frustrated by his inability to obtain books, Aldrete lamented the fate of the cache from Pastrana, writing in another letter: “This matter of the Arabic books is a sad case, for they are so valuable—all written by hand—and there must be important works among them. They must all have been scattered, if no one gathered them up to bury them together with Muley Zidan’s in El Escorial.”35 He was well aware of what awaited Arabic books in Spain: so many were confiscated by the Inquisition, and most of the ones in El Escorial came from a ship of the Moroccan sultan’s, seized in 1611. Aldrete’s correspondence betrays the disappointment that some scholars felt on seeing how collections of Arabic works were dispersed, destroyed, or locked away in the Inquisition’s cellars or in royal libraries.36 Sources from the Inquisition in Toledo confirm that Arabic books were found in Pastrana after the expulsion of the Moriscos. In the course of the 1631 visit by representatives of the Holy Office in Toledo, witnesses stated that “earlier,” on two separate occasions, “a great number” of books had appeared in houses abandoned by expelled Moriscos, and as a result the Toledo Tribunal sent a request to Pastrana for further information.37 Archdeacon Alonso de Cifuentes testified that one set had been found about sixteen years before (i.e., around 1615), and a second set nine years before (in 1622), in houses in the Albaicín quarter: “bound books in the Arabic language, in a cloth case made of strips of blue and red damask with gold stripes (he does not remember how many there were), in a house that the Moriscos had left, right next to the orchard of the Francis- can friars.” The books were discovered in a cellar, in small sacks stuffed with lavender, and there were also some Spanish volumes among them.38 There is indeed a document that testifies that in 1622 the Duke of Pastrana had informed the Inquisitor General about the discovery of these books and had sent him “six packets” of them. Through accounts of the carter

35 Rodríguez Mateos (ed.), Un epistolario, letter no. 68, 219. 36 M. García-Arenal and F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Los libros de los moriscos y los eruditos orientales,”Al-Qanṭara, 31:2 (2010), 611–646. 37 AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3105, 1, April 23, 1631. 38 “Libros en lengua arábiga encuadernados y con una funda de faxos de damasco azul y colorado y franjas de oro que no se acuerda cuántos serían, en una casa que dejaron los moriscos pegada al huerto de los frailes de San Francisco”: ibid., April 30, 1631. 280 chapter twelve who transported them and who charged for them by weight, we know that those six packets of books weighed 28 arrobas (about 320 kilograms), suggesting a very considerable number of volumes.39

The Pastrana Books

Dobelio did not, unfortunately, include in his text a complete list of the books that the Inquisitor Pacheco had told him about, and the information that he does give us about some of them is as tantalizing as it is meager. We must recall that Dobelio’s Nuevo descubrimiento de la falsedad del metal, which has come down to us in three versions, is presented as an “Introduction” to, or synthesis of, a longer treatise of which we have found only fragments in draft form, and in which he obviously developed in detail each of the points mentioned in the “Introduction”. One feature of Dobelio’s use of the Pastrana texts is significant: in the two draft chapters that survive in the Real Academia de la Historia, he includes his own translation of the fatwa of the so-called Mufti of Oran (of which we shall speak below), with the title Epístola mahomética del Apóstata (Moham- medan Epistle of the Apostate), and notes in his own hand, “it is a letter from Obaydala Ahmad Abenabigiomoa, a native of Almagro settled in Oran.”40 He also alludes frequently in his writings, and particularly in the “Introduction”, to the works that he used in proving his case that the Lead Books were a Morisco fabrication, and he specifies that all the books that he consulted and cited in his treatise (and therefore in his “Introduction”) belonged to the cache found in Pastrana. The three authors that he mentions most often are al-Ghazzālī, Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (Kitāb al-Shifāʾ), and al-Bakrī (Kitāb al-Anwār, of which he notes that it was an ancient tome, blackened and much handled, over three hundred years old); on the basis of these he shows how the stories about Jesus contained in the Lead Books were no more than reworkings of tales about the Prophet Muhammad. The books of “necromancy, spells, and superstitions” that dealt with seals and with planets “where the seal of the Moon appears as a hexagonal figure, just as in the lead sheets,” served

39 The report on the 1622 discovery is found in AHN, Inquisición, leg. 3096. Toledo’s Inquisitor Gaspar de Peralta collected the books on July 30, 1622. 40 This version of the fatwa has been edited by María del Mar Rosa-Rodríguez, “Simu- lation and Dissimulation: Religious Hybridity in a Morisco Fatwa,” Medieval Encounters, 16 (2010), 143–180; neither Dobelio nor the provenance of this version are named in this article. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 281 to indentify the provenance, script, and signs of those same sheets; one source was a Kitāb al-asrār (The Book of Secrets).41 He relies above all on the Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ (Stories of the Prophets) by al-Thaʿālibī and Ibn Wathīma, comparing them to the story of Solomon’s Seal as it appeared in the Lead Books, and can prove that the latter is the Islamic legend of Solomon and the ring that gave him power over demons and granted him esoteric knowledge.42 This ring bore a seal that “was of hexagonal shape” and the inscription: “There is no God but God, one only without any companion or partner. Mohammed is his servant and messenger.”43 Dobelio likewise deploys the Arabic Pentateuch found in Pastrana to demonstrate that the story of Moses as told in the Lead Books came not from Exodus but from the Qurʾānic version and from the “tales of the prophets.”44 He also makes abundant use of a “book of sermons” titled Kitāb zād al-wāʿiẓ wa-rawḍ al-ḥāfiẓ (Book of provisions of the preacher and garden of the scholar),45 “trasladado” (that is, copied) by one Aḥmad b. Qāsim b. Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan b. ῾Umar of Almazán,46 whom we have been unable to identify.

ت ك ��ا ب� superstitions I find a very old one with the title أabout ف works ذ Among other“ 41 � � ف�ن ن � ش ت ن � � ق Book of secrets of different types of operations of the) ال� �سرار �ي� ��و� �م�� ا�ه� ب� ا ل��ار و�م�� ا ل��يط��ا �لي�� Princes of Demons), where he introduces one of their princes called Phitecus who says that he was the first to have rendered obeisance to King Solomon, advising him to call into his presence the 72 princes of the Legions so as to question each one about the evil that he commits against the human race, and to force him to offer the remedy. All of these, after having entered his presence, tell about the evil that they do, then they give the remedy: substances from Nature together with letters, spells, seals, and mysterious words from the Koran. From this it is clear that some Mohammedan composed it, and to give credence to his fraud, attributed it to King Solomon” (“Entre otros libros que tratan de cosas supers tiçiosas hallo uno muy antiguo intitulado [. . .] Libro de los secretos de differentes maneras de operaçiones de los Príncipes de los Demonios, donde introduce un Príncipe dellos llamado Phitecus, y diçe hauer sido el primero que diò obediencia al Rey Salomón aconse- jándole que llamase a su presençia los.72. Príncipes de las Legiones para interrogar a cada uno de por sí del daño que haze al género humano, y que enseñe el remedio. Todos estos después de hauer entrado a su presençia diçen el mal que hazen, después dan el remedio de cosas naturales acompañadas de Caracteres, Nóminas, Sigilos, y palabras superstiçiosas del Alcorán; donde se descubre hauerlo compuesto algún Mahometano y para acreditar su patraña, lo apoya al Rey Salomón”): M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fol. 32. 42 Philippe Roisse, in his edition and translation of the Lead Book Historia del sello de Salomón (History of Solomon’s Seal), shows how closely it follows the legend of Solomon in Arabic literature, particularly the version that forms part of the qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ genre: P. Roisse, “La Historia del sello de Salomón. Estudio, edición crítica y traducción comparada,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 141–171. 43 [old 39] “No hay Dios sino Dios, uno solo y sin compañero ni participante. Mahoma es su siervo y mensajero”: M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fol. 138. 44 Ibid., fols. 70 ff. 45 Ibid., fol. 112. 46 Ibid., fol. 161. 282 chapter twelve

Genealogies, Religious Polemic, and Stories of the Prophets

The books that passed through Marcos Dobelio’s hands from the Morisco cache at Pastrana—that cache is lost today, or at least has not been located as an identifiable set—were for the most part typical of other finds of the same type, that is to say groups of books hidden by Moriscos; but this particular lot seems to have been a good deal larger and richer than the rest. By way of comparison we can consider another set of books of Granadan origin, the one seized from Pedro de Mendoza, leader of the Moriscos of Güéjar, in 1570; it is described in the Inquisition trial of Moriscos from Valdeinfierno. The books were taken to the Holy Office in Granada, where they were translated. The majority of them contained “the religion and sect of the Moors and what they should believe and perform according to the sect and religion of the Moors and the opinions of Mohammed,”47 but there were also books of magic that dealt with “dreams and sneezing and other superstitious matters.” Another volume found among the Morisco captain’s possessions contained “formulas that the Moriscos pronounce for various ends, in which they invoke and use words of Mohammed; and the first of them is called the spell of the messenger of God, with which they say that Mohammed cured all sufferings and illnesses; the others are for going to war, and for speaking to kings without fear. In all of which they invoke the name of Mohammed and deny the Holy Trinity.”48 Here we find once again the same interweaving of religion, magic, and healing that was so characteristic of Granadan Islam. The books from Pastrana also included titles found in other sets of Morisco manuscripts, like the huge cache that appeared in Almonacid de la Sierra (province of Saragossa);49 the latter also contains examples of magic and divination,50 a copy of the Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ of ʿUmāra b.

47 M. Barrios, La suerte de los vencidos, op. cit., 144 ff. 48 “Nóminas que los moros hazen para diversos hefectos, en las quales ynuocan y tratan palabras de Mahoma; y que la primera dellas se llama la nómina del mensajero de Dios, con la qual dizen que Mahoma curaua todas las pasyones y enfermedades; las otras, que son para entrar en las guerras y para hablar a los reyes syn temor. En todas las quales nombran a Mahoma y niegan la Santísima Trinidad.” 49 It is housed in the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás of the Centro de Humanidades, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid (the collection is called “Manus critos de la Junta” because before the formation of the CSIC it belonged to the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios). It was catalogued by F. Ribera and M. Asín, and the entire collection has been digitized. 50 A. Labarta (ed.), Libro de los dichos maravillosos, op. cit. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 283

Wathīma,51 and several other volumes in Aljamiado (Spanish written with Arabic letters) of the genre of stories of the prophets, which had been very popular in al-Andalus.52 One of the Aljamiado narratives in the Junta collection, the story of Buluqiya, has been edited by Luce López-Baralt53 together with a translation of the same story from the Arabic Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ by al-Thaʿālibī; the Aljamiado version is a virtual calque of the Arabic. According to the legend, Buluqiya was an Israelite sage contemporary with Solomon who, on examining his inheritance after his father’s death, found a chest: within it was a strongly sealed gold box that contained a secret text, a fragment of the Torah that prophesied the coming of Muhammad, last of the prophets. On reading the parchment Buluqiya converted from Judaism to Islam, shared the good tidings with other Jews, and set out on a journey to fur- thest Syria in order to learn more about this heralded prophet. For this primordial Israelite Muslim, the journey became a spiritual pilgrimage that recalls the Miʿrāj or ascent of Muhammad to the Seventh Heaven. There are notable parallels between the tale of Buluqiya and the Lead Books. In the latter, Caecilius and Ctesiphon are primordial Arab Chris- tians who set off to the limits of the known world bearing the Truth of the Gospel—a Gospel that is suspiciously close to Islam. In Granada a parchment containing a prophecy was also found within a sealed metal coffer—a recurring theme in Arab-Muslim legends of an eschatological nature. For example, in al-Kisāʾī’s Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ, God gives Adam a secret chest and orders him to open it; Adam finds there a white cloth on which is written a list of the Pharaohs and all the future prophets, the last one being Muhammad, with whom the Revelation ends.54 The Egyptian historian al-Maqrīzī related that the Christian Crusaders, on conquering Acre, found a chest of red marble resting on a golden table. When they were finally able to open it they found a prediction written “in Roman letters” that prophesied the coming of the Arabs, led by their Prophet, who would defeat all his enemies and impose his religion on the whole human race.55 This theme of the sealed casket that contains a

51 M. J. Hermosilla, “Una versión inédita del Kitab baʿd al-jalq wa-qisas al-anbiya en el Ms. LXIII de la Junta,” Al-Qanṭara, 6 (1985), 43–77. 52 See the extensive bibliography in R. Tottoli, “The Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ of Ibn Muṭarrif al-Ṭarafī: Stories of the Prophets from al-Andalus,” Al-Qanṭara, 19 (1998), 131–160. 53 El viaje maravilloso de Buluqiya a los confines del Universo (Madrid, 2004). 54 Ibid., 16. 55 A. Abel, “Changements politiques et littérature eschatologique dans le monde musulman,” Studia Islamica, 2 (1954), 39. 284 chapter twelve prophecy is strongly reminiscent of the symbolic chest that King Rodrigo found in Toledo, in a tower closed with many locks. That casket was set on a golden table that had been Solomon’s, and held a secret parchment that predicted the coming of the Muslims to Visigothic Spain and the terrible fate that awaited that country.56 The same motif, so often repeated in Arab historiography about al- Andalus, figured also in the false history that Miguel de Luna composed, attributing it to the supposed Arab historian Abulcacim Tarif Abentarique: Historia verdadera del Rey Don Rodrigo.57 Luna embroidered the story by placing a cave below the tower, and within it an inscription in “letters of the Greek language, but in cipher, whose meaning is doubtful.”58 Luna introduced into his book, after the sealed and ruined tower in Toledo, a second prophecy that clearly derives from the qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ. A woman approaches the Arab conqueror of Spain, Tarif, just after he disembarks in the Peninsula, because she recognizes him as the protagonist of a prophecy that her father had told: a man of marvelous powers would conquer Spain, and would be known by “a hairy birthmark the size of a chickpea located on his right shoulder.”59 The inspiration for this tale was the legend of Bahira, which appears in all the compendia of “stories of the prophets”: he was a Christian monk who was the first to recognize the prophethood of Muhammad on seeing on his right shoulder a birthmark that was its identifying sign.60 Dobelio hastened to stress that this hairy birthmark was present also in the Lead Books’ depictions of Jesus; for him it was a literal calque of the physical description of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib in the “stories of the prophets.”61 The Lead Books also told the story of Moses’s conversation with God on Mount Tabor.62 This tale or its variant, Moses’s dialogue with God on

56 J. Hernández Juberías, La Península imaginaria, op. cit., 194 ff. 57 See Chapter VI, “in which it is related how King Rodrigo opened the enchanted tower in the City of Toledo thinking to find some treasure, and how he found there the foretell- ing of the loss of Spain” (“que trata cómo el Rey Don Rodrigo abrió la torre encantada de la Ciudad de Toledo pensando sacar algún tesoro, y como halló en ella los pronósticos de la pérdida de España”). 58 “Letras en lenguage Griega, aunque cifradas, dudosas en el sentido de la lectura”: Historia verdadera, op. cit., 23. 59 “Un lunar peloso, tan grande como un garvanço, situado sobre el hombro de la mano derecha”: Ibid. 60 See M. García-Arenal, “‘Un réconfort pour ceux qui sont dans l’attente’: Prophétie et millénarisme dans la Péninsule Ibérique et au Maghreb (XVI–XVII siècles),” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 220 (2003), 445–486. 61 M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fol. 164. 62 Ibid., fol. 70. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 285

Mount Sinai, was common in Aljamiado literature as well.63 Like the stories of Buluqiya and Bahira, it had a clear pro-Islamic polemical slant: in each one, a wise and respected Jew or Christian cannot help but accept the truth of Islam.

Al-Bakrī’s Kitāb al-Anwār

Dobelio does not establish the aforementioned connections, but rather analyzes in detail the parallels between some of the Lead Books’ texts and Kitāb al-Anwār (The Book of Lights) by al-Bakrī, a thirteenth-century Arab writer whose book he found in the Pastrana collection. This work enjoyed enormous popularity among the Moriscos, to judge by the several Aljamiado versions that have survived among texts uncovered in Ricla, Uclés, and Urrea de Jalón.64 It was even put into verse by an Aragonese Morisco, Mohamad Rabadān, and then circulated in that form.65 The work is a detailed genealogy of the Prophet Muhammad that recounts, in legendary terms, his marvelous deeds and those of his ancestors and descendants. For the Moriscos, it glorified the ancestry not only of the Prophet but of all Muslims; it transformed their lineage into a sacred one that placed them closer to their Creator than any other people, and made them heirs to a triumphant past. Inquisition trials also bear witness to the wide circulation of this Book of Lights, which helped Muslims to recall “our glorious exploits.”66 Dur- ing their celebrations of the mawlid, the Prophet’s birthday, the Moriscos used to read passages of the Book of Lights aloud,67 as we learn from

63 A. Vespertino Rodríguez, Leyendas aljamiadas y moriscas sobre personajes bíblicos (Madrid, 1983). 64 M. L. Lugo Acevedo (ed.), El Libro de las luces. Leyenda aljamiada sobre la genealogía de Mahoma (Madrid, 2008). 65 J. A. Lasarte, Poemas de Mohamad Rabadán. Canto de las lunas. Día del juicio. Discurso de la luz. Los nombres de Dios (Saragossa, 1991), 73–270; and F. Corriente, Relatos píos y profa- nos del manuscrito aljamiado de Urrea de Jalón, prologue by M. J. Viguera (Saragossa, 1990). 66 It enters into the case of Francisco de Espinosa of El Provencio (Cuenca), who “used to read in a book stories about Mohammed, [. . .] especially about how he had conquered and ruled many lands” (“leía en un libro cosas de Mahoma [. . .] especialmente cómo había ganado y señoreado muchas tierras”), while the Moriscos who were present “enjoyed this very much”: M. García-Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos, op. cit., 87. Likewise, in Aragon, several trials of Moriscos specified that the accused had read the Book of Lights: J. Fournel-Guérin, “Le livre et la civilisation écrite dans la communauté morisque arago- naise (1540–1620),” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 15 (1979), 251. 67 On the mawlid celebration, and on the Sufis’ practice of reading from Kitāb al-Anwār, see B. Shoshan, “Al-Bakri’s Biography of Muhammad,” in Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo 286 chapter twelve several Inquisition trials held in the vicinity of Pastrana.68 The version of al-Bakrī’s work found in Pastrana was in Arabic; in this particular cache of books there were none in Aljamiado, because the Arabic-speaking Moris- cos of Granada did not write in Spanish with Arabic script, but in the Arabic language itself. The information that Dobelio provides about this Arabic work suggests that it was the manuscript now housed in the Vati- can Library.69 The themes of the Book of Lights that meant so much to the Moriscos were the Muslims’ sacred ancestry, their glorious lineage, and the great deeds performed throughout their illustrious past; all of these, portrayed in heroic terms, gave the lie to the Christian accusation that the sons of Ishmael were bastards, descended from the slave-woman Hagar. As Dobe- lio states, the text of the Book of Lights “describes the ancestry of Moham- med, his birth, and his miracles with infinite falsehoods, in which we can see that everything that the author says about Our Lord Jesus is really about Mohammed concealed under the name of Jesus.”70 He maintains that certain of the Books, particularly the one titled Vida y milagros de Cristo (Life and miracles of Christ), are nothing but a transposition of al-Bakrī’s work in which all of the tales about Muhammad are attributed to Jesus; the Prophet is “disguised” as Christ. He also can show that all of the epithets applied to Jesus in the Lead Books correspond to the seventy- seven names or attributes of Muhammad that occur in the Kitāb al-Shifāʾ of Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ. We must now recall that these two texts—Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ’s, and the Crónica y relación de la esclarecida descendencia Xarifa (Chronicle and narrative of the illustrious lineage of the Sharifis)71—were copied in Spanish transla-

(London, 2002), 37 ff. See also N. J. Kaptein, Muhammad’s Birthday Festival (Leiden, 1993), 129 ff., and M. García-Arenal, “Shurafa in the Last Times of al-Andalus and in the Morisco Period: Laylat al-mawlid and genealogies of the Prophet,” in M. Kazuo (ed.), Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim Societies: The Living Links to the Prophet (London, 2012), 161–185. 68 P. Dressendörfer, Islam unter der Inquisition. Die Morisko-Prozesse in Toledo (1575–1610) (Wiesbaden, 1971), 84. 69 The manuscript was taken to Rome in 1627 by the Papal Nuncio in Madrid, Camillo Massimo, who carried a total of twenty-one Arabic manuscripts from Spain to the Vatican: M. L. Lugo, “Introducción,” in Libro de las luces, op. cit., 41. P. S. van Koningsveld has shown that most of the Arabic manuscripts from Spain that came to the Vatican had passed through the Inquisition’s hands: “Andalusian-Arabic Manuscripts from Christian Spain. A Comparative Intercultural Approach,” Israel Oriental Studies, 12 (1992), 75–110. 70 “Descriue la descendençia de Mahoma, su nasçimiento y Milagros con infinitas patrañas donde se puede ver todo lo que el Autor habla de Nuestro Señor Jesús, es de Mahoma encubierto debaxo del nombre de Jesús.” 71 Crónica y relación de la esclarecida descendencia Xarifa, ed. J. F. Cutillas (Alicante, 1998). marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 287 tion by Aḥmad al-Ḥajarī and are found in the Bologna manuscript that we referred to in Chapter 6, commissioned by Mohamed Rubio, a Morisco exile in Tunis. These were obviously very important texts for the Moriscos. With Kitāb al-Anwār, which was so successful and, as Dobelio proved, exerted such an influence on the Lead Books, we should connect yet another work: al-Anwār al-nabawiyya fī ābāʾ khayr al-bārriyya (Lights of the prophets on the best of the forefathers), the work of another Morisco in Tunisian exile, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rāfiʿ al-Andalusī.72 This other “Book of Lights,” also a recounting of the Prophet’s genealogy, was written by a Morisco who claimed to be a sharīf or descendant of the Prophet himself, by virtue of which he demands to be treated and honored in accordance with his rank. Both this work and al-Bakrī’s testify to the Moriscos’ need (at least by those of noble blood) to place themselves within a lineage that goes back to Muhammad, and to claim the rights and privileges that derived from that doubly blessed condition: aristocracy of blood and Prophetic descent. These are fascinating texts. They display arguments in defense of certain Morisco lineages that were not, naturally, the same ones that Morisco hidalgos put forward in Castilian documents when they sought to claim their privileges. This is not to say, however, that there was no overlap between them; there were individuals who claimed noble status in Chris- tian society at the same time that they boasted of their descent from the Prophet. The prestige of Sharifi ancestry coexisted with another status that gave Moriscos even greater legitimacy: Umayyad descent, which was claimed by Don Hernando de Córdoba y Válor, whom the Alpujarras rebels had chosen as their king.73 The Banū Abī al-Āsi, of whom we have

72 The text was partially translated into French by A. Turki, “Document sur le dernier exode des andalous vers la Tunisie,” in M. de Epalza and R. Petit (eds.), Études sur les moriscos andalous en Tunisie (Madrid, 1973), 114–127. 73 L. del Mármol affirms in his Historia, Chap. 7, Book IV, “Which tells of Don Hernando de Córdoba y Válor, and how the rebels raised him up as king” (“Que trata de don Her- nando de Córdoba y Válor, y cómo los rebeldes le alzaron por rey”): “Don Hernando de Córdoba y Válor was a Morisco, a man respected by those of that nation because he traced his origin to the Caliph Maruán [Marwān]; and his ancestors, so it is said, being from the city of Damascus in Syria, had been present at the death of Caliph Hucein [Ḥusayn], son of Ali, Mohammed’s cousin. And they fled to Africa and later to Spain, and by their own efforts had occupied the Kingdom of Cordova and had possessed it for many years under the name of the Abdarrahamanes, because the first of them was called Abdarrahamán [ʿAbd al-Raḥmān]; but his own surname was Abén Umeya” (“Don Hernando de Córdoba y Válor era morisco, hombre estimado entre los de aquella nación porque traía su origen del halifa Maruán; y sus antecesores, según decían, siendo vecinos de la ciudad de Damasco Xam, habían sido en la muerte del halifa Hucein, hijo de Alí primo de Mahoma y veníanse huyendo a África, y después a España y con valor propio habían ocupado el Reino de 288 chapter twelve spoken, and perhaps also the Chapiz clan, boasted of Umayyad ancestry as well. Let us turn now to one of the principal and most striking correspondences that Dobelio found between the Lead Books and the Book of Lights, and the one that held the greatest significance for him. In the Lead Book called Libro de los actos de nuestro Señor Jesús y de sus milagros y de su madre María la Virgen (Book of the acts of our Lord Jesus and of his miracles and of his mother the Virgin Mary)—which Dobelio claimed to possess and to have read many times74—in the “Chapter of his birth and of the marvels that occurred at the time,” the following story is told about Jesus: when the shepherds approached to see the newborn babe, the angel Gabriel wrote on the child’s back, with a beam of brilliant light that was said to have existed since before the creation of the world, the phrase “There is no God but God.” As Dobelio points out,75 this episode is identical to the one in al-Bakrī’s Kitāb al-Anwār in which the coming of Muham- mad is heralded by a light which proceeds directly from the divine Light that predated the Creation; it had passed through all of the prophets from Adam onward. On Muhammad’s back, the phrase written in divine light was “there is no God but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” Therefore the Lead Book transposes onto Jesus one of the most important themes of Islamic mystical prophetology, the nūr muḥammadī (light of Muhammad). Originating before Eternity, this luminous mass of primordial adoration, in the form of a transparent column, made Muhammad into the first being created by God.76 This motif, together with those of Solomon’s esoteric knowledge and the names of Muhammad and Jesus, connected the content and form of the Lead Books with some of the essential elements of Sufi mysticism as it was practiced, for instance, in Morocco in the sixteenth century. It also placed Morisco Islam in close conjunction to the religious expression of the Maghrib at the time: in Maghribi Islam, the cult of families that descended from the Prophet played a central role. It resulted in an unusual reverence for the figure of Muhammad as uswa ḥasana, the perfect and inimitable model. Magic, esoteric knowledge, and mystical brotherhoods coincided

Córdoba y poseídolo mucho tiempo con nombre de Abdarrahamanes, por llamarse el primero Abdarrahamán; mas su propio apellido era Abén Umeya”). 74 M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fol. 5. 75 Ibid., fols. 77–78. 76 U. Rubin, “Pre-existence and Light: Aspects of the Concept of Nūr Muḥammad,” Israel Oriental Studies, 5 (1975), 62–119. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 289 in the worship of the Prophet and of Solomon, a hero steeped in magical powers who was a superhuman figure in the popular mind and who must have been a consolatory symbol to the Moriscos.

Islamic Texts for a Morisco Audience

We have traced the many pathways that lead outward from the Sac- romonte forgeries, and everywhere we find the same animating themes: defense of the Arabic language, pride in an ancient lineage, and recol- lection of former glories that adorned a mythical past. There is no doubt that Marcos Dobelio was correct in placing the falsifications in a Morisco and Islamic context. In his text he states on at least four occasions that Castillo and Luna were the authors of the fraud, but he provides no evidence or rationale for his claim. He does, however, prove convincingly that the Lead Books are steeped in Morisco culture, in both their form and their literary motifs. Even so it is difficult to assert that these texts, although they drew on works and themes of Islamic religious polemic, were an anti-Christian screed or, as Dobelio believed, simply an Islamic text in Christian clothing. In Dobelio’s opinion the works were Islamic and shaped for a Morisco audience; however, since through mixing of populations Arabic was so widely spoken in Spain, “some people, in order not to be understood by all, invented the cipher based on necromancy in order to hide their secrets. This is my opinion.”77 Dobelio promoted the notion that the texts were a form of disguised and secret writing, connected to magic, esoteric knowledge, and mysticism, in part because he had read another volume from the Pastrana cache: an “apostatic epistle of the perverted heretic Abina- giomoa, a native of the town of Almagro settled in the city of Oran, from which he exhorts the Moors of Spain, universis et singulis, to converse with Christians on matters both sacred and profane with a clear conscience, while keeping to their own religion entirely.”78 This “epistle” convinced Dobelio that the Sacromonte texts were not only a form of secret writing

77 “Algunos, para no ser entendidos de todos, inventaron la zifra sacada del carácter negromántico para ocultar los secretos. Éste es mi parescer”: M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fol. 39. 78 “Epístola apostática del perverso hereje Abinagiomoa natural de la villa de Almagro, aveçindado en la çiudad de Orán essortando la Morisma de España Vniuersis et singulis, que puedan conuersar con los cristianos, tanto en las cosas sacras como en las prophanas sin cargo de consçiencia y guardar su ley enteramente”: ibid., fol. 49. 290 chapter twelve but exhorted the Moriscos to dissimulate and keep their faith hidden from the Christians. According to Dobelio, he included the epistle and commented on it extensively in his work La falsedad del metal. In effect, the epistle appears in his translation among the draft chapters of that work that survive in the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid,79 and it is none other than the famous fatwa of the Mufti Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Abī Jumʿa al-Maghrāwī (d. 1511). This legal opinion was issued in the Maghrib in 1504, soon after the forced conversion of Muslims to Catholicism in Spain; it came in response to a petition by Spanish Moriscos, who wished to learn if they could continue to live in a Christian country. The document was crucial because it allowed Muslims to continue in place while disguising their religious beliefs, maintaining them internally while conforming outwardly to Catholicism, without ceasing to be Muslim. This fatwa argued for that position even though it contradicted opinions of other earlier scholars, like the jurist Aḥmad al-Wansharīshī of Fez, who a few years before had decreed that anyone who wished to be considered a Muslim would have to leave Spain.80 The famous dissenting response by the so-called “Mufti of Oran” is one of the most important theological texts of later Spanish Islam; in Dobelio’s view it had the added effect of legitimizing the secret Islamizing literature that he found in the Lead Books, and of helping to further the aims of their authors. Dobelio considered the author of the fatwa an apostate and believed him to be a Morisco; because the adjective of origin in his name was al-Maghrāwī, and because the text had belonged to Moriscos, Dobe- lio thought that he came from Almagro, an error that arose from his ignorance of the Maghrib and Western Islam. Maghrāwa was, in fact, a Berber tribe from the area between Oran and Marrakech, to which the Mufti undoubtedly belonged even though he lived as a scholar in Fez.81 If we reread the text of the fatwa by the Mufti of Oran after having read Dobelio’s arguments in La falsedad del metal, we understand the impact that this “epistle” must have made on our Eastern scholar: every one of the subjects that he claimed were avoided in the Lead Books were

79 RAH Gayangos 1922/36. 80 There is an enormous bibliography on this fatwa: see one of the more recent studies, D. Stewart, “The Identity of the ‘Mufti of Oran’ Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Abī Jumʿa al-Maghrāwī al-Wahrānī (d. 917/1511),” Al-Qanṭara, 27 (2006), 265–301. 81 As D. Stewart has shown in the article cited in the previous note. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 291 precisely those that the Mufti recommended should be disguised or evaded.82 Dobelio underlines the parallels between the epistle and the Lead Books: both are texts that support the Moriscos’ use of subterfuge in their clan- destine observance of Islam.

Muhammad Alguazir or Diego Alguacil

Two texts shaped Dobelio’s essay into what it really is, a polemical anti- Islamic treatise of a historical and philological nature, with hermeneutic overtones. The first was the epistle just discussed; the second, also found among the Pastrana books, was one that Dobelio called “Libro de la disputa contra los judíos y cristianos” (Book of the disputation against Jews and Christians).83 He says of its author only that “he was known to be a Spanish Arab, learned not only in their holy scripture but also in the Hebrew language.” Dobelio was obviously following the main lines of this “Disputation” when he responded to a series of questions that he associated with the Lead Books, but which were difficult to locate in the Sac- romonte texts. He rebelled in particular against the idea that Muhammad was the Paraclete announced by Jesus, the “promised one,” the Messiah; this notion must have been defended in the “Disputation,” to which he refers.84 Dobelio believed that the motif of Muhammad as Paraclete is inherent in the Lead Book texts. Gerard Wiegers has shown that the notion of Muhammad as the Messiah arose among the Moriscos in the mid-seventeenth century, particularly in Morisco exile communities.85 By the time Dobelio was writing there were only two texts, to our knowledge, that made this equivalence explicit; it would later inform the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas, which also originated among expelled Moriscos. The first was the religious disputation by Juan Alonso Aragonés, a Christian who converted to Islam and was exiled to North Africa; there he wrote a polemic that contrasted the beliefs of Jews and Christians with those of Muslims, showing the superiority of the latter. It was written in Spanish between 1602 and 1612, and could be the

82 Different versions of the fatwa’s text have been translated and published; we use the version given in M. García-Arenal, Los moriscos, op. cit., 43 ff. There is an English translation in L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain (1500–1614) (Chicago-London, 2005), 60 ff. 83 M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fols. 80 ff. 84 Ibid., fols. 81 ff. 85 G. A. Wiegers, “Muhammad as the Messiah: A Comparison of the Polemical Works of Juan Alonso with the Gospel of Barnabas,” Bibliotheca Orientalis, 52 (1995), 245–291. 292 chapter twelve book that Dobelio refers to as the “Libro de la disputa.” The second was by Muhammad Alguazir, the Morisco from Pastrana mentioned above, who in 1609–1611 wrote an anti-Christian screed, also in Spanish; the author tells us that he did so at the request of the Moroccan Sultan Muley Zidan.86 Juan Alonso was living in Marrakech and addressing his fellow Moriscos, who had lived too long among Christians and needed arguments that would strengthen their Islamic faith.87 It is clear from a reading of Dobelio’s arguments that they coincide almost point for point with the text of Alguazir, including details that are not found in Juan Alonso. The chief of these is the treatment of Muham- mad’s ṣifāt or attributes. Another is the way in which early Christians described the Trinity, using the term aqānīm, plural of uqnūm “hyposta- sis”; it is a word rarely used in polemical works but, according to Dobe- lio, was the translation for the idea of the Trinity that he found in the Pentateuch from Pastrana. (Alguazir and Dobelio actually approach this concept from opposite points of view.88) Among Alguazir’s statements, Dobelio objects to the belief that Christ did not suffer the Passion, but was replaced on the cross by Judas; to the definition of Jesus as rūḥ Allah, “the spirit of God,” rather than as His Son; and to the concept of tawḥīd, the oneness or unicity of God, with which Dobelio was so concerned and which he insisted was implicit in the Lead Book texts. The biggest stumbling-block was Alguazir’s principal theme, that Muhammad is the Mes- siah proclaimed by the Old and New Testaments, the Paraclete. All these structural similarities suggest that Dobelio wrote with a copy of Alguazir’s work before him. How would he have obtained it? Undoubt- edly because the book was one volume of the cache found in Pastrana, as he claims about all the references in Nuevo descubrimiento de la falsedad del metal. Could that mean that Alguazir wrote his treatise before the expulsion, and only later, in Morocco, was encouraged to circulate it more widely under the patronage of Muley Zidan? Or could he have sent a copy to relatives who had remained in Pastrana and had avoided exile?

86 “Because it was ordered by the most puissant and virtuous savior and exalted, just, and empowering king and governor of the Moors, Muley Zidan” (“Por avérmelo mandado el potentíssimo uirtuosso socorredor y engrandezido justo y ssublimador Rey i goberna- dor de los moros, Mulei Zaidan”): cited in G. A. Wiegers, “The Andalusi Heritage in the Maghrib,” op. cit., 114. 87 Ibid. There is another Spanish version of the work of Alguazir at Oxford: L. P. Harvey, “A Second Morisco Manuscript at Wadham College, Oxford,” Al-Qanṭara, 10 (1989), 257–272. 88 G. Wiegers, “The Andalusi Heritage in the Maghrib,” op. cit., 117, and M. Dobelio, Nuevo descubrimiento, op. cit., fol. 167. marcos dobelio and the books from pastrana 293

The first hypothesis seems more likely, but both are purely hypothetical; nonetheless, they give rise to interesting speculation about possible connections between the treatise and Diego Alguacil. Consider, for example, the following anecdote: Diego Alguacil, the Morisco from Pastrana, was denounced to the Inquisition in 1613 because a witness who was a New Christian had asked him about “Moorish prayers” and had been astonished at how many he knew. Furthermore, Alguacil had been heard to say, “Yes, it is true that no one knows more about these matters than I, and no one has a better memory for translating them.” He had continued, “There are many truths among us that come from the Christian religion, and there is very little difference between one and the other,” and had quoted a verse that said: “Oh Koran, so fully do you enlighten men’s souls that even from earth/ they can see the most profound aspects of the machine in the heavens.”89 When officers of the Inquisition went to arrest Diego Alguacil, he had been forewarned; he fled and was never found. Alguazir’s apologetic work, as scholars have pointed out, uses the term máquina, “machine,” for the universe, a rare and remarkable choice. It is noteworthy that Miguel de Luna used the same term máquina in the same context (describing the cosmos) in his Historia verdadera.90 Did Alguacil read Luna or have contact with him, or could they both have drawn on the same sources? These are all tantalizing questions for which we can only guess at answers, such as this connection between Granadan Moris- cos in Pastrana and the affair of the Lead Books. The Oxford manuscript of Muhammad Alguazir’s treatise also contains a number of poems, in the popular forms of décimas and romances. Thus it is not rash to conclude that the Diego Alguacil who fled Pastrana in 1613 was Muhammad Alguazir, who might have written a version of his Apología before departing into exile. Were the Sacromonte Lead Books a secret Islamic text composed for the eyes of only a few? Were they a polemic, a screed against Christi- anity? That is what Dobelio thought. Why, then, should Jesus be given features and characteristics of Muhammad? Of course, if they constituted a Christian text, it was one built on an Islamic foundation. But we prefer

89 “Sí, es verdad que no ay quien sepa más que yo destas cosas y quien tenga mayor memoria que yo para traducirlas”; “Ay muchas cosas de verdad entre nosotros de la ley de los cristianos que ay muy poca diferencia de una a otra”; “Tanto a las almas alumbras Alcorán que dende el suelo/ven las cosas más profundas de la máquina del cielo.” 90 Miguel de Luna, Historia verdadera, 269. 294 chapter twelve to believe that the work was intended for both Muslim and Christian readers—as indeed it served for a considerable time—and reduced the elements of faith to their most universal essence, maintaining a studied vagueness on the topics that showed the greatest potential for conflict. An example of this deliberate ambiguity—to which Dobelio and all students and enemies of the Lead Books pointed—was that on many occasions, the phrase “there is no God but God” was followed by the two Arabic letters mīm and rāʾ, with a period after each. The Books’ translators and defenders resolved these abbreviations as “the Messiah [i.e., Christ] is the rūḥ [spirit] of God,” whereas their opponents read them as the Islamic shahāda or profession of faith, therefore “Muhammad is the rasūl [messenger] of God.” Dobelio himself and, later, the Vatican commission that examined the Lead Books insisted on detecting quotations from the Qurʾān; pointing out the lack of any reference to the Trinity, but many to tawḥīd or the unicity of God; and noting the avoidance, if not outright denial, of the Passion of Christ, Jesus’s divinity, and the transubstantiation celebrated in the Mass. The texts’ authors sought to create a situation of commit- ment and convivencia (living together in mutual toleration) as a sort of final argument for the Moriscos’ ability to remain in Spain under acceptable conditions. They needed to convince the Christian authorities, but perhaps also to sway parts of the Morisco population by offering them Christian texts that contained enough reminiscences of Islam to make them tolerable or to help them preserve (while still dissimulating) their Muslim beliefs. Elements of clear Islamic origin were mixed with others that fully confirmed Catholic doctrine, particularly that of the Immaculate Conception at a period when it was fiercely debated (as was the belief that St. James had been present in Spain). This was a lure that the Church in Granada would find very difficult to resist. chapter thirteen

is the arabic of the lead books the language of islam?

Up to the time when Dobelio entered the fray, the arguments made in Spain against the Lead Books were linguistically based. Their language was associated firmly with the spoken Arabic of Granada and with West- ern Arabic in general: in script, vocabulary, phonetics (shortening of long vowels), grammar (imperfect use of noun cases), etc. Dobelio was adamant that they were composed in “colloquial Western Arabic, much corrupted,” and demonstrated the fact through comparisons to many Arabic documents that he had handled in Spain, from manuscripts on parchment in the San Clemente monastery in Toledo to Granadan notarial documents.1 He also offered innumerable instances in which the prose of the Lead Books betrayed phonetic traits of the colloquial dialect.

1 “As for the script of the lead sheets, I say that it was invented by Moors in Spain, derived from necromantic characters similar to those that I have seen on other bronze tablets, and incised on stone. I believe the reason to be that this script was so common in past times in this country among both Christians and Moors (for I have seen parchments written in Arabic in Toledo in the convent of San Clemente, and others in the principal church); I find that all the bills of sale and donations were written in Arabic; as an example, King Alphonse IX and Queen Leonor his wife, to ensure a certain bequest that they were leaving to that monastery, had the document drawn up in Arabic. Further, a certain gentleman from Granada showed me many contracts written on parchment in that language. We can conclude from this that because the writing and the language are so common, some people, in order not to be understood by all, invented the cipher based on these necromantic letters in order to hide their secrets, calling it the script of Solo- mon. This is my belief” (“En quanto al carácter de las láminas, digo ser inuençión de los Moros de España, sacado del carácter Nigromántico conforme me acuerdo hauer visto otras láminas en bronze y esculpido en piedras; la causa pienso hauer sido que como el carácter común era tan ordinario en los tiempo passados en esta tierra, tanto entre los Cristianos y Moros (conforme he visto Pergaminos escriptos en Arábigo en Toledo dentro del Conuento de San Clemente, y los de la Iglesia Mayor) hallo que todas las ventas, donaçiones, y compras se escriuían en Arábigo, entre los quales, el Rey Don Alfonso el .ix. y la Reyna Doña Leonor su muger, para assegurar çierta heredad que dauan al dicho monasterio dexan la escriptura hecha en lengua Árabe. Demás desto un çierto Cauallero de Granada me enseñó muchíssimos pergaminos de contractos en la dicha lengua. En esto se puede comprehender, que siendo la escriptura y la Lengua tan común, algunos, para no ser entendidos de todos, inuentaron la zifra sacada del Carácter Negromántico, para occultar sus secretos llamándole Carácter de Salomón. Éste es mi parecer”): M. Dobelio, Falsedad del metal, op. cit., fols. 38–39. 296 chapter thirteen

These observations gave another twist to the narrative. When the Books’ language was eventually examined by Arabic-speaking Christians, like Dobelio and the experts called in by the Vatican, it became clear that it was modern and Western, rather than ancient and Eastern as the perpetrators of the fraud had claimed. Dobelio’s arguments rested in part on his knowledge of “scholastic” Arabic: he pointed in particular to a series of terms that proved that the authors were Muslims. “For Apostles, the Books say ḥawāriyyūn, not rusul”;2 “but I recall having read the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul (which are more than a thousand years old) and other books of Holy Scripture that I have perused in this language [Arabic], and all of them call the Apostles al-rusul”;3 “he calls Abraham Ibrāhīm khalīl Allah, friend of God, which is a Mohammedan phrase.”4 He also noted that the word kitāb translated “religious law,” and insisted that these texts did not resemble the Christian works in Arabic that he had seen in Rome: These men [creators of the lead sheets] have not considered that there are other, older books of Holy Scripture—at least a thousand years older—in Arabic, some of them translated from Hebrew originals, some from Chaldean, some from Greek; and many books composed by the ancient bishops and patriarchs of that nation, who lived at the time of the Arab Ghassanid rulers [. . .]. All of them were Christians and left behind books concerning the law of God that are found in Rome and especially in the Orient [. . .]. I find that [the Lead Books] in no way conform to the wording and style of the books that I remember having read in the Vatican Library with the title “The Life of Christ,” composed by Christian Arabs.5 Dobelio was also surprised that the term for “baptism” should be wuḍū’ (Muslim ritual ablution); that the name “John” should be rendered as Yuwan rather than Yūḥannā; and above all that it should be preceded by

2 Ibid., fols. 18–19. 3 “Como recuerdo haber leýdo en los Evangelios y epístolas de San Pablo cuya antigüe- dad de más de mil años y otros libros de la sagrada escriptura que he recorrido en esta lengua, hallo que todos llaman a los Apóstoles arrosulo”: ibid. 4 “Llama a Abraham, Ibrahim jalil Allah, amigo de Dios, que es frase mahometana”: ibid., fol. 63. 5 “No pueden considerar estos que en la lengua árabe se hallan otros libros de la escriptura sagrada más antiguos o al menos de mil años y más, los unos traducidos del original hebreo, otros del Chaldeo y otros del Griego, y muchos libros compuestos por los Obispos y Patriarcas antiguos de la dicha naçión que residieron en tiempo de los Reyes árabes Gassanitas [. . .] que todos fueron cristianos dejando otros libros que se hallan en Roma y quanto más en Oriente tocantes a la Ley de Dios”: ibid., fols. 12–13; “hallo que en ninguna manera corresponden con las frasis y estilo de los libros que me acuerdo aver leýdo en la librería Vaticana intitulado Vida de Christo compuesto por los árabes cristianos”: ibid., fols. 4–5. is the arabic of the lead books the language of islam? 297 shān (“San,” i.e., “Saint”), from Latin sanctus, when the Lead Books purported to predate the Latin language.6 Dobelio was not the first Eastern Christian to come into contact with the Books; he had been preceded by John (Yūḥannā) Hesronite, Archbishop of Mount Lebanon, in around 1608.7 John had written several letters to the Pope warning him of the dangers that the Lead Books represented and of the notoriety and diffusion they were achieving.8 At about the same time, Ignacio de las Casas was insisting that the sheets needed to be taken to Rome to be scrutinized by Maronite experts.9 He, like Gurmendi, knew that a different version of “Christian Arabic” existed and had in fact been defined in Rome. The Moriscos of Granada could not have known this form of Arabic, which brings us back to the question of what tools they did have for learning the language (Pedro de Alcalá’s Vocabulista, cited in Chapter 2, also uses wuḍūʾ for “baptism,” miḥrāb for “altar,” and ṣalāt for “Mass”), and to what Christian texts in Arabic they might have had access. Several modern students of Mozarabic texts have written that they find a certain “Islamization” in the religious vocabulary employed by Christians in al-Andalus.10 Among the many instances they quote are calling Abra- ham Ibrāhīm khalīl Allah; the term ḥawārī instead of rasūl for an Apostle (the Qur’ān calls Christ’s disciples ḥawāriyyūn); miḥrāb for “altar,” kitāb for “religious law,” and (yawm) al-ḥaqq for “the Day of Judgment.” These very terms that modern Mozarabic scholars cite are the ones that sounded an alarm for Marcos Dobelio.

The Laminae Granatenses and the Vatican Experts

Archbishop Pedro de Castro had brought Marcos Dobelio and other translators from Italy in his search for the meaning of the Lead Books, but he

6 Ibid., fol. 44. 7 On the translators who came from Italy see F. Rodríguez Mediano and M. García- Arenal, “De Diego de Urrea a Marcos Dobelio,” op. cit., 328 ff. 8 ACDF, St, St. R6-a, fols. 238 ff. and 277 ff. 9 Letter of June 27, 1603: ACDF, St. St. R6-a, fol. 530. 10 M.-T. Urvoy, “Influence islamique sur le vocabulaire d’un Psautier arabe d’al-Andalus,” Al-Qanṭara, 15 (1994), 509–517; M. Penelas, “Linguistic Islamization of the Mozarabs as Attested in a Late-Ninth-Century Chronicle,” in Language of Religion, Language of the People. Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Munich, 2006), 103–114; and H. Kassis, “The Arabization and Islamization of the Christians of al-Andalus: Evidence of their Scrip- tures,” in R. Brann (ed.), Languages of Power in Islamic Spain (Bethesda, Maryland, 1997), 136–155. 298 chapter thirteen was also trying, by every means possible, to delay sending the texts to the Vatican; for many years the Holy See had been asking for them in order to study them and issue an opinion. The transfer was finally made in 1645.11 The Vatican then named a commission of six experts who, over the next fifteen years, carried out a remarkable project of study: they converted the “Solomonic” script into cursive Arabic with diacritical marks, collated the Books, and supplied a translation. Members of the group made independent versions which were then compared to each other; differences among them were discussed, doubts resolved, and glossaries of terms and obscure phrases drawn up. It was a scholarly enterprise whose precision and philological rigor provoke admiration today, and whose results are preserved in the archive of the Holy Office as part of the process that would lead to the Books’ being declared anathema.12 The commission members were Giambattista Giattini, Athanasius Kircher, Ludovico Mar- racci, Antonio dell’Aquila, Filippo Guadagnoli, and Bartolomeo a Pet- torano. Several of these men have already been mentioned in these pages, and will appear again. They had all been educated in the Roman milieu and had learned Arabic from the Maronites; the most influential of them all, Abraham Ecchellensis, was a Maronite himself. Let us now turn briefly to the context of this commission and the curricula of its members.

Arabic in Rome

From the late sixteenth century onwards, Rome had become one of the main centers for the study of Arabic and for the printing and translation of books and the collecting of manuscripts in that language. Two events were of particular importance in that process. One was the founding in 1584 of the Maronite College of Rome, whose remarkable role in the transmission of Eastern Christian culture in Europe is well known.13 The other was the formation in the early seventeenth century of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, (Propaganda Fide) a circumstance that led to an especially fruitful development, the knowledge of Eastern languages. The Congregation was established in 1622 to coordinate the missionary

11 The story of Rome’s request and the long-delayed response is told in C. Alonso, Los apócrifos del Sacromonte, op. cit. 12 ACDF, St. St. R6-b, R6-c, R7-a, R7-b, R7-c, R7-d, R7-f. 13 N. Gemayel, Les échanges culturels entre les maronites et l’Europe. Du Collège de Rome (1584) au Collège de Ayn-Warqa (1789), 2 vols. (Beirut, 1984); and P. Raphael, Le rôle du Col- lège maronite romain dans l’orientalisme au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Beirut, 1950). is the arabic of the lead books the language of islam? 299 activity of all the religious orders under the leadership of the Pope.14 From the moment of its founding the Propaganda Fide taught Oriental languages, particularly Arabic, to missionaries; these were being trained to spread the principles of Catholicism both by evangelizing among Muslims and by catechizing the Eastern churches in accordance with the principles of the Council of Trent. The Propaganda Fide, which saw languages as the most crucial and critical tools of its apostolate, combined the teaching of languages with that of religious disputation by means of a program drawn up by its first secretary, Francesco Ingoli. Rome saw itself as a center for the diffusion of works in several languages, Arabic among them, which would serve its missionaries’ needs in conversion and evangelization. Its role was to spread Catholic religious culture within a framework of sub- mission to the Pope’s universal authority over the missions.15 The Congregation also set up, in 1626, a polyglot printing press that became an intellectual center of the first order. Its production of books in a wide variety of tongues, including Arabic, stimulated the learning of languages and attracted foreign scholars who helped to prepare its various editions. These scholars often took posts as teachers or translators in other institutions, particularly the University of La Sapienza (where a succession of leading Arabists occupied the chair of Arabic studies),16 and colleges of foreign languages at San Pietro in Montorio, the Collegio Urba- niano, the Collegio Romano, etc. The position at La Sapienza was held by the Maronites Vittorio Scialac and Abraham Ecchellensis. The latter assumed the chair in 1636 and left it to go to France and teach Arabic at the College de France in 1640, although he returned to Italy in the following decade. He died in Rome in 1664. His wide knowledge of Oriental languages allowed him to collaborate in Le Jay’s Polyglot Bible. Ecchellensis is fundamental to our understanding of the development of Roman Orientalism during the first half of the seventeenth century, particularly as it related to the Propaganda Fide.

14 G. Pizzorusso, “La Congregazione di Propaganda Fide e gli ordini religiosi: conflit- tualità nel mondo delle missioni del XVII secolo,” in M. C. Giannini (ed.), Religione, con- flittualità e cultura. Il clero regolare nell’Europa di Antico Regime (=Cherion, 43–33 [2005]), 197–240. 15 G. Pizzorusso, “Il papato e le missioni extra-europee nell’epoca di Paolo V. Una prospettiva di sintesi,” in A. Koller (ed.), Die Außbeziehungen des Römischen Kurie unter Paul V (1605–1621) (Tübingen, 2008), 367–390. 16 F. M. Renazzi, Storia dell’Università degli Studi di Roma (Rome, 1803–1806), and E. Conte, I maestri della Sapienza di Roma dal 1514 al 1787: i rotuli e le altre fonti (Rome, 1991). 300 chapter thirteen

He was succeeded by Filippo Guadagnoli, who also worked as a scriptor at the Vatican Library. Guadagnoli, a member of the Order of the Minor Clerks Regular, held the post until his death in 1656, and was followed by Ludovico Marracci, a member of the Chierici regolari della Madre di Dio, who served until the end of his long life in 1699. Marracci was very close to Echellensis, whom he visited every day while the latter was living in Rome to make use of his magnificent collection of Oriental manuscripts. Guadagnoli and Marracci were Italians who had learned Arabic from Maronite teachers, and both were authors of well-known and widely read scholarly works. Guadagnoli wrote an Apologia pro christiana religione published by the Congregation’s press in 1631 and 1637, while Marracci had translated the Qurʾān and had composed a glossary and a refutation of the religion of Islam.17 Thus the two men were living exemplars of the close relationship that had formed betweeen the Arabic language and religious controversy. As teachers and polemicists they also played a key role in revising and censoring Eastern books for the Inquisition in Rome, and in producing books through the Propaganda Fide’s polyglot press. The Congreation charged a committee with preparing a canonical Arabic version of the Bible that took many years to complete under the watchful eye of the Inquisition, and which was finally published in 1671. The committee was formed by Guadagnoli and Marracci, Athanasius Kircher, the Fran- ciscan Antonio dell’Aquila (author of an Arabic grammar), and the Jesuit Giambattista Giattini. During its early years Abraham Ecchellensis was also a member, and was replaced when he left for France by Bartolomeo a Pettorano, a missionary and trusted translator for the Holy Office. In other words, the very same men who later served on the Holy Office’s committee to analyze the Laminae Granatenses had already worked together on an earlier project. All of them also, within the Vatican bureaucracy, translated letters and documents received from the East and acted occasionally as interpreters. Beginning with the Maronite College’s founding in 1584, its members had come to monopolize the canonical Arabic versions of Christian texts. At this supreme moment of Catholic reform, they were trying to carve out a space for themselves in the complex Roman world; they also wished to

17 M. P. Pedani, “Ludovico Marracci: la vita e l’ opera,” in G. Zatti (ed.), Il Corano. Tra- duzioni, traduttori e lettori in Italia (Milan, 2000), 9–30; ead., “Ludovico Marracci e la conoscenza dell’ islam in Italia,” Campus Maior, Ed. Istituto Storico Lucchese, sez. di Camaiore (2004), 6–23; and M. Borrmans, “Ludovico Marracci et sa traduction latine du Coran,” Islamochristiana, 28 (2002), 73–86. is the arabic of the lead books the language of islam? 301 legitimate, and to establish beyond question, the immovable orthodoxy of their Eastern Christianity18—an orthodoxy that (as they had to prove) had not been contaminated one iota by many centuries of coexistence with Islam. Their religious texts had been “infiltrated” in Medieval times by identifiably Islamic terminology,19 which now needed to be replaced. They had arrived in Rome wearing robes, beards, and hairstyles that stamped them as Eastern, and had had to establish their legitimacy as Catholics with full rights; to this end they entered into disputations with Armenians, Syrians, Nestorians, and Orthodox Christians. The Maronites would create the definitive Arabic version of Catholi- cism: they cultivated the language with attention to its smallest details, and took care to purge it of any connotation of, or convergence with, the vocabulary of Islamic sacred texts. The Maronites’ Arabic project extended to university teaching, polemical activity, control over translations, employment in the Roman bureaucracy, and the founding of schools for missionaries which taught linguistic skills in addition to religion. In order to filter and control the Christian texts to which future missionaries would have access, absolute precedence was given to the Arabic translations of the Psalms and of Roberto Bellarmino’s Doctrina Christiana which were made by the Maronites Vittorio Scialac and Gabriel Sionite. One signal result of this effort was the monumental Arabic-Latin dictionary compiled by Abraham Ecchellensis, now in manuscript at the Bib- liothèque Nationale in Paris.20 Containing a Christian vocabulary of nearly 7,000 entries (in 337 folios), almost entirely devoid of Islamic terms, it was useless for translating Islamic texts. Even the few expressions that do have a connotation in Islam appear with purely Christian definitions. For example, zakāt is glossed with “puritas, animi candor, innocentia,” with no mention of alms. Ecchellensis renders jinn as “spiritus, genius, daemon,” even though giving it a more negative connotation (“devil”) would have served anti-Islamic polemic by acknowledging that the Prophet counted demons among his followers. Ecchellensis was certainly not ignorant of the Islamic import of these terms, since he was in almost daily contact with Marracci during the years in which the latter was translating the Qurʾān.

18 B. Heyberger, Les chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme catholique (Rome, 1994), 412. 19 Samir Khalil Samir, “Rôle des Chrétiens dans la civilisation arabe,” in J. P. Monferrer Sala (ed.), Eastern Crossroads. Essays on Medieval Christian Legacy (Piscataway, 2007), 11. 20 Nomenclator arabico-latinus, Bibliothèque Nationale de France ms. arabe 4345; see also A. Hamilton, “Abraham Ecchellensis et son Nomenclator arabo-latinus,” op. cit. 302 chapter thirteen

His intent was rather to separate, to discriminate, and to place on one side what was Christian Arabic and on the other what was Muslim Arabic— in short, to create and establish an Arabic language for Christians. All the persons we have mentioned were deeply involved in this task, some making translations and others drawing up glossaries that rarely mixed the two types of Arabic, as in Vittorio Scialac and Gabriel Sionite’s dictionary of Qurʾānic terms.21 It appears that Marracci himself prepared a glossary of expressions from the Qur’ān that gave a special consistency to his translation. Some of his equivalences were mushrikūn for “associators,” kāfirūn or kuffār for “infidels,” and al-rūḥ al-qudus “Spiritus Sanctitatis,” rasūl “Legatus,” kalima “Verbum,” kitāb “Liber,” ghayb “Arcanum,” masīḥ “Christus” or “Messias,” tawrāt “Pentateuchus,” al-akhīra “novissimum saeculum,” and janna “Paradisus.”22 The connection between the Vatican experts and religious controversy is best illustrated by Filippo Guadagnoli, whose case merits closer attention because he played a leading role in the Propaganda Fide’s projects. He was the first Italian to teach Arabic and Syriac at La Sapienza, in addition to working on the Bible translation, as we have mentioned, until his death in 1656. A significant portion of his intellectual output arose from his dedication to religious disputation: he composed an Apologia pro christiana religione, a polemical work launched against the Safavid scholar Aḥmad b. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn. This fascinating dispute was provoked in the first instance by the anti-Muslim tract penned by the Navarrese Jesuit Jerónimo Javier, a missionary to the court of the Great Mughal Emperor in Lahore.23 That work found its way to Safavid Persia, where Aḥmad b. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn wrote a polemic response that refuted Christianity; he sent it to Rome in hopes that his arguments would convince the Pope. Scholars in Rome, among them Guadagnoli, studied the Safavid text and prepared their own refutation of it, which was published in the Roman presses of the Congregation in 1631; soon afterward there would be two Arabic

21 Dictionarium Arabo-Latinum ex Alcorano et celebrioribus authoribus, BNF ms. arabe 4338. 22 M. Borrmans, “Ludovico Marracci et sa traduction latine du Coran,” Islamochristiana, 28 (2002), 81. 23 A. Camps, Jerome Xavier S.J. and the Muslims of the Mogul Empire. Controversial Works and Missionary Activity (n.p., 1957); A. Santos Hernández, Jerónimo Javier S.J. Apóstol del Gran Mogol y arzobispo electo de Granganor, en la India, 1549–1617 (Pamplona, 1962); and M. Alam and S. Subramanyam, “Frank Disputations: Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir,” The Indian Economic & Social History, 46 (2009), 457–511, with accompanying bibliography. is the arabic of the lead books the language of islam? 303 translations made by Guadagnoli himself.24 The work enjoyed wide circulation and reached the Muslim East: we know that it was wielded as a tool of religious propaganda at the court of the Great Mughal, and that years later, in the eighteenth century, an occasional Christian missionary would study it as a valuable resource for religious disputation with Muslims.25 A comparative analysis of Guadagnoli’s Apologia and its two Arabic translations provides a clear picture of his methods of disputation, his linguistic competence, and his Islamic scholarship.26 The Apologia contains, for example, quotations from the Qurʾān that are written in Arabic and always accompanied by Guadagnoli’s own Latin translation, in addition to one reference to the famous Arabic dictionary al-Qāmūs and vague citations of other sources, in passages borrowed from the Confusión de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán (Confusion of the Mohammedan sect and the Koran, published in 1515) by the converted Morisco Juan Andrés. A side-by-side comparison of the Italian edition of the latter work with the Apologia shows that Juan Andrés was Guadagnoli’s prime source of information for the life of Muhammad and the traditions of Islam. The 1631 edition is intensely anti-Islamic and full of ad hominem attacks on the Prophet, while curiously the 1637 version shows an evolution toward a somewhat greater respect for the religion. In his Considerationes ad Mahomettanos of 1649, Guadagnoli takes a gentler approach in which he suppresses direct criticisms of Muhammad and the Qurʾān in favor

24 F. Guadagnoli, Apologia pro cristiana religione qua a R. P. Philippo Guadagnolo Malleanensi, Clericorum Regul. Minorum S. Theologiae & Arabicae linguae professore, res- pondetur ad objectiones Ahmed Filii Zin Alabedin, Persae Asphahensis, contentas in Libro inscripto Politor Speculi (Rome, Typ. Sac. Congreg. de Prop. Fide, 1631); Pro christiana religione responsio ad obiectiones Ahmed filii Zin Alabedin, Persae Asphahanensis, contentas in libro inscripto Politor Speculi. Ijābat al-qaṣīṣ al-haqīr Filibus Kuwadanulus al-rāhib min ruhbāniyya yuqāl lahā bi-lughat al-faranjī Klarikus Minur ilā Aḥmad al-Sharīf b. Zayn al-῾Ābidīn al-Fārisī al-Isbahānī (Rome, Typis Sac. Congreg. de Prop. Fide, 1637); ṭaba῾a hadhā l-kitāb al-mubārak al-haqīr Yūsuf min Jabal Lubnān al-mubārak min qaryat Baslūqīt fī Rūmiyya al-῾uẓmā fī sanat alf wa-sittami’a wa-thalāthīna li-rabbinā. Before Guadag- nolo wrote, Father Bonaventura Malvasia had composed another response to Ibn Zayn al-῾Ābidīn, but that one had been judged inadequate by the Congregation: see A. Camps, Jerome Xavier, op. cit., 176 ff. 25 A. Camps, Jerome Xavier, op. cit., 177. For a keen analysis of the religious polemics that took place during the mission to the court of the Great Mughal see M. Alam and S. Subramanyam, “Frank Disputations,” op. cit. 26 A. Trentini, “Il caracciolino Filippo Guadagnoli controversista e islamologo. Un’ analisi dei suoi scritti apologetici contro l’Islam,” in I. Fossi and G. Pizzorusso (eds.), L’Ordine dei Chierici Regolari Minori (Caracciolini): religione e cultura in età post-tridentina (Rome, 2010), 297–314; G. Pizzorusso, “Filippo Guadagnoli, i Caracciolini e lo studio delle lingue orientali e della controversia con l’Islam a Roma nel XVII secolo,” loc. cit., 245–278. 304 chapter thirteen of apologies for the Christian Scriptures, the Trinity, and the divinity of Christ. He explains the errors of Islam as false interpretations to which the Prophet and the Holy Book have been subjected: he acknowledges that the Qur’ān contains many truthful elements that were misunderstood by Muslim exegetes under the influence of Christian Monophysites. Thus the Vatican commission that translated and evaluated the Laminae Granatenses worked on two fronts: it disseminated tools both for teaching and learning Arabic and for religious polemic against Islam. Its members already had a history of working together: they had toiled for years on the Arabic translation of the Bible (finally published in 1671 as the Biblia Sacra Arabica), and as individuals they had reflected upon and created a means of distinguishing a canonical Christian Arabic from Islamic Arabic. They had no doubt that it was the latter that appeared in the Lead Books; in their final report they included a list of “Mohammedan terms.”

Mohammedan Terms

The Vatican experts concluded that the lead sheets were impious and profane. Those “Mohammedan” usages revealed a hatred for Christianity, and even the portions that appeared doctrinally sound were not so in reality, because they were expressed in the language of a different religion and therefore drew on another religious culture. One of the terms that Guadagnoli and his colleagues identified as Muslim was al-ḥawāriyyūn with the meaning “Apostles,” instead of rusul. Guadagnoli had dealt with this form several years before seeing the Lead Books: in the Apologia he had tried to counter Aḥmad b. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn’s argument that the Holy Scriptures had been corrupted by the Christians. In seeking to show that the Apostles could not have carried out such textual corruption, he analyzed the meaning of al-ḥawārī in both the Qurʾān and al-Qāmūs.27 Guadagnoli concluded that, if the “Apostles” were seen by Muslims as “helpers” or “coadjutors” of the prophets, they could not be suspected of having perverted the sacred text. This issue shows how he was led to consider the term as Muslim rather than Christian: his knowledge of Eastern Christianity was exhaustive, while his object was to refute scholarship by Muslims. Nonetheless, a glance at Pedro de Alcalá’s Vocabulista reveals that “Apóstol” is glossed in Arabic as “haguari, haguariin”28—a small

27 F. Guadagnoli, Apologia, op. cit., 40–41. 28 However, “Apostolado” is translated as “ricela, raceil.” See P. de Alcalá, Vocabulista arávigo en letra castellana (Granada, 1505), s. v. is the arabic of the lead books the language of islam? 305 example of how linguistic and doctrinal differences were not the same at all times and in all places. The “Mohammedan terms” that the Vatican experts identified in the Lead Books included masjid for “temple,” kāfirūn for “unbelievers,” and janna for “Paradise,” all of which occur both in Pedro de Alcalá and in writings by Mozarabs, as we saw in Chapter 2. We must ask ourselves if this vocabulary truly indicates Islam, or at least to what extent it does so. The Maronites of Rome did indeed forge a Catholic form of Arabic in the seventeenth century, and did so in the context of polemics against Islam. But that “purified” language did not exist earlier, forcing us to ask: were Mozarabic texts as Islamized as they appear to us today? Did the “Christian Arabs” of the Iberian Peninsula have any other way of expressing certain terms and categories? From Pedro de Alcalá to Bartolomé Dorador, all found themselves faced with the same conundrum. It is difficult, therefore, to agree with Dobelio and the Roman scholars that one can decide, on the basis of vocabulary and terminology, whether a text is fundamentally Islamic or not. In Spain the two cultures had been mixed and intertwined for a long time, and there were not many expressions like “There is no God but God” that could stamp a text as unquestionably Islamic. It is paradoxical and a little sad that those same Christians from the East that Núñez Muley and Ignacio de las Casas invoked to defend their own identity as “Christian Arabs” would be the ones who, to reaffirm their own identity, would point to the Granadans as unredeemable Muslims who could not possibly be integrated into the Catholic world. The Maronites obtained and legitimized their own inclusion by excluding others who might have been very like themselves.

chapter fourteen

father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar: a learned correspondence

We recall from Chapter 11 that Nicolás Antonio1 and Martín Vázquez Siruela hoped to find among Marcos Dobelio’s books and papers any documents that might serve them in their scholarly work. This circumstance allows us to examine the figures of Diego de Urrea and Marcos Dobelio more broadly, beyond their roles in the Lead Books affair. To put it another way, Urrea and Dobelio, thanks to their Eastern education and their complex and cosmopolitan intellectual horizons, were able to read the Books from a point of view independent of the immediate context that had produced them. A text like Nuevo descubrimiento de la falsedad del metal can be read not only as a substantial critique of the lead sheets from Sacromonte, but also as a product of advanced Orientalist scholarship. The phrase “Orientalist scholarship,” as we apply it to this period, has a precise meaning: this was a crucial moment in the creation of Orien- talist studies in Europe, one that produced foundational works by Erpe- nius, Raimondi, and Bedwell, who have already been mentioned. These were intellectuals in avid search of new texts with which to learn Oriental languages—Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac texts to be edited and translated. They scoured the East for them, and their discoveries were soon spread through the new networks of communication that united the “Republic of Letters” which was coming into being in the whole European continent in the seventeenth century. We know that an important vector for the concerns of this “Republic” was Orientalist scholarship, which proved capable of creating basic critical, historical, philological, and theological tools; it was also formulating questions that proved ever more probing and problematic for existing textual and religious authority. But what was happening in Spain? By exploring issues related to the Arabic language, we have shown how an initial phase in which the central question was the link between the language and one’s religious

1 Nicolás Antonio was one of the leading Spanish intellectuals of the seventeenth century, known especially for his great bibliographic works Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus and Bibliotheca Hispana Nova. 308 chapter fourteen allegiance—because of the urgent need to evangelize the Moriscos— evolved into a specific concern with Arabic that we may call “learned” or “scholarly.” This does not mean, of course, that the relationship between Arabic and Islam ceased to be pertinent or even crucial. It means rather that alongside this existing problem a new intellectual field arose in which one could interrogate the value of Arabic and other Oriental languages as well as the uses to which their texts could be put. In our view, the affair of the Sacromonte Lead Books is essential for understanding how this process worked itself out in Spain. If the polemic about those texts was so broad and so heated, and if its consequences were so profound, it was undoubtedly because they touched on fundamental issues in the history of Spain: its interactions with Islam and al-Andalus, the presence of Christianity and the Biblical East in its ancient past, and the very possibility of writing its ecclesiastical history. In the chapters to come we will seek to follow the thread of this learned concern with Arabic in seventeenth-century Spain. First, we will attempt to show that the process was indissolubly linked to the Sacromonte events: virtually all the persons to be discussed had a connection with them, in some cases a close and meaningful one. We will deal with these people as a group, rather than as individuals, since they formed a learned circle whose members included some of the central figures of Spanish critical historiography. Subsequently we will explore how their network of intellectual relationships grew up around a shared education in Oriental languages (defined as essential by the protagonists themselves), and will show how their circle was not merely Spanish, but European. The latter point seems to us essential: these scholars must be subsumed into a broader community that shared resources and problems on a Con- tinental scale. It is crucial to our argument to follow the trail of the Euro- pean books that circulated among Spanish intellectuals, and to pursue the questions which that literature brought with it. We believe that this relationship with European Orientalism produced profound changes in the construction of Spanish history and the role played in it by Arabic and Islam; we can examine how an initial interest in Spain’s past evolved into a concern with wider issues, like Hebrew and Egyptian antiquity. These, in turn, laid the groundwork for posing more serious and urgent questions, like the historical authenticity of the Bible. We shall begin with an eminent representative of seventeenth-century Spanish scholarship, the Marquis of Mondéjar. father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 309

Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia, Marquis of Agrópoli and of Mondéjar

Manuscript 9881 of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid2 comprises copies of letters exchanged among Spanish scholars in the seventeenth century, among whom one of the most prominent was Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia, the Marquis of Agrópoli and of Mondéjar. He is a figure both well known and obscure: born in Madrid in 1628, connected to the Mendozas by his marriage to María Gregoria Mendoza y Aragón in 1654, he was one of the most important scholars in Spain in the second half of the seventeenth century.3 His wide-ranging intellectual interests included the history of the Spanish Church, chronology, historiography, and genealogy. His significance is rooted in the central role that he played in developing a “critical” study of history in Spain, as a member of the group known as the novatores who exerted a strong influence on the early Spanish Enlightenment.4 Mondéjar’s crucial place in pre-Enlightenment Spanish historiography is recognized, but we still cannot trace in detail either his intellectual journey or the assumptions on which his work was based; knowing these would help us to understand exactly what intellectual program he was following and how significant were his contributions. We propose here to foreground a facet of his scholarly activity that has been only occasionally touched on: his Orientalism and his interest in Eastern languages and the texts composed in them. The abovementioned Biblioteca Nacional manuscript is made up principally of Mondéjar’s correspondence with other Spanish and European scholars. Letters were the primary form of communication at the time, and were a basic tool in the makeup of the “Republic of Letters”; the participants in this group of correspondents form a good sample of the network of learned relationships into which the Marquis was integrated and whose interests he shared. Within it, the individual of greatest importance

2 Papeles varios de erudición, BNE ms. 9881. 3 See G. de Andrés, “La bibliofilia literaria del Marqués de Mondéjar († 1708) y su biblioteca manuscrita,” Jornadas Bibliográficas (1976), 583–602; V. Arizpe, “Don Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia, Marqués de Mondéjar, ‘Rey y Príncipe de la Erudición en España’: un novator de la segunda mitad del siglo XVII,” in E. Artaza, J. Durán, C. Isasi, J. Lawand, V. Pineda and F. Plata (coords.), Estudios de Filología y Retórica en Homenaje a Luisa López Grigera (Bilbao, 2000), 31–43; and J. Villanueva, Política y discurso histórico en la España del siglo XVII. Las polémicas sobre los orígenes medievales de Cataluña (Alicante, 2004), 214 ff. 4 J. Pérez Magallón, Construyendo la modernidad: la cultura española en el tiempo de los novatores (1675–1725) (Madrid, 2002). The Lead Books affair is discussed on 163 ff. 310 chapter fourteen to us was Father Tomás de León, a Jesuit residing in Granada who was one of the leading experts in Oriental languages in Spain at the time. We will show in the coming chapters how the correspondence between the two men underscores the importance of Orientalist learning for the historiographic enterprise in which the members of their circle were involved. Because Tomás de León is relatively little known, it will be useful to conduct a brief review of his life and work.

Father Tomás de León

Little has been known until now about Father Tomás de Leon.5 Darío Cabanelas devoted a short article to one of his works, a Vocabulario arábigo-castellano y arábigo-latino, kept today in the Escuela de Estudios Árabes in Granada (CSIC).6 He included a brief biographical note: Tomás de León was born in Ireland in 1613 and moved with his family to Spain as a boy. He taught at the Jesuit College of San Pablo in Granada, and died there on February 7, 1690. The Historia del Colegio de San Pablo gives somewhat more detail about his life: Father Tomás de León, a great and famous figure, died on February 7, 1690. He was of Irish origin but the son of very noble Catholic parents; he was 77 years old, 63 of them spent in the Company of Jesus and 44 since profess- ing his 4 vows. Father Sotuelo, in his “Biblioteca,” says of him: ‘Laudatum impense ab insigne eruditione necnon a peritia linguarum Graecae, Hebraicae et Arabicae.’ He taught two Provincial courses, one in Seville and the other at this College in Granada (where, while Prime Teacher, he was chosen for the General Congregation held in Rome in 1664); later, for many years he held here the three chairs of theology, and for the rest of his life was Prefect of Higher Studies, the office that he held when death overtook him. Aside from this, he had perfect mastery of mathematics, astrology, geometry, and medicine; he was eminent in expository theology, morals, and both types of law; and he was therefore consulted not only in Granada but in all of Spain on the most difficult cases, for which his responses were heard and received like oracles. He had full knowledge of different languages beside Spanish and Latin: Hibernian, English, French, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic; and so it was that he provided the most complete intelligence about the lead

5 Some information can be found in F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Fragmentos de orientalismo,” op. cit., 243–276. 6 “Vocabulario arábigo-castellano y arábigo-latino inédito,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, 28 (1979), 209–214; the manuscript in question is no. XVII. See also C. Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, nouvelle édition, vol. IV (Brussels- Paris), 93, col. 1697. father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 311

sheets that had been found in earlier years in caves on the Sacromonte in this city. He possessed clear understanding and precise information about history and about the sects, errors, and rites of foreign nations; therefore our Very Reverend Father Tyrso González, when his mission brought him to this city, held long consultations and conferences with Father Tomás de León about the sect of Mohammed and his Koran, learning from them many facts and arguments for his preaching to the Moors, so that he converted many of them to our holy Faith. To these qualities he added a great humility and lack of self-regard, as well as great mortification and patience to bear the many serious afflictions that he continually suffered, especially during the brief time when he became totally blind. At his burial, in the presence of the nobility and the clergy, the Chapter of the Sacromonte Abbey took charge of all the rites and their costs.7 This scant information can be expanded or confirmed through other sources: we know that the surname “de León” is a Hispanization of the Irish “Dillon,” and also that Tomás had a brother named Robert.8 He was

7 “A 7 de Febrero de 1690 murió aquel grande y celebrado sugeto, el P. Tomás de León, de nación irlandés, pero hijo de Padres mui católicos y mui nobles, de edad de 77 años, 63 de compañía y 44 de Profesión de 4 votos, de quien el P. Sotuelo en su Biblioteca dice: ‘Laudatum impense ab insigne eruditiones necnon a peritia linguarum Graecae, Hebraicae et Arabicae’. Leió dos cursos de Provincia, el uno en Sevilla y el otro en este colegio de Granada (donde siendo Maestro de Prima fue electo para la Congregación General que se tuvo en Roma año de 1664), donde después leió por muchos años las tres cátedras de Teología, y el resto de su vida fue Prefecto de estos Estudios Maiores, en cuio oficio le cogió su muerte. Demás de esto supo con perfección la Matemática, Astrología, Geometría y Medicina; fue eminente en la teología Expositiva, en la Moral y en ambos Derechos, y así era consultado no sólo en Granada sino de toda España en los casos más arduos, y sus respuestas se oían y recibían como oráculos. Tuvo mui cabal inteligencia de diferentes lenguas demás de la Española y latina, de la Hibérnica, Inglesa, Francesa, Griega, Hebrea, Syra, Árabe, y así fue quien más entera inteligencia dió a las láminas que años anteriores se avían hallado en las cuevas del Monte Santo de esta ciudad. Tuvo una gran compre- hensión y noticias exquisitas de Historia y de las sectas, errores y ritos de las naciones extrangeras de suerte que Nuestro Muy Reverendo P. Tyrso González, cuando estuvo en missión en esta ciudad, tuvo mui largas consultas y conferencias con el P. Tomás de León acerca de la secta de Mahoma y su Alcorán, en que adquirió muchas noticias y argumentos para la Predicación que hizo a los Moros, con que convirtió muchíssimos a nuestra santa Fe. A estas prendas ponía el realce una gran humildad y desprecio con que se trataba, y una gran mortificación y paciencia con que llevó muchos y gravíssimos accidentes que repetidamente padecía, especialmente un poco de tiempo que estuvo totalmente ciego. En su entierro hizo los oficios de sepultura y todo su gasto el cavildo del Monte Santo, con asistencia de la nobleza y Religiones”: Historia del Colegio de San Pablo, Granada 1554–1765. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Ms. Jesuitas, Libro 773, transcr. by J. de Béthencourt S. J., rev. and notes by E. Olivares S. J. (Granada, 1991), 413–414. 8 Father Joaquín Domínguez, Faculty of Theology, University of Granada, personal communication. See M. Murphy, “Jesuitas ingleses e irlandeses en la provincia de Anda- lucía,” in W. Soto Arturñedo (ed.), Los jesuitas en Andalucía. Estudios conmemorativos del 450 aniversario de la fundación de la provincia (Granada, 2007), 187–200: “We know of only a few Irishmen who entered the Company in Andalusia. A notable exception is Thomas 312 chapter fourteen born in Ireland, although he arrived in Spain at an early age.9 His career in the Company of Jesus may be traced through the triennial catalogues of the Bética Province that are kept in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI). To retell his history with the Company in brief, we will note that he was a novice beginning on February 2, 1627, in the Domus Pro- bationis Hispalensis; in 1629 he was numbered among the initiati, having received the first tonsure and achieved the four grades. Afterward we find him attached in succession to the colleges of Cordova, Granada, Úbeda, Cadiz, and finally Seville, where in 1639 he was a professor of logic at San Hermenegildo College. He must have remained in Seville until no later than 1645, for at that date he was associated with San Pablo College in Granada, a city where he would live for the rest of his life. He professed the four vows on December 8, 1647. We also know that he must have spent some time in Rome, perhaps in 1664, where we saw him in the role of elector at the general Congre- gation. The moral catalogues agree that he showed prudence and good judgment, and that although his experience of the world had not been fortunate he possessed an extraordinary acuity and inclination for letters, making him ideal for studious and administrative tasks. As he grew older the reports emphasized his talents, stating that he had reached the highest level in letters, and finally that his talentum et ministeria could be applied ad omnia societatis. In the 1678 catalogue, however, he is discribed as “infirm”; we cannot tell if the infirmity was the episode of blindness that was mentioned earlier, but from that date onward, until his death, there are repeated references to his ill health.10

Works by Tomás de León

Tomás de León’s written output was considerable, and testifies to a significant facet of his personality that he himself sometimes referred to: the

Dillon (Tomás de León, 1613–c. 1676), a theologian and Orientalist, who taught at the colleges of Seville, Cadiz, and Granada” (Se sabe de pocos irlandeses que entraron en la Com- pañía, en Andalucía. Una notable excepción es Thomas Dillon [. . .] teólogo y orientalista, que enseñó en los colegios de Sevilla, Cádiz y Granada). We owe this reference to Father Francisco de Borja de Medina. 9 Historia, op. cit., 413, n. 50. 10 All this information can be found with greater detail in the following sources: ARSI, Catalogui Triennales Prov. Baeticae, book 14–I, 1627, fols. 65r, 104v, 107r, 124v, 129r, 157r, 172r, 176v, 206r, 208v, and 219r; book 9, fols. 255r, 311r, 351v, and 380v; book 10, fols. 30r, 231v, and 283r; and book 11, fols. 13v and 55r. father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 313 strict separation between his professional work as an expert in law and theology, and his profound and beloved avocation, the study of Orien- tal languages. In the first category, a number of relevant documents have survived: a manuscript miscellany in the library of Granada’s Hospital Real contains his replies to a series of doubts and questions put to him between 1656 and 1677.11 The various issues that he dealt with did not, in principle, have much to do with the Orientalism that mainly interests us here, with the possible exception of one that we shall discuss in a later chapter: a brief treatise in which Tomás de León tried to demonstrate that Spanish arras (the coins given by the bridegroom to the bride upon marriage) were of Hebrew origin, and in which he expatiated on one of his favorite themes, the influence of ancient Eastern customs in Spain.12 He was also the author of several theological works, some of which survive in manuscript at the University of Seville: De incarnatione,13 and a pamphlet titled Explicatio distinctionis virtualis in divinis per sua principia exposita.14 The University catalogue refers to two additional manuscripts, De Trinitate and De scientia Dei, said to be in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, but we have been unable to locate them there. Finally, the Abbey of Sacromonte possessed the manuscripts of at least two other works: De Scientia Dei Creatoris nostri (perhaps the same one mentioned

11 Granada, Biblioteca del Hospital Real (BHR), caja A-042: “Doubt 1. If the Bishop may commute last wishes after the Tridentine Decree” (“Duda 1. Si puede el Obispo conmu- tar las últimas voluntades después del Decreto del Tridentino”) (14), fols. 80–81; “[If one should reveal indications of persuasion to place obstacles in the way of a marriage”] (“Si debe exponer indicios de inducción a poner impedimentos en un matrimonio”) (18), fol. 157; “[If it is irregular for clergy to form a company to arm a vessel”] (“Si quedan irregulares unos clérigos que forman compañía para armar un bajel”) (19), fols. 157–158; “Executio. Regulae examinandi processus in executivis ex Pichardo” (21), fols. 161–164; “That religions and religious Orders are truly religious” (“Que las religiones y Órdenes militares son verdaderamente religiosos”) (23), fols. 167–168; “Dubium. Si sunt duo agnomina vel cognomina quorum utrumque attingat aliquem, unum conveniens, alterum non conveniens, numquid poterit uti conveniente, et non uti conveniente?”(24), fols. 169–171; “It is asked whether a person in articulo mortis (and not on a crusade or in another privileged state) was absolved of reserved cases by a priest who did not have jurisdiction or authorization to absolve in such cases is obliged, should he recover, to appear before the superior” (“Pregúntase si el que in articulo mortis [independiente de la cruzada o de otro privilegio] fue absuelto de casos reservados por sacerdote que no tenía jurisdicción ni privilegio para absolver de dicha reservación, está obligado, si convalece, de comparecer delante del superior”) (31), fols. 198–199; and “A case presented by a brotherhood in the parish church of Santa Marina in Andújar” (“Caso planteado por una cofradía en la iglesia parroquial de Santa Marina de Andújar”) (47), fols. 294–300. 12 “Arras españolas. Qué sean y su origen,” BHR, caja A-042 (8), fols. 48–53. 13 Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla, ms. 332–038. 14 Ibid., mss. 333–018, 116–122. 314 chapter fourteen in the Seville catalogue),15 and a Tractatus de Disputationes de Divini Verbi Incarnate.16 More significant for our purposes is another manuscript from the Hos- pital Real library in Granada that has been designated Tratado de alquimia (Treatise on Alchemy), and which has the name “Thomas Leon” written on its cover.17 In this miscellany, according to the catalogue, several different hands and sizes of paper can be identified; Tomás de León’s own handwriting may be detectable in the first text of the volume. This text is organized as a list of words ordered alphabetically under the epigraph “Hieroglyphica.”18 It is structured, in short, like a dictionary, and includes a collection of Egyptian hieroglyphics; it may therefore be linked to works about the ancient Egyptians and their writing that circulated widely throughout Europe. One example was Hieroglyphica sive De sacris aegyptiorum aliarumque gentium literis by Pierio Valeriano Bolzano, a work that proposed a complete reconstruction of the Egyptian religion.19 The Hieroglyphica was the chief authority on Egyptian hieroglyphics up to the seventeenth century; the work was abundant in Europe, was translated into several languages, and underwent additions.20 A comparison of the Granada manuscript with the Hieroglyphica shows that the former’s list of words and topics appears also in the latter, so that even if a direct influence cannot be proved, we can place the work that may have belonged to Tomás de León in the same tradition as Bolzano’s. The Granada fragment is the first piece of evidence for what we shall see was one of Father León’s principal concerns: the history, antiquities, and language of Egypt.21

15 It is ms. no. 77 in the catalogue by M. del C. Calero Palacios, La Abadía del Sacromonte. Catálogo de manuscritos (Granada, 1999), 205. 16 Ibid., 263, n. 119. 17 BHR, caja B-071 (1). 18 At the beginning there is a list of words that begin with “A”: “Accidentia corporis humani et animi, vide Corpus.—Actiones et affectiones naturales, vide Homo.—Aedificia, vide Domus cures,” etc. After that list comes a disquisition on “Anima”; then another list of words that begin with “B” followed by essays on “Baculus,” “De bello et paces,” etc. 19 The catalogue of the Hospital Real library in Granada confirms that at least one of its copies of the work came from Granada’s College of Jesuits: BHR, A-030-041. 20 E. Iversen, The Myth of Egypt and its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition (Copenhagen, 1961, 2nd ed. Princeton-Chichester, 1993), 70–73. 21 In the same Tratado de alquimia from the University of Granada, following the first text about hieroglyphics there are others, perhaps attributable to Tomás de León, that show a clear adherence to the alchemical tradition, such as “Dicta et enigmata philosophorum sapientis.” father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 315

Two other works complete the portrait of Tomás de León as an Ori- entalist scholar: the aforementioned Vocabulario arábigo-castellano y arábigo-latino, and a manuscript that according to Sommervogel should be in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid,22 but which we have been unable to locate.

Father Tirso González de Santalla

Another notable aspect of Tomás de León’s biography was his relationship with Father Tirso González de Santalla. We have mentioned that a note in the Historia del Colegio de San Pablo alluded to this tie, stating that González de Santalla had learned a great deal from his conversations with Father León about the Qur’ān and Islam and had applied that knowledge to his missionary work and conversions of Muslims. Their encounter would have occurred during Tirso González’s stay in Granada in 1669.23 Between 1665 and 1686 Father González undertook intermittent but continual apostolic journeys throughout Spain; these internal missions’ first objective was not Muslims themselves, but rather preaching on a wide scale in the bosom of the Catholic community, in pursuit of doctrinal and confessional uniformity. Nonetheless Father González did occasionally meet Muslims in the course of his activities, and managed to convert a few of them.24 Addressing these Muslims certainly required a degree of acquaintance with Islam that would permit carrying out religious polemics; it was told, for example, that when Father Tirso made his mission to Marbella, although he preached vigorously to the Moors he did not convert a single one; because one of them, who was said to have studied in Fez and was well versed in the Koran, through his authority and his flatteries, exhortations, and threats, dissuaded all the others from converting; and said of himself that there was more danger of the Pope’s becoming a Moor than of his becoming a Christian. All of them persisted in their error; but let us not imagine that it is a waste of time to preach to them, for we are confident that God’s word will bear fruit, although we do not know how long it will take. Llegando el de la primera [sic], Our Lord inflicted on this rebellious Moor a fatal illness, and since at

22 C. Sommervogel, Bibliothèque, op. cit., vol. IV, col. 1697. 23 E. Reyero, Misiones del M.R.P. Tirso González de Santalla, XIII Prepósito General de la Compañía de Jesús, 1665–1686 (Santiago, 1913), 32–33, 179, and 125. 24 On these missions see E. Colombo, Convertire i musulmani, op. cit. 316 chapter fourteen

such a moment the eternal verities are seen with fresh eyes, he submitted, calling for baptism with great anxiety and in exemplary fashion; and so fortunate was he that shortly after receiving it, he expired.25 A second story, this one connected to the evangelization of the Muslims of Vélez, offers a glimpse of the degree of polemical religious knowledge that was called for in the course of these internal missions. The priest was trying to convert one who seemed to be a leader of that town’s Mus- lim community (someone who “was intelligent, but knew little about the Koran”), so that his conversion would bring about that of others. To this end he deployed a number of rhetorical weapons: When he was told of certain errors in the Koran he would reply that he knew well that they were falsehoods, but he was not persuaded that they were in the Koran, a law that so many had followed for so long. If we spoke against polygamy and divorce, which he was aware of, he claimed that God had also allowed them in the religion of the Jews, so why should he not allow them to Mohammedans, following what was now their religion? If we proposed that the world could not have been left without a true religion between the time of Jesus and that of Mohammed, and that therefore the laws of the Jews and Gentiles were not to be followed but only the true Christian one, he said that for that period only, it might have been true; but that Christian law had ended with Mohammed, just as Moses’s had ended with Jesus. If we insisted that a religion could never cease to be true in what it said about God, if it had once been so; for God never changes, so that if earlier it had been true that God was Triune and Christ was God, then it must still be true, and therefore the religion of Mohammed that denied it was false; in these and other instances that he could apprehend but not explain, he clung to the little he knew about his Koran and maintained that our mysteries were too difficult. And he made more objections than one would expect from a man who was a peasant and had been a slave for most of his life. It was very hard for this Moor to accept that God, being One, should be three persons, and particularly that each person should do what it wished, while each one was obliged to wish what the others did. He claimed not to understand how God,

25 “Cuando hizo misión en Marbella el P. Tirso, aunque predicó con empeño a los moros no se convirtió ninguno; porque uno de ellos, que había sido, como ellos decían colegial en Fez, y era muy versado en el Alcorán, con su autoridad y agasajos, exhorta- ciones y amenazas, consiguió que no se convirtiesen los otros; y de sí mismo decía, que había más peligro de que el Papa se volviese moro, que no de que él se hiciese cristiano. Quedáronse todos en su error; pero, para que no imaginemos que es tiempo perdido el predicarlos, y confiemos ha de tener su fruto la palabra de Dios, aunque ignoramos el tiempo; llegando el de la primera, le dió nuestro Señor á este moro tan rebelde la enfermedad de la muerte, y como allí se ven con ojos diferentes las verdades eternas se redujo, pidiendo con grandes ansias y ejemplo el bautismo, con tanta dicha, que poco después de haberle recibido, murió”: E. Reyero, Misiones, op. cit., 240. father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 317

being a Spirit, could suffer and die; and how could God be one whom his creatures were able to kill? As we tried to explain these deep mysteries with reasoning, metaphors, and examples as best we could, he would answer in the same way, insisting that he did not understand how that could be. Here we could only maintain that belief in our faith must overrule his reason; but he said that he could not abandon reason, but would consider the matter further and read the books that we recommended, begging God to enlighten him; for the time being, he was not moved to seek baptism. He persisted in his error, although he left us with the hope that he would submit in the end; for he is a moral man, and it appeared that rather than insisting on following the religion of Mohammed, he simply found it difficult to believe in ours.26 It is easy to identify in this story some of the issues—the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and so on—that have already arisen in relation to the Lead Books, interreligious polemic, and the need to fix limits in a world of intense spirituality whose boundaries were blurred. Father Tirso González de Santalla’s experiences with Muslims certainly caused him grave concern. He eventually composed an important polemical work called Manu- ductio ad conversionem Mahumetanorum in duas partes divisa, published initially in two volumes in Madrid in 1687; it went through several more

26 “En proponiéndole algunos errores del Alcorán respondía, que conocía claramente que aquellas eran falsedades, pero que no se persuadía estuviesen en el Alcorán, ley á quien tanto tiempo y tantos habían seguido. Si le decíamos algo contra la poligamia y repudio, que no ignoraba, decía que también había dispensado Dios en la ley de los judíos, y que por qué no había de dispensar con los mahometanos, siguiendo la que ahora era su ley. Si le proponíamos que no había de estar el mundo sin ley verdadera desde la venida de Jesucristo hasta la de Mahoma, y que entonces como no era ley que debía seguirse la de los judíos y gentiles, sólo la de los cristianos era la verdadera, decía, que aquel tiempo fue la verdadera: pero que ya cesó con la de Mahoma, como la de Moisés con la de Jesucristo. Si le instaban, que no podía dejar de ser siempre verdadera una ley en lo que dice de Dios, si una vez lo había sido; pues Dios no se muda, y que así si antes fue verdad, que Dios fue Trino y que Cristo es Dios, que ahora lo había de ser, y consiguientemente falsa la ley de Mahoma que lo niega, se acogía en estas y otras instancias, que entendía y que no sabía desatar, á las pocas noticias de su alcorán, y á las dificultades de nuestros misterios, en que ponía más reparos de lo que podía esperarse de un hombre del campo, y esclavo casi toda su vida. Hacíasele muy dificultoso á este moro que Dios, siendo uno, fuese tres personas, y en especial, que todas hacían lo que querían y cada una estaba obligada á querer lo que quería la otra. Decía que no entendía cómo Dios, siendo Espíritu, podía padecer y morir, y que cómo podía ser Dios aquél a quien pudieron matar sus criaturas. Y como procurá- semos declararle estos altos misterios con razones, semejanzas y ejemplos, lo mejor que podíamos, daba sus respuestas, y se cerraba en que no entendía cómo aquello pudiera ser. Aquí fue necesario recurrir á los motivos de credulidad de nuestra fe, para que sujetase el entendimiento; pero respondía que no podía sujetarle, que él lo pensaría más y leería los libros que le dijimos, y pediría á Dios le alumbrase; que por entonces no se hallaba movido á pedir el bautismo. Quedóse en su error, aunque nos dejó con esperanzas de que se había de reducir; porque es de buenas costumbres y al parecer no era su empeño seguir la ley de Mahoma, sino dificultad de creer la nuestra”: ibid., 239. 318 chapter fourteen printings inside and outside of Spain and was even translated into Arabic by a Maronite monk.27 This fascinating work not only constructs a broad- based anti-Muslim argument within the tradition of Christian polemical literature, but also offers many examples taken from Father Tirso’s own missionary experience. Because the anonymous chronicler of the San Pablo College stated that Tirso González’s knowledge of Islam came in part from Tomás de León, we should wonder what exactly that knowledge consisted of. In theological matters Father González drew on two principal sources: Lope de Obregón’s Confutación del Alcorán,28 and Confutación de la secta mahomética by Juan Andrés, published in Valencia in 1515.29 González may have learned of the latter work (as he explains in his introduction to Manuductio), of which there was a copy in the Marquis of Estepa’s library, through conversations with Jesuits from the San Pablo College in 1669.30 This must have been the occasion on which he met Tomás de León, who by González’s own account told him how helpful Juan Andrés’s work could be for the mission he was about to undertake in Málaga.31 We think it plausible that Tomás de León may have told him of the existence of other works, such as Thomas Erpenius’s edition and Latin translation of the Ta’rīkh (History) of Jirjis b. al-῾Amīd; it was published in Leiden in 1625 and was known as the Historia Sarracenica, or alternatively as “Elmacino” from one of its author’s surnames, al-Makīn.32 This text had an extraordinary impact on all European Orientalism in the seventeenth century, when scholars were beginning to gain access to reliable Arabic sources; its presence may also be traced in Spanish

27 Liber Thyrsi Gonzalez e Societati Jesu contra impiam sectam alcorani legemque Maho- metis e latino idiomate arabici juris facti, a Jacobo Aruntin alepino praesbytero et monacho maronita S. Antoni Magni an. 1724 [. . .]. The reference is from E. Reyero, Misiones del M.R.P. Tirso González de Santalla, op. cit., 696. 28 L. de Obregón, Confutación del Alcorán y secta mahometana sacada de sus propios libros y de la vida del mesmo Mahoma (Granada, 1555). 29 J. Andrés, Confutación o confusión de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán, ed. E. Ruiz García, transcr. M. I. García-Monge (Mérida, 2003). 30 “Cum in Collegio Granatensi anno 1669 degeret, protinus Malacam Missionis instit- uendae causa profecturus, in familiari sermocinio quidam ex illius Collegij Patribus, ex Stepae Marchionis Bibliotheca se haber librum disservit cui titulus inerat Sectae Mahu- metanae confutatio . . .”: in T. González, Manuductio ad conversionem Mahumetanorum in duas partes divisa (Madrid, 1687), “Ad lectorem.” 31 E. Colombo, Convertire i musulmani, op. cit., 25. 32 Historia Sarracenica qua res gestae muslimorum, inde a Muhammede primo imperij & Religionis Muslimicae auctore, usque ad initium imperij Atabacaei, per XLIX Imperato- rum successionem fidelissimè explicantur. Insertis etiam passim Christianorum rebus in Ori- entis potissimum Ecclesijs eodem tempore gestis. Arabicè olim exarata à Georgio Elmacino fil. Abuljaseri Elamidi f. Abulmacaremi f. Abultibi (Leiden: ex Typographia Erpeniana Lin- guarum Orientalium, 1625). father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 319 historiography. Tirso González claims to have consulted it for his Manuductio,33 particularly as a source for the biography of the Prophet, at which much of anti-Muslim polemical literature took aim. It is odd that González believed Elmacino to be a Muslim author (“Scriptor arabus & de profesione mahometanus”), when he was actually a Christian. In any event, the Historia sarracenica was one of the scholarly resources that Tomás de León and his colleagues brought to their Orientalist discussions, and it is not unlikely that Tirso González learned of this work in his visit to the San Pablo College in Granada and drew on it for his preaching.

Tomás de León and the Sacromonte Abbey

Another significant feature of Father Tomás de León’s biography was his intimate relationship to the Abbey of Sacromonte. After the Papal condemnation of the Lead Books in 1682, Diego de la Serna Cantoral set out to compose the Vindicias catholicas granatenses—a signal work among all those written after that date in defense of the Books—and he informed Father Tirso González, who was by then the Jesuit Prepositor General, of his project. The latter answered him approvingly, “showing the high opinion he held of the Books, even though they had been condemned.” As Manuel Barrios stresses on reporting this exchange, Tirso González’s positive view of the Books reinforced the favorable attitude that the Company of Jesus had always maintained toward them. Pastor de los Cobos made the same point, using the example of Tomás de León himself: “a distinguished Jesuit very well known for his outstanding talents, knowledge of exotic languages, and broad erudition, who knew the Arabic language well enough to understand the original texts of the lead sheets.” In fact, the Sacromonte Chapter had charged Father León in 1683 with drawing up an apology for the Books, and had placed at his disposal the necessary materials, an annual stipend of one hundred ducats, and a secretary to make fair copies of his conclusions. He had accepted willingly: Forgive me, Your Honor, for losing my temper on this subject when I hear [the Books] censured because our practice is different today, without considering their antiquity and the events of almost 1700 years, when there have been so many changes and among us the ways of the earliest, Eastern Catho- lic Church have been almost submerged . . .34

33 Manuductio, op. cit., II, 14. 34 “Perdone vuestra señoría que en esta materia pierdo los estrivos quando los veo censurar por lo que oy se practica, sin inquirir la antigüedad después de tantas vueltas de 320 chapter fourteen and he continued to work on them until his death. Nicolás Antonio was able to locate and copy, among the papers of Tomás de León, a number of works that included several volumes of the Lead Books.35 Here we should point out a significant fact that is relevant to several of the persons we have been discussing: Tomás de León, like Nicolás Antonio, had a decid- edly negative view of the false chronicles,36 while at the same time he was committed to the Sacromonte cause. Here a line begins to be drawn between the two types of falsifications; it would persist throughout the seventeenth century in much of critical Spanish historiography, which judged the false chronicles harshly but did not take such a clear position vis-à-vis the Sacromonte texts. We shall encounter further examples.

Tomás de León, Orientalist

To understand fully Tomás de León’s link to the Sacromonte, we must begin with his chief activity and greatest personal dedication: Orientalist scholarship and the study of Eastern languages. These were the subjects in which he was most deeply engaged. As he wrote to one of his best friends, the Marquis of Mondéjar, he could not bear the legal matters to which he was obliged to attend: “I have interrupted my work for now, because cerca de 1.700 años, donde ha avido tanta variedad y están entre nosotros casi sepultados los estilos de la Yglesia Cathólica primera y oriental”: see M. Barrios Aguilera, “Claves de la historia laminaria en la formación y edición de Vindicias Cathólicas granatenses. ¿Una cuestión regalista?,” in Estudios de historia moderna. Homenaje a la doctora María Isabel Pérez de Colosía Rodríguez (Málaga, 2006), 51–91, esp. 62–63. 35 N. Antonio, Papeles y opúsculos varios, BNE ms.7365. The following Books are mentioned in the index: “Libro de las acciones de Jacobo el Apóstol y de sus milagros. It is one of those that was found incised on lead on the Sacromonte in Granada. I received this copy in Granada from Father Tomás de León of the Company of Jesus. Fol. 359”; “Liber bonitatum Domini nostri et miraculorum eius et Mariae Virginis. From the same books. Fol. 373”; and Libro de la relación de la misa de Jacobo el Apóstol. It is from the same books. Fol. 379.” Further, on fol. 359r it is stated that “these books, which were among those found on the Sacromonte, I copied in Granada from other copies belonging to Father Tomás de León of the Company of Jesus.” In the index, the reference to the Libro de los misterios grandes que vio Jacobo Apóstol en el monte Santo (fol. 372) is lacking. In the same index Nicolás Antonio speaks of another book, “Nicephori Blemmidis Geographiae Synopsis Graeca cum propria versione latina. It is in the library of San Lorenzo el Real [El Escorial] and was copied there by the Licenciate Francisco Vanegas, a gentleman of great erudition, a relative of Don Gal- cerán Albanell, Archbishop of Granada; I found it there in the hands of Father Tomás de León of the Company of Jesus, a man of singular learning in all manner of letters.” 36 G. Mayáns, for instance, tells how Tomás de León had seen the letter written by Father Mariana to Francisco Pacheco that affirmed “that those books were false, invented, and not to be believed” (“fingidos, i supuestos, i de ningun credito”): “Vida de Don Nicolás Antonio,” in N. Antonio, Censura de historias fabulosas (Madrid, 1742, facsimile ed. 1999), viii. father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 321 they have ordered me to write a legal brief for a suit that the Capuchins have brought against us; Your Lordship may imagine that there is nothing more wearisome or more against my character than Canon lawyers and lawsuits.”37 To another correspondent, or perhaps the Marquis again, he confided, “If Your Lordship knew how many tasks I am engaged in, I would happily confess what a passionate inclination draws me to these studies. And having made Your Lordship’s acquaintance I can be content, for I have countered the offensive nickname that my friends gave me because I studied Oriental languages.”38 In yet another letter to the Marquis he lamented the difficulty of finding anyone else in Granada who shared his interests: I confess to Your Lordship that is discouraging to have no one here with whom to discuss these studies; and although I have tried my best to infect my pupils and friends with my own enthusiasm, laziness is sweeter than the pleasure of drinking from the source, and of understanding the world’s greatest minds as they have spoken in their own words and not as others have explained them.39 Nothing could be clearer than these statements. On the one hand, Father León’s true love was Oriental studies, as opposed to his tedious daily obligations in the world of laws and lawsuits. On the other, his Orientalist bent grew from a desire to understand some of the world’s greatest figures in the language that they used themselves, without intermediaries. Finally, his dedication to Orientalism found no response whatever in his Granadan milieu, where it was seen rather as a defect. Faced with this lack of direct stimulus, León attempted to create a network of contacts with other scholars, both within Spain and without, who could share his

37 “E suspendido esto estos días, porque me an mandado escrevir un Papel en derecho en un pleyto que nos an puesto aquí los Capuchinos; vea Vuestra Señoría si puede aver cosa más pesada ni más contra mi genio que Canonistas y pleytos”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, August 31, 1660, Papeles varios de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 48v. 38 “Si Vuestra Señoría conociera la cantidad numeral de mis ocupaciones, confessaría con satisfactión lo que me arrastra una inclinación apassionada a estos estudios. Y aviendo conocido a Vuestra Señoría puedo vivir gustoso, pues e desecho el baldón con que me motejaron mis amigos por el estudio de las lenguas orientales”: letter from Tomás de León, possibly to the Marquis of Mondéjar, ibid., fol. 3r. 39 “[C]onfiesso a Vuestra Señoría que es desconsuelo no aver por acá con quien comunicar estos estudios; y aunque yo e procurado quanto e podido pegar la afición a discípulos y amigos, pero puede más la dulzura del no trabajar, que la suavidad que ay en bever de las fuentes, entender las almas mayores del mundo como ellas se declararon y no como otros las explicaron”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, July 8, 1664, ibid., fol. 23r. 322 chapter fourteen interests and concerns. His correspondence shows how this web of relationships, communications, and sharing of books and ideas with his fellow Orientalists came to be constructed.

Networks of Arabists

We have seen that Tomás de León visited in Rome at least once, when he attended the General Congregation of the Company of Jesus in 1664. We do not know if it was his first stay in the city, but he had certainly established previous contact, at least by letter, with certain persons there. There were two scholars in Rome to whose friendship he alludes often in his correspondence: Abraham Ecchellensis and Athanasius Kircher. The first of these was a well-known figure to whom we have referred in earlier chapters. We have seen the crucial role that he played in educat- ing the experts who issued the definitive report about the Lead Books’ authenticity. Tomás de León, speaking in one of his letters of a Syriac copy of the Book of Adam, related that “Abraham Echellensis, in Rome, showed me only three chapters that he has in ancient Syriac; he is making every effort to obtain the whole.”40 Elsewhere he remarked that Ecchellensis and Kircher had given high praise to the London Polyglot Bible.41 It seems that León’s relationship with Kircher was the more intense one, on account of their shared interest in several topics that included ancient Egypt and polygraphy. He often referred to him in letters as “our Kircher” or “our friend Kircher.” Among the latter’s correspondence, three letters from Tomás de León survive: the most significant one was included in part by Kircher himself in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus, in the chapter “Magia Hyeroglyphica,” subsection “Alterius Magici Apotelesmatis explicatio.”42 Kircher called his friend “Pater Thomas de Leon ex Soc. nostra Hispali Philosophiae & Theologiae Professor, linguarum Orientalium, & abstruso- ris doctrinae Veterum explorator eximius.” This reference to Father León’s post as professor at Seville suggests that their relationship was of long

40 “Deste libro me mostró en Roma tres solos capítulos que tiene Abraham Echellense en lengua Syriaca antigua y haze todas las diligencias possibles por averle todo”: ibid., fol. 23v. 41 Letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, Granada, June 3, 1664: ibid., fol. 25v. 42 A. Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus ad Ferdinandum III Caesarem semper augustum, 4 vols. (Rome: Vital Mascardus, 1653), vol. IV, 481 ff. father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 323 standing, going back perhaps to the early 1640s; in any case it would predate 1653, the year that the Oedipus was published.43 The relevant chapter of Oedipus Aegyptiacus examines several items that Tomás de León had sent to Kircher. The first was a “magic seal” that had been owned by Fernando Afán de Ribera, Duke of Alcalá and Vice- roy of Naples; it was said to have come from Palestine, brought by the Viceroy’s grandfather, the Marquis of Tarifa, or perhaps it had belonged to the Marquis of Villena, whom Kircher calls “famossisimo Hispaniae mago.” Kircher adds his own commentary on the magic seal, and indicates that León had sent him other singular objects and inscriptions. There were two idols that bore inscriptions (one of which Kircher claims to be written in hieroglyphics, and interprets), and a text in strange characters found in Caravaca de la Cruz, where the True Cross had appeared; we saw how Miguel de Luna had interpreted that text as if it had been composed in Arabic. Kircher notes that Tomás de León had suspected, with good reason, that Luna’s translation was a fraud, since the characters in question were not Arabic but “characteres Punici antiqui à Gothis corrupti.” In any event the friendship between León and Kircher was a close and long-lasting one, and they acknowledged one another as members of a “Catholic Republic of letters.”44 In an unedited passage of the same letter that Kircher cited in his Oedipus, Tomás de León told him that no work in Europe was as eagerly anticipated as the Oedipus Aegyptiacus, and not only by Spanish scholars (“eorum qui in Hispania Litteras et Musas nobliori spiritu collunt”) but in non-Catholic countries such as Holland as well. In another letter Father León thanked his friend for sending the Thesaurus coptus, and in a third introduced him to Diego de Robles, an aristocrat from Granada who was on a visit to Rome in 1669.45 As we review Tomás de León’s contacts with Orientalist scholarship we recall his discouragement at the minimal interest that his companions in Granada showed in such studies, even considering them somewhat shameful. Nonetheless an occasional reference in his letters offers a more nuanced view. In one to the Marquis of Mondéjar, for example, he stated

43 The library of Granada’s Hospital Real contains a volume originally from the Col- lege of San Pablo, Kircher’s Prodromus coptus sive aegyptiacus, bearing the note: “Donum Auchthoris Rom. 16 nov. 1642”; Tomás de León may have made a trip to Rome at about that time. 44 “República católica de las letras”: the phrase occurs in a letter by Tomás de León. 45 See Tomás de León’s letters in the Archivio Storico della Pontificia Università Gregoriana: correspondence of A. Kircher, 557, fols. 428r-429v; 558, fol. 94r; and 561, fols. 172r–173r. 324 chapter fourteen that “in spite of everything I have here a colleague and Master of Theol- ogy with whom you can certainly communicate on any point, because he has a solid knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and some of Arabic; he possesses very good judgment in matters of scholarship, which is a great relief to me.”46 Elsewhere he added that the Eastern texts that he studied “are appreciated only by Rachman and Don Lu. [?], with whom I am seen to speak (the first is a Moorish Altaleb or student from here, and [the other] is a Jew from Oran).”47 He seems to allude to the ṭālib named “Rachman” in yet another letter: “as to [Arab] students, especially mature ones, very few reach here; the only one who is here, and who is my friend, told me today that he knows of no other anywhere in Spain who is al-taleb or student; he himself knows by heart the Grammar of Abibeker [Abū Bakr] [. . .] and the Ziragia or Kabbala of the Arabs.”48 It is difficult to know who this Arab student in Granada, the only ṭālib in all of Spain, might have been; León refers to him in several letters as one who “knows his Koran well.” The second individual, the Jew from Oran with whom Tomás de León hoped to share his passion for Oriental languages, was probably Samuel Sasportas; he too was mentioned in letters, and León claimed to have corresponded with him.49 A member of one of the great Jewish families of Oran, Sasportas was a brother of Rabbi Jacob Sasportas (who had been exiled to Spain) and the leader of the city’s Jewish community.50 We

46 “Con todo, tengo aquí un Compañero y Maestro de Theología con quien segura- mente se puede comunicar qualquier punto porque tiene buena inteligencia del Griego y Hebreo y algo del Árabe y mui buen juizio en materias de erudición que me es de no poco alivio”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, July 8, 1664, Papeles varios de erudición, BNM ms. 9881, fol. 23r. 47 “Sólo las aprecia Rachman y D. Lu. (es el primero un moro Altaleb o Estudiante de aquí y un Judío de Orán) con quienes me veen comunicar”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, December 14, 1659, ibid., fol. 3r. 48 “Luego de los estudiantes, y más si son provectos, raros llegan por acá, y oi me dize uno solo que aquí ay y es mi amigo que no save que en toda España aya otro que sea altaleb o estudiante; éste save de memoria la Gramática de Abibeker [. . .], save la Zira- gia o Kaballa de los Árabes”: letter from Tomás de León to Antonio de Araoz, Granada, December 10, 1658, ibid., fol. 17r. 49 Letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, March 25, 1658, ibid., fol. 36r. 50 J.-F. Schaub, Les juifs du roi d’Espagne (Paris, 1999), and B. Alonso Acero, Orán- Mazalquivir, 1589–1639. Una sociedad española en la frontera de Berbería (Madrid, 2000), 209 ff. In 1671, two years after the expulsion of the Jews from Oran, Samuel Saportas arrived in Spain together with another member of his family, Solomon, with the intention of converting. See B. J. López Belinchón, “Aventureros, negociantes y maestros dogmatizadores. Judíos norteafricanos y judeoconversos ibéricos en la España del siglo XVII,” in M. García- Arenal (ed.), Judíos en tierras del Islam, II. Entre el Islam y Occidente. Los judíos magrebíes en la Edad Moderna (Madrid, 2003), 69–99, esp. 81. father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 325 should recall that the post of Arabic interpreter in Oran had traditionally been held by members of either the Cansino or the Sasportas families of Jews. It is clear that Father León had entered into contact, sporadically and not always satisfactorily, with fellow residents of Granada. Later, seeking other colleagues with whom he might share his interest in Oriental languages, he sought out a translator from Oran. This relationship, too, must have been insufficient: we can imagine that while Sasportas might provide a certain amount of linguistic information, he could not enter into the profound scholarly issues that concerned León. Therefore the wisdom and guidance of Kircher and Ecchellensis must have been crucial for him, making him feel that he at last belonged to a great “Republic of letters.” But he had yet to meet the person who would become his principal and most devoted correspondent, the one who would share his Orientalist enthusiasm to the greatest degree. Their encounter came almost as a revelation. In the same letter that told of the Jew from Oran, while León was lamenting how hard it was to form scholarly connections on the subject of Arabic, he also celebrated the beginning of his correspondence with the Marquis of Mondéjar. In him he found within Spain what he had been seeking outside: The second failing for which I ask pardon is for having written to Your Lord- ship, a learned gentleman of our country, [. . . about] matters as select as they are arcane; and now I kiss Your Lordship’s feet, for you are the king and prince of erudition in Spain. The knowledge that you possess, Sir, is like no one else’s among my acquaintance! Your letter has caused admiration in me and in everyone else who has seen it and knows something of the subject; I assure Your Lordship that I have not seen for many years a paper that has humbled me more or inspired me more to further study. And recalling how I had sought in far-flung correspondence—in Africa with Samuel Zaporta, in Holland with Willem Vorstius—a friend who could correct and enlighten my ignorance, I see that the wise Arab Ali Abitaleb [῾Alī b. Abī Ṭālib] now ن ن ن ف ض ن ن ثق Light from a door is better“] ,ا ��ل�ور �م�� ب��ا ب� ا�ح��س� وا��ل �م�� ا ��ل�ور ب�� ب� :informs me and more excellent than light from a drillhole”], Quam bona lux in porta praecellit prae luce de fenestra (foramine): this benefit to which Your Lord- ship has opened the door for us with your favor is greater than that which we had gone about begging for with little return.51

51 “Lo segundo de que pido perdón es de aver escrito a Vuestra Señoría como Caval- lero erudito de nuestro paýs, n[. . .] de noticias tan selectas como arcanas: y aora beso a Vuestra Señoría los pies como Rey i Príncipe de la erudición de España. ¡Esto, Señor, es saver como ninguno save de quantos yo conosco! E mostrado la carta con admiración mía y de quantos saven de [la] materia y la an visto; asseguro a Vuestra Señoría que no e visto 326 chapter fourteen

This first epistolary contact between Tomás de León and the Marquis of Mondéjar represents an important moment in our history. It shows that in the seventeenth century, within the elite ranks of Spanish critical histori- ographers (at whose head stood the Marquis himself), interest in Oriental languages and Orientalist scholarship played a central role in formulating the most fundamental questions. As we follow the threads of the issues that arise in this correspondence we shall understand how deeply Ori- entalist studies were implicated in the intellectual and historiographic development of this group of learned men. We need to speak of one more individual in order to complete the roll of this network of historians who were concerned with Oriental languages. We can document how Tomás de León was introduced into this circle, in the first instance, by Nicolás Antonio. In a letter of 1653, Antonio introduced Father León to his friend Martín Vázquez Siruela in these terms: In hopes of repaying the great debt that I owe to you, Sir, and in part as a reward for your studies, I wish to offer you a friend in this city who will seem to you more attractive than all its other attractions. He is Father Tomás de León, from the great Company of Jesus which is the seedbed for such men: devout, humane, discreet, learned in all theologies, well versed in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and other Eastern languages, full of erudition and doctrine. He has done me many favors, and I have prepared him for this new friendship and correspondence; and I know that communicating with him will be of great use and benefit to you on the subject of Hebrew and Arabic elements in the origins of Baetica. He has told me many times that this is his wish; and so, my good Sir, the prize of the tournament is for him who first rushes to seize it.52 papel en muchos años que más me aya humillado ni obligado más a estudiar, y viendo quán lexos andava buscando yo en correspondenc[ias] estrañas, en África con Samuel Zaporta, en Holanda con Will. Vorstio, amigo que corrijiesse y alumbra[sse] mi ignorancia veo que me dize oy el agudo árabe Aly Abitaleb [. . .] Quam bona lux in porta praecellit prae luce de fenestra (foramine) este bien a que Vuestra Señoría nos a abierto la puerta con su favor es mejor que quanto andávamos mendigando con participación escasa”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, March 25, 1658, Papeles varios de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 36r. 52 “En satisfación de mucho de lo que io debo a Vuestra Merced, i en buena parte de premio de sus estudios quiero darle un amigo en esta ciudad que le a de parecer a Vuestra Merced más ameno que todas las amenidades de ella. Es el padre Thomás de León, de la gran Compañía de IHS que es el plantel de tales; religioso, humanísimo, discreto, docto en todas las Teulugías, mui versado en las lenguas Hebrea, Griega, Árabe, i demás Orien- tales, lleno de toda erudición y doctrina. Háçeme mucha merced y io le tengo prevenido para esta nueva amistad i correspondencia: i sé que su comunicación le a de ser a Vuestra Merced de mucho uso i utilidad para lo Hebreo i Árabe de los Orígines Béticos. Ame dicho no una sola vez que desea esto mismo; y así, señor mío, el pallio es de quien primero se father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 327

Vázquez Siruela must have reacted favorably to this proposal, for in August of the same year Nicolás Antonio wrote to him once more: “Father Tomás was excessively pleased with your letter, and will reply today. I promise you that he is an excellent friend, with simple and pleasant man- ners—his presence in Granada is a great relief to me. Be sure, Sir, that you do not let the correspondence drop, for I am certain that he will respond on any subject that you wish to discuss with him.”53 A surviving letter from Tomás de León among Vázquez Siruela’s papers tells of “the great pleasure with which I received your letter, Sir, seeing in it a door opened to the communication that I so value and hoped for,” and goes on to say, “I never dared to importune you, Sir, although I wished fervently to do so; the more after I learned from some gentlemen of the Sacromonte that you are advanced in the study of Arabic, to whose writers I have dedicated some time, though imperfectly, as in all things; for some reason I revel in this interest and had not found anyone to share it, except for one Arab who lives here and knows his Koran well.”54 The name of Martín Vázquez Siruela has already arisen in these pages; we will now discuss him in greater detail, as one of the Sacromonte clergy who was most famous in his time as a student of Arabic, historian, and scholar.

Martín Vázquez Siruela

In spite of his significance, Vázquez Siruela is little known; he published nothing in his lifetime and his writings are scattered among different

arrojare a él”: letter from Nicolás Antonio to M. Vázquez Siruela, Granada, June 30, 1653, Papeles varios de Martín Vázquez Siruela, Biblioteca Real de Palacio ms. II/158, fol. 52r. 53 “El padre Tomás a hecho grande fiesta con su carta de Vuestra Merced i respond- erá oi. Prometo que es excelentisimo amigo, i de lindo trato i natural, es todo mi alivio en Granada. No dexe Vuestra Merced la correspondencia: que sé que le hallará en todo género de noticias que le quiera comunicar”: letter from Nicolás Antonio to Martín Vázquez Siruela, Granada, August 19, 1653, ibid., fol. 97r. 54 “Con quánto gusto receví su carta de Vuestra Merced por ver abierta la puerta a comunicación que yo tanto estimo y desseava tanto”; “nunca me atreví a importunar a Vuestra Merced aunque ardientemente lo deseé, y mucho más después que por algunos señores del Sacro Monte e entendido que está Vuestra Merced aprovechado en el estudio del árabe, en cuios autores e gastado algún tiempo, con la cortedad que en todo; pero con inexplicable gusto mío y sin aver encontrado ninguno desta afición, menos un árabe que aquí ay, sabio en su Alcorán”: letter from Tomás de León to Martín Vázquez Siruela, Granada, August 18, 1653, Del Señor Conde de Miranda, BNE ms. 8809, fol. 18. 328 chapter fourteen manuscripts, many of them in poor order. He was born in Borge (Málaga) in 1600;55 after studying at the San Dionisio College of the Sacromonte he became a canon of the same Abbey in 1625, serving in various capacities, including secretary and director of the College. The year 1642 found him in Madrid as tutor to the children of Don Gaspar de Haro, Marquis of El Carpio; Gallego Morell believes that this friendship with the Marquis helped him to be named rationer of Seville Cathedral in 1647. He died in Madrid in 1664. Alongside his ecclesiastical career Vázquez Siruela was an active historian and antiquarian, and his work has left traces in the many papers written in his hand that are dispersed throughout different collections. One satirical anecdote about his archeological pursuits shows how far he sometimes carried his attempts at interpretation. It was related by Fran- cisco de Trillo y Figueroa in his Apologético Historial: It is worth recounting a laughable incident that happened in my time in this great city [Granada] involving Dr. Siruela, Canon of the Sacromonte, who was proud of his knowledge of antiquities although he really did not understand them. During an entertainment held at Soto’s villa—which was then an Academy of this city—a practical joke was played on him. A sacristan of San Salvador, who was staying in that beautiful place at the time, took a large brick of the Nasrid style, carved five large S’s on it, and buried it in a damp place for a few days so that the letters would look somewhat decayed. On the day in question, after Dr. Siruela had pronounced a very long lecture about the meaning of the letters SSSSS, the sacristan told him cheerfully: ‘Doctor, do not waste your time, for you do not understand these things. I know no Latin, but I can explain this inscription without any doubt: the five S’s stand for “Sebastián Sánchez, Sacristan of San Salvador.”’ The Doctor blushed with shame, and the trick was considered very amusing—as will happen every time that someone tries to interpret ancient stones that are inscribed only with separate letters and not with continuous text.56

55 Most of these biographical data are taken from A. Gallego Morell, “Algunas noticias sobre don Martín Vázquez Siruela,” in Estudios dedicados a Menéndez Pidal, vol. IV (Madrid, 1953), 405–424. 56 “Sobre [lo] que es muy de notar un risible caso que en mi tiempo sucedió en esta insigne ciudad al doctor Siruela Canónigo del Monte Santo, muy presumido de Antigüe- dades que, a la verdad, no entendía. Tratóse de hacerle una burla en un festejo que se tubo en el carmen de Soto, Academia de esta ciudad en aquel Siglo, y algunos días antes, un Sa- cristán de San Salbador, que por temporal tenía también su nicho en fábrica tan hermosa, abrió cinco S en un ladrillo mazarí [sic] muy grande, lo enterró en parte húmeda porque las letras se carcomiesen algo y para el día señalado, después de aber discurrido larguís- simamente el Dr. Siruela sobre la inteligencia de las cinco letras SSSSS, le dijo el Sacristán donayrossísimamente: Mire, Sr. Dr. no se canse que no entiende de estas materias; yo no sé latín y tengo de declararle esta inscripción, sin que tenga duda lo que quieran decir las father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 329

It is important to note, together with this story’s sarcastic tone, the venue in which it took place: “Soto’s villa” (a carmen, as such houses are known in Granada) belonged to Pedro Soto de Rojas, a canon of the collegiate church of El Salvador and a famous poet in the Gongorine style. He was the author of “Paraíso cerrado para muchos, jardines abiertos para pocos,” a complex poem in which he described the gardens that he had built in his villa on the Albaicín hill in order to be alone and withdraw from the world.57 It happens that one of Vázquez Siruela’s best-known roles was as a commentator on Góngora and defender of Gongorism in the literary disputes of the day. In addition to frecuenting Soto de Rojas’s circle of culteranistas in Granada, he met other scholars and poets in Seville (as Gallego Morell also informs us), among them Rodrigo Caro, with whom he coincided shortly before the latter’s death. Still according to Gallego Morell, Vázquez Siruela frequented the literary circle of Juan Lucas Cortés while he was in Seville;58 Nicolás Antonio, his intimate friend since childhood, did the same. Thus Nicolás Antonio requested in a letter to Vázquez Siruela the name of the “author of a little Arabic work annotated by Juan Seldeno that is owned by Don Juan Lucas Cortés; it deals with the Patriarchs of Alexandria from St. Mark onward. Father Tomás [de León] wishes to know who the author is.”59 The work in question was the Arabic edition, with a Latin translation and an extensive commentary by John Selden, of a fragment of the History by Sa῾īd b. al-Biṭrīq, known also as Eutychius.60 This writer (d. 940) was the Melkite patriarch of Alexandria and one of the most important Arab Christian

cinco S es esto: Sebastián Sánchez Sacristán de San Salbador. Corrióse dicho Dr. y fué muy risible la burla, como lo será las más veces que lleguen a interpretarse algunas piedras antiguas que solo constan de notas y no de raçones continuadas”: ibid., p. 410, and A. Gallego Morell, Francisco y Juan de Trillo y Figueroa (Granada, 1950), 101. 57 A. Gallego Morell, Pedro Soto de Rojas (Granada, 1948), 26. 58 Cortés, a jurist and bibliophile, was one of the most important scholars in the circle of relationships that formed around the Marquis of Mondéjar and Nicolás Antonio; he possessed one of the greatest libraries of his day. See, for example, G. de Andrés, “Un erudito bibliófilo español: Juan Lucas Cortés,” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 81 (1978), 3–72. On his friendship with Martín Vázquez Siruela see ibid., 8. 59 “[A]uctor de una obrilla arábiga que, con notas de Juan Seldeno, tiene en su poder D. Juan Lucas Cortes y trata de los Patriarchas de Alexandría desde S. Marcos, porque el Padre Tomas desea saber qué autor sea”: letter from Nicolás Antonio to Martín Vázquez Siruela, October 28, 1653, Papeles varios de Martín Vázquez Siruela, Biblioteca Real de Palacio ms. II/158, fol. 110v. 60 Eutychii Aegyptii Patriarchae Orthodoxorum Alexandrini [. . .] ecclesiae suae origine, ex eiusdem arabico nunc primus typis edidit ac versione & commentario auxit Ioannes Seldenus (London: excudebat Richardus Bishopus, 1642). 330 chapter fourteen authors of the Middle Ages. The relevant fragment—which does indeed contain a brief history of the Christian patriarchs of Alexandria beginning with St. Mark—was later retranslated by Abraham Ecchellensis, who criticized Selden’s work.61 We shall return later to Selden, simply taking note here of this first confirmation that his works were known to our group of Spanish scholars. We also see here Vázquez Siruela’s interest in matters related to Arabic and Islam; further proof is the fact that he owned a copy of ῾Īsā b. Jābir’s Breviario sunni, annotated in his hand in passages that dealt with Islamic concepts such as the sunna.62 Nicolás Antonio’s and Vázquez Siruela’s friendship gave rise to an intense exchange of letters on historical subjects; Odette Gorsse and Robert Jammes called it, in the title of an article, a “fight for the truth” waged by them both.63 The reference is, of course, to criticism of the false chronicles and the imprint they had left on the historiography of the period. Jammes and Gorsse note certain aspects of this “fight” that are worth recalling here. In the first place, those who defended the authenticity of much invented material in the false chronicles were powerful figures, and since the debate touched on sensitive matters like the presence of St. James in Spain, it was not easy to criticize their proponents freely. Nicolás Antonio’s Censura de historias fabulosas, for instance, could be published only much later, and after many troubles and difficulties, thanks to the intervention of Gregorio Mayáns. In the second place, another limit that was placed on the critical approach of these historians arose from the Lead Books of Sacromonte. We have seen that Vázquez Siruela had been both a student and later a canon at the Sacromonte Abbey, and his support of the Books was absolute. He took an active part in the affair at the time that the Lead Books were sent to Rome, corresponding with the clergy who accompanied them there, assisting with complex negotiations, and seeking to use his post as tutor to the children of Don Luis de Haro to good advantage.64 On the other hand, Nicolás Antonio’s position on the Books was ambiguous. He had relationships with canons of the Sacromonte, and we have letters that

61 See, for example, F. Micheau, “Sa῾īd b. al-Biṭrīḳ,” EI 2, s.v. 62 Breviario çunni o cerimoniario de la seta de Mahoma para conosçer y qualificar las çerimonias de moros, BNE ms. 2076. 63 O. Gorsse and R. Jammes, “Nicolás Antonio et le combat pour la vérité (31 lettres de Nicolás Antonio à Vázquez Siruela),” in Hommage des Hispanistes français à Noël Salomon (Barcelona, 1979), 411–429. 64 See, for example, Papeles varios del Sacro Monte, BNE ms. 6437, passim; and C. Alonso, Los apócrifos, op. cit., passim. father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 331 he sent to some of them when he was serving as procurer general in Rome from 1673 to 1678; in these he kept them apprised of the vicissitudes of the Sacromonte cause at the Vatican. It is possible that he knew that the Granadan finds were false, and that the ambiguity in his correspondence was a way of implicating himself as little as possible in the affair. His pronouncements about the Lead Books certainly lack the strong conviction with which he expressed his skepticism of the false chronicles.65 We have seen how Father León, too, had contacts at the Sacromonte Abbey and came to write a treatise in defense of the Books toward the end of his life.

A Circle of Orientalists?

We have been following the figure of Tomás de León in his efforts to establish personal and epistolary relations that would fulfill his intellectual yearnings; these were focused particularly on the study of Eastern languages, Arabic above all. He pursued his contacts in a logical progres- sion: a ṭālib or Arab student in Granada, a mysterious character who was acquainted with the Qur’ān and with Arab magic; Samuel Sasportas, a professional interpreter and member of one of the principal Jewish families of Oran; and the greatest experts on Oriental languages in Rome, Abra- ham Ecchellensis and Athanasius Kircher. The lodestar that guided Tomás de León’s steps was not only the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and Coptic, but above all the scholarly uses to which those languages could be put. The previously cited statement that he and Kircher were fellow citizens of a “Catholic Republic of letters” was a felicitous one. Tomás de León was seeking to situate himself, through his Orientalist studies, in a European scholarly milieu that was undergoing an intense process of formation at this point in the seventeenth century. The correspondence among its members was not a mere mode of communication, but a phenomenon on a Continental scale—it showed the emergence of a collective consciousness in which an intellectual common ground was taking shape through the exchange of books and ideas.66

65 O. Gorsse and R. Jammes, “Nicolás Antonio et le combat pour la vérité,” op. cit., 426. See an example in Diario del viaje desde Valencia a Andalucía hecho por don Francisco Pérez Bayer en este año de 1782, BNE ms. 5953, fol. 116v. 66 This issue has been well studied for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. See, for example, P. Dibon, “Les échanges épistolaires dans l’Europe savante du XVIIe siècle,” Revue de Synthèse, 81–2 (1976), 31–50; K. Pomian, “De la lettre au périodique: la 332 chapter fourteen

For Tomás de León, the crucial moment in his search was his entry into the circle of Vázquez Siruela, Nicolás Antonio, and the Marquis of Mon- déjar—all great critical Spanish historians who, in their turn, recognized and respected León’s depth of scholarship.67 This group was certainly an important one. At Mondéjar’s tertulia or conversation circle in Madrid, “every afternoon and evening, scholars and enthusiasts of letters would gather in his library and begin by imbibing chocolate and other drinks; then they would go on to discuss the latest literary and political news, as well as other pleasant and useful topics.”68 A celebrated and oft-repeated quotation from Diego Zapata reveals much of significance about those gatherings: I can affirm that from the time that I arrived in Madrid in the year 87, the city was distinguished by the famous public tertulias that were honored and adorned by the best-known men of standing, prestige, and learning. Among them were the most excellent Marquis of Mondéjar; Don Juan Lucas Cortés, of the Royal Council of Castile; Don Nicolás Antonio, whose wisdom, erudition, and intelligence reached further than one would think possible, as his Bibliotheca Hispana proved; Dr. Antonio de Ron; Abbot Francisco Barbará; and the most learned Don Francisco Ansaldo, a Sardinian gentleman. They discussed modern philosophy as well as all the other sciences.69 It is not clear what was meant by the “modern philosophy” with which this circle was concerned, although, as José Pardo Tomás has noted, the

circulation des informations dans les milieux des historiens au XVIIe siècle,” Organon, 9 (1973), 25–43; and C. Poulouin, Le temps des origines. L’Éden, le Déluge et les ‘temps reculés’ de Pascal à l’Encyclopédie (Paris, 1998), 69–73. 67 José Pellicer, for instance, said of him that he was “one of the greatest men of our time in divine and human learning and in exotic languages”: G. Mayáns, “Vida de Don Nicolás Antonio,” op. cit., xxiv. 68 “Todas las tardes y noches los aficionados a las letras y eruditos se reunían en su biblioteca, empezándose por beber chocolate y otras bebidas; luego se continuaba exponiéndose las últimas novedades literarias y a veces políticas y otras cuestiones agrada- bles y útiles”: testimony by Claude François Pellot, a French traveler and agent of Colbert, cited by G. de Andrés, “La biliofilia,” op. cit., 593. 69 “Puedo asegurar que desde el año de 87 que entré en la Corte, había en ella las públicas y célebres tertulias que ilustraban y adornaban los hombres de más dignidad, representación y letras que se conocían, como era el excelentísimo marqués de Mondéjar, el señor don Juan Lucas Cortés, del Consejo Real de Castilla, el señor don Nicolás Antonio, cuya sabiduría, erudición e inteligencia parece que llegó más allá de lo posible, como lo acreditaba su Bibliotheca Hispana; el doctor don Antonio de Ron; el abad don Francisco Barbará; el doctísimo don Francisco Ansaldo, caballero sardo; los cuales como de todas las ciencias trataban de la filosofía moderna”: J. M. López Piñero, La introducción de la ciencia moderna en España (Barcelona, 1969), 44. father tomás de león and the marquis of mondéjar 333 same text that contains the above quotation may afford a hint when it alludes to the philosophical systems of Maignan and Descartes.70 We wish to emphasize the central role played by Orientalist subjects in the intellectual program of the Marquis of Mondéjar’s circle. He himself stressed their importance in a letter to Tomás de León, with the words: “I confess that I value your opinion, Father, more than that of anyone else that I know and communicate with in Spain; I respect them all for their professional knowledge, but it is extremely rare to possess such breadth and depth of understanding of Oriental languages, which is the key to true wisdom.”71 “Understanding Oriental languages is the key to true wisdom”; it is a powerful statement of the values of this scholarly community that formed around (among other subjects) the mastery of Arabic and other Eastern tongues. The words also seem to mark the group as a singular, somewhat isolated one that defined itself by its distance from a world dominated by “the zeal of the ignorant (that is what I call those who criticize what they usually do not understand).” The scholarly enterprise, however, is “all the sweeter the further it leaves behind the popular and pedestrian observation of the common student; for the gift of profound understanding of the most remote origins is granted to so few.”72 Here we have one of the keys to this project: the link between “true wisdom” and “hidden origins,” a relationship to which we shall return. Add to this the aforementioned desire to apprehend what the world’s greatest writers expressed in their own language, without intermediaries. This proposition, whose implications were vast, led to a basic but very serious problem: how, and with what tools, were Oriental languages to be learned? If we wish to understand how Eastern languages, and particularly Ara- bic, became the key to true scholarly learning, we must analyze the formation in Spain of what we can call “Orientalist” knowledge, in the same

70 J. Pardo Tomás, El médico en la palestra. Diego Mateo Zapata (1664–1745) y la ciencia moderna en España (Salamanca, 2004), 133. 71 “Confiesso que para mí es de mayor estimaçión el sentir de V. P. que el de quantos conozco y comunico en [Espa]ña; venero a todos por doctos en su profeçión, pero raríssimos que en todas tengan con extenssión la profundidad y la conprehensión de las lenguages orientales, llave d[el] verdadero saver . . .”: Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 225. 72 “El çelo de los ygnorantes (tal llamo a los que reprehenden lo que ygnoran de ordinario)”; “tanto más apaçible quanto se remonta de la vulgar y pedestre notiçia, de los comunes eruditos, pues el don de saber con profundidad los más escondidos orígenes es conçedido a tan pocos”: Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 225. 334 chapter fourteen sense that this process was taking place in Europe at the same period. We believe it essential to stress the deep connection between this small network of Spanish scholars and European Orientalism—a connection that was nourished by the circulation of books and ideas that originated outside of Spain. To reconstruct the creation of this particular field of knowledge we must return to the original problem that faced the Euro- pean Orientalists also: how to study the Arabic language. chapter fifteen

the arabic language and orientalism in spain

In the previous chapter we followed the career of an illustrious Jesuit, Father Tomás de León, an expert on Oriental languages with close relations to the Sacromonte Abbey. Through him we came to know a core group of scholars who counted the knowledge of such languages among their principal interests. This group’s activities allow us to identify a process that we consider highly significant: the development of a learned or scholarly use of the Arabic language. In order for this process to succeed, a clear sense of separation had to be created between that language and the religion of Islam—a separation that is one of the recurrent themes of this book. It arose in Europe as well, and produced the noteworthy surge in Orientalist studies that characterized the seventeenth century. We know both the causes and the consequences of this surge. Access to the original texts of Holy Scripture had taken the universal impulse toward spiritual reform, based on a return to the purity of the Gospels, and given it a philological turn; the need to reconstruct the Biblical text with utmost fidelity had brought about enormous progress in Hebraic studies. Other Oriental languages, particularly Arabic, had received the benefit, since Arabic was considered especially close to Hebrew and also possessed a long tradition of writing by Christians. Debates concerning the Biblical text were of course inherent in the essential polemics about recognizing the authority of Church teachings. In the confrontation between Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and in the creation of an absolute division between one world and the other, knowledge of Islam came to play a prominent role in the disputes between the two camps. To give only one notable example (already mentioned in earlier pages), we may recall the success and circulation enjoyed by Muhammad Alguazir’s anti-Christian polemic in Protestant Europe.1 On the other hand, the realization that a great and significant fund of knowledge lay concealed in languages that were neither Greek nor Latin had led to a more complex process. Attempts to integrate this knowledge into a world view dominated by Classical and Biblical authority had laid

1 See Chapter 12. 336 chapter fifteen bare the weaknesses of the latter; therefore a pressing need had arisen to create new and ever-more-refined tools of critical historiography and philology. But the tools themselves gave rise to further problems.2 We propose in this chapter to explore how this area of knowledge took shape in Spain in the seventeenth century. With regard to the need to learn Arabic, and to collect the materials for doing so, we shall see how Orientalist works printed in Europe became known in Spain, and how they influenced the concerns of Spanish scholarly circles. At the same time, the creation of an Orientalist culture implied a reevaluation of East- ern languages and the books written in them, and led to the crucial question: could Arabic sources legitimately be used in writing the history of Spain? And if the answer was affirmative, what were those sources?

Learning Arabic: The Problem of Texts

We have already touched on the difficulty of learning Arabic in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tentative attempts to institutionalize Arabic teaching during the fifteen-hundreds culminated in one significant victory, the creation of a Chair of Arabic at Alcalá de Henares, first held by Diego de Urrea. We have seen how his biography and that of Marcos Dobelio were unique, and separate them from figures like Miguel de Luna and, to a lesser extent, Alonso del Castillo. Up until that time the notion of an “expert in Arabic” was only loosely defined: learned intentions were mixed with utilitarian ones, the latter related to evangelization or diplomacy. But from at least the middle years of the sixteenth century we can perceive signs of a new perspective on Arabic. This process finds its parallel in the methods used for the study of the language. The story of Urrea’s pupils, who complained that he never taught them more than the fundamentals, betrays how imperfect teaching methods led to frustration. Whoever wished to study Arabic in Spain at the time came up against the gulf between the modern dialect spoken by Moriscos and North Africans, and “ancient Arabic”; furthermore,

2 There is ample bibliography on these topics. See the following, which by no means exhaust the subject: K. H. Dannenfeldt, “The Renaissance Humanists and the Knowledge of Arabic,” Studies in the Renaissance, 2 (1955), 96–117; G. J. Toomer, Eastern Wisdom and Learning, op. cit.; A. Hamilton, Arab Culture and Ottoman Magnificence, op. cit.; M. Rodinson, La fascination de l’Islam (Paris, 1980); G. A. Russell (ed.), The “Arabick” Interest, op. cit.; and B. Heyberger, M. García-Arenal, E. Colombo, and P. Vismara (eds.), L’Islam visto da Occidente, op. cit. the arabic language and orientalism in spain 337 basic texts for learning the latter were lacking. Benito Arias Montano, for instance, wrote to Archbishop Pedro de Castro: I have put into ancient Arabic all possible effort until I was able to understand the holy books written in it, for which I had some information about grammar, as will be seen one day; but I have not worked on other topics written in the language for lack of time and lack of books, especially good vocabularies. We have none of those here nor have I been able to create any through my inquiries, and the Licenciate Luna and Castillo have not told me that they possess them, although I have asked them about it.3 At almost the same time, Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola wrote to his friend Llorente about the Arabic lessons he was receiving from Diego de Urrea: “Please, Sir, tell our Godoy that there are no Arabic primers to be had, and that I will not send him my own, because without a teacher he could not learn anything [from it], nor could I learn here without it.”4 We gather certain important facts from these quotations. First, Arias Montano’s reference to “ancient Arabic” shows that as a scholar he was fully aware of the difference between Classical and dialectal Arabic and of the separate spheres of knowledge and activity that they covered. We saw earlier that Arias Montano himself had spoken of two Morisco doctors, Gonzalo de Ayala and Gerónimo de Álava, who spoke the “Andalusian” or “modern African” dialect but were ignorant of grammar.5 We also saw how Alonso del Castillo had had to study Arabic with the famous Flemish humanist Nicolas Clénard;6 this pupil-teacher relationship is mentioned in several sources and shows awareness of a clear separation between colloquial and Classical Arabic. Pedro Velarde de Ribera, in his apologetic work about the Sacromonte finds written early in the seventeenth century, writes about Doctor

3 “En la lengua arábiga antigua he puesto la obra que me ha sido posible hasta entender los libros sagrados que están interpretados en ella, y para esto he tenido noticias de la Gramática, como algún día se verá, pero en las demás disciplinas que en ella están escritas no he trabajado por falta de tiempo y de libros, y sobre todo por falta de buenos vocabularios, que no los hay entre nosotros, ni yo los he podido hacer con diligencia, ni el licenciado Luna ni Castillo me han dado intención de que ellos los tengan por allá, aunque por mi parte se les ha preguntado”: Diario del viaje desde Valencia a Andalucía hecho por don Francisco Pérez Bayer en este año de 1782, BNE ms. 5953, fol. 174r. 4 “Mande Vm. decir a nuestro Godoy que cierto no se hallan cartillas arábigas, y que yo no envío la mía, porque sin maestro no podría aprender, ni yo acá sin ella”: letter from Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola to Llorente, September 11, 1598, in O. H. Green, Vida y obras de Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola (Zaragoza, 1945), 53. 5 See Chapter 4. 6 A. Centurión, Información, op. cit., fols. 15v–16r. 338 chapter fifteen

Clenardus Lubaniensis, a Fleming who established the study of Greek at the Alhambra in Granada, having come from his own country to Africa and from Africa to Granada with a great desire and curiosity to learn the ancient Arabic language. As a scholar, he suspected that it was needed for the use of God’s Church, as we have seen in recent days. He died and was buried in the Old Church of the Alhambra in Granada, beneath the choir, in the year 1546.7 Velarde de Ribera, in trying to prove (in defense of the Torre Turpiana Parchment) that Latin descended from Spanish and that the latter had been spoken centuries earlier in Spain than the former, made the tortuous argument that “the conquerors who remained the longest in Spain were the Moors, and they were not able to impose their Arabic language on the native Spaniards in spite of all their efforts.” He maintained that Spanish was well known to be pronounceable correctly only by those born in Spain; foreigners invariably mispronounced it, whereas Spaniards always spoke other languages with excellent pronunciation, “like the most learned scholars, for instance Joseph de Herrera, interpreter and translator for the Holy Office in Granada; also many other clergymen and laymen who live and have lived in this Kingdom of Granada, from whom the Moriscos were happy to learn Arabic.” He claimed that something similar occurred in New Spain and Peru, where the Jesuits had established chairs for the teaching of Amerindian languages.8 Simultaneously, Arias Montano was insisting on a well-known situation in the Spain of his time: the lack of vocabularies and grammars with which to study Classical Arabic. Luna and Castillo could hardly have supplied him with such texts, which were almost nonexistent. The few surviving accounts by individuals who tried to learn Arabic in sixteenth-

7 “Clenardo Lubaniense, flamenco de nación, que tuvo su estudio de lengua griega en el Alhambra de Granada, aviendo venido de su tierra a África y de África a Granada con mucho deseo y curiosidad de deprender la lengua arábiga antigua, que según era estudioso sospechava ser menester para aprovechar en la Iglesia de Dios, como se a visto en estos días, el qual falleció y está enterrado en la Iglesia Vieja del Alhambra de Granada debajo del choro, año de mill y quinientos y quarenta y seys”: P. Velarde de Ribera, Historia ecle- siástica del Monte Santo, op. cit., fol. 183r. 8 “Los conquistadores que más perseveraron en España fueron los moros, y éstos no pudieron introducir en los naturales españoles su lenguaje arábigo, aunque lo procuraron mucho”; “como los más eruditos de las naciones, como fue Joseph de Herrera, intérprete y lengua del Sancto Oficio de Granada y otros muchos eclesiásticos y seglares que a avido y ay en este Reyno de Granada, de quien los moriscos gustavan de deprender su algarabía”: ibid., fols. 181v–182r. This same equivalence with New World tongues was alleged by the Bishop of Segorbe, Juan Bautista Pérez, when he proposed establishing a chair of Arabic at Valencia: see F. de Borja de Medina, “La Compañía de Jesús y la minoría morisca,” op. cit. the arabic language and orientalism in spain 339 century Spain testify to this deficiency.9 The most compelling is certainly that of the abovementioned Nicolas Clénard, who became interested in Arabic after having studied Hebrew, and who traveled to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco in a journey that he recounted in detail in a remarkable collection of letters. In one of them he relates how his first Arabic teacher was the famous Hernán Núñez, known as “the Greek Comendador.” This gentleman, according to Clénard, had begun to learn Arabic, “that barbarous language,” in his youth, together with Hebrew, but had abandoned both to dedicate himself exclusively to Greek. Nonetheless he was able to teach Clénard the rudiments of Arabic with the help of two books: the Muqaddima of Ibn Ājurrūm, also known as al-Ājurrūmiyya, and a work by Pedro de Alcalá, probably the Arte para brevemente saber la lengua arábiga.10 Further, Clénard adds, Hernán Núñez owned another Arabic grammar by a certain Abū al-Qāsim, more complete than Ibn Ājurrūm’s.11 However, it contained commentaries in Latin only at the beginning of the text; later on they were written in Spanish, a language that he understood no better than Arabic.

Learning Arabic: The New Materials

It is not surprising to find the work of Ibn Ājurrūm mentioned as the one with which Clénard first began to learn Arabic; al-Ājurrūmiyya, written in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century by the Moroccan grammarian, is a very brief and concise treatise on grammar. Because it could be memorized so easily it enjoyed an especially wide circulation in the Arab world, and was ideal for learning the rudiments of the Classical language. It was known and studied in Europe from the sixteenth century onward.12 We have seen that Hernán Núñez, the “Greek Comendador,”

9 An interesting case is that of the Jesuit Jerónimo Mur (1525–1602), probably a native of Gandía, who knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and especially Arabic; he taught Arabic to a few students in Gandía for use in evangelizing the Moriscos. Mur possessed Arabic versions of the Gospels of Matthew and John, and had apparently drawn up a grammar of the language. But its quality may be judged by the fact that when he was put forward for the Chair of Arabic at the Roman College, he was unable to occupy it because of his imperfect knowledge of the literary language; he began to study Classical Arabic with Father Giovanni Battista Eliano. See F. de Borja de Medina, “La Compañía de Jesús y la minoría morisca,” op. cit., 35 n. 106. 10 A. Roersch, La correspondance de Nicolas Clénard, 3 vols. (Brussels, 1941), vol. III, 184 ff. 11 Clénard’s editor identifies it as that of Maḥmūd b. ῾Umar al-Zamakhsharī: ibid., 189. 12 G. Tropeau, “Ibn Ādjurrūm,” EI2, s.v.; id., “Trois traductions latines de la ‘Muqaddima’ d’Ibn Āǧurrūm,” Études d’orientalisme dédiées à la mémoire de Lévi-Provençal, I (Paris, 1967), 359–365. 340 chapter fifteen had a copy with which he had studied Arabic as a young man; we know that al-Ājurrūmiyya was still being consulted later on, for instance by the Hebraist Cantalapiedra, also in Salamanca.13 There are further testimonies to its use in Spain in the late sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth: several manuscripts from the Biblioteca Nacional, bound together as miscellanies, provide examples of what might have been work notebooks belonging to Arabists in the early seventeenth century. One of these,14 which undoubtedly passed through the hands of someone connected to the Sacromonte affair, contains (among other texts, including several translations of Lead Books) fragments of al-Ājurrūmiyya in Arabic and Latin; passages from the Epistles of St. Paul in Arabic, with an interlinear translation in Arabic and Latin; the Greek Orthodox profession of faith in Arabic; and a Spanish translation of another Arabic grammar, the Kāfiya of Ibn al-Ḥājib, which circulated widely in the Muslim world. A second Biblioteca Nacional manuscript15 includes printed copies of al-Ājurrūmiyya and Ibn al-Ḥājib’s Kāfiya with an interlinear translation in Latin and Spanish. And finally, a third manuscript with Sacromonte connections preserves (inter alia) copies of both grammars, a Spanish translation of al-Ājurrūmiyya, and a series of grammatical exercises or tests of language and calligraphy, such as a curious transliteration of the beginning of the Kāfiya into Solomonic characters. To these texts we should add others already mentioned that are connected, more or less directly, to the Lead Books or to persons who took part in translating them: one is the extensive Arabic grammar in Latin that we have identified as Marcos Dobelio’s, now in the Hospital Real library in Granada, which also contains a few fragments in Solomonic letters with the notation “istum alphabetum est repertum in laminis montis sancti in Granata.”16 Finally, there were the “Vocabulario arábigo” and the translation of at least one “Thesauro arávigo en lengua castellana” made in El Escorial by Diego de Urrea, who described the latter as an exceptional work. Obviously the Lead Books affair brought with it at least some production of materials for the study of Arabic, notable among them the gram-

13 L. López-Baralt (with R. Iversen), “A zaga de tu huella”. La enseñanza de las lenguas semíticas en Salamanca en tiempos de san Juan de la Cruz (Madrid, 2006), passim. 14 Del Señor Conde de Miranda, BNE ms. 8434. According to the catalogue it might have belonged to Miguel de Luna, although there is little evidence for the fact: on fol. 160v there is mention of a “Juan de Luna.” 15 Alfabeto arábigo y otros papeles árabes del Conde de Miranda, BNE ms. 7887. 16 BHR, caja C-097. the arabic language and orientalism in spain 341 mars of Ibn Ājurrūm and Ibn al-Ḥājib (both printed in Rome in 1592 by the Tipografia Medicea Orientale).17 To these two basic texts we should add a third book, the Kitāb al-Taṣrīf of al-Zanjānī, printed at the same press in Rome at a later date; it is a manual for conjugating Arabic verbs.18 There are two observations to be made about these materials. First, that around the end of the sixteenth century a basic corpus of texts for the study of Arabic was taking shape in Europe; its existence can be detected from the first half of the century onward, but it was enhanced by editions published in places like Rome and Giovanni Battista Raimondi’s Tipogra- fia Medicea Orientale. Second, that this corpus provided tools for initiating Arabic study, but fell short for those who wished to read advanced texts. When Diego de Urrea’s students at Alcalá complained that he was teaching them only basic Arabic and would never proceed to higher levels, perhaps they were alluding to the rudimentary character of textbooks like al-Ājurrūmiyya; Nicolas Clénard had felt the same when he began to study Arabic with Hernán Núñez. All Spanish students of Arabic in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were faced with these same deficiencies. Vázquez Siruela and Tomás de León, who lived in Granada and had connections with the Sac- romonte Abbey, could at least have access to the books kept there; but on finding them inadequate they had to procure others, especially ones published outside of Spain. When the Abbey sent emissaries to Rome to accompany the Lead Books, they were charged with procuring Arabic works from a list drawn up by Spanish scholars—perhaps by Vázquez Siruela himself, who, as we have observed, followed closely all the negotiations that involved the Books in Rome.19 The list contains, apart from some Biblical texts in Arabic and al-Ājurrūmiyya, several grammatical and lexicographic works like the

17 Ibn al-Ḥājib, Grammatica arabica dicta Kaphia autore filio Alhagiabi (Rome: Tipogra- fia Medicea Orientale, 1592); Ibn Ājurrūm, Grammatica arabica in compendium redacta, quae vocatur Giarrumia, auctore Mahmeto filio Dauidis Alsanhagij (Rome: Tipografia Medi- cea Orientale, 1592). 18 ῾Abd al-Wahhāb b. Ibrāhīm al-Zanjānī, Liber Tasriphi compositio est senis Alemami (Rome: Typographia Medicaea linguarum externarum, 1610). 19 The list is as follows: “Evangelia Arabica 1 vol./ Psalterio Arabico 1 vol./ Thesaurus Arabicus Antonij Gigeé 4 vols./ Thesaurus Arabicus by Fr. Novara 1 vol./ Fabrica Arabica 1 vol./ Ajurrumill [sic] 1 vol./ Gramatica de Marteloto 1 vol./ Gramatica de Guadañolo 1 vol./ Apologia de Guadañolo 1 vol./ Lexicum Arabicum de Rafalengio 1 vol./ Gramatica de Herpenio 1 vol./ Testamentum novum Arabicum de Herpenio 1 vol.”: letter of April 23, 1664, Rome, Papeles del Sacro Monte, BNE ms. 6437, fol. 111v. See F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Fragmentos,” op. cit., 265. 342 chapter fifteen dictionaries of Antonio Giggeo,20 Domenico Germano,21 and Tommaso Obicini da Novara22 and the grammar of Francesco Martelloti.23 Some of the works cited are especially significant. The Lexicon Arabicum of Frans van Ravelingen (Franciscus Raphelengius), the great Flemish Orientalist, publisher, and son-in-law of Plantin, was the first Arabic-Latin dictionary to be published in Europe; it was printed posthumously in 1613, at the same time as Thomas Erpenius’s Grammatica Arabica.24 Filippo Guadag- noli, author of the Breues Arabicae linguae institutiones, has already been mentioned as one of the experts in Arabic who ruled on the falsity of the Lead Books in Rome. In fact, the “Apologia de Guadagnolo” that the Sacromonte’s emissaries hoped to purchase in Rome was the anti-Ismaili work by Guadagnoli whose title was Apologia pro christiana religione. The fact that there was also interest in copies of the Psalms and the New Testament in Arabic shows that the search for Arabic-language learning materials went hand in hand with other wider concerns about religion and historiography. Or to put it another way, the circulation of books in Arabic was creating a specifically Orientalist area of knowledge that Span- ish scholars shared, at least in part, with their European colleagues. It is possible to trace, to a certain extent, how these materials circulated among and were employed by Tomás de León and his group of friends. We know, for example, that León considered Erpenius’s book to be “the clearest grammar that I can imagine,”25 and that Nicolás Antonio asked Vázquez Siruela in 1653 if it could possibly be sent to him in Granada26— proof that it had become a basic reference for the study of Arabic. Else-

20 Thesaurus linguae Arabicae (Milan: ex Ambrosiani Collegij Typographia, 1632). 21 Fabrica overo dittionario della lingua volgare arabica, et italiana (Rome: Stampa della Sac. Congreg. Propag. Fide, 1636). 22 Thesaurus Arabico-Syro-Latinus (Rome: typis Sac. Congregationis de Propag. Fide, 1636). 23 Institutiones linguae Arabicae (Rome: Stephanus Paulinus, 1620). 24 F. Raphelengius, Lexicon Arabicum (Leiden: ex Officina Auctoris, 1613). Curiously, the basis for this dictionary was a Mozarabic Arabic-Latin glossary copied in Toledo in 1175 and acquired by Guillaume Postel in 1532: see A. Hamilton, Arab Culture and Ottoman Magnificence in Antwerp’s Golden Age (New York, 2001), 73. Also T. Erpenius, Grammatica Arabica (Leiden: in Officina Raphelengiana, 1613). 25 Letter from Tomás de León to Antonio de Araoz, November 7, 1658, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fols. 1v–2r. 26 Letter from Nicolás Antonio to Martín Vázquez Siruela, Granada, October 28, 1653: “And if there should be found there, or in any library, the Arabic-Latin Grammar by Thomas Erpenius, I would also be very grateful for it, if you, Sir, could send it to me by post, or take it to my house so that they may send it to me from there” (“Y si huviese en ese lugar o en alguna libreria la Grammatica de Thomas Erpenio Arabico-Latina, tanbien la estimaria mucho: i que Vuestra Merced me la remitiese por correo: o en mi casa la the arabic language and orientalism in spain 343 where Tomás de León speaks explicitly of the manuals, grammars, and vocabularies that he normally consulted: “I have Erpenius’s Method copied in my own hand, with my own additions and deletions as I needed them; and the great work of Guadagnoli, also the Taṣrīf, the Ājurrūmiyya, and other Arabic books.”27 With regard to the correct spelling of an Arabic word, he wrote: خ خ -the lat ;��ل�� ل what should be ك� ��ل�ك�ل And thus it is an obvious error to write as ter appears in all the vocabularies, as in Erpenius, on folio 129 of the Sacro- monte vocabulary, and I have it copied in the Qāmūs that I also own, [. . .] a will never ك� ��ل�ك�ل ;famous Arabic vocabulary that begins with the final letters be found.28 Here he is clearly referring to two important Arabic dictionaries. Although ordering a dictionary according to the last letter of the root is a common Arabic practice (because of its usefulness in constructing rhymes), it is likely that the reference here is to Tāj al-lugha wa-ṣihat al-῾arabiyya by al-Jawharī, the famous eleventh-century lexicographer whose dictionary introduced this type of arrangement. A manuscript copy of it, dated July 29, 1603, is found in the Sacromonte Abbey.29 Al-Ṣiha, as it is commonly known, was the most-consulted dictionary in the Arab world before the advent of al-Fīrūzābādī’s al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ, the second one cited by Tomás de León. Al-Fīrūzābādī, who died in 1425, was a grammarian and lexicographer whose Qāmūs was extraordinarily popular and came to be much consulted in Europe. We may recall that Diego de Urrea wrote to Cardinal Borromeo in Milan offering to make a translation of it. We know that Giggeo drew on the Qāmūs in composing his own dictionary, which appeared in Milan in 1632 and was one of the books sought by the Sacromonte’s envoys to

entregue para que desde ella me la enbiasen”): Papeles varios de Martín Vázquez Siruela, Biblioteca Real de Palacio ms. II/158, fol. 110v. 27 “El Arte de Erpenio le tengo de mi letra y añadido y quitado como lo avía yo menester tengo el grande de Guadanolo, el Tasriph, la Giarumía y otros Árabes”: letter from Tomás de León de Antonio de Araoz, January 14, 1659, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 20v. 28 “Y assí es yerro evidente poner [. . .] lo que a de ser [. . .] y assí hallándose este último en todos los vocabularios, como en Erpenio, fol. 129 en el Vocabulario del Sacro Monte, y yo tengo copiado en el Chamús, que también tengo, [. . .] insigne vocabulario Árabe que comienza por las letras finales, nunca se hallará [. . .]”: letter from Tomás de León to Anto- nio de Araoz, December 10, 1658, ibid., fol. 17r. 29 C. Álvarez de Morales and E. Molina, “La colección de manuscritos árabes de la Abadía del Sacromonte,” in F. J. Martínez Medina, Jesucristo y el emperador cristiano (Cor- dova, 2000), 649–668, esp. 665. 344 chapter fifteen

Rome. Later, Golius also drew heavily on Jawharī’s al-Ṣiha—in consultation with other works, when necessary—for his own dictionary,30 published in Leiden in 1653.31 We are witnessing here the creation of an Arabic lexicographic tradition in Europe, drawing on some of the most important Arabic dictionaries, which began to have currency in the learned European and Spanish worlds in the late sixteenth century. This tradition became the basis for Tomás de León’s own Arabic-Spanish-Latin dictionary, preserved in manuscript at the Escuela de Estudios Árabes in Granada. But in fact, this intense collecting of Arabic grammatical and lexicographic materials responded to only some of the concerns of the Orientalist scholarship of the time; other types of works, including historical and Biblical texts, were being introduced into Spain almost as soon as they were published elsewhere in Europe.

Orientalist Books in Spain

Arabic books that circulated in Spain were not limited to texts meant for learning the language: in 1659, Tomás de León wrote that he had seen all the Arabic books published in Europe up to 1640.32 Although the claim may not have been strictly true, it does indicate a desire to bring together the largest possible amount of material produced by contemporary Euro- pean Orientalism. We can trace in Father León’s correspondence, sometimes with great precision, the results of this circulation of books inside his circle of learned friends; its members sometimes learned of them through personal contacts, then discussed them and incorporated them into their historiographic works. In 1658, for example, Tomás de León thanked the Marquis of Mondéjar for having given him the names of Hottinger, Schickhard, and Joseph Voi- sin, together with information about a work of John Selden’s previously

30 On this topic see H. Fleish, “Al-Fīrūzābādī,” EI2, s. v. 31 J. Golius, Lexicon arabico-latinum (Leiden, 1653). “Si dubia vel obscura essent Gjeu- haris verba, ad Firuzabadium recurri, Zjmachsjarim, aliosve, qui Arabice scripssent”: “Prae- fatio,” fol. 3v. Golius places his choice of al-Jawharī as a base text in explicit contrast to Giggeo’s choice of al-Fīrūzābādī. 32 “De los libros Árabes [. . .] e visto quantos se an impresso hasta el año de 1640 en Europa”: letter from Tomás de León to Antonio de Araoz, July 22, 1659, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 13r. the arabic language and orientalism in spain 345 unknown to him.33 All these authors were prominent in European Orien- talist and scholarly circles. Joseph Voisin was author, among other works, of a Theologia Iudaeorum published in Paris in 1647, and also the editor of Ramón Martí’s Pugio fidei.34 Wilhelm Schickhard, a renowned Ger- man Orientalist and mathematician, taught languages and mathematics at Tübingen, and among his works was a history of Persia.35 John Selden (1584–1654), a prominent English jurist and politician, had introduced parliamentary initiatives to limit royal power, and Tomás de León was aware of his political activities; perhaps León’s Irish origins made him follow British affairs more closely than most. It is interesting that Tomás de León suspected that Selden’s De iure naturali & gentium, iuxta disciplinam Ebraeorum might include some defense of his political views; as we saw earlier, León had sought the Eastern and Hebraic origins of certain Span- ish customs, such as the matrimonial arras, and had relied on Selden’s book for some of his arguments.36 We shall see later what use Tomás de León made of the Englishman’s work. Another notable book was the Swiss scholar Johann Heinrich Hottinger’s Historia Orientalis, first published in 1651; it proved to be one of the most widely read and circulated Orientalist texts in Europe in the seventeenth century.37 It is not surprising that Father León still did not seem to have heard of it, since Mondéjar wrote that like other works recently

33 “In the authors that Your Lordship mentions I find important and complete information; among them Hottingero, Schinkardo, and Joseph Voisin are new to me. I shall obtain the works of Seldeno; I fear that in Iure naturali he will try to defend the error, widespread in England, of predominance over the ruler, whose declared and parliamentary enemy he was” (“En los auctores que V.Sa. enumera veo sus grandes y acavadas noticias, entre ellos no conosco al Hottingero, Schinkardo ni Joseph Voisin. Procuraré las obras del Seldeno, y temo que en lo de Iure naturali a de querer defender el error popular de Inglaterra del Predominio sobre el Príncipe, cuio enemigo declarado y parlamentario fue”): letter of Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, March 25, 1658, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 26v. 34 J. Voisin, Theologia Iudaeorum sive opus, in quo rem ipsam, quae nunc Christiana reli- gio nuncupatur, etiam apud antiquos fuisse [. . .] (Paris: apud Mathurinum Henault [. . .] et Ioannem Henault [. . .], 1647); and R. Martí, Raymundi Martini Ordinis Praedicatorum Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Judaeos, cum observationibus Josephi de Voisin [. . .] (Paris: apud Mathurinum Henault [. . .] et Ioannem Henault [. . .], 1647). The latter work (repr. Leipzig, 1687) has a modern edition (Farnborough, 1967). 35 Tarich, h.e., series regum Persiae [. . .] (Tübingen: typis Theodorici Werlini, 1628). 36 Ioannis Seldeni De iure naturali & gentium, iuxta disciplinam Ebraeorum, libri Septem (London: excudebat Richardus Bishopius, 1640). 37 J. Heinrich Hottinger, Historia Orientalis quae ex variis orientalium monumentis col- lecta, agit De Muhammedismo [. . .] (Zurich: Typis Joh. Hacobi Bodmeri, 1651). A second edition appeared in 1660. 346 chapter fifteen printed in Germany, this one had not yet reached Spain.38 Both Tomás de León and Mondéjar drew heavily on Hottinger’s Historia for their own scholarly work. Nonetheless the Historia had been criticized by Abraham Ecchellensis, who in his Eutychius patriarcha Alexandrinus vindicatus (1661–1662)39 pointed out its errors and others made by John Selden—a criticism that must be seen in the wider context of the ideological struggle between Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Hottinger’s history was placed on the Index of forbidden books in 1662.40 It appears that Tomás de León had been shown Abraham Ecchellensis’s work by its author himself before its publication, another indication of the close contacts he maintained with scholars outside of Spain, and perhaps also of how much his opinion was valued.41

38 “Your Reverence tells me that you do not know Hottingero; I am not surprised, since his works have not arrived here, like most of those recently printed in Germany; I have only his Oriental History, in which he collects wonderful information about the customs and rites of the Saracens; [. . .] in it he cites many of his other books, which I have not been able to procure in spite of my efforts. The second person that you ask about is Guillermo Schinkardo, that most acclaimed Hebraist; I know that he translated and annotated the Persian Taarich, and that is the sum of my knowledge”) (“Díceme Vuestra Reverencia que no conoce a Hottingero; no lo estraño que sus obras no han llegado por acá como las más que nueba mente se imprimen en Alemania; sólo tengo su Historia Oriental en que junta exquisitísimas noticias de las costumbres y ritos de los Sarracenos; [. . .] en ésta çita otras muchas suias que no he podido conseguir aunque lo he procurado. El segundo por que Vuestra Reverencia pregunta es Guillermo Schinkardo, celebradísimo de los Ebraiçantes; sé que traduxo y escolió El Taarich Pérsico y aquí se acaban mis noticias”): letter from the Marquis of Mondéjar to Tomás de León, April 15, 1659, ibid., fols. 241v–242r. 39 A. Ecchellensis, Eutychius patriarcha Alexandrinus vindicatus, et suis restitutus ori- entalibus; siue Responsio ad Ioannis Seldeni origines. in duas tributa partes; quarum prima est De Alexandrinae Ecclesiae originibus. Altera De origine nominis Papae; quibus accedit censura in Historiam orientalem Iohannis Henrici Hottingeri Tigurini a pag. 283. ad 495. Omnia ex orientalium excerpta monumentos, 2 vols. (Rome: typis S. Congreg. de Prop. Fide, 1660–1661). In the previous chapter we mentioned Selden’s partial translation of the work of the Patriarch Sa῾īd b. al-Biṭrīq, and how it was criticized by Ecchellensis. 40 J. Martínez de Bujanda (with M. Richter), Index librorum prohibitorum (Montreal, 2002), 448. 41 “Abrahamo Ecchelense de origine nominis Papa et de originibus Ecclesia Alexandri- nae against Seldeno and Hottingero [. . .] shows, among other things, very basic errors by the latter” (“. . . contra Seldeno y Hottingero [. . .] muestra, entre otros vulgaríssimos yerros deste último”): letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, June 3, 1664, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 25v. “[Samuel Bochart] is without question very learned, and he is one of those whom Ecchelense mentions to Hottingero on correcting his Historia Oriental; I consulted this work before he ventured to publish it, especially its translations of Arabic, where his errors are egregious” (“Es muy docto sin duda y es uno de los que le dize Ecchelense a Hottingero en la correctión de su Historia Oriental, que consulté antes de atreverse a imprimir, especialmente las traductiones del árabe, donde son crassísimos sus errores”): ibid., fols. 23r–24r. the arabic language and orientalism in spain 347

Elsewhere in his correspondence León told what he had heard about Brian Walton’s Polyglot Bible even before its publication, and how he expected to obtain it within a few months: He wrote to me this May to say that the work and the lexicons and grammars would soon be finished, and he promised that I would have them by September. This will be the first of these Bibles to enter our country, and even in Rome there was only one, the property of Abbot Hilarion; I saw it only briefly at the time of [. . .] and outside of Rome. And although its owner and Father Kirchero, Ecchellense, and others praised it to me, their praise falls short of its great usefulness.42 In any event he could compare it to the Paris Polyglot Bible, the work of Le Jay.43 A month later he wrote of the Heptaglot Lexicon, whose publication he was awaiting: I have notice of the Heptaglot Lexicon that is coming out in two volumes and must have been printed this last June; if it is as they say, it is an admirable work. In the Hebrew, it contains everything you can imagine from both Jewish and Christian scholars; in the Chaldean, everything that Aquinas, Cohen de Lara, and Buxtorfio [Buxtorf] have added to Aruc; in the Syriac, aside from what is in the common lexica, the entire text of Bar Bahlul; in the Arabic, all that scholars have written up to Golius, with their many additions from the Camus [Qāmūs] and Giauhari [al-Jawharī]. In the Samaritan, it -غ نhas Morinus’s Lexicon with other additions. In the Ethiopic, those of Wey �ل�� ت� ��ع��م� ت� mers,ّٰ Lobo [and] Lodulfo; in the Persian, the complete vocabulary and in addition a new one drawn up by Golius based on 300 Persian ,ا �ل��ل�ه authors. Edmundo Castello says that it is ordered according to Schindlero’s method.44

42 “Este mayo me escrive que estaría acavada la obra y los léxicos y gramáticas, y pro- metido que me las traerán para este setiembre. Ésta es la primera que a entrado en el reyno destas Biblias, y aun en Roma avía una sola que tenía el abad Hilarión; vila bien de passo en tiempo de [. . .] y extramuros de Roma, y aunque assí el dueño como el P. Kirchero, Ecchellense y otros me la alabaron, es muy inferior la alavanza a su utilidad.” 43 “Today I am much encouraged by the great Bible printed in England in 9 Eastern languages; it contains everything that the Parisian or Jayan one does” (“Oi me hallo alenta[do] no poco con la Biblia magna impressa en Inglaterra en 9 lenguas orientales; contiene todo lo que la Parisiense o Jayana . . .”): letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, June 3, 1664, ibid., fol. 25. 44 “Tengo la directión del Léxico Heptaglotta que sale en dos tomos y se acabaría de imprimir este Junio passado: si es conforme le pintan es obra admirable. Tiene en el Hebreo quanto puede pensarse de los críticos assí Hebreos como christianos; en el chaldeo quanto al Aruc a añadido Aquinas, Cohen de Lara y Buxtorfio; en el Syriaco fuera de los léxicos comunes ponen todo el texto de Bar Bahlul; en el Árabe quanto tienen todos hasta el Golio que an escrito con muchas addiciones del Camus y Giauhari. En el Samaritano el Léxico de Morino con otras addiciones. En el Ethiópico el de Weymers y Lobo Lodulfo; en el Persiano todo el vocabulario [. . .], y fuera déste otro nuebo compuesto por el Golio 348 chapter fifteen

We may imagine that León’s own friends from Rome, Kircher and Ecchel- lensis, might have told him of the imminent appearance of this work by Edmund Castell, which came out in London in 1669, having been composed as a complement to Walton’s Polyglot Bible.45 It was Kircher who sent León the Mishle shu’alim by Rabbi Berechiah, published in Prague by his disciple Melchior Hanel; León was planning to send it in turn to the Marquis of Mondéjar.46 The circulation of these works in Spain—some of them in large or multiple volumes, and written in strange alphabets—was not free of difficulties. Tomás de León wrote in some detail about the vicissitudes of the London Heptaglot Bible before it made its way into his hands. It appeared that a comisario of the Inquisition in Málaga (disregarding earlier services that the Jesuit had done him at his request) had seized the work as soon as he saw it, together with Selden’s De iure naturale,47 and had sent the volumes directly to the Suprema or Council, “as if withheld and marked,” instead of to the local tribunal. This unprecedented act made León sus- pect the influence of the hidden adversaries that he refers to occasionally in his letters. He was forced to ask the Marquis of Mondéjar, as the only person who could vouch for the Samaritan Pentateuch, to intervene with the Inquisition ; it turned out that the Inquisitor General had felt astonished on viewing the books, because he was not acquainted with either Guy Michel Le Jay’s Parisian Polyglot Bible nor with Jean Morin, who had prepared the Samaritan Pentateuch.

y sacado de 300 authores Persianos. En el orden dize Edmundo Castello que sigue el méthodo de Schindlero”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, July 8, 1664, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 23r. 45 E. Castell, Lexicon Heptaglotton, hebraicum, chaldaicum, syriacum, samaritanum, aethiopicum, arabicum (conjunctim) et persicum (separatim) [. . .] (London: Thomas Roy- croft, LL., orientalium typographus regius, 1669). 46 B. ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, Parabolae vulpium Rabbi Barachiae Nikdani. Transla- tae ex Hebraica in linguam Latinam opera R. P. Melchioris Hanel Societatis Jesu (Prague: Typographia Universitatis, in Collegio Societ. Jesu ad S. Clementem, 1661). “I will send Your Lordship the Rabbi Barachias as soon as I can find a secure messenger. It is true that Bux- torfio the Younger cites him in his collection; before this it was printed in Turkey, and so Genebrardo calls it a rare book; now it has been printed in Prague by a student of Father Kircher, who gave it to me” (“Embiaré a Vuestra Señoría el R Barachias luego que halle por- tador seguro. Es verdad que Buxtorfio el Hijo le cita en su florelegio; porque antes de aora estava impresso en Turquía y assí le cita Genebrardo por libro raro; aora se imprimió en Praga por un discípulo del Padre Kircher, el qual me le dio”): letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, July 8, 1664, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 23v. 47 Ibid., fol. 24r. the arabic language and orientalism in spain 349

Furthermore, the comisario from Málaga had shown the Arabic section to “a Moor,” who had been “scandalized to see the Bible written in the language of the Moors.” Tomás de León could not appeal to his friend Don Francisco de Lara, Inquisitor of the Suprema, because when on a former occasion he had shown him the Synagoga Iudaica of Johann Bux- torf the Elder,48 Lara had retained the book, saying, “this one belongs to the Inquisitor.” León had seen that the Bible was sold openly in Rome, a fact confirmed by his friend Father Campo, calificador or examiner of the Suprema, who had been with him at the time.49 More than four years later León still had no access to his copies of the Heptaglot Bible, “because they say in Madrid that the examiners do not understand the contents; and if they had only sent it to the examiners here, with only the Index of Forbidden Books in my hand I could have explained it to them.” In short, these rare books no longer reached Madrid, because “there are very few people anywhere who look at them and appreciate them, much less who understand them.”50 In this anecdote about a Bible that languished for years in the hands of Inquisitors who were ignorant of the languages in which it was written, we can sense to what a closed circle or alienated group these Orientalist historians and philologists belonged; as Tomás de León frequently suggests, their surroundings were at least hostile to them, and at worst con- spired against them. But those surroundings did not merely cast a shadow: their reality was sharper than that. Hebrew and Arabic texts had an inherent threatening power that could draw the attention of the Inquisition. In other circumstances they could give rise to scholarly debate about whether the texts stretched the limits of orthodoxy; even, as in the case of Selden, about whether European Orientalists were using the texts in ways that orthodoxy would allow.

48 On this work—an important, widely read, and influential ethnography of the Jewish people—see S. G. Burnett, “Distorted Mirrors: Antonius Margaritha, Johann Buxtorf and Christian Ethnographies of the Jews,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 25–2 (1994), 275–287; and id., From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies. Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden, 1996), esp. 54 ff. 49 Letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, July 21, 1664, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 31. 50 “Porque en Madrid dicen es materia que no la entienden los calificadores: y si la ubiesen remitido a los calificadores de aquí con sólo el expurgatorio en la mano les diera yo la materia a entender [. . .]; ya en todas partes ai muy pocos que los vean o estimen, y menos entiendan”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, December 11, 1668, ibid., fol. 30v. 350 chapter fifteen

In any event, these and many other works in Eastern languages entered Spain and were studied in depth by our circle of Spanish scholars; occasionally one of them, like Buxtorf’s Synagoga, added to the knowledge of an Inquisitor, just as León’s expertise on Islam had helped Father Tirso González in his evangelizing missions. The texts we have cited form only a limited set of all the Orientalist bibliography that circulated among intellectuals in Spain; they are the portion that we are able to explore through citations in historical or philological studies. Other important works that we might add include the Specimen Histo- riae Arabum and Historia compendiosa dinastiarum of the great English Orientalist Edward Pococke,51 chaplain in Aleppo from 1630 to 1636 and professor of Arabic and Hebrew at Oxford; both books were based on the edition, translation, and commentary of the work of the thirteenth-century bishop Gregory Abū al-Faraj, also known as Bar Hebraeus.52 There was also the Geographia of al-Idrīsī, called “the Geography of the Nubian” because its true author was unknown, edited and translated into Latin by Gabriel Sionite and John Hesronite in Paris in 1619, and often cited in works on Andalusi geography or history. Finally, a work already mentioned as a source for Tirso González de Santalla, the Historia Sarracenica by al-Makīn or “Elmacino”; references to it can be traced in historians like José Pellicer, among whose papers are some forty folios of “Notes taken from the Historia Sarracenica composed by Gregorio Elmacino son of Abulyaser [. . .]. Thomas Erpenius translated this work from Arabic into Latin, from a manuscript in the Heidelberg library.”53 These examples, extensive as they are, do not exhaust the list of works in Oriental languages that travelled along the threads that wove together Mondéjar, León, Vázquez Siruela, and their colleagues. The impression they leave is one of solid linguistic, historical, ethnographic, and theo-

51 On Pococke see, for example, P. M. Holt, “The Background to Arabic Studies in Seventeenth-Century England” (20–29), and V. Salmon, “Arabists and Linguists in Seven- teenth-Century England” (55–69), in G. A. Russell (ed.), The “Arabick” Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England (Leiden-New York-Cologne, 1994). 52 Specimen Historiae arabum, sive Gregorii Abul Farajii Malatiensis, de Origine & Mori- bus arabum [. . .] (Oxoniae: excudebat H. Hall, impensis Humph. Robinson, in coemeterio Paulino, ad insigne trium Columbarum, 1650); and Historia compendiosa Dynastiarum, authore Gregorio Abul-Pharajio, Malatiensi Medico, historiam complectens universalem, à mundo condito, usque ad tempora authoris, res orientalium accuratissime describens [. . .] (Oxoniae: excudebat H. Hall celeberrimae Typographum [. . .] impensis Ric. Davis, 1663). 53 “Apuntamientos sacados de la Historia Sarracenica compuesta por Gregorio Elma- cino Hijo de Abuljaser [. . .]. Tradujo esta historia de la lengua Arábiga en la latina Tomás Erpenio, de un M.S. de la Biblioteca de Heidelberg”: BNE ms. 11146, fols. 83 ff. the arabic language and orientalism in spain 351 logical knowledge. Here we can see justification for one of our chief arguments: that from the late sixteenth century onward, in intellectual circles, a purely learned use of the Arabic language was developing. We have come a long way from the milieu in which Morisco priests and translators were defending Arabic language and culture against the hostile, violent, and traumatic world of the Alpujarras War and the obsession with purity of blood; the expulsion of 1609 had, in a sense, canceled out the problematic position of Arabic in Spanish society. We now perceive a linear process in which the use of Arabic, once closely associated with ethnicity and identity, came to be applied to more abstract problems of a historiographic nature. It is precisely the historiographic dimension of the question that allows us a better sense of how the scholarly world saw the Iberian Peninsula’s Arab and Islamic past. In order to understand the intellectual outlook of Mondéjar, León, and their colleagues, and the nature of the problems at which they aimed their arsenal of Orientalist readings, we must adopt a wider perspective that reveals to what extent al-Andalus was not only a doctrinal, but also a historiographic issue. The Sacromonte events were significant not just for the religious problems they posed, nor for their attempt at syncretism, nor even for their status as supposed proof that in Antiquity the Church in Granada had known the presence of St. James and his disciples. All of these matters also exhibited a historiographic dimension. In the next chapter we will seek to show how, from at least the middle of the sixteenth century, these questions took shape in certain important authors and works. Rather than providing an exhaustive list, we plan to indicate a few milestones in the tentative and cautious process by which the society approached a crucial question: Was al-Andalus part of Spanish history, or not? Could it be integrated in a meaningful way into an ecclesiastical history of Spain? And these queries led on to others of no less moment: in writing the nation’s history, should Arabic sources be relied on? If so, what were those sources, and how far should they be trusted? These were matters of the greatest concern to a learned world that was beginning to develop critical tools for interpreting the written and material vestiges of the past.

chapter sixteen

al-andalus in the history of spain

Al-Andalus: Part of the History of Spain?

The theme of Islam and the Arabic language in Spain had of course been ever-present in the era’s historical narratives, particularly in that of the Reconquest or, as it was then called, the loss and recovery of Spain. At the end of the sixteenth century, therefore, we find a broad and well-founded corpus of historical writing that brought together all that was known about the medieval wars that ended with the defeat of the Muslims. This extensive and multifaceted body of material was of a complexity that could encompass the major works of both Esteban de Garibay and Juan de Mariana. In general terms, this material may be seen as a providentialist reading of Spain’s past, forged in the struggle against Islam. Nonetheless we need to adopt a finer-grained perspective, one that will highlight the many nuances that arose from the problem of integrating the history of al-Andalus into the history of Spain.1 Was al-Andalus Spain, or was it not? Could one trace a continuous thread, in spite of the supposed break that al-Andalus represented in Spain’s medieval history? Could linguistic, communal, or archeological remains of Arab culture be incorporated into a “Hispanic” identity? All of these questions underlie historical narratives, and emerge in dramatically problematic form at certain moments when the tension between rejection and acceptance of the Muslim past rises to the surface. It is not surprising to find this contradiction expressed in texts about the ancient glories and monuments of Spanish cities, especially cities that had an evident Islamic history. Ambrosio de Morales, in speaking of Cordova (although he placed certain non-Cordovan figures in the city), wrote: In those days of the Moors, Cordova boasted famous men of science and of letters: the renowned Averroes [Ibn Rushd], and also Abenzoar [Ibn Zuhr], Rasis [al-Rāzī], Abenragel [Ibn Abī al-Rijāl], and many others, whose works,

1 See, for example, F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Al-Andalus y la lengua árabe en la España de los siglos de oro,” in M. Marín (ed.), Al-Andalus/España. Historiografías en contraste, siglos XVII–XXI (Madrid, 2009), 1–20. 354 chapter sixteen

which we still preserve, are prized by learned men. It had kings and captains so valiant and successful in war that our histories do not cease to lament the harm that they did us. And although these were Moors they were born in Cordova, and their having been infidels does not detract from their greatness and exalted natural gifts.2 In some texts this contradiction was expressed in an even more striking manner. Pedro de Medina, in speaking of the greatness of Cordova, does not scruple to name among its famous sons, alongside Lucan, Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā], even though the latter was a native of Bukhara and his mother tongue was Persian. Thus Medina appropriated a writer who still enjoyed great prestige in the field of medicine, but in the same paragraph he seems to give much of the credit for Avicenna’s work to Latin-speaking Christians: From this city [Cordova] were that excellent poet Lucan, and the great physician Avicenna, whose book, called after his own name Avicenna, is such an outstanding work of medicine. The blessed St. Ildefonsus, Archbishop of Toledo, says about it that the glorious St. Isidore had written a very excellent medical book, which remained in his chamber after the saint passed from this world. And before that book came to be known by anyone, a wicked bishop arrived from Africa to serve as Archbishop of Seville: Theodosius, a Greek infected with the Arian heresy. He took many volumes that St. Isidore had left in his study, among them that work of medicine; and because he needed to understand some Arabic terms, he sent for an educated Moor who could explain them, and that was the great doctor called Avicenna. In payment for his service Theodosius gave him the book written by St. Isidore so that the Moor could name it after himself, as if he had composed it; and many people claim that this is the same book that doctors now hold to be their greatest text, the Avicenna. And they say that the book was then translated from Latin into Romance—so that the said Moor, who knew no Latin, could understand it—and that the Moor rewrote it in his own Arabic language, after which it passed once more into the Latin in which we now have it; and because of that series of translations, through a misunderstanding of its terms many errors were made which remain in the work until today. And physicians have spoken many times about correcting those mistakes in the Avicenna, because they cause great harm, especially when a doctor is new

2 “Tuvo también Córdova en aquellos tiempos de los Moros insignes hombres en ingenio y letras, el famoso Averrois, y con el Abenzoar, Rasis, Abenragel y otros muchos, cuyas obras, que tenemos, son muy estimadas entre los doctos. Tuvo Reyes, capitanes vale- rosos en la guerra, y de tan grandes hazañas en ella, que nunca nuestras historias acaban de lamentar los daños que nos hizieron. Y aunque estos eran Moros, nacían en Córdova, y el ser infieles no les quita su grandeza y alto ser en el bien natural”: A. de Morales, Las antigüedades de las ciudades de España que van nombradas en la Corónica (Alcalá de Henares, 1575), fol. 113r. al-andalus in the history of spain 355

and inexperienced. It would be very good to do that, to avoid the injuries that result, or may result, to the bodily health of many people.3 This story could still trouble scholars like Vázquez Siruela several decades later.4 It reveals in a single paragraph how both the rejection and the appropriation of Islamic and Arabic material might come into play, sometimes simultaneously and in irreconcilable contradiction.

Diego Pérez de Mesa

Pedro de Medina’s book, published in 1595,5 was reworked by Diego Pérez de Mesa, a native of Ronda; an astronomer and professor of mathematics at the universities of Alcalá de Henares and Salamanca, he appears to have known Arabic well. The variety of his intellectual interests makes

3 “Desta fueron aquel excelente poeta Lucano, y Avicena, gran médico, de cuyo nombre se intitula el libro tan señalado en medicina, llamado Avicena. Deste libro dice el biena venturado San Ildefonso, Arzobispo de Toledo, que el glorioso San Isidro hizo un muy excelente libro de medicina; el qual quedó en su cámara cuando de este siglo pasó, y antes que este libro viniese a poder de ninguna persona que lo conociese, vino de las partes de África a suceder en la Silla Arzobispal de Sevilla un obispo malo, inficionado de la heregía arriana, que se decía Teodosio, Griego de Nación; el cual tomó muchos libros de los que San Isidro había dejado en estudio y entre ellos halló aquel libro de medicina; y porque él tenía necesidad de entender algunos nombres Arábigos, envió por un moro letrado que se lo declarase; que era gran médico y se decía Avicena; y en pago de su trabajo, dióle aquel libro que San Isidro había hecho para que el moro se lo intitulase a sí mismo, como si él lo hubiese compuesto. Afirman muchos que este es el mismo libro que los médicos tienen agora principal, que se nombra Avicena; y dicen que como aquel libro fué entonces trasladado de latín en vulgar (porque el dicho moro que no sabía latín lo pudiese entender) y él lo compuso en su lengua arábiga, y después fué otra vez tornado a trasladar en latín, como agora está, dicen que en aquellas traslaciones, por no ser bien entendidos los vocablos hubo muchos yerros, los quales hoy día se hallan en el dicho libro; y muchas veces se ha platicado entre los doctores médicos de corregir los dichos errores de Avicena, porque dicen que son muy dañosos, especialmente en los médicos nuevos no esperimentados. Sería bien que se hiciese por evitar los daños que se siguen o pueden seguir a la salud corporal de muchas personas”: P. de Medina, Libro de las grandezas y cosas notables de España, in Obras de pedro de Medina, ed. A. González Palencia (Madrid, 1944), 84. 4 A manuscript note by Vázquez Siruela reads: “Avicena was a native of Seville, in the opinion of some. See what Don Lorenzo Ramírez de Prado relates in his commentaries on Liutprand in Chronicle no. 163, where he also discusses the question of the works of St. Isidore claiming that Avicenna translated them into Arabic and published them as his own” (“Avicena natural de Sevilla, conforme a la opinión de algunos. V. lo que refiere don Lorenzo Ramírez de Prado en los comentarios a Luitprando en el Crónico no. 163, donde tanbién disputa la questión de las obras de S. Isidoro que dice traduxo Avicena en Árabe y publicó por suyas”): Papeles varios. Del señor Conde de Miranda, BNM ms. 6156, fol. 138v. 5 Primera y segunda parte de la grandeza y cosas notables de España (Alcalá de Henares, 1595). 356 chapter sixteen him difficult to categorize. Several of his astronomic and algebraic works exist only in manuscript, but in his Comentarios de sphera, published in 1596, he made a nuanced critique of the Copernican model;6 as a political theorist he wrote a Política o razón de estado sacada de Aristóteles.7 We know that he spent an extended period in Italy, where he joined the household of Cardinal Gaspar de Borja (Borgia).8 Mesa’s activity as an Arabist in Rome has left traces in the Vatican Library: it contains the copy that he made of Masīḥ b. al-Ḥakam’s famous popular medical work, al-Risāla al-Hārūniyya, which he dedicated to Cardinal Francesco Bar- berini, nephew of Urban VIII.9 Diego Pérez de Mesa’s interest in Islamic history is revealed in his method for calculating equivalencies between the Muslim and Christian calendars.10 Pérez de Mesa also wrote a Tratado de Astrología judiciaria, a long oneiric allegory in which he imagines himself on a long journey, meeting a variety of characters along the way. At one point he arrives at a beautiful valley, a place of pleasure and ease, where many men of diverse garb and origin were walking: some, it appeared, dressed in the style of India, others in the style of Persia, Chaldea, and Babylonia; others seemed to be Greeks, still others Romans, and the majority Arabs. There were some Germans and Spaniards, and many were Egyptians. I soon realized that they were astrologers, for I saw them measuring the altitudes of heavenly regions and stars with astrolabes and other instruments; others performed actions by which it was clear that they were astrologers. Among the most prominent figures I spied one clad in royal robes, with a king’s crown on his head and sitting on a throne, drawing up some tables; and it was clear that he

6 J. M. López Piñero, Ciencia y técnica en la sociedad española de los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1979), 184 and 188. 7 D. Pérez de Mesa, Política o razón de estado. Convivencia y educación democráticas, ed. L. Pereña and C. Baciero, with V. Abril, A. García, and F. Maseda (Madrid, 1980). 8 J. García López, “Introducción,” in D. Saavedra Fajardo, República literaria (Barce- lona, 2006), 12–13. 9 BAV Barb. or. 83. Other manuscripts in the same library are attributed to Diego Pérez de Mesa in Levi della Vida’s catalogue (where he is called “convertito”), but these attributions are less secure. The texts in question are a copy of al-Ḥulal al-mawshiyya, made by a Diego Masana (?) al-Andalusi in July 1594 (Vat. ara. 176); al-Risāla al-Hārūniyya signed by the same Diego Masana (?) al-Andalusi, with a Latin note: “Opus Didaci Mas- sani Medici Andalutij qui vivevat de anno 1580” (Vat. ara. 309, fol. 122v); and an unsigned copy of the Ājurrūmiyya, with calligraphy similar to that of the previous manuscript. In the absence of further information we assume that someone named Diego Masana, an “Andalusi”(whatever that might mean) physician, and different from Diego Pérez de Mesa, was active in Rome in the late sixteenth century. See G. Levi della Vida, Elenco dei manoscritti islamici della Biblioteca Vaticana. Vaticani, Berberiniani, Borgiani, Rossiniani (Vatican City, 1935), 309, 355. 10 F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Fragmentos de orientalismo,” op. cit., 251. al-andalus in the history of spain 357

was the famed and illustrious King Alphonse of Spain, who knew so much astrology that he exceeded its best practitioners in all the world. There I met Ptolemy, Abén Ragel [Ibn Abī Rijāl], Abén Rodán [῾Alī ibn Riḍwān], Alcindo [al-Kindī], Japhar [Ja῾far], Jeber [Jābir b. Ḥayyān], Mesahalac [Mashallah], Porono, and many more of the most distinguished men in this field, among them the wise Albumasar [Abū Ma῾shar].11 The Arab and Muslim astronomers whom Pérez de Mesa names were indeed among those well known in Europe and cited as authorities in specialized works. It may be no coincidence that Pérez de Mesa, who knew Arabic, acknowledged the importance of Arab astronomy. We recall that in 1608, when Archbishop Pedro de Castro was seeking translators of Arabic in Italy, Pérez de Mesa, then living in Rome, was considered. Scholars of astrology and astronomy, like medical men, were in broad agreement about the value of a scientific tradition that originated in the Arab-Islamic world and had produced works and authors whose authority was respected. In those fields, citation of those authors and works had been well documented for centuries. The case was very different, however, for historical sources in Arabic, knowledge and use of which was highly restricted in sixteenth-century Spain. In major works of Spanish history, which included long passages about the multisecular struggle with al-Andalus, the need to identify and evaluate Arabic sources about the period was scarcely recognized. None- theless we can draw on a few examples to explain how, from the second half of the century onward, some historians began to be aware of the need to consult writing by Arabs.

11 “[U]n hermoso valle de grandísimo deleyte y recreaçión, en el qual andavan munchos hombres de diversos trajes y naçiones al paresçer unos vestidos al uso de la India, otros al de Persia, otros al de Caldea y Babilonia, otros paresçían griegos, otros Romanos, y los más eran Árabes, algunos avía Alemanes y otros Españoles, y munchos eran egipçios; los quales luego conosçí ser astrólogos, porque unos paresçían tomar alturas de regiones y de estrellas con astrolabios y otros instrumentos, y otros hazían obras por las quales se consçían claramente ser astrólogos. Entre los más prinçipales vi uno de vestiduras reales con corona real en la cabeça y sentado en una real silla componiendo unas tablas, el qual bien claramente se dexava conosçer ser aquel ilustre y tan famoso rey don Alonso de España, el qual supo tanto de Astrología que excedió a los mayores de el mundo. Allí conoçí a Ptolomeo y a Abén Ragel, a Abén Rodan, Alchindo, Japhar, Jeber, Mesahalac, Porono y otros munchos de los que más an floresçido en esta facultad, y entre ellos aquel sabio Albumasar . . .”: D. Pérez de Mesa, Tratado de Astrología judiciaria, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, CSIC, Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, ms. RM 3876. 358 chapter sixteen

Arabic Sources for Writing the History of Spain: Luis del Mármol

Throughout this book we have dealt with explicit instances of the use of Arabic sources in works on Spanish history. Diego de Urrea, who easily revealed the falsity of Miguel de Luna’s Historia verdadera (which, ironi- cally, based its own legitimacy on a supposed ancient Arabic chronicle), had written a history of Spain after the Arab conquest that drew on works owned by the Grand Turk and the king of Morocco. Histories like this one, or the very success of Miguel de Luna’s, prove that the possibility of writing a history of al-Andalus or Spain based on Arabic sources was beginning to be felt more insistently by the second half of the sixteenth century. Another significant case was that of Luis del Mármol, who in his Descrip- ción General de África stated that his work as a historian was based on his experience of captivity and travel in North Africa, with which, accompanied by continual meditation upon select works of history in Latin, Greek, Arabic, and vernacular languages, written in these kingdoms and elsewhere—which, with great effort, we were able to read, following our inclination for this field of study—and taking from them what seemed to us most relevant to this end, joining all this to our experience and much practice in the Arabic and Berber languages (which differ greatly from each other), we composed this history and general description of Africa.12 Luis del Mármol’s biography was strongly shaped by his relations with Islam. A soldier in Africa, a captive in Morocco, a member of Don John of Austria’s army in the Alpujarras War and author of one of the chief chronicles of its events, he is another of the innumerable individuals who in the Early Modern age lived on the frontier as adventurers, renegades, diplomats, merchants, or spies in the service of one ruler or another, sometimes on both sides at once. Mármol’s experience in Africa and knowledge of Morisco affairs earned him a certain reputation as an expert which he employed in other projects, such as the unsuccessful attempt to translate

12 “Acompañado de la continua meditación de hystorias escogidas latinas, griegas, ára- bes y vulgares destos reynos y de fuera dellos, que con mucho trabajo pudimos saber, siendo inclinado a este exercicio, y tomando dellas lo que nos paresció más al propósito para este effecto, juntándolo con la esperiencia y mucha prática que de la lengua árabe y affricana (que mucho diffieren) tenemos, hezimos esta hystoria y general descripción de Áffrica”: L. del Mármol, “Prólogo al lector,” Descripción General de África, I (Granada: René Rabut, 1573). al-andalus in the history of spain 359 the Turkish standard captured at Lepanto, and his candidacy to be ambassador to Morocco in 1579, which failed because of his inferior social rank. While Mármol shared this type of background with many of his contemporaries, his uniqueness resided in his historical writing; he himself recognized the fact when, in a report to Philip II in 1575, he requested, among other favors, to be named an official chronicler: Luys del Mármol says that he composed a book titled Descripción general de África about all of the wars waged between Moors and Christians, and among the Moors themselves, up to the present day. He devoted much time and effort to it, and because it is such a useful history it has been very well received both in these kingdoms and abroad; he dedicated it to Your Maj- esty, and Your Majesty ordered it placed in his library at San Lorenzo el Real [El Escorial].13 This allusion to the success of his work and to its inclusion in the royal library occurs more than once in Mármol’s writings, and shows his proud awareness of having produced an entirely original work within Spanish historiography: a text, in short, that provided full information about them and their populations; for it is very necessary to have such knowledge in order to negotiate peace, if it is to be had, or if there must be war, in order to wage it with the advantage that comes from knowing and recognizing the enemy’s territory. Interested writers have had little or no communication with those barbarous nations, whose diverse customs, religion, and languages are so different from our own, and it is clear that this knowledge could have been obtained in no other way.14 Thus Mármol makes explicit the relationship between historical and geographical writing and public utility, constructed in large part upon knowledge of the Arabic language. Placement of his book in the royal library had ensured its preeminent position in the social hierarchy of knowledge.

13 “Luys del Mármol dize que él compuso un libro yntitulado Descripción general de África con todas las guerras acaecidas entre moros y cristianos y entre ellos mesmos hasta estos tiempos, en el qual gastó mucho tiempo y passó mucho trabajo, y por ser historia tan provechosa ha sido muy bien recebida en estos Reynos y fuera dellos, la qual dirigió a Vuestra Majestad y Vuestra Majestad la mandó poner en su librería de S. Lorenço el Real”: ibid., I, 37. 14 “[N]oticia dellas ni de sus poblaciones, como quiera que es cosa muy necessaria tenerlas conoscidas para la contratación de la paz, si la uviere, y para que la guerra, quando sea menester, se haga con la ventaja que suele dar el tener sabida y reconoscida la tierra del enemigo. Bien se dexa entender que no avrá dado lugar a ellos la diversidad de costumbres, religión y lenguas, en que tanto diffieren de nosotros aquellas naciones bárbaras con quien los escriptores curiosos an tenido y tienen muy poca o ninguna comunicación”: ibid., I, “Prólogo al lector.” 360 chapter sixteen

Although Mármol claimed to have drawn on Arabic sources in writing his Descripción, it is very unlikely that he knew the language well enough to understand works written in it.15 It is more plausible that in his years of captivity in Morocco he learned the colloquial dialect, but not the Classical Arabic that would allow him to read books in that language. His quotations from Arab historians come at second hand, often taken from Leo Africanus, whom he follows closely. When he refers vaguely to certain “African writers,” he is really copying Leo Africanus without naming him. It is significant that Mármol, in tracking Leo Africanus so closely, was acknowledging the enormous importance that the latter’s work attained in the European culture of his time: Leo’s was a detailed geographic work on North Africa written by an “African” and available in Italian, as well as in later translations into other languages.16 On the other hand Mármol’s pretense of having used Arabic sources, although it must be viewed with skepticism, shows consciousness of the need for a purely historiographic application of the language. That consciousness would rid itself, very gradually, of all the practical uses and doctrinal implications of Arabic in sixteenth-century Spain; at the same time a new profile was emerging, that of a specialist in Arabic and Islam. In the person of Luis del Mármol himself, all of these trends converged: he was a soldier in Africa, a captive, well acquainted with the Moriscos, a translator, almost an ambassador, and, finally, the author of a work which, in spite of its imperfect citations of sources, was highly original. From this point onward the history of al-Andalus was inscribed within the far wider perspective of the history of Islam.

Diego de Guadix

Another work that took a different and broader perspective on the integration of Arab culture into Spanish history was Diego de Guadix’s Reco-

15 F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Luis de Mármol et la appréhension espagnole de l’Afrique,” in F. Pouillon (ed.), Léon l’Africain (Paris, 2009), 231–259. 16 On the influence of Leo Africanus’s Descrizione on European culture see O. Zhiri, L’Afrique au miroir de l’Europe. Fortunes de Jean Léon l’Africain à la Renaissance (Geneva, 1991). N. Z. Davis insists on the double nature of Leo Africanus’s life and work in North Africa and Rome in her biography Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds (New York, 2006). The linguistic issue is relevant for understanding the European diffusion of Leo Africanus’s work: his original, written in a highly flawed Italian, underwent extensive correction by its first editor, Giovanni Battista Ramusio. The original remains in manuscript to this day. al-andalus in the history of spain 361 pilación de algunos nombres arábigos que los árabes pusieron a algunas ciudades y a otras muchas cosas (Collection of some Arabic names that the Arabs gave to some cities and many other things). This important contribution to Spanish lexicography remained unpublished until very recently, when two separate editions appeared.17 Nonetheless it was fairly well known in its time, thanks to frequent citations of it by Sebastián de Covarrubias in his own dictionary; the latter consulted both Guadix and Diego de Urrea about possible Arabisms. Guadix, who lived at exactly the time of the Lead Books affair, became an interpreter for the Inquisition tribunal in Granada in 1587. In the 1590s he traveled to Rome, where he collaborated with the Tipografia Medicea Orientale.18 We have observed that Raimondi was once on the point of traveling to Spain to help to translate the Lead Books. The idea for this Arabic press had arisen years before, in 1577–1578, when the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, Ignazio Ni῾matallah, was in Rome investigating a possible union with the Catholic Church. A special commission was created to oversee the matter, one of whose members was Raimondi who, in the course of his dealings with the Patriarch, conceived the plan for the Tipografia. Raimondi carried out, in addition to printings, an ambitious plan to copy Eastern manuscripts, often with the help of colleagues like Giovan Battista Britti da Cosenza and Giovan Battista Vecchietti, who traveled to the East in search of such texts.19 Raimondi’s real goal was to compose a great Polyglot Bible, to which end he created a

17 D. de Guadix, Recopilación de algunos nombres arábigos que los árabes pusieron a algunas ciudades y a otras muchas cosas; ed., introd., notes, and indices by E. Bajo Pérez and F. Maíllo Salgado (Gijón, 2005); and Diccionario de arabismos. Recopilación de algunos nombres arábigos, ed. and study by M. Á. Moreno Moreno (Jaén, 2007). 18 For what follows see esp. A. Tinto, La Tipografia Medicea Orientale (Lucca, 1987), passim. 19 Raimondi’s intellectual adventure formed a crucial episode not only in the history of printing Oriental books, but in the formation of the great European collections of Eastern manuscripts. Giovan Battista Vecchietti undertook several journeys to the East with his brother in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, uniting diplomatic missions with the copying of manuscripts; his ties to the Tipografia are well documented. See U. Tucci, “Una relazione di Giovan Battista Vecchietti sulla Persia e su Regno di Hormuz (1587),” Oriente Moderno, 35 (1955), 149–160; F. Richard, “Les manuscrits persans rappor- tés par les frères Vecchietti et conservés aujourd’hui à la Bibliothèque Nationale,” Studia Iranica, 9 (1980), 291–300; and R. Almagià, “Giovan Battista e Gerolamo Vecchietti viaggiatori in Oriente,” in Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Rendiconti. Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, Serie VIII, 11 (1956), 313–350. There is a list of some of the Ori- ental manuscripts owned by Raimondi in G. E. Saltini, “Della Stamperia orientale Medicea e di Giovan Battista Raimondi,” Giornale Storico degli Archivi Toscani (Oct.–Dec. 1860), 257–308, esp. 297 ff. We are grateful to Giuseppe Mandalà for the latter reference. 362 chapter sixteen team that included, among others, Paolo Orsini, “a Turk who has become a Christian”; Guglielmo Africano, “a Tunisian neophyte”; and Diego de Guadix. Raimondi’s dream of a Bible did not reach fruition for a number of reasons: he had little commercial sense, and met opposition from other persons and institutions in Rome, among them the Jesuits, who eventually set up their own Oriental press in the city. Nonetheless the Tipografia was able to publish several Arabic works, including the Ājurrūmiyya, the Kāfiya, and the Gospels; all were printed in elegant type faces forged by the great Robert Granjon, and composed by Giacomo Luna, that is, the Christian Maronite Ya῾qūb al-Hilāl. Such was the atmosphere in which Diego de Guadix composed his Recopilación in Rome. The work proposes hundreds of Arabic etymologies for Spanish words and toponyms, but the majority of them are mistaken, deduced from fortuitous phonetic resemblances. Careful analysis of the work could probably assess its value as a historiographic, if not as a linguistic, document. But it is worthwhile to recall the intellectual substrate that underlay Guadix’s project: in the first of ten notes to the reader with which the book opens, the author assumes that the Arabic language is the oldest of all the languages in the world, because it is the same as Hebrew—although corrupted—and Hebrew was the tongue that Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc., spoke. Therefore, if we were to find some word or verb that was common both to Arabs and to Spaniards or Italians or other peoples, we could not say that Arabic took it from Spanish or Italian or any other tongue, but rather that Spanish or Italian or any other borrowed and took it from Arabic, that being the oldest language.20 It was obvious to Guadix that Latin had borrowed many words from Ara- bic, because the latter was the older, and therefore any Arabic words that had come into Romance had done so not in the Muslim period, but long before. This was an attempt to de-Islamize Arabic, almost a mother tongue to Guadix, who had been raised among Moriscos; a very similar attempt underlay the Sacromonte forgeries, and had enormous implications. The notion that Arabic was a corrupt form of Hebrew, mankind’s original lan-

20 “[L]a lengua arábiga gana en antigüedad a las demás lenguas del mundo, porque es la lengua hebrea, aunque corrupta, y la lengua hebrea es la que ha[blaron] Adán, Noé, Abraham, etc., y assí, si halláremos algún vocablo o verbo que fuere común a los árabes y españoles o italianos o a otra cualquier gente, no podemos dezir que la lengua arábiga lo tomó de la lengua española o italiana o de alguna de las demás lenguas, sino que la lengua española y italiana o otra cualquiera lo mendigó y tomó de la lengua arábiga, como de lengua más antigua”: D. de Guadix, Recopilación, op. cit., 149–150. al-andalus in the history of spain 363 guage, was well established in Early Modern Europe;21 it placed Arabic among the languages that needed to be brought to bear on Biblical exe- gesis. A related development was the greatly increased contact between Rome and the Eastern churches, and the increasing efforts to reestablish the unity of Catholicism. In Guadix, both of these currents came together naturally. They had the virtue of focusing the issue of Oriental languages on a goal that was more distant—perhaps less clear, but also more important: the history of Spain’s origins, and the influence exerted on them by an Oriental element that went back to Antiquity and constituted a link to the history of the Church. Here again, it was probably not coincidental that Guadix had ties to the Sacromonte. In fact one of the entries in his Recopilación is “Abenatar,” i.e., St. Ctesiphon, a significant reference if we bear in mind that the work’s publication date falls very close to the unearthing of the Lead Books.22 In another passage Guadix speaks of how the Moriscos considered Jesus “a very great prophet” and accepted the virginity of Mary, “saying that the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady, conceived Christ our Redeemer when the Holy Spirit breathed in her face, so that she was a virgin before giving birth; and they say it on account of these words in Arabic: maulina mariem bacaadra acalb al-nafiç gua falnafiç guabaa dalnafiç.”23 Of course these and other indications do not prove that Guadix took part in the Sacromonte forgeries, but they do show that he shared with the Moriscos who did certain cultural horizons and common interests. It is easy to find examples of his enthusiasm for etymology, which in the case of Arabic was particularly focused on the toponymy of Granada. There did exist a consciousness of

21 Consider, for instance, the opinion of Guillaume Postel, in M. L. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, Prophet of the Restitution of All Things. His Life and Thought (The Hague-Boston- London, 1981), 9. 22 Guadix’s editors Bajo and Maíllo proposed 1593 as the Recopilación’s date of composition; but as Carmen Barceló has pointed out, they failed to notice that the “Abenatar” entry betrays knowledge of the Lead Books, which began to appear only in 1595. Thus their date cannot be accepted unless one supposes that Guadix played a direct role in the falsifications. It should be moved forward on the basis of other factors as well, as Barceló notes in her review of the edition: Aljamía, 19 (2007), 418–429. (On 430–432 Barceló reviews the other edition of Guadix’s book.) 23 “Diziendo que la sacratíssima Uirgen, nuestra señora concibió a Christo, nuestro redemptor, soplándole el Espíritu Sancto en el rostro, y que assí fue virgen antes del parto; y dízenlo por estas palabras arábigas: maulina mariem bacaadra acalb al-nafiç gua falnafiç guabaa dalnafiç”: D. de Guadix, Recopilación, op. cit., 170. (The Arabic sentence, though it contains some recognizable words, is gibberish.) 364 chapter sixteen false etymologies,24 and Guadix himself realized the need to develop a rigorous method of etymological analysis for toponyms, stating that for anyone who should wish to arrive at the true meaning of the names of some of these towns, the method should be either to see them written in an Arabic document, or to find some ancient document, decree, or contract of sale or rental, and see what letters or syllables of these names it comes closest to; thus he will recognize it and give it its proper meaning.25 Guadix obviously did not follow his own rule, for he preferred to propose etymologies that were based on similarities of sound, often very approxi- mate ones. Clearly his project and interests were of a different nature: what is surprising about his work is its massive character, the enormous number of words and toponyms that, according to him, descended from Arabic; the notion, in short, of a very ancient Arabic language, disconnected from Islam, earlier than Latin, the true origin of Spanish. To arrive at such an explanation, he had to subsume recent history into a wider perspective: that of the remotest past, in which the Islamic was dissolved into an even earlier influence, the Oriental. This was a project identical to the one that supported most of the Sacromonte falsifications, and that ultimately comprehended the whole ecclesiastical history of Spain. The explanatory potential of this model—that of a very ancient Oriental influence on Spanish history—was certainly great. It made it possible to advance explanations of an incontrovertible fact: the presence of relics of al-Andalus in Spain’s landscape, history, and language.

24 See, for example, the absurd popular etymologies for the towns of Caravaca and Moratalla. The wife of the Moorish ruler of Caravaca had gone to watch a running of the bulls there without her husband’s permission; he had told her “Mórateallá” [“stay there”], to which she had answered “Caravaca” [“how dear (cara) the cow (vaca) has cost me”]. Jerónimo Román de la Higuera objected, “As if in those days the Moors had spoken Span- ish, or were pleased to provide etymologies for the names of their towns in our language, valuing it more than their own or guessing that it would be spoken there [in the future]” (“Como si entonçes los moros usaran la lengua castellana o se preciaran de dar las eti- mologías de los nombres de sus pueblos en nuestra lengua, o estimándola en más que la suia o adivinando que se avía allí de hablar”): J. Román de la Higuera, Historia eclesiástica de la imperial ciudad de Toledo, op. cit., vol. II, BNE, ms. 8193, fol. 73v. 25 “Quien quisiere sacar en blanco la verdadera significación del nombre de algunos d’estos pueblos, el camino sería o verlo scripto [en] scriptura arábiga, o buscar alguna scriptura antigua, i., prebilegio o carta de venta o de arrendamiento y ver con qué letras o sílabas d’estos nombres más simboliça o frisa, y assí saberle y darle su significado”: D. de Guadix, Recopilación, op. cit., 301. al-andalus in the history of spain 365

The Relics of al-Andalus

When Pablo de Céspedes wrote his famous treatise on Hebrew elements in the construction of the Great Mosque of Cordova, and his studies on Cordovan toponymy that sought to prove the Hebrew origin of names like “Cordova” and “Arrizafa,” he revealed a trait that was present in Span- ish culture in the second half of the sixteenth century: a turn away from interest in Classical Antiquity and toward the Oriental and Biblical. In archaeology, it expressed itself as a preference for studying Christian over Roman remains, implying an attempt to link the Hispanic world with the ancient Hebrew one.26 It may not be coincidental that Céspedes was an acquaintance of Miguel de Luna, in whom he found confirmation of some of his etymological interpretations. On the supposed Hebrew origin of the toponym “Arrizafa,” Céspedes confessed that for a long time he was persuaded that it was Arabic from the Caliphal period: I allowed myself to believe this for a long time, but then I spoke of it to the Licenciate Miguel de Luna, who was so distinguished in his profession of philosophy and medicine, as well as for his great knowledge of this language [Arabic], as can be seen from the translations he has made of certain narratives from Arabic into Spanish, and of the holy books found in Granada in 1594 and 1595. He enlightened me, saying that the term did not occur in Arabic, and he accepted the [Hebrew] derivation that I have given above.27 The notion of an ancient Jewish presence in Spain was implicit from the very first in the Lead Books affair, and is found more broadly in much writing about antiquities in Spain in general, and in Andalusia in particular. One obvious example occurs in Fernando de Vergara Cabeças’s polemical defense of public baths, Apología por los baños de la muy noble y leal ciudad de Alhama.28 The text coincides, in part, with one by Miguel de

26 J. Rubio Lapaz, Pablo de Céspedes y su círculo. Humanismo y contrarreforma en la cultura andaluza del Renacimiento al Barroco (Granada, 1993), 32. 27 “Yo me dexé llevar gran tiempo desta opinión i comunicándola con el licenciado Miguel de Luna, hombre insigne, assí en su professión de filosophía y medicina, como por la gran noticia desta leng[u]a como se a visto en las traduciones que a hecho de ciertas istorias de arábigo en español i de los libros santos hallados en Granada el año 1594 i 95, me desengañó con que tal nombre no avía en arávigo i le pareció bien la derivación que de suso está puesta”: in “Tratado de Pablo de Céspedes sobre el topónimo de Córdoba y otros lugares cercanos y sobre hijos ilustres cordobeses,” ibid., 318. 28 F. de Vergara Cabeças, Apología por los baños de la muy noble y leal ciudad de Alhama contra el desengaño que de ellos escrivió Francisco Fregoso (Granada: Blas Martínez, 1636). 366 chapter sixteen

Luna, and also received the approval of Martín Vázquez Siruela.29 It defends the Jewish—as opposed to Arabic—origin of baths, in response to Francisco Fregoso’s “contemptible” suggestion “that these baths survived from the time of the Moors, insinuating that they originated with them.”30 On the contrary, the structure of the Alhama baths “in every way resembles those made by Jews, if they are compared to the others made by them [Jews] that exist all over this kingdom, to which they came in the time of Nebuchadnezzar.”31 As a general rule, seeking this connection between the Hispanic and Hebraic worlds coincided with an attempt to write an ecclesiastical history of Spain that stressed its ancient ties to Biblical times. But in order to place this ecclesiastical history within a universal framework, the presence of al-Andalus had to be included—not as a rupture with the past, but as the scene of a certain continuity. It had to provide an explanation for the undeniable presence of the material relics of Arabic civilization.

Continuities and Ruptures

In order to deal briefly with this matter we shall focus on a single topic that was crucial in the Spain of the time, one that combined efforts to explain the Andalusi past on the one hand with the development of an ecclesiastical history on the other. This was the problem of the corpses and relics of Christian saints; without it, as we have shown, one cannot understand the Sacromonte events, which represented only one among innumerable “finds” of saints’ remains and tales about how relics were either preserved in place or transferred. An essential figure for understanding how Spanish history dealt with this question was Ambrosio de Morales, Philip II’s great chronicler, considered one of the fathers of modern archaeology in Spain. Keenly interested in the history of relics—the king commissioned him to prepare an inventory of those preserved in the Peninsular northwest—he was also concerned with physical artifacts from the past and their inter-

There is a digitized copy in the Universidad Complutense (Madrid) library: http://alfama .sim.ucm.es/dioscorides/consulta_libro.asp?ref=X532904914&idioma=0 (March 17, 2009). 29 F. J. Puerto Sarmiento believes that Vázquez Siruela was the true author of the work: see “El agua en la terapéutica barroca,” Folchia. Página del grupo de investigación y estudios “Folchia,” monograph, December 2001, http://www.ucm.es/info/folchia/Javier.htm (April 26, 2004). 30 F. de Vergara Cabeças, Apología por los baños, op. cit., fol. 16r. 31 “En nada dexa de parecer de judíos, si se coteja con las que dellos ay por todo este reyno, donde vinieron en los tiempos de Nabuc de Nosor”: ibid., fol. 17r. al-andalus in the history of spain 367 pretation. On the occasion of the transfer of some relics of the child Saints Justus and Pastor to Alcalá de Henares, for example, Morales described how they had been discovered in the fifth century by Bishop Asturius, who prepared a chest to contain their little bodies: All this and what will be told later, about the time when they removed the holy bodies from here, serves as proof that this chapel of the saints was always Christian, even in Moorish times, like many other churches that remained in Spain, where the Moors permitted their captives and subjects to join together in all the rites that our religion demands. And because the Moors moved the town from this lower area and placed it high up (where the fortress that we call “Old Alcalá” now stands) [. . .], they would not have paid much attention to the church, which remained far away here below.32 For Morales, Alcalá embodied a characteristic of Muslim settlement, because “the Moors were inclined by nature to settle in high, fortified places; having taken Spain from the Visigoths, its original lords, they had to be especially cautious about fortifying themselves.” Therefore they had left Alcalá’s Christians—mixed with a few Moors—in the original town, Compluto, on lower ground, while they built an elevated fortress, for which they reused many stones of Roman origin: “and since those were scattered about in disorderly fashion, they are a good example of the remains of Roman structures that the Moors from the lower town destroyed in order to build their fortress.”33 The issue of continuity and rupture could even be applied to the etymology of Alcalá: its Roman name, Complutum, arose from the fact that all the water-courses met there, “and the Moors, who changed the name from Complutum to Alcalá, respected this, for

32 “Por todo esto y por lo que se dirá después de quando llevaron los sanctos cuerpos de aquí se prueva bien que esta capilla de los sanctos fue siempre de Christianos, aun en tiempo de Moros, como otras muchas iglesias que quedaron en España, donde los Moros consentían que sus cativos y súbditos se juntassen para todo lo que nuestra religión pide. Y como los Moros mudaron la población desto llano y la subieron a lo alto, donde agora está la fortaleza que llamamos Alcalá vieja [. . .], no curarían mucho de la iglesia, que quedava muy lexos acá baxo”: A. de Morales, La vida, el martyrio, la invención, las grandezas y las traslaciones de los gloriosos niños mártyres San Justo y Pastor, y el solenne triumpho con que fueron recebidas sus santas reliquias en Alcalá de Henares en su postrera traslación (Alcalá de Henares: Blas de Robles, 1568), fols. 11v–12r. 33 “Los Moros eran de suyo amigos naturalmente de poblar en lugares altos y fortaleci- dos, y el averles quitado entonces a España a los Godos sus naturales señores, los avía de hazer más recatados para fortalecerse”; “y en estar muy esparzidas y sin orden ni concierto, muestran bien cómo son los despojos de edificios romanos que los Moros en el pueblo de abaxo arruinaron para edificar su fortaleza”: ibid., fol. 37. 368 chapter sixteen in Arabic Alcalá means, among other things, ‘a confluence of waters, or something similar.’ ”34 The relics of Sts. Justus and Pastor had a complicated history, compris- ing several transfers before they returned to Alcalá in 1567. Morales’s han- dling of the subject, which combined etymology, archaeology, and belief in an unbroken presence of the Spanish Church, summed up very clearly how those approaches were brought to bear in seeking a coherent explanation. It contrasts with that of José Pellicer, for example, who tried to establish a morphological criterion for dating images of saints before and after the fall of Spain: It is not recorded that the Christians preserved any carvings or images of Christ or his saints, but only images of [. . .] and saints’ relics and bodies. Since that time, over 800 of them have appeared. To determine which images go back to before, and which to after, the fall of Spain, we should observe their posture. If they are seated they are from before, because the custom was to depict them in glory, on the assumption that they had no further need to move. If they are standing it is a sign that they were painted to attract the faithful to them, making it clear that they had to be on their feet in order to intercede.35 A complicated set of problems therefore surrounds the Sacromonte falsifications. The integration of Islam into the history of Spain was always contradictory; while Christians clung to their devotion to the martyrs of Cordova, the Morisco Miguel de Luna could affirm—about an ancient shrine to St. Anthony where both Christians and Muslims had experienced miraculous cures—that “the Moorish king, from that time forward, allowed the Christians to live in greater freedom and to enlarge their church and their shrines.”36 This and other examples of the Christiano- philia of some Muslim rulers, which formed part of Luna’s ideological

34 “Y los Moros, que mudaron el nombre de Complutum en Alcalá, a esto mismo tuvieron respecto, pues en arávigo Alcalá, entre otras significaciones, ‘ayuntamiento de agua o cosa semejante quiere dezir’ ”: ibid., fol. 34r. 35 “No se lee que los Cristianos salvasen haciendas ni imágenes de Cristo ni de sus santos alguno, sino las imágenes de [. . .] i reliquias i cuerpos de santos. Ay aparecidos desde entonces acá más de 800. Para conocerse quáles imágines son de antes de la pérdida de España o después se mirará del modo de la postura dellas. Si están sentadas son de antes de la pérdida porque assí las retrataban gloriosas, juzgando no tenían más que andar. Si están en pie es señal que las pintavan para que los acudiessen, dando a entender havían de estar en pie como intercesoras”: J. Pellicer, Obras varias, vol. IV, BNE ms. 2239, “Varias observaciones de España,” fols. 37–38. 36 “Tratado de la defensión y verdad de las Santas Reliquias halladas en la Torre Anti- gua de la Iglesia Catedral de Granada,” AHN, Universidades, lib. 1179, fol. 19r. al-andalus in the history of spain 369 arsenal, took advantage of contradictions about the absorption of al- Andalus into the larger history of Spain. Any history that sought to affirm the ancient character of the Spanish Church and its links to the origins of Christianity came up against this paradox: it had to account for the problem of continuity versus rupture. Writers resolved the matter in a variety of ways. There are innumerable accounts of the transfer of relics from the Muslim South of Spain to the Christian North, but there are nearly as many references to the persistence of Christian worship in al-Andalus. It was essential to affirm that continuity in order to consolidate the mythology of the Mozarabic Christians, but it also implied that, contrary to expectation, Muslims had shown a certain degree of tolerance. The Marquis of Mondéjar, quoting Jerónimo Zurita, explained how there could have been an episcopal see in Saragossa even while it was ruled by Muslims: Zurita says that in all the Spanish cities captured by Moors the original prelates were retained in their previous positions, conserving the diocesan boundaries according to Wamba’s division, and continuing the observances and rites of our holy faith. He adds, however, that although a few were removed from their sees through the tyranny and cruelty of the barbarians, the Catholic religion was always kept among them in all its purity and with the proper rituals, at the cost of the Christians’ paying very heavy tributes in exchange for permission to profess it.37

Problems of Interpretation

A manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional contains texts that perfectly represent this contradiction, which needed to be addressed by developing critical tools for interpreting relics from the past. These two brief treatises refer to a set of ruins left uncovered in Cordova after the River Guadalqui- vir flooded on January 24, 1626. Each of the respective authors, Pedro Díaz

37 “De manera que dice Zurita se conservaron en todas las ciudades que ganaron en España los Moros sus mismos prelados en la conformidad que los tenían antes, mante- niendo los límites de sus diócesis según la división de Wamba y continuando en la observancia y ritos de nuestra sagrada religión. Sin embargo añade que aunque se retiraron algunos desterrados de sus sedes por la tiranía y rigor de los Bárbaros, se conservó siempre la religión Cathólica entre ellos con toda pureza y en su devida observancia a costa de gravíssimos tributos con que conseguían los Christianos la permisión de profesarla”: Mar- qués de Mondéjar, “Consequencia de Gerónimo de Zurita en señalar siempre la antigua Cathedralidad de Zaragoza en la iglesia de San Salvador,” in [Contestación a los reparos hechos a las Disertaciones eclesiásticas], BNE ms. 5557, fol. 45v. 370 chapter sixteen de Rivas and Fernán Pérez de Torres, argues for a different origin of the ruins. The question was not a trivial one; at stake was whether the structures in question were, or were not, from the monastery of San Cristóbal, a significant site in the Mozarabic history of Cordova and supposed repository of the remains of two martyrs, Saints Servusdei and Gumersindus. Díaz de Rivas did not doubt that the site was of Arab construction: “The floor of the pool is entirely smooth, and finished with that reddish coating that other waterworks made by Moors also exhibit [. . .]. This pool is won- drously large, and is similar to other splendid ones that the Moors built, especially in royal gardens like that of Arizafa.”38 Next to the ruins, tombs had also appeared in which the burials had unique features: They were built of quarried dressed stone, coated with a layer of mortar on the inside. Each tomb contained a single corpse, and its interior preserved in size and shape the form of the human body, such that beginning with a narrow portion for the head, it broadened toward the shoulders and then grew narrow again at the legs. And for greater strength, because the local soil was unstable and sandy, [the tomb] was reinforced on all sides by a wall of large river cobbles bound with lime. The dead all had their faces and feet turned toward the river and the East.39 For Díaz de Rivas these burials were neither Christian, nor Roman, nor “Spanish pagan,” but rather Moorish, for several reasons: “first, the Moors normally buried their dead in the countryside, and buried the entire body, as is the case here. Second, since the pool that we mentioned was built by Moors, as seems clear from its style of construction, they also would have cultivated the fields and buried their dead. Finally, it is worthy of note that all the bodies in them had their faces and feet turned toward

38 “El suelo de la alberca es todo llano, y lustrado por cima con aquel barniz colorado, que tienen las demás obras de agua de los Moros [. . .]. La grandeza de esta Alberca es maravillosa, y es semejante a otras que con ostentación hicieron los Moros, principalmente en huertas reales, como son las de la Arizafa”: P. Díaz de Rivas, Relación de algunos edificios y obras antiguas, que descubrió el Río Guadalquivir cerca de Córdoba, con la gran creciente que tuvo estos días. A Don Francisco Fernández de Córdoba, Abad mayor de Rute, y Racionero de la Sta. Yglesia de Córdoba, BNE ms. 1742, fol. 3r. 39 “Eran fabricados de piedra de cantería labrada, y cubiertos por de dentro con una encostradura de argamasa. Cada sepulchro era sólo de un cuerpo, y el hueco guardava en su proporción y hechura los gruesos del cuerpo humano, de modo, que comenzando angosto por la cabeza, se ensanchava hacia los hombros y después volvía a ensangostarse por las piernas. Y para mayor firmeza del sepulchro, y porque estaba debaxo de tierra movediza y arenisca, estaba fortalecido por todas partes de un entivo echo de piedras gruesas del río atadas con cal. Tenían los muertos todos bueltos el rostro y pies hacia el río y el Oriente”: ibid., fol. 6r. al-andalus in the history of spain 371 the nearby river and the East.”40 In support of his arguments Díaz de Rivas cites, among other works, the Topografía e Historia General de Argel, traditionally attributed to Diego de Haedo; it was considered at the time one of the most important sources on Algiers and North Africa. Pérez de Torres, in contrast, defends the hypothesis that the ruins must have been those of the San Cristóbal monastery, and the remains those of the holy martyrs. For him the monastery would have been founded in the pre-Muslim era, because it is impossible that under the yoke of the Moors the wretched, downtrodden Christians—and those of Cordova were especially so— could have built, under the very noses of the enemies of the Faith and at the entrance and principal gate of the city, a costly edifice with walls; to do so they would have needed many days, and would have aroused suspicion that under pretext of building a convent they were really building a fortress, and were planning a rebellion.41 He did not believe that the pool had been built by Moors, because in his opinion all such pools, whether made by Persians, Medes, Arabs, or Romans, were constructed in the same way. And even if it had been a Moorish product, that would mean nothing; it might have been built after the Christian Reconquest, when it was well known that many Moorish artisans had remained behind in the city, “either as converts, or because their crafts made them useful.” As for the tombs, Díaz de Rivas’s arguments claiming that they were Muslim were not definitive: the bones were in a deteriorated state and it was hard to determine which way they faced. And even if they had faced toward the East, it was not firmly established that the Muslims buried their dead in that way: For I have questioned them on this point, and in particular with one who was knowledgeable I measured out a patch of ground and drew a sun at the

40 “Lo primero: los Moros acostumbraban hacer en el campo sus entierros, y enterra- ban los cuerpos enteros como aquí se hallaron. Lo segundo: siendo la obra de la alberca que diximos de Moros, como parece por su modo de fábrica, también serían por ellos las huertas cultivadas y hechos los entierros. Últimamente, es digno de advertencia en ellos que todos los cuerpos tenían los pies y caras bueltas al río bezino, y al oriente.” 41 “[N]o es posible que en tiempo de la captividad de los Moros se atreviesen los míse- ros, y oprimidos Christianos, y tanto como lo fueron los de Córdova, a labrar en las barbas de los crueles enemigos de la fee, y a la entrada y puerta principal de la ciudad, un edificio costoso de paredes, para el qual eran menester munchos días, dando ocasión de sospechar, que hacían algún fuerte y que con pretexto de convento intentaban algún rebelión”: F. Pérez de Torres, Discurso sobre el Monasterio de San Christóval de la ciudad de Córdova en tiempo de los Moros; cuios vestigios se descubrieron con la creciente de Guadalquivir del año 1626 [. . .] Al Ylustríssimo Señor Dn. Christóval de Lobera Obispo de Córdova, del Consejo de Su Magd., BNE ms. 1742, fol. 24r. 372 chapter sixteen

Eastern end, drawing it to his attention. Then I put a stick in his hand, asking him to pretend that it was a dead body and to place it in the manner and position in which they place their [bodies]; the Moor placed it crosswise so that it fell toward the North, and said, resting his cheek on his right hand, “Like this, Father; like this, Father.”42 Fernán Pérez de Torres was the parish priest of San Nicolás de la Ajarquía, and one of the chief seventeenth-century promoters of establishing the worship of St. Eulogius in Cordova; having commissioned a statue of the saint for his church, he composed the Latin inscription for its pedestal.43 It is not surprising that he should argue energetically that the uncovered ruins were of Mozarab origin. Pedro Díaz de Rivas was a well-known antiquarian and historian of Cor- dova. He is perhaps best remembered today as a friend of, and commenter on, Góngora: he wrote a set of Discursos apologéticos on the latter’s poetry, as well as Anotaciones a la Canción de la toma de Larache.44 Among his historical and scholarly works were De las antigüedades y excelencias de Córdoba and Origines Bethicae, as well as two now apparently lost: Anti- güedades de Arjona and África ilustrada. Letters that he wrote to Martín Vázquez Siruela confirm that for these historical treatises he drew on, among other sources, al-Idrīsī’s Geographia: Dr. Aldrete’s library, according to his will and testament, was left to the Car- thusians. Thus he fulfilled his natural bent to safeguard his books both in life and in death, for he bargained over lending me an exquisite book in such a manner that I felt I could never ask him for it. So through the intercession of a friend I asked him for the Nubian [al-Idrīsī], and from it I made an exact copy of what related to Spain, and a summary of the rest.45

42 “Lo uno, porque io les he consultado acerca de este punto, y en especial a uno bien entendido le señalé un quadro en la tierra y le dibuxé a la parte del oriente un sol, advirtién dole de ello, y luego le puse un trozo de un palo en la mano diciéndole que hiciese cuenta que era cuerpo muerto, y lo pusiese en la forma y postura que ellos los ponen; el Moro lo atravesó de manera que cayó al Septentrión, y dixo inclinando la mejilla sobre la mano derecha. Así Padre, así Padre”: ibid., fols. 24, 77, and 87–88. 43 J. Aranda Doncel, “Culto y devoción a los mártires de Córdoba de siglos [sic] XVI y XVII: la figura de San Eulogio,” in El culto a los santos: devoción, vida, arte y cofra- días (Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2009), 109–132. http://descargas .cervantes virtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/08141630969725362977857/031738_0004.pdf [Janu- ary 29, 2009]. 44 E. Joiner Gates, Documentos gongorinos (Mexico City, 1960); and id., Anotaciones a la Canción de la toma de Larache por Pedro Díaz de Rivas (Madrid, 1963). 45 “La librería del doctor Aldrete quedó por su testamento a los Cartujos cumpliendo en todo con su condicion natural de guardar en vida y en muerte sus libros, pues regateava de modo el prestar un libro exquisito que me obligava a no pedírselo jamás, y así por intercessión de un amigo le pedí al Nubiense i saqué a la letra lo de España y un epítome al-andalus in the history of spain 373

On the basis of that consultation he was able to inform Vázquez Siruela about “the road from Almería to Granada described by the Nubian, together with some annotations that I made to it with the help of a Dominican father who was very interested in the matter and familiar with the journey.”46 Thus Pedro Díaz de Rivas, with his concern for knowledge from East- ern sources, was one more member of the scholarly circle we have been describing: a group that was beginning to question collectively how to employ such sources, whether written or material, in reconstructing the origins of Spain and Andalusia. A book like al-Idrīsī’s Geographia could help them to map ancient Baetica, in the context of a vision of Span- ish history in which the Oriental was a key element of interpretation. For example, Rivas had been composing an África ilustrada, which may have developed in contact with Aldrete’s Varias antigüedades de España y África; at the least, both authors would have shared an overarching vision of the ancient pasts of both Spain and North Africa. At the same time, Rivas’s Origines Bethicae coincided with the scholarly interests of Vázquez Siruela and of a generation of historians who were concerned with the origins and antiquities of their cities, their region, and the whole of Spain. Our circle of Spanish historians can be more readily understood if we place it within a more general and long-lasting movement: a critique of the model of authority that was based on the Classical or Greco-Latin world, and a shift toward a new model, the Oriental and Biblical. Yet not all the scholars of the time accepted this change of direction. We could quote many passages similar to the ones above, but Eastern references were not within the purview of all, and many of their implications were difficult to accept. After all, the application of Hebraic scholarship to the study of the Bible had brought enormous doctrinal consequences: one of the principal factors in the struggle between Reformation and Counter-Reformation had been the elevation of the Holy Scriptures over the authority of the Church. Further, an excessive attention to the Hebrew Bible could be interpreted as a form of Judaizing, hence the persecution of Fray Luis de León and other Hebraists from the University of Salamanca.

de lo demás”: letter from Pedro Díaz de Rivas to Martín Vázquez Siruela, February 21, 1642, Papeles varios de Martín Vázquez Siruela, Biblioteca Real de Palacio ms. II/158, fol. 172r. 46 “El camino que describe el Nubiense desde Almería a Granada, con unos escolios que le hize con ayuda de un padre dominico muy curioso i práctico en este viaje”: letter from Pedro Díaz de Rivas to Martín Vázquez Siruela, November 2, 1641, ibid., fol. 40r ff. 374 chapter sixteen

The Arabic language, too, carried strongly negative connotations. Its close relationship with Islam was patent. In a culture in which the Clas- sical model remained the ideal, the Arab world was frequently viewed as barbaric: “barbarous” and “barbarian” were terms often applied to North African societies and to the language itself. (We recall that the “Greek Comendador,” in abandoning his study of Arabic, had used those very words.) In Spain as in the rest of Europe, anyone who tried to turn the language to scholarly ends was forced to defend it against those who deemed it savage, useless, or dangerous. In the next chapter we shall explore that particular polemic, and shall see examples of how Arabic was utilized for specific historiographic purposes by Spanish scholars in the seventeenth century. chapter seventeen

the arabic language as a tool for scholarship

Constructing a learned space in which the Arabic language could be used implied a critical evaluation of the available materials. In the previous chapter we showed how al-Andalus had acquired a degree of historical visibility such that its written and material traces called for an adequate response if they were to be integrated into the history of Spain. We also saw the kinds of problems that the process uncovered: problems of legitimacy—because of the negative connotations attached to Arabic language and culture—and technical problems having to do with access to and interpretation of sources. In the coming pages we shall analyze how the circle of scholars who were concerned with Oriental studies tried to deal with these issues. We should recall here a fundamental dimension of their activity, already touched on in earlier chapters: their crucial relationship with European Orientalism and their acquaintance with the important body of work that the field had produced. We shall see how their activities and writings were decisively shaped by the influence of that literature, to the point that the Spanish Orient they constructed would be, in good measure, a European Orient, with all that the phrase implies.

In Defense of Oriental Languages

Pedro de Valencia, in a letter to Pablo de Céspedes, questioned whether some authors used the terms “Syrians” and “Aramaeans” interchangeably; in the same text he criticized Greek and Latin culture on the grounds that they focused exclusively on their own languages and ignored others, especially Eastern ones: As a general rule, any information that we read in Latin authors has come from their reading of the Greeks; and the latter held their own language and thought in such high esteem that almost none of them cared to learn any of the Oriental languages, nor did they take advantage of the learning of those whom they scorned and called barbarians. This resulted in great ignorance of many things, particularly of the name and origin of peoples: for they called almost no people by the name that it used for itself in its own 376 chapter seventeen

language, but instead gave to each one a Greek name without any reason or basis that we can tell, and any reasons that they give are invented.1 More than a half century later, the Marquis of Mondéjar penned a similar opinion; in this case he was speaking of the founding of Carthage, and criticizing Philistos of Syracuse: Philistos’s error arises from the common ignorance of Oriental languages that affected all the ancients and limited their knowledge to what was in Greek, which they believed to be the source of all learning. They also traced speculative etymologies of all exotic names to that language, as if all of them had originated there.2 It is easy to discern in these quotations how both scholars were projecting back into the past the atmosphere in which they themselves were writing: they too were trying to defend the learned use of Oriental languages as basic tools for understanding ancient history, in the face of the ignorance of those who would limit themselves to Greek and Latin. There was certainly a solid and continuous European tradition of defending the learning contained in Eastern sources, especially Arabic ones. It had become almost a cliché to list famous Arab scholars in a variety of scientific disciplines, usually in the context of an apology for the value of Oriental languages. In this spirit, the English Arabist William Bed- well wrote in 1612, in the prologue to his Arabic translation of the Epistles of St. John:

1 “Generalmente la dottrina que leemos en los escritores latinos es tomada de leción de los griegos, i éstos estimaron con tanta presunción su lengua i ingenio que apenas uvo alguno de ellos que quisiese deprender alguna de las lenguas de Asia, ni curase de apro- vecharse de la disciplina de los que ellos despreciaban y llamavan bárbaros. Desto se les siguió grande ignorancia de muchas cosas i particularmente de la origen i nombres de las naciones, i casi a ninguna llamaron con el nombre que ella se nombrava i quería nombrar en su lenguaje, sino a cada una le dieron nombre en griego sin raçón ni origen que sepa- mos, ni ellos las dan sino fabulosas”: letter from Pedro de Valencia to Pablo de Céspedes, October 5, 1604; see J. Rubio Lapaz, Pablo de Céspedes, op. cit., 406–407. 2 “El principio en que estriba la equivocación de Philisto consiste en la ignorancia común de las lenguas orientales que hizo deslumbrar a todos los antiguos, circunscribi- endo los límites de su saber a sólo la griega, fuente en su sentir de todas las ciencias, y a quien ambiciosas reducían también las etimologías de los nombres peregrinos, como si de ella huviesse dimanado su origen”: Marqués de Mondéjar, “Razón y asunto de esta obra: Moysén, universalmente celebrado por primer escritor. Opónese Mascardo a esta verdad, impugnando el sentir de todos los padres de la Iglesia,” in [Contestación a los reparos hechos a las Disertaciones eclesiásticas], vol. I, BNE ms. 5557, fol. 287v. the arabic language as a tool for scholarship 377

In medical matters, good God, how great is the multitude of [Arab] writers? Shall I recall Rhasin [al-Rāzī], Abin-Senna [Avicenna], Mesue [Ibn Masāwaih], Serapion [Ibn Sarafyūn]? What excellent, what serious writers! How much philosophers owe to only one, Abin-Rhoi [Averroes], is a question whose judgment I leave to those whose task is to examine the subtle details of Aristotle. By mathematicians the Arabs are the most highly esteemed, for mathematics belongs to them. Truly they discovered, cultivated, and perfected these arts before all other nations. I call to witness Geber [Jābir b. Ḥayyān], Haly [ʿAlī], Thebit [Thābit b. Qurra], Alphraganus [al-Farghānī], Albumasar [Abū Ma῾shar], and many other weighty authors of keen intelligence, whose discoveries in these fields are greatly celebrated.3 Earlier we quoted a text by Diego Pérez de Mesa that recited almost the same list of famous Arab astrologers; it was a common and well-worn theme that constituted a sort of defense of “Arab culture.” Erpenius drew up a list of four reasons for praising the Arabic language: it was widely spoken in the Middle East and therefore highly useful for commerce; its literature contained a great fund of knowledge; it served as a tool for learning Hebrew, because of the resemblances between the two; and it could be deployed in evangelizing Muslims. Such arguments were advanced with greater or lesser conviction, according to the authors’ circumstances and the scientific or religious issues that concerned them.4 We may compare these passages to another from a letter from Tomás de León to his colleague Father Antonio de Araoz:

3 “In re Medica, bone Deus, quanta est scriptorum caterva? Memorabo Rhasin, Abin- Sennam, Mesuem, Serapionem? quam bonos, quam serios scriptores! Quantum Philoso- phi uni debent Abin-Rhoi, illis aestimandum relinquo, quibus subtiles Aristotelis minutias rimari curae est. Mathematicis omnium charissimi Arabes: quia Mathematica illis. Has enim artes hi prae caeteris nationibus invenerunt, coluerunt, perfecerunt. Testes mihi Geber, Haly, Thebit, Alphraganus, Albumasar, et alii multi graves et acuti ingenii authores, quorum inventa in his artibus valde celebrantur”: cited by A. Hamilton, Arab Culture and Ottoman Magnificence in Antwerp’s Golden Age (New York, 2001), 110 n. 60. An instance of the importance granted to Avicenna and Averroes in Europe, and the University of Sala- manca’s role in maintaining their fame, may be found in Pedro Chacón’s 1569 work Histo- ria de la Universidad de Salamanca hecha por el maestro Pedro Chacón, ed. A. M. Carabias Torres (Salamanca, 1990), 55–56. 4 See, for example, P. T. Van Rooden, Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Stud- ies in the Seventeenth Century. Costantijn L’Empereur (1591–1648), Professor of Hebrew and Theology at Leiden (Leiden, 1989), 59–60. Erpenius’s list reflects fairly closely the generally accepted clichés about the value of learning Oriental languages. Thus Francis Bacon defended the study of Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic (although he did not know the latter) with four reasons of his own: scholarly interest “propter studium sapientiae absolutum”; the maintenance of commercial and diplomatic ties; the conversion of infidels; and the castigation of infidels who did not wish to convert. See V. Segesvary, L’Islam et la Réforme. Étude sur l’attitude des réformateurs zurichois envers l’Islam (1510–1550) (Lausanne, 1978), 76 n. 13. 378 chapter seventeen

In regard to the Arabic text, I wish that Your Reverence would not say that Arab scholars are barbarians, although it is true that they are a widespread and numerous people, and that the number of students among them is smaller than among ourselves. As for their students, especially mature ones, very few reach here; the only one who is here, and who is my friend, told me today that he knows of no other anywhere in Spain who is an altaleb or student [. . .]. They have three vowels: alphato [al-fatḥa], which serves for “a” or “e”; alkesro [al-kasra], which elsewhere is “i”; the aldiamo [al-ḍamma], which serves for “u” and “o.” They rarely write with vowels, unless it is the Koran, but they show great skill and ease in reading without diacritical marks [. . .]. Since they write by hand—some of them beautifully—the letters must be formed distinctly, just as in Spanish; but for one who is used to it, it is easy to read. It is more difficult to make out the hands of Spanish scribes, and other ancient characters.5 In a second letter, perhaps replying to one by Araoz, Tomás de León addressed him again: No matter how often Your Reverence insists, I will not admit that Arab scholars are barbarians, unless you mean it in the sense that the Greeks called even the Romans by that name, and the Romans called every other people Giaur, and even the Italians affect to call both ج�ور so; the Turks today say the Spaniards and the French barbarians, ridiculous though it is. It was a barbarous situation in our schools when the philosopher Averroes was read in a bad translation, and Aristotle in a translation made from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic into Latin, and Galen likewise. But alas for the physician who considers Avicenna—whom our Kircher is translating today—a barbarian in medicine! I assure you that a mathematician who knows more than [Christopher] Clavius is no barbarian; and Clavius lamented that his greatest regret was not to have seen translations of the works of Arab mathematicians that Giovan Battista Raimondi had brought from Egypt. In history, some reliable witnesses were the authors from whom our Athanasius [Kircher] quotes long passages in his volume Oedipus [Aegyptiacus]. As for the variability of their script, I must confess to Your Reverence that I have

5 “En cuanto al texto Árabe no quiero que Vuestra Reverencia diga que los Árabes Escolásticos son Bárbaros, que entre nazión tan esparzida ay innumerables y menos estudiantes que entre nosotros es sin duda. Luego de los estudiantes, y más si son provectos, raros llegan por acá, y oi me dize uno solo que aquí ay y es mi amigo que no save que en toda España aya otro que sea altaleb o estudiante [. . .]. Éstos tienen tres vocales: alphato, que sirve “a” o “e”; alkesro, que es “i” otras vezes; el aldiamo, que sirve por “u” e “o”. Poco usan escribir con vocales si no es el Alcorán, pero tienen gran destreza y facilidad en leer sin puntos [. . .]. En el formar las letras, siendo lo que escriven de mano, y algunos linda- mente rasgueado, es forzossa la differencia, como en Español, pero a quien tiene exercicio es fácil de conocer; más difficultoso es leer letra de Escrivanos Españoles y otros antiguos caracteres”: letter from Tomás de León to Antonio de Araoz, December 10, 1568, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 17. the arabic language as a tool for scholarship 379

not encountered it, and many witnesses can attest to how much I have written. One cannot claim as a maxim that reading without diacritical marks is a sign of little ingenuity; Arabs are able to do this, and they learn it more easily that one would think; a good argument for the practice is Quinquarbores’s and Genebrardo’s Latin method for reading Hebrew without them. Chinese writing is not barbaric. And Rome’s most widely praised invention was ‘real characters,’ created by Cicero’s slave Tiro and expanded by St. Cyprian; its signs have many useful features that our own letters lack, although ours have their own advantages. And how I wish—as if I were calling on Iusto Lipsio—that someone in Europe would invent real characters of which each one would represent a single sound! Plutarch was not a barbarian, although by his own account he refused to learn a word of Latin while he lived in Rome, nor was Galen. Why then should the Arabs be called so, having such an abundance of writers in their own language? I admit Your Reverence’s argument that Arabic printed books show vowels, but I have seen only two that contain them [. . .]. Your Reverence has a false impression that certain hands are different from each other. Books written by Christians are termed “Nischi” or “Nesichi” [naskhī], and they are so called because only we print them, but it is absurd to think that they differ because of that.6

6 “Por más que Vuestra Reverencia diga, no admitiré que los Árabes Escolásticos, si no es en el sentido que los Griegos aun a los Romanos llamavan Bárbaros, y éstos a todas las demás Naciones, los turcos oy [. . .] Giaur, y aun los Italianos afectan llamar Bárbaros a los Españoles y Franceses ridículamente. Es verdad que era suma Barbaria la que avía en nuestras Escuelas quando en la Philosofía se leía a Averroes mal traducido y a Aristóteles por la traductión echa de Griego en Árabe y de Árabe en Latín, y lo mismo a Galeno. Pero triste Médico quien juzgare por Bárbaro en Medicina a Avicena, a quien oi está traduc- iendo nuestro Kircher; el Mathemático que supiere más que Clavio, asseguro que no será Bárbaro, y éste declaró que no tenía ottra pena maior que no veer traducidos los libros que traxo Juan Baptista Raymundo de Egypto de autores Árabes Mathemáticos. De la Historia buenos testigos son los authores de quienes cita grandes pedazos nuestro Athanasio, como Oedypi. En la variedad del escribir, confiésole a Vuestra Reverencia que no la e experimentado, con ser assí que tengo buenos testigos de lo mucho que he escrito. Y reducir a reglas el leer sin puntos no es argumento de poca ingeniosidad y le an conseguido los Árabes y aprenden con más facilidad del que parece, de que puede ser buen argumento el arte que ay latino de Quinquarbores y Genebrardo para leer sin puntos el Hebreo. El escribir de los chinos no es Bárbaro, sino la invención más aplaudida que tubo Roma, que fue formar characteres Reales y le inventó Tyrón, esclavo de Cicerón, y aumentó S. Cypriano, y consigue muchos útiles de que carecen nuestros characteres, aunque tienen otros útiles los nuestros. Y ojalá como lo desseo, como pidiéndoselo a Iusto Lipsio, ubiesse quien en Europa inventasse characteres Reales, que cada charácter sinificasse una entidad. No fue Bárbaro Plutarcho quien, viviendo en Roma, nunca quiso aprender Latín ni una palabra (como él dize) ni Galeno, ¿y lo an de ser por esso los árabes, teniendo en su lengua tanta copia de authores? Admito que diga Vuestra Reverencia que los libros impressos Árabes están con vocales solos dos e visto con punctos [. . .]. Los modos de escrivir que Vuestra Reverencia pone diversos es burlería. Nischi o Nesichi se llaman los libros que escriven los christianos y como nosotros solos imprimimos los llaman assí, pero ridículo es imaginar que por eso sean diferentes”: letter from Tomás de León to Antonio de Araoz, January 14, 1659, ibid., fol. 20r. 380 chapter seventeen

Although the letters from Antonio de Araoz that formed the other half of this exchange have not survived, it is easy to infer some of their content from León’s arguments. Araoz must have raised, in the midst of a learned discussion of certain Eastern etymologies, the subject of the “barbarism” of the Arabs: his arguments included their manner of writing—often without vowel signs and dots, and in several different scripts—which in his opinion reflected a chaotic and uncivilized cast of mind. He would also adduce as proofs of barbarism, as we shall see, the organization of the Islamic calendar, and supposed differences and inconsistencies in how Muslims treated the Hijra. Tomás de León, for his part, defended Arab scholars on a number of points: their people produced good students, although few of them found their way to Spain (with the exception of that mysterious ṭālib in Granada whom he mentions several times in his letters); and there was a great tradition of learning in the Arabic tongue, reflected in Averroes, Avicenna, and Galen as well as in Eastern manuscripts collected in Rome by Raimondi and in historians cited by Kircher. León’s classic defense of Arabic arose not only from the traditional respect for Arabic achievement in fields like medicine and astronomy, but from acknowledgment of more modern historical works that were newly accessible in Europe, thanks to the important manuscript collections being created in several cities on the Continent. But an aspect of Father León’s arguments that holds particular interest is the question of Arabic writing.

Arabic Script

Faced with the charge that Arabic script was inconsistent and barbarous, Tomás de León explained that, on the contrary, the language could boast a writing system that was unified, logical, and anything but arbitrary. It was subject to rules that allowed easy reading, in spite of the occasional omission of vowel signs and dots—which also occurred in Hebrew, as shown in the respective grammars of that language by Jean Cinquarbres and Gilbert Génébrard.7 The fact that Arabic had only three vowels also guaranteed its stability and normality, unlike European languages in

7 J. Cinquarbres, Institutiones in linguam hebraicam [. . .] per auctorem suum Iohannem Quinquarboreum (Paris: apud Martinum Iovenem, 1582); and G. Génébrard, Eisagoge Gilb. Genebrardi [. . .] ad legenda & intelligenda Hebraeorum & Orientalium sine punctis scripta (Paris: apud Aegidium Gorbinum [. . .], 1587). the arabic language as a tool for scholarship 381 which “we cannot preserve a uniform pronunciation because of all our vowels; Scaliger claims that when an Englishman spoke to him in Latin, he thought that he was speaking English.”8 Thus to write without vowels and sometimes without diacritical points showed not a lack of sophistica- tion but great “ingenuity”; in like manner the Chinese had invented a type of “real characters” comparable to the ones created in Rome by Marcus Tullius Tiro, Cicero’s slave. The expression “real [or true] characters” (caracteres reales) refers to signs whose direct relationship to reality is evident, signs that represent one thing in an immediate and unequivocal way. Tomás de León’s description of Chinese ideograms in these terms is understandable, but not so his reference to Cicero’s secretary and amanuensis Tiro. To him were attributed the notae Tironianae, a system based on the Greek and Latin alphabets that allowed the rapid copying of texts—somewhat similar, in other words, to shorthand.9 To explain León’s comparison of the Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese scripts, we should look more closely at the philosophy of language that prevailed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This was the era that raised the issue of the relationship of words to things, and that saw an obsessive search for a universal language. The link between words and things, which supposedly began with Adam’s naming of the world, had become a well-established concept in Renaissance culture.10 For writers like Alexander Top the original names had been in Hebrew, mankind’s first language; its letters had originally been ideograms, and only later grew corrupt and evolved into a phonetic alphabet. This notion was supported by an allegorical interpretation of Creation, which also underlay the concern felt by humanists of the time for Egyptian hieroglyphs. Kircher, who exerted such influence on Tomás de León, sought symbolic meanings in those ancient signs, and had even tried to extend his interpretations to Chinese ideograms. His Polygraphia Nova et Universalis was one of several attempts to create a universal written language based on the Tironian system; Kircher believed that all languages

8 “[L]a pronunciación no la podemos nosotros conservar uniforme con todas nuestras vocales pues Scalígero dize que, hablándole en Latín un Inglés, entendía que hablava inglés”: letter from Tomás de León to Antonio de Araoz, January 14, 1659, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 20v. In the same letter León announces that he may write a treatise on the diversity of languages and the Tower of Babel. 9 We borrow this definition from Á. Riesco Terrero, Vocabulario científico-técnico de paleografía, diplomática y ciencias afines (Madrid, 2003), 292. 10 For what follows see M. Elsky, “Bacon’s Hieroglyphs and the Separation of Words and Things,” Philological Quarterly, 63 (1994), 449–460. 382 chapter seventeen could be reduced to one and that one could form the basis for a world- wide secret mode of writing.11 The problem of the connection between language and reality gave rise to a totally different, non-allegorical tradition, represented chiefly by Francis Bacon: he was searching for a language in which every sign would represent a single thing, with a degree of rigor that could transcend the imperfections of every known language. A parallel phenomenon was the rise of important critical research into the Hebrew text of the Bible, con- centrating on the vocalization of the Masoretic text. During the Reforma- tion and Counter-Reformation, polemicists had taken up the question of whether that vocalization could have occurred no earlier than the fifth century ce: if the Hebrew Bible had been vocalized only after the composition of the Vulgate, the latter would gain in authority. Reformers defended the preeminence of Scripture; but if Scripture had had a history—if it had been subject to change—then Counter-Reformers had an argument against it, and could insist on the greater authority of the Church. In this atmosphere, a Reformist Hebraist named Louis Cappel (1585– 1658) supplied a crucial element: he demonstrated, following Elia Levita, the historical nature of Masoretic vocalization. His general framework, which was elaborated by later Reformist theologians, was intended to exalt the authority of Scripture, but in the long run the critical tools that Cappel and others developed proved incompatible with the authority granted to the Biblical text.12 In this atmosphere of desacralization, some viewed hieroglyphs not as the hope for a restitutio antiquitatis but as a real possibility for creating a philosophical language, much as Leibniz thought of Chinese characters.13 All of these issues are present in León’s defense of Arabic, which encompassed “real characters” and their relationship to hieroglyphics and Chinese ideograms, as well as the concept of Hebrew letters (and Arabic ones, by association) as bearers of a certain primaeval wisdom.

11 H. Saussy, “Magnetic Language. Athanasius Kircher and Communication,” in P. Find- ley (ed.), Athanasius Kircher. The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New York-London, 2004), 263–281, esp. 264. It was Gustavus Selenus who in 1624 had proposed to make the notae Tironianae the foundation of a universal written language. 12 R. A. Muller, “The Debate over the Vowel Points and the Crisis in Orthodox Herme- neutics,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 10 (1980), 53–72; F. Laplanche, L’Écriture, le sacré et l’histoire. Érudits et politiques protestants devant la Bible en France au XVIIe siècle (Amsterdam-Maarsen, 1986), 57 ff. and 212 ff., and on the work of Cappel, 579; S. G. Burnett, From Christian Hebraism, op. cit., 203–239, for an analysis of Buxtorf ’s role in this polemic; and C. Poulouin, Les temps des origines, op. cit., 149. 13 See M. Hernández Márquez, “Leibniz y la lingua característica,” Diánoia, 45 (1999), 35–63. the arabic language as a tool for scholarship 383

The question of writing was present also in the debates about the Sacromonte Lead Books: part of the discussion of their language turned on whether it was an ancient form of Arabic or simply the modern dialect of the Moriscos. The texts’ defenders argued for the former, insisting on the archaic nature of the Solomonic characters as well as of the writing used in the Latin inscriptions. Some of their claims are worthy of note. To Gonzalo de Valcárcel, one of the earliest critics, the Solomonic characters immediately recalled the work of Johannes Trithemius, a founder of the European tradition of steganography, whose writings were the chief inspiration for Kircher’s work on polygraphy and cryptography.14 Valcárcel saw in those strange signs a form of cryptogram similar to Trithemius’s, a fact that afforded great strength to his argument: “if these books cannot be read, we need no further reason to consider them fabricated.”15 Valcárcel, like Juan Bautista Pérez, thought that the Solomonic characters must be a form of magic, necromancy, or witchcraft. Furthermore, wrote Pérez, they betrayed the ignorance of their creators who, if they had been more clever, rather than merely twisting Spanish letters would have used “other strange characters from the Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian, Chaldean, Ethiopic, and Indic languages; I own those alphabets, and they have been printed by two authors, an Italian named Teseo Ambro- sio and a Frenchman named Guilielmo Postelo [Guillaume Postel].” Teseo Ambrosio (or Ambrogio) Albonesi’s Introductio in Chaldaicam linguam [. . .] was one of the foundational texts of Early Modern European Orientalism.16 Tomás de León claimed to have received his friend Kirch- er’s De Polygraphia from the author himself, having become interested in the subject twenty years earlier.17

14 N. Wilding, “Publishing the Polygraphy. Manuscript, Instrument, and Printing in the Work of Athanasius Kircher,” in P. Findlen (ed.), Athanasius Kircher, op. cit., 283–296, esp. 285. 15 R. Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “El discurso del licenciado Gonzalo de Valcárcel sobre las reliquias del Sacromonte,” in M. Barrios and M. García-Arenal (eds.), Los Plomos del Sacromonte, op. cit., 173–199, esp. 196. 16 “Caracteres estraños de las lenguas Hebrea, Aráviga, Armenia, Chaldea, Etiópica, Índica, cuyos alphabetos yo tengo y andan impressos por dos autores, el uno italiano, que se llama Teseo Ambrosio, y el otro françés que se llama Guilielmo Postelo.” T. Ambrogio Albonesi, Introductio in Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam, atque armenicam, & decem alias linguas. Characterum differentum alphabeta, circiter quadraginta [. . .] (Pavia, 1539). 17 Letter from Tomás de León to Pedro de Torres, April 19, 1664, Varias cartas de eru- dición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 7r. We should recall how intensely interested in the topic were other Spanish intellectuals of the time, like the Jesuit Pedro Bermudo and, above all, Juan Caramuel: see J. Velarde, “Proyectos de lengua universal ideados por españoles,” Taula, 7–8 (1987), 7–78, and J. de Caramuel, Gramática audaz, prelim. study L. Velázquez Campo, transl. P. Arias (Pamplona, 2000). 384 chapter seventeen

Several factors underlie the defense of Arabic made by León and some of his friends. Progress had clearly been made beyond the simple recita- tion of names of a few illustrious Arabs who could do honor to Arabic culture and legitimate the study of its language. The defense of Arabic was carried out in a polemical atmosphere in which the accusation of Arab “barbarism” was a constant theme; it supposedly showed in the inconsistency of the writing system, the various ways of calculating time, and the use of different calendars. In opposition to these views, to maintain that Arabic was a rich language and that its script and calendar were sophisticated constituted a defense of a high civilization. As the Marquis of Mon- déjar wrote about those who saw inconsistency in the date of the Hijra, “they have wasted their time arguing about something that is undeniable, and about which the Africans and their neighbors would have enlightened them if only they had sought out the truth of the matter.”18 These disputes about the value of Arabic language and culture were really commentaries on the contemporary scene. To criticize classical Greek or Latin authors for their ignorance of Eastern languages was to accuse historians of Spain of not knowing Arabic or Hebrew; the question became one of who could legitimately write about ancient history. The Sacromonte Lead Books represented, in large part, a strategy for de- Islamizing Arabic culture. This same strategy allowed the Oriental world to be recycled into a history of the beginnings of the Spanish Church; both cases presupposed a radical program for separating the Arabic language from the religion of Islam. Nicolás Antonio, an admirer of the scholarly interchanges between Tomás de León and Martín Vázquez Siruela, wrote to the latter: I have seen your letter, Sir, [. . .] as well as Father Tomás’s reply. I read both of them carefully and with great pleasure, although with some alarm, such as must be felt by good Spaniards who find themselves in Granada and hear everyone speaking Arabic, a language that recalls the errors expressed by the Mohammedans. I see the contrast between your respective opinions, but unless you both grant me at least twenty years in which to study this incomprehensible tongue, non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites. Although my ignorance does not permit me, as a lay person, to enter these

18 “An perdido el tiempo en disputar sobre una cosa yncontrastable y en que los Afri- canos y sus vecinos les uvieran ynstruydo si ubieran querido ynformarse de la berdad del caso”: Marqués de Mondéjar, Disertazión sobre el día y año en que comenzó la éjira o la hépocha de los árabes y de los Mahometanos, BNE ms. 2288, fol. 3v. the arabic language as a tool for scholarship 385

shrines of true scholarship, the genius of both letters is obvious even to the most uninformed and least polyglot reader.19 The sound of spoken Arabic may have recalled the Muslims, but the language was now one of the tools of scholarship; nonetheless it could not be entirely separated from its religious dimension and its identification with Islam. Vázquez Siruela was forced to acknowledge the fact to his friend the Marquis of Mondéjar, after the latter had sent him a treatise that claimed Moses as the first writer, and drew on several Hebrew and Arabic sources that included the Qurʾān: If you wrote in Latin, you would have no reason for concern. But in writing in the vernacular one must adjust one’s scholarship somewhat, assume a certain simplicity for simple people, and adapt to the capacity of ordinary readers so that they may understand the authors involved. I say this on account of the Rabbinic writings, many of which are quoted; so that they may not sound like magical incantations, they must be tempered with some explanation that will make them understandable to those unschooled in such texts [. . .]. There are other references to the Koran and similar sacrilegious books which, although they are relevant, must be handled with care, remember- ing how the Apostle said, Sapientibus et insipientibus debitorsum. For some might be scandalized to learn that in a Catholic country a gentleman, with all a gentleman’s standing and obligations, should make a particular study of such works, and they would judge him harshly for reading them. Therefore it is best to proceed with great caution and to quote from these sources only casually, giving them little weight, rather than affirming that they support what one writes.20

19 “Vi la de Vuestra Merced [. . .] y e leído tanbién la respuesta que enbía el Padre Tomás: ambas con mucho cuidado y alboroço en su lección, si bien con algún susto: porque no puede dexar de darle a los buenos castellanos hallarse en Granada, i ver que se habla de una parte y otra en Arábigo, lengua que nos acuerda los ierros en que la tuvieron los Mahometanos. Veo la diferencia de los dos pareceres, y si Vuestras Mercedes no me dan un plaço siquiera de veinte años para que pueda estudiar esta algarabía, non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites. Pero quando mi ignorancia no me dexe entrar como profano a estos sagrarios de la verdadera erudicion, bien se descubre el ingenio de ambas cartas al más lego i menos Pol‎ýglotto”: letter from Nicolás Antonio to Martín Vázquez Siruela, October 28, 1653, Papeles varios de Martín Vázquez Siruela, Biblioteca Real de Palacio, ms. II/158, fol. 110v. 20 “Si escribe en lengua latina, no ubiera que reparar nada. Pero escribiendo en la vulgar necesario es humanar un poco la erudición, i haciéndose flaco con los flacos ajustarse a la inteligencia de los vulgares de modo que puedan hacer concepto de los Autores que se citan. Digo esto por los Tratados Rabínicos, que se alegan muchos a cada paso, i para que no parezcan invocaciones mágicas es menester templallos con alguna luz que los haga perceptibles a los no versados en estas letras [. . .]. Otras alegaciones se hazen al Alcorán y semejantes libros sacrílegos, que aunque vienen mui a pospósito, es menester ir con mucho tiento, acordándonos de lo que dize el Apóstol Sapientibus et insipientibus debitorsum. Porque podría ser que se escandalizasen algunos de que en una provincia católica 386 chapter seventeen

This criticism certainly shows the limits of an Orientalist historiographic project that aspired to the unrestricted use of Arabic sources. Nonetheless several of the most prominent members of this learned circle identified themselves with such a project, convinced that Eastern languages were the “key to true knowledge.” Only with that key could they become citizens of the European Republic of Letters, and enter into a wider exchange of books and ideas. We have provided several examples of those contacts, readings, and discussions. We have also shown the persistence of the overarching goal of writing an ecclesiastical history of Spain that could connect to sacred history, and clarify the problems of continuity and rupture inherent in the presence of al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula. Now we must ask what concrete results arose from those concerns. Did the defense of Arabic sources culminate in the edition or translation of any significant texts? What specific historical issues attracted the attention of these scholars? How was the history of Spain integrated into the history of the Ancient Near East? We shall begin by offering examples of translations of Eastern sources for the specific use of Spanish historiography, and seeking to explain the motivations and uses of such works.

Manuscripts and Translations

Throughout the sixteenth century historians had been faced with the need to draw on Arabic sources in writing the history of Spain, but by the beginning of the seventeenth, there was still no easy access to those works. The Sacromonte affair had, in a fashion, provoked activity among a number of Arabists and translators of diverse training and competence. These men had created a modest corpus of works that could be called Orientalist: Miguel de Luna’s fabricated Historia verdadera, Diego de Urrea’s lost chronicle, Marcos Dobelio’s partial translation of Abū al-Fidāʾ, and Gurmendi’s Doctrina phísica y moral de príncipes. All four men were translators of Arabic, all had worked on the Lead Books, and all took part to some degree in the historical and doctrinal disputes that the Books inspired.

un varón que lo es tanto i de tantas obligaciones haga particular estudio de tales libros, juzgándolo por mui dado a su lección. I ansí en esto convendrá proceder con mucha cau- tela, citándolos como al desgaire y más por desprecio que por acreditar con ellos lo que se escribe”: letter from Martín Vázquez Siruela to the Marquis of Mondéjar, March 7, 1659, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fols. 133r–133v. the arabic language as a tool for scholarship 387

Their works reflected a certain interest in Arabic texts, but the diversity of their origins and motivations led to a good deal of incoherence. Miguel de Luna wrote as a Morisco apologist for a Granadan elite that had very specific ends. Diego de Urrea was shaped by his service to the Ottomans. Marcos Dobelio, a Christian who had taught at La Sapienza, was learned in Arabic literature and theology. Gurmendi, a librarian at El Escorial and the first to encounter Muley Zidan’s manuscripts, chose some “mirrors of princes” to translate, giving them a Christian tinge. Yet another figure, Luis del Mármol, while claiming to have consulted Arabic sources, really had acquired only a few references at second hand. The material that these men produced was sparse and disconnected; it reflected different traditions, concerns, and ways of interrogating the available Arabic texts. What is more, their works were very difficult to locate and use. Of those just mentioned, only Luna’s and Gurmendi’s had been printed, and their value as historical sources was, for different reasons, very slight. A fundamental problem was that in Spain—unlike in Rome, the Low Countries, France, or England—there were no Arabic printing presses; one cause was probably a lack of business initiative, but a greater one was a negative view of Oriental studies. Add to these the absence of any systematic program to study and reevaluate Arab texts on the history of Spain, and the result was a significant gap in the field of historiography. Thus the Marquis of Mondéjar, in his brief treatise on sources for Spanish history, summarized those that were available for writing about “the ferocious tyranny of the Arabs”: But although some Arab accounts of this benighted incursion survive— Monsieur D’ Herbeloth mentions some of them in his Biblioteca Oriental— not one has so far seen the light of day, although many of their principal expeditions appear in the Chronicon of Isidoro Pacense (if only the copy that Fray Prudencio Sandoval published had not been so corrupt, as was the one quoted by Archbishop Pedro de Marcá in his History of Béarn). On the basis of these accounts, Father Pedro Abarca and Don Joseph Pellicer wrote the story of their tyrannical conquest better than Luis del Mármol and Fray Jayme Bleda did, the former in the Historia de África, the second in the history [D]e los moros; and Garibay took down, though in very shortened form, the remainder of their deeds in Spain; these can be read in a thousand historians, and have been fairly widely discussed.21

21 “Pero aunque se conservan algunos Escritores Árabes de esta sacrílega expedición, de que hace memoria Monsieur D. Herbeloth en su Biblioteca Oriental, no ha visto hasta ahora ninguno la luz pública, aunque muchas de las más principales expediciones suyas permanecen en el Cronicón de Isidoro Pacense, si no se hallara tan corrupto el ejemplar que publicó Fray Prudencio Sandoval, como el que cita el Arzobispo Pedro de Marcá en la 388 chapter seventeen

There were Arabic books in Spain, however. In the first place, it was obvious that many Moriscos owned, or had owned, books written in Arabic, many of which dealt with different aspects of Islam. We saw how Alonso del Castillo and López Tamarid were responsible for studying the Arabic volumes kept in the Royal Chapel in Granada or held by the Inquisition. Some books had been hidden by their owners and subsequently “discovered” by Christians; that was the case of the Morisco tomes found in a cave in Pastrana and later consulted by Marcos Dobelio for his refutation of the Sacromonte Lead Books. Among those volumes Dobelio, thanks to his education, was able to identify works of al-Ghazzālī, al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, and al-Thaʿālibī; they helped him to apprehend a Morisco Islamic culture that, he felt, had inspired the falsifications in Granada. The discovery of Arabic books in the possession of Moriscos was by no means unusual, and those works often served as evidence in Inquisition trials. The way in which Dobelio used the Pastrana manuscripts, however, seems to indicate the development of a certain theological and learned culture centered on Arabic. Dobelio’s role in this process was no accident: his background was unique for Spain, and his critique of the Lead Books is the most interesting and well grounded of those that were written at the time. We can contrast his work on the Pastrana collection with the discovery, years later, of another Arabic-Islamic manuscript, which Tomás de León described as follows: I have some fragments of a commentary by an interpreter, lacking a beginning and an end, which were found in recent years with other books in a building that was being torn down. I believe it is by Abu Eleit el Samarcandi [Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī], who is the least coarse among the barbaric commentators of this religion; concerning verse 5, he mentions a book on the interpretation of dreams by the Patriarch Joseph; and Abu Nazir [sic] el ح��ل Iauhari [Abū l-ʿAbbās al-Jawharī] in his great dictionary under the verb م cites the same work.22

Historia de Bearne, por cuyos testimonios formaron el Padre Pedro Abarca y Don Joseph Pellicer la relación de su tiránica conquista mejor que Luis del Mármol y Fray Jayme Bleda, el primero en la Historia de África, el segundo en la de los Moros, y los demás sucesos suyos acontecidos en España, aunque muy abreviados, recopiló Garibay y se ofrecen en mil escritores, tocados bastantemente”: Marqués de Mondéjar, Noticia y juicio de los más principales historiadores de España, que a persuasión de la Excma. Señora Doña María de Guadalupe, Alencastre y Cárdenas, Duquesa de Aveyro, &c., escribió [. . .]. Con algunas cartas al fin escritas al dicho Señor Marqués (Madrid: Oficina de Pantaleón Aznar, 1784), 43–45. 22 “Tengo unos pedazos de Comento de un Intérprete, sin principio ni fin, que en años passados hallaron derribando un edificio con otros libros, y creo que es de Abu Eleit el Samarcandi, que de los Bárbaros Comentadores desta ley es el menos rudo, y sobre el the arabic language as a tool for scholarship 389

The context for the quotation is a discussion of a treatise on Moses by the Marquis of Mondéjar, into which enter Joseph, his supposed book on the interpretation of dreams, the various traditions that speak of it, and how to accommodate the precepts and rules of interpretation used by Joseph the Patriarch with “natural meanings” (significados naturales), i.e., those used and understood by the Egyptians. The note reveals a particular process: discovery of an Islamic book, its attribution to an author, and its use in a scholarly discussion rather than in a religious polemic. Here we have an indication, however slight, of Orientalist scholarly activity in seventeenth- century Spain that was not limited to recycling European books and materials, but that dealt with a world in which Arabic books were present and called for an Orientalist response. We know that these scholars sometimes encountered unpublished Ara- bic texts. In a letter possibly by the Marquis of Mondéjar to Tomás de León, the subject is an Arabic manuscript that the former had apparently offered to send to his friend: The Arabic book that I offered to you, Father, is written in octavo on vellum in a reasonably clear hand, with that range of colors characteristic of books of high quality. On the outside it bears as a title, on the same leaves, this inscription [blank], which is repeated on the second leaf [blank], nominatio which in my opinion is the same as Campi disputationem in doctrina seu sapientia prinçipiorum et finium. It begins with a narrative of the Creation, indicating the authors on which it draws, repeating several times the word with which it separates the opinion of each one. I have been unable to identify the rest, because as I have written you, Father, I am not very fluent in this language.23 The blank spaces in this draft letter must have been prepared for Arabic characters which the Marquis of Mondéjar copied carefully so that Tomás

verso 5 hace mención de un libro de interpretación de sueños del Patriarca Ioseph; y Abu Nazir el Iauhari en su gran léxico verbo [. . .] cita al mismo libro”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, July 2, 1659, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 54v. 23 “El libro Árabe que ofreçí a V.P. está escrito en Otavo en Vitelas y raçonable carácter con aquella variedad de colores frequente en los libros escritos con cultura, y por de fuera tiene por título sobre las mismas hojas esta inscriptión [blanco] la qual se repite en la segunda hoxa [blanco] nominatio de que mi sentir es lo mismo es que Campi disputationem in doctrina seu sapientia prinçipiorum et finium. Empieça poniendo relaçiones de la Creaçión del mundo, señalando los autores de quien toma repitiendo varias veçes la palabra, conque divide el sentir de cada uno no he podido reconoçer lo demás, porque como tengo escrito a V.P. no tengo muy suelto el uso desta lengua . . .”: draft letter, possibly from the Marquis of Mondéjar to Tomás de León, n.d., ibid., fol. 229r. 390 chapter seventeen de León could identify the work’s title. The latter replied with an initial conjecture: As for the title of the Arabic book, I find errors in the letters as Your Lord- ship has written them, and only after long study could I straighten out this confusion and distinguish the letters from each other. If the Arabic is to ض ت ن ظ ف �� ا �ل��م��ا � � ع��ل mean what Your Lordship writes in Latin, it should read رو ر ي� م خ Campus dispu[ta]tionis in scientia primi et novissimi, principalis ,الاو�ي�ل الا ا �ر ف� ,Populo �ي� ع�ا �م et sequitiis. But it seems that Your Lordship has written only ض ت � ظ ف� خ� -Septum purifica رو �� ا ل��م��هر �ي� ع�ا �م الاواي��ل والاوا �ر and therefore it may read tum populis sive nobilis sunt, sive ignobilis. I am inclined to think that it may be the latter, because Mohammedans often write on the outsides of their sic] Ne tangat nisi purus; but if it] لا ��م��س�ه الا ا �ل��م��ط�ه books phrases of the type ي ر ن ظ ,I am certain that it concerns the Last Judgment ا �ل��م��ا �ر contains the word which I think comes in Chapter 17 of the Koran and is called caput disputationis vel fraudationis. At present this is all that I can conjecture; when I see the context, I shall try to speak with greater certainty.24 We see that Father León tried to guess the name of the work based on what Mondéjar had sent him, complaining about poor rendering of the script: this made it difficult to distinguish between the Arabic words ʿilm ‘knowledge’ and ʿāmm, here ‘people, nation,’ whose written form is very similar. Finally León determined the work’s title, presumably Rawḍat al-manāẓir fī ʿilm al-awāʾil wa-l-awākhir by Muḥammad b. al-Shiḥna (d. 1485), a member of a prominent Aleppo family who became a judge in Cairo.25 It is a history of the world from its beginnings up to the signs of the end that were predicted by the Prophet Muhammad, a work in the tradition of Abū l-Fidāʾ’s Ta ʾrīkh, which had been translated in part by Marcos Dobelio.The manuscript of Rawḍat al-manāẓir not only circulated within our circle of historians but was partially rendered into Spanish by one of them, Juan

24 “En quanto al título del libro Árabe, tengo equivocación en las letras como las forma Vuestra Señoría, y sólo en larga leyenda se puede deponer esta confusión y distinguir bien unas letras de otras. Para que el Árabe signifique lo q VSa pone en Latín a de decir [. . .] Campus dispu[ta]tionis in scientia primi et novissimi, principalis et sequitiis. Pero parece q VSa no escrive sino [. . .] Populo y assí puede decir [. . .] Septum purificatum populis sive nobilis sunt, sive ignobilis. Muéveme a pensar que puede ser esto; porque es ordinario escrivir los Mahometanos por de fuera en sus libros cláusulas deste género [. . .] Ne tangat nisi purus: pero si tiene la palabra [. . .] tengo por sin duda que trata del Juizio final que pienso es la Azoara 17 del Alcorán y llaman caput disputationis vel fraudationis y al presente sólo esto puedo conjeturar. Viendo el contexto procuraré hablar con más seguridad”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, October 7, 1659, ibid., fol. 21v. 25 D. Sourdel, “Ibn al-Shiḥna,” EI2, s.v. the arabic language as a tool for scholarship 391

Durán de Torres.26 The latter, according to Nicolás Antonio’s note in the Biblioteca Hispana Nueva, was a native of Seville who had studied civil and canon law at Salamanca and had traveled to Rome with Cardinal Pimentel as a jurisconsult on canonical questions. He died young, in 1663,27 leaving behind twelve notebooks of his translation of Ibn al-Shiḥna’s work: I felt deeply the untimely passing of Don Juan Durán de Torres. I saw up to twelve notebooks of the translation that he had completed, and told him in all sincerity how highly I thought of the work; up to a week before his death I was returning to him the folios that he was sending me, revised word by word and annotated. I have never seen the original, and since informing his brother that I could review what remained, I have heard nothing. There- fore Your Lordship must be sure not to lose the original but to recover it with all speed, because it will be at risk in the hands of ignorant people. Don Juan was greatly relieved to see that, when he traced the most ancient families of Arabs and rulers of Yemen through several generations, there was no discrepancy with my Giauhari, whose sources go back 400 years to the heyday of the Moorish kings of Granada. The author of the chronicle is generally respected. Abrahamo Ecchelense, on fol. 319 of De origine nominis Papa et de originibus Ecclesia Alexandrinae (against Seldeno and Hot- tingero), shows, correcting one of many crude errors made by the latter, just who were and are the Sabaites as a people and a sect; and in the Index م ن ش ن Mahamed ben ح�م�د ب�� ا �ل��ح��ه of Arabic terms he includes under [the letter] M Alsachena [Muḥammad b. al-Shiḥna], chronicler.28

26 N. Antonio, Biblioteca Hispana Nueva, transl. M. Matilla Martínez, I (Madrid, 1999), 728. For a general view see F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Fragmentos,” op. cit., passim. 27 “We have lost in our Don Juan Durán a person in whom we placed great hopes and who could have honored our whole nation. I heard of his death with great sadness, because I loved and esteemed him. The literary men of our country are experiencing a terrible deficit of health, with my good Doctor Siruela in the sad state that you, Sir, tell me of, and Don Juan Suárez unable to attend even to the duties of his position” (“Faltò en nuestro Don Juan Duràn un sugeto de grandes esperanzas, i que nos pudieran honrar la Nacion. Yo oì su muerte con gran sentimiento por lo que le amava, i estimava. Terrible carestìa de salud pasa por los Literatos de nuestra Patria, halladose mi buen Dotor Siruela en el estado que U.M. me dice, i el Señor Don Iuan Suarez en el de no poder atender ni aun a la obligación del oficio”): letter from Nicolás Antonio to Juan Lucas Cortés, Rome, Sep- tember 1, 1663, in N. Antonio, Censura de historias fabulosas. Antecedida de su biografía por d. Gregorio Mayàns y Siscàr. Se añaden cartas de Nicolás Antonio y otros eruditos (Madrid, 1742; facsimile ed. Madrid, 1999), 646. 28 “Muchísimo sentí el malogro de D. Juan Durán de Torres: yo vi hasta unos doze quadernos de la traductión que tenía hecha y muy de veras le dije mi sentimiento de lo bien que me parecía la obra; palabra por palabra bolvía revisto y annotado el pliego que me embiava hasta la última semana de su muerte. El original nunca le vi; antes ofreciendo a su hermano el reveer lo que restava, no he tenido más noticia; y assí Vuestra Señoría no pierda el original, sino mande poner diligencia en cobrarle, porque quedando en manos de gente ignorante, queda arriesgado. D. Juan se consoló muchísimo quando vio que las generaciones que pone antiquíssimas de los Árabes y Príncipes de varias generaciones 392 chapter seventeen

Juan Durán de Torres, a part-time prebendary at the cathedral of Seville, may have joined the circle of scholars thanks to his acquaintance with Vázquez Siruela. In 1660, after the death of León Pinelo, he was a finalist for the post of Chronicler of the Indes; of his two fellow candidates, José Pellicer and Antonio de Solís, the latter was eventually chosen.29 Durán de Torres confessed in a letter to Vázquez Siruela how difficult the study of Arabic had been for him; at the same time he provided some geographical notes on Andalusia from an Arabic work, possibly even Rawḍat al-manāẓir, that might help his correspondent in his historical research.30 In another letter to Nicolás Antonio in Rome, Durán de Torres spoke of his efforts to learn Arabic, that “strange and neglected” language, and how he had made bold to translate “a history by Abu Walid Ben Shacenas [Abū Walīd b. al-Shiḥna], owned by D. Gaspar Ibáñez. It is a general chronicle of a notable series [of rulers], from the first ancient monarchies to the most recent Saracen history.” Having finished this translation, Durán de Torres had begun composing “some historical notes or drafts on Arab history that I trust will be well received and observed with amazement by men of our nation.” Finally he promises to send his translation so that Nicolás Antonio may correct it “and, if it were convenient, print it in both Arabic and Latin at the press of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.”31 If Durán de Torres had seen the publication of his complete translation of Ibn al-Shiḥna’s Rawḍat al-manāẓir, it would not have been the first of his works to appear in Rome; a few years earlier his De postliminio inter del Iaman están sin descrepar en mi Giauhari, que tiene 400 años de Escritura (quando florecían los Reyes moros de Granada). El Author del Chrónico es estimado y le está de ordinario. Abrahamo Ecchelense, De origine nominis Papa et de originibus Ecclesia Alex- andrinae contra Seldeno y Hottingero, y folio 319 dél, muestra, entre otros vulgaríssimos yerros deste último, muestra quiénes eran y son los Sabaítas, su nación y religión, y en el Índice de los Árabes MS. en la M. pone [. . .] Mahamed ben Alsachena crónico”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, June 3, 1664, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 25v. 29 L. A. Arocena, Antonio de Solís, cronista indiano. Estudios sobre las formas historiográ- ficas del Barroco (Buenos Aires, 1963), 59, 61, and 456. 30 Letter from Juan Durán de Torres to M. Vázquez Siruela, Madrid, March 22, 1661, Papeles varios de Martín Vázquez Siruela, Biblioteca Real de Palacio, ms. II/158, fol. 164. 31 “Una Historia que se hallò en poder de Don Gaspar Ibañez de Abu Walid Ben Sha- cenas, que es un Chronicon General con notable serie, assi en lo antiguo de las prime- ras Monarquias, como en lo ultimo de la Historia Sarracenica”; “unas notas históricas, o Exercitaciones de la Historia Arabe, que juzgo serà trabajo bien recibido, i mirado con estrañeza de hombres de nuestra Nacion”; “i, si acaso huviere comodidad, para imprimirlo Arabico-Latino en la Imprenta De propaganda”: letter from Juan Durán de Torres to Nico- lás Antonio, May 26, 1660; N. Antonio, Censura de historias fabulosas, op. cit., 671–672. the arabic language as a tool for scholarship 393 liberos, foederatosque populos critico-iuridica dissertatio had been printed in that city.32 But the Ibn al-Shiḥna translation never saw the light, as Nicolás Antonio himself recorded in his Biblioteca Hispana Nueva, perhaps on account of what all seem to agree was its author’s early death. There is a certain logical continuity between this translation and the one that Dobelio made of portions of the Ta ʾrīkh ofA bū l-Fidāʾ: indeed, the former was written in the wake of the latter, both being Eastern in origin and including the history of the world since its creation. We recall that after Dobelio’s death, Vázquez Siruela and Nicolás Antonio were attempt- ing to recover from among his papers a certain work, possibly his partial translation of Abū l-Fidāʾ, in order to mine it for their own historical writings, just as they hoped to recover Durán de Torres’s translation when the latter died. From an inquiry that Vázquez Siruela had made of Durán de Torres, we may deduce what kinds of information his colleagues had hoped to learn from his work, for Durán replied as follows: And in order to satisfy without further delay what you, Sir, require of me [. . .] from it, I can tell you that he does not go into detail about geography, nor does he describe [. . .] provinces or cities, but only generalities of Arab geography as to its different climes, the general location without lati- tudes and longitudes, with only some very general markers like neighbor- �ش��م�ا ل ان��د �ل�� ad septentriones Hispaniae, on ي� س on the Franks غ,.ing regions, e.g �� ا � ن ad Occidedentis [sic] Indis, and likewise in other [. . .]. There ربي� �ل�ه��د India is another notable passage about a poet-king of Seville who met with a sad end when he was deposed and imprisoned, with an epigram by him.33 In fact one could not expect from a work like Ibn al-Shiḥna’s much detail about Spain’s geography or early history, since it was neither written by an Andalusi nor concerned particularly with al-Andalus. We might ask why this Eastern text was chosen for translation in Spain; if the point was to compose a national history, it was not the most obvious choice.

32 J. Durán de Torres, De postliminio inter liberos, foederatosque populos critico-iuridica dissertatio [. . .] (Rome: typis Vitalis Mascardi, 1655). 33 “I por cumplir sin mas dilación con lo que Vuestra Merced me manda le [. . .] de él; digo señor, que en quanto toca a lo geográfico no se detiene, ni describe [. . .]dante provincias o ciudades, sino sólo lo universal de la Geografia Árabe por sus climas, y la situación con generalidad sin grados, ni alturas, sino sólo con algunas señas muy generales como son las vezindades de otras regiones, v.g. de los francos [. . .] ad septentriones Hispaniae, de la Hindia [. . .] ad Occidedentis [sic] Indis, i de este modo en otras [. . .]. Ai otro lugar mui insigne de un Rei de Sevilla poeta y desastrado en su fin que fue depuesto i preso, i un epigramma suio . . .”: letter from Juan Durán de Torres to M. Vázquez Siruela, March 22, 16[61?], Papeles varios de Martín Vázquez Siruela, Biblioteca Real de Palacio ms. II/158, fol. 164. The poet-king in question is, of course, al-Muʿtamid of Seville. 394 chapter seventeen

Perhaps the motive was purely opportunistic: it was a manuscript that the Marquis of Mondéjar happened to own. We do not know how it came into his hands, although he does mention elsewhere that he had access to Arabic manuscripts from El Escorial such as one by a Muhamed Abu Giafar, “whose manuscript in Arabic, of which I have a copy, is kept in El Escorial”;34 this text, in the absence of other information, may be a work by Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad al-Ṭabarī, author of the Ta ʾrīkh orUniversal His- tory, one of the principal works of Arabic historiography. If this identification is correct, the text’s selection might indicate an interest in history that went far beyond the merely local. Durán de Torres himself speaks clearly about that wider concern when he alludes to the importance of Ibn al-Shiḥna’s work, claiming that it should be highly regarded “as much for its universal history, as for the portion that deals with Spain—which, although it is limited, is more exact than what we have had up to now.”35 We have observed Durán de Torres’s interest in the ancient Yemeni genealogies that appeared in his translation, and also how Tomás de León valued Ibn al-Shiḥna because Abraham Ecchellensis had cited him in his debates with Selden and Hottinger. The Spaniards’ concern for early Eastern history was therefore shared with their European Orientalist colleagues. Thus we begin to comprehend the Orientalist project that informed the work of this circle of scholars, as well as why they made certain choices, such as to translate the work of Ibn al-Shiḥna. On the one hand, their chief concern was the role of Islam and Arabic culture in the history of Spain; they sought a coherent explanation of the medieval history of the Peninsula, and we can trace their ever-growing need to integrate Arabic sources into this pursuit, with all its implications. On the other hand, it is clear that this path led them to a more general and universal concern for the history of the East, particularly of Egypt. It is significant that a great portion of this turn from the local to the universal should arise from questions of the origin of the world, of measuring time, and of chronology; we shall discuss all these issues in the next chapter.

34 Marqués de Mondéjar, Examen chronológico del año en que entraron los moros en España (Madrid, 1687), 124. 35 “Assí en lo universal de la Historia, como en lo que toca a España; que, aunque no es mucho, es mas puntual, que lo que hasta hoi tenemos”: letter from Juan Durán de Torres to Nicolás Antonio, May 26, 1660: N. Antonio, Censura de historias fabulosas, op. cit., 672. chapter eighteen

the orient in spain

The manner in which Spanish critical historiography tried to integrate the Andalusi past and resolve the problem of using Arabic sources seems to have been strongly influenced by European Orientalism, which was beginning to construct a discipline based on Eastern languages. We can affirm that the circulation of works produced by Europan scholars caused a profound change in how history was written in Spain. We have shown in previous chapters how a change of perspective took place in certain fields, as concern for the history of Spain evolved toward wider horizons. We shall illustrate this shift with one of the greatest issues in historiography in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: chronology. As both a technical and a historiographic problem, chronology will help us to understand how two favorite themes of European Orientalism were handled in Spain: the ancient Egyptian and ancient Hebrew civilizations, both of which had serious implications for the learned debates of the seventeenth century.

Problems of Chronology: The Hijra

It had been known in Spain for a long time that Muslims reckoned time differently from Christians. It was an inescapable fact in the context of a multisecular coexistence with Muslim communities, and the sixteenth- century Catalan historian Pere Antoni Beuter could write: The Moors determine the year from the time when Mohammed began to preach his religion, which was, according to the Archbishop [Rodrigo Ximé- nez de Rada], in ad 621; while the Florentine [St. Antoninus of Florence] makes it almost in ad 640, give or take a little. But according to the Moorish reckoning of the moons—and for them the moon of St. John, June 1537, would be their year 944—their calendar would begin in ad 593.1

1 “Los moros compten de l’any que Mahoma començà a predicar la sua secta, que fòn, segons diu l’arquebisbe, l’any del Senyor 621, encara que lo Florentí diu que fón quasi en l’any del Senyor 640, poc mes o menys. Mas segons los moros compten les llunes, i diuen que en la lluna de sent Joan de juny 1537 tendran ells del seu compte l’any 944, comença este compte l’any del Senyor 593”: P. A. Beuter, Crònica, ed. E. Iborra (Valencia, 1982), 52–53. 396 chapter eighteen

This brief but interesting quotation shows some of the ways in which a historian of the first half of the sixteenth century could deal with the problem of Islamic chronology. Beuter’s closest experience was of Mus- lims who lived in Valencia; the passage in question occurs in a longer one in which he offers examples of how “ordinary people” (vulgars) in Spain still reckoned time on the basis of memorable events. But as a historian he could draw on well-known medieval sources, such as the often-quoted Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, that offered concrete information about the Islamic calendar but no precise system of how to calculate equivalences. Beuter was aware that the Muslims counted time in “moons” but not, apparently, that the lunar cycle is shorter than the solar one; therefore, to arrive at the date of the Hijra by going backward from June 1537 (A.H. 944) he performed a simple subtraction, resulting in a date for the start of the Islamic era that was pushed back by nearly thirty years. The issue of Islamic chronology began to be a problem for historiography in parallel with the concern for the use of Arabic sources. It is not surprising that one of the first Spanish authors to create a somewhat more sophisticated way of calculating equivalences should be Luis del Mármol, who proposed the following method in his Descripción General de África: From the year in which Mohammed took up arms against those tribes, which was in ad 613, the Arabs reckon their era, as a signal event; and they call it the year of the Hixara (which means the pilgrimage) because up to that point they had used the Era of Caesar, whom they call Cáyçar, and some earlier [rulers] from the time of the kings of Persia and Assyria, and the creation of the world. And in computing these years it is essential to bear in mind that the Arabs have both a lunar year and a solar year. They construct the lunar one from twelve moons, six of twenty-nine days and six of thirty, so that the lunar year is eleven days shorter than the solar one, and every thirty years they must subtract one [year] minus forty-five days. [. . .] It arises from this that in computing the reigns of Christian and Moorish kings, and the dates of their principal battles, there is an error because of this lunar calendar of the Arabs.2

2 “Desde el año que Mahoma tomó las armas contra estos pueblos, que fue a los seys cientos y treze de Christo, cuentan los Alárabes su miléssimo, como de cosa muy señalada, y le llaman año de la Hixara (que quiere dezir de la peregrinación), porque hasta allí con- tavan de la Era de César, que llaman Cáyçar, y algunos de más atrás, de los tiempos de los reyes de Persia y de Assiria y de la criación del mundo. Y hase de tener cuenta especial para la computación destos años que los Alárabes tienen año lunar y año solar. El lunar hazen de doze lunas, seys de a veynte y nueve y seys de a treynta días, por manera que viene a ser onze días menor el lunar que el solar, y en cada treynta años se ha de descontar uno menos quarenta y cinco días. [. . .] De aquí nasce que en las computaciones de reynados the orient in spain 397

Years later, Mármol himself would return to this topic in somewhat more detail in his Rebelión. There he admitted that he had been mistaken in placing the beginning of the Hijra in 613, rather than in 621, which he now believed to be the correct date.3 By now the method had begun to take into account the difference between the lunar and solar cycles in a more or less systematic way, and to make more accurate calculations of the difference between them. Ambro- sio de Morales followed the method, but proposed calculating equivalences with the Christian calendar by taking the Islamic date (A.H.) and adding 618 years (since he believed the Muslim era to have begun in 618 ad) plus one additional year for each cycle of thirty. Mármol had proposed subtracting one year minus forty-five days for each thirty-year solar cycle. Morales disdained those forty-five days as insignificant, claiming that “no one need weary himself with something so unimportant and so tedious.”4 But this lack of precision clashed with what he had declared earlier when, in discussing the differences between calendars, he had affirmed that “wise men have always maintained this scrupulous and total exactitude in the reckoning of years, for they consider it the soul of history—if it has one—which gives it life and being; but if it is lacking, history might as well be dead.”5 Although Morales approved of scrupulousness in dating as one of the basic tools of the historian, he does not seem to have believed that Islamic chronology was worthy of exactness—doubtless because the use of Arabic sources was not one of his chief concerns. Nevertheless, Morales’s interest in chronology coincides with one of the major themes of the Humanist project, which had developed chronological tools as a crucial element in constructing a new ars historica.6 This concern would culminate in the masterly work of the learned Calvinist J. J. Scaliger: his attempt to build a great chronological edifice that was both

de reyes Christianos y Moros y en las batallas de notables que se dieron, ay yerro por razón desta cuenta lunar de los Arabes”: L. del Mármol, Descripción, op. cit., I, fol. 55. 3 L. del Mármol, Rebelión, 45. 4 A. de Morales, “De los años de los Alárabes y la diferencia que tienen con los del nacimiento de nuestro Redemptor,” in Los cinco libros postreros de la Corónica General de España (Cordova, 1586). 5 “Esta fineza y entera averiguación en la cuenta de los años han tenido siempre los sabios, que bien juzgan, por ánima de la historia, que le da vida y ser, si la tiene, y queda como muerta si no la tiene”: A. de Morales, “De la mucha diversidad que ay en las maneras de contar los años, y las difficultades que desto proceden [. . .],” in Los otros dos libros undécimo y duodécimo de la Corónica General de España (Alcalá de Henares, 1577), fol. 6v. 6 A. Grafton, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge- New York, 2007), 28. 398 chapter eighteen rigorous and truly inclusive of all the world’s different systems would have an enormous impact on later historical studies.7 Scaliger, who flourished in the second half of the sixteenth century, was possibly the most admired scholar of his time; his work had tremendous influence in transforming historiographic practice and bringing about the adoption of new meth- odological tools like technical chronology. Among other projects, he carried out a critical purge of the texts that Annius of Viterbo had wrongly ascribed to ancient authors like Manethon and Berosus. Scaliger’s work is an extraordinary synthesis of several concerns of the historiography of his age—recourse to astronomical techniques, the need to unite Classical with Oriental studies—taking them to their logical conclusions with great rigor. His indices and tables were an incomparable point of reference that all his contemporaries admired.8 It was in the wake of Scaliger that the first rigorous study on the Islamic calendar appeared in Spain: Father Juan de Mariana’s De annis arabum. It is yet another work that allows us to date the transformation in the use of Arabic to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.9 The work is one of the treatises in Tractatus Septem, a collection that includes Mariana’s famous disquisition on the devaluation of currency. Two of the seven treatises have a chronological theme: the one at issue here on the Islamic calendar and its equivalences with the Christian era, and a second on the year of Christ’s crucifixion.10 Finally, De annis arabum contains a detailed technical discussion of the correct way to calculate the equivalences between the two calendars: it stresses that one must consider not only the difference between the solar and lunar cycles but also the organization of the Islamic system into thirty-year sequences into which one day must be inserted in certain years (although not all astronomers agreed

7 A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger. A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, II, Historical Chronology (Oxford, 1993). 8 A. Grafton, “Joseph Scaliger and Historical Chronology: The Rise and Fall of a Disci- pline,” History and Theory, 15 (1975), 156–185. 9 J. de Mariana, Ioannis Marianae e Societatis Iesu Tractatus VII (Coloniae Agrippinae: Sumptibus Antonij Hierati, sub Monocerote, 1609); Tractatus VI, “De annis arabum cum nostris annis comparatis,” 329 ff. See also id., Historia general de España. Compuesta primero en latín, después buelta en castellano por Juan de Mariana, D. Theólogo, de la Com- pañía de Jesús, 2 vols. (Toledo: imp. Pedro Rodríguez, 1601), Book VI, Chap. XXVI, “De los años de los árabes,” I, 409. 10 The chronology of the life of Christ was a recurring theme, even in popular leaflets, and was not always free from doctrinal controversy. See, for example, AHN, Inquisición, 4467/22: Calificaciones y Censuras de las “Conclusiones cronológicas” del Padre Alonso Mal- donado, 1622. the orient in spain 399 on which were the proper years). This insertion was particularly important for fine-tuning the calculations, and it required some knowledge of Arabic astronomical literature, such as Mariana possessed: for instance he cites the famous al-Battānī, known to medieval Europe as Albatenius or Albategnius. Scaliger’s direct influence on Mariana may be detected in the latter’s inclusion of tables that show the equivalences between the Caesarean era, the Christian era, and the Hijra up to ad 1749. Of course, Arabic works of different genres showed different rhythms of entry into and circulation within Spain. Certain astronomical and medical texts had been available freely and continuously for a very long time, but historical ones suffered a different fate. It is possible to trace examples of translations of Arabic chronicles in Spanish historical writing during the Middle Ages, but the trend did not continue into the Early Modern period, when new histories were being produced. Mariana’s treatise reflects this absence as he tries to approach the historiographic aspect of the problem: how to calculate correctly the equivalences of the two calendars when it was essential to know not only the solar and lunar cycles and the inter- calated years, but also the date to be assigned to the Hijra. Mariana is precise about the latter—he places it on June 15, 622—but despairs at the variations found in other scholars: João de Barros placed it in 593, Mármol in 613, Garibay in 614, and Juan Vaseo in 617, while different opinions were held by Campanus of Novara, Isidore Pacensis, John of Biclaro, Alphonse X, the Annales Compostellani, Annales Complutenses, Anales de Toledo, Johannes Lucidus, Mercator, etc.11 Indeed, how should the exact beginning of the Islamic calendar be determined? The life of the Prophet Muhammad was known in Spain only partially and incorrectly, through a tradition rooted in ancient Greek and Latin sources and often filtered through anti-Muslim polemic. Luis del Mármol, for instance, in spite of his pretensions to consulting Arabic books, had recourse to that tradition, which went back to Paulus Diaco- nus, when he penned a life of the Prophet. Nor did he hesitate to cite Fray Alonso de Espina’s Fortalicium fidei,12 one of the best-known and most virulent anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim polemics of the late Middle Ages. Yet it was clear that the tradition was unsatisfactory and, in many ways, self-contradictory; this fact constituted a genuine difficulty for a “modern”

11 J. de Mariana, “De annis arabum,” op. cit., 329–330. 12 L. del Mármol, Descripción, op. cit., I, fol. 57v. 400 chapter eighteen historiography that was obsessed with chronological exactness, for example when it wished to establish the exact date of Spain’s fall to the Mus- lims. It was this very point, in fact, that became one of the chief topics of discussion among historians who debated whether or not to draw on Arabic sources. In 1684 Father Josef de Moret published his Annales del Reyno de Navarra,13 which included an appendix “On the Year of the Fall of Spain.” In it Father Moret was responding to a “serious writer” (undoubtedly Mon- déjar, in his Disertaciones eclesiásticas) who had placed the conquest in 711 rather than 714, the year generally agreed upon by historians of Spain. In defending the 714 date Moret asserted from the outset that he would not employ the Islamic calendar. Inspired by Mariana, he claimed that Mus- lims differed enormously among themselves in reckoning years and did not even agree on the date of the Hijra, and that historians who had lived with the Arabs, like Mármol (“who lived among them for so many years, and came to know their affairs and their writers so well”) shared those varying opinions. Finally, he stated that the question itself—“In what year did Mohammed embark upon his ravings?”—did not merit the trouble that it would take to determine the exact date of the Hijra. The Marquis of Mondéjar, whom this passage was intended to refute, did in fact display a keen interest in chronology in general and its Islamic variant in particular, and dedicated several substantial studies to the matter.14 Mondéjar scorned Moret’s assertion that the Arabs show no uniformity in the manner of calculating their Hijra, some of them advancing it by many years and others delaying it. It is obvious that Spaniards, having removed the Moors from their country entirely, have lost all memory and every trace of Mohammedanism; if these [masters?] had any contact with Muslims they would know that they show no variation at all in their calculation of the Hijra, even though they are spread from Molucca and the remotest Eastern isles to the Atlantic Ocean. And if any difference should exist among them, it is of at most a single day.15

13 J. de Moret, Annales del Reyno de Navarra, I (Pamplona: Imprenta de Martín Gregorio de Zabala, 1684). 14 Marqués de Mondéjar, Disertazión sobre el día y el año en que comenzó la éjira o la hépocha de los árabes y de los Mahometanos, BNE ms. 2288; id., Examen chronológico del año en que entraron los moros en España (Madrid, 1687). 15 “[Que] los árabes no tienen alguna uniformidad tocante al modo de contar su égira, adelantándola o anticipándola unos muchos años y ottros atrasándola, bien se be que haviendo los españoles echado enteramente a los moros de su Paýs se ha borrado en él la memoria del Mahometisimo [sic] que no ha quedado rastro de él, si esttos [Maestros?] the orient in spain 401

Since the date of the Hijra was sacred and had been established by the Caliph ῾Umar, it was absurd to suppose that any alteration could be made to it: I would certainly like to know how the count could have been changed among these peoples without arousing revulsion. I offer an example: how could they count up to 200 years, and then go on to claim that the next year was not 201 but 210, or 220, or 230; unless we assume that in the same year most people had lost their memory, no idea could be more ridiculous. I am confident that those who have read the books of the Arabs, be they historians or astronomers, will agree that Father Moret’s opinion is one of the strangest paradoxes that has ever been seen. Those who do not know these languages will see clearly that since the time of Caliph Omar there has been no variation in the date of the Hijra; and there is no denying the well-known fact that at the moment that I write this, in the month of June of the year of Our Lord 1692, all the Mohammedans in the universe [are following?] Ramadan of the year 1103 of the Hijra.16 Mondéjar attacked Moret and others such as Pellicer (who maintained that there were two different calculations, one by the Arabs and another based on the Hijra)17 on the basis of a common argument: if such mistaken claims could be made it was because so many people were ignorant of Arabic, and furthermore had not even bothered to ask the Arabs, who were so close at hand: “Far from being of uncertain date, the Hijra is the most secure of dates and is supported by the consensus of many different peoples. Father Moret and the other authors have wasted their time in disputing something that is irrefutable, and about which the Africans and

tuvieran algún comercio con los musulmanes supieran que no difieren en alguna manera tocante a la quentta de la Hégira con haverse estendido desde las Malucas y últimas yslas de Orientte hasta el mar Adlánttico, y si ay alguna diferencia entre ellos no es más de un día a lo summo”: Marqués de Mondéjar, Disertazión, op. cit., fol. 1v. 16 “De buena gana preguntara yo cómo se abrá podido mudar la serie en estos pueblos sin hazerles repugnancia. Y pongo por exemplo, después de haver contado 200, cómo el siguiente avrán podido contar, en lugar de 201 años, 210, ó 220, ó 230, sin suponer que la mayor parte de aquella gente perdió la memoria en un mismo año, y no hay cosa más ridícula que esa ymaginación, y aseguro que los que an le‎ýdo algo de los libros de los Ára- bes, ora sean Ystoriadores o Astrónomos, conbendrán en que la opinión del Padre Moret es una de las más estrañas paradoxas que asta aora se a visto, y los que no saben estas lenguas verán claramente que desde el califa Omar no ha havido alguna diferencia en la cuenta de la égira como también es ynnegable y cosa notoria que en el tiempo que escrivo estto, en el mes de Junio del año de Jesuchristo de 1692, todos los Mahometanos del universo [siguen?] el ramadán del año de 1103 de la égira”: ibid., fol. 2. 17 J. Pellicer, Annales de la Monarquía de España después de su pérdida (Madrid: Fran- cisco Sanz, 1681), 10. 402 chapter eighteen their neighbors would have instructed them, had they wished to learn the truth of the matter.”18 Mondéjar, unlike those he criticized, did draw on Arabic sources: for example in his writings he cites Alfraganus, i.e., Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Kathīr al-Farghānī, recognized in Europe as an authority on astronomy and, especially in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, on matters of chronology.19 He also refers to “Ulug Peigi,” i.e., Ulug Beg (d. 1449), a grandson of Tamerlane and Timurid governor of Transoxiana. He was a well-known astronomer whose astronomical tables, known as al-Zīj al-Sulṭānī or Zīj-i- Ulūgh Bīk, enjoyed unusually wide circulation in Europe and were edited and translated by Johannes Gravius (John Greaves) in 1650.20 Mondéjar further cites the works of Erpenius and Pococke, Athanasius Kircher’s Pro- dromus Coptus, and al-Idrīsī’s Geographia; thanks to this historical corpus he was able to avoid the errors of other historians of Spain who had proved more tendentious and less reliable in regard to Islam, and he could agree with wiser European Orientalists and chronologists that the Hijra dating began in 622.21 For Mondéjar, as for his contemporaries, chronology was a basic tool for the writing of history:

18 “Vien lejos de ser la égira época ynzierta, no ay épocha o quenta más segura y apoiada por el consentimiento de tan distintos pueblos. El padre Moret y los autores an perdido el ttiempo en disputar sobre una cosa yncontrastable y en que los Africanos y sus vecinos les uvieran ynstruydo si ubieran querido ynformarse de la berdad del caso”: Marqués de Mondéjar, Disertazión, op. cit., fol. 3r. 19 A. Hamilton, Arab Culture, op. cit., 61. Mondéjar mentions the three known translations of his Elements of Astronomy: the medieval one by John of Seville and Gerard of Cremona; the sixteenth-century one by the German Orientalist and astronomer Jakob Christmann, published in Frankfurt (in Latin, based on the Hebrew version by Jacob Antoli), Chrono- logica et astronomica elementa [. . .] (Frankfurt: apud Andreas Wechell heredes, Claudium Marnium et Ioann. Aubrium, 1590); and the Latin one by Jacob Golius, Muhammedis fil. Ketiri, qui vulgo Alfraganus dicitur, Elementa astronomica, Arabice & Latine [. . .] (Amster- dam: apud Jansonium a Waesberge & viduam Elizei Weyerstraet, 1669). 20 U. Beg (1394–1449), Epochae celebriores, astronomis, historicis, chronologis, chataio- rum, syro-graecorum, arabum [. . .] (London: Jacobi Flesher, & prostant apud Cornelium Bee [. . .], 1650). See, for example, R. Mercier, “English Orientalists and Mathematical Astronomy,” in E. G. Russell (ed.), The “Arabick” Interest, op. cit., 158–214. 21 All the scholars who had dedicated themselves to reading and studying Arab authors were in agreement on this date. Mondéjar lists them as “Thomas Erpenio, Iacopo Golio, Gabriel Sinaita [sic], Juan Hesronita, Guillermo Pocokio, Abrahan Eccelense, Juan Seldeno, Juan Henrique Hotingero, and Juan Gravio.” To these should be added the most famous chronologists of the age: “Josepho Scaligero, Iacobo Clepero, Matheo Beroaldo, Iacobo Chrismano, Nicolás Mulero, Juan de Mariana, Dyonisio Petavio, Seto Clavisio, Abrahan Bucholcero, Christophoro Helvicio, Iacobo Grandamico, Egidio Estrauchio, Juan Baptista Ricciolio, plus Juan Gramaire, Phelipe Briecio, Georgio Hornio.” See Marqués de Mondéjar, Examen cronológico, op. cit., 101–102. the orient in spain 403

Just as history is the ruler of life, chronology, or the awareness and ordering of time, is the light of history. Without its illumination its teachings are unseen and unpersuasive, and many events lacked order and seemed uncertain, because they were foreign to the time in which they were related; with it, those events became credible and securely established. For this reason so many modern historians have striven to clarify and situate the most famous actions of the ancients, which were confused and misplaced in the works of those who did not use chronology as a guide as they proposed to write the histories of all peoples.22 Therefore, in order to calculate the exact year of the fall of Spain, one must refer to writers of both sides, although there are some who, over- confident of their own opinion, disdain the Arabs, either because they have not read them—as they are rare in the principal collections in Spain—or because they will not take the time to compare and reconcile their calendar system with our own. They cannot be unaware—because Luis del Mármol mentions it—of how much Africans still celebrate this event, preserving it in their memory and calling it Gazuat El Indiluz [ghazwat al-Andalus].23 This concern for methodology, based on the great tradition of Orientalist historiography in Europe, was a basic determiner of the historiographic practice of this small Spanish learned elite; it also influenced the types of works that were translated and consulted within the group. We know, for instance, that Marcos Dobelio’s partial translation of Abū l-Fidāʾ was mined particularly for its chronological value: the Count of Campomanes, whose surviving papers include a copy of it, used it for this purpose in his own work on the chronology of the Arabs in Spain.24 This zeal for

22 “Assí como es la historia maestra de la vida, es la Chronología, o conocimiento i orden de los tiempos, luz de la historia, sin cuyo esplendor ni se percibe ni se persuade lo que enseña, i con ella se han hecho creíbles muchos sucessos que, desordenados, por no convenir a la edad en que se referían, peligravan de inciertos, i con su apoyo permanecen seguros. Ésta es la razón porque se han empleado tantos escritores modernos en aclarar i poner en su devido lugar las más señaladas acciones de los antiguos, que corrían confun- didas y dislocadas en los que sin esta guía emprendieron formar las historias de todas las naciones”: ibid., 1. 23 “Es preciso valerse de los escritores de ambas, aunque no falte quien, satisfecho más de lo que debiera de su dictamen, desestime los Árabes, u porque no los ha visto, por menos comunes en las librerías más escogidas de España, u por no detenerse a conferir y concordar la diferencia de sus cómputos con los nuestros, no pudiendo ignorar, pues consta de Luis del Mármol, quánto solemnizan los Africanos este sucesso a que ellos, con- servando todavía su memoria, llaman Gazuat El Indiluz”: ibid., 8. 24 A note on the first folio of his copy reads: “I note also that Inveges, in the History of Sicily, published something by Amad eldin [῾Imād al-Dīn] about the chronology of the Saracens in Sicily, about which nothing is said in this translation./ I therefore surmise that this work is not complete, but rather a literal translation of what is relevant to Spain 404 chapter eighteen chronological rigor is characteristic of the historical projects of the Span- ish Enlightenment. Mayáns i Siscar published two volumes through the Academia Valenciana: one was Nicolás Antonio’s Censura de historias fabulosas, and the other the Marquis of Mondéjar’s Obras chronológicas. The latter was divided into two parts, one devoted to the Hispanic Era and the other a re-edition of Examen chronológico del año en que entraron los moros en España (Chronological study of the year in which the Moors entered Spain).25 Of equal interest in this regard is the abovementioned translation by Juan Durán de Torres of Ibn al-Shiḥna’s Rawḍat al-manāẓir. As another Eastern text, written by a Cairene judge in the wake of Abū l-Fidāʾ’s Ta⁠ʾrīkh, it described the history of the world from its beginnings. The decision to translate it seems to have arisen not from its relevance to the history of Spain but for its value in establishing the chronology of world history, especially as concerned Egypt; or, in Durán de Torre’s words already quoted, as “a general chronicle of a notable series [of rulers], from the first ancient monarchies to the most recent Saracen history.” We shall mention below a Turkish manuscript owned by Mondéjar that was also translated (or at least its translation was attempted) and that spoke of “the long series of centuries by which [Egypt’s] chronology exceeds our own,” and “the particular errors of the Egyptians, who, in order to give more renown and precedence to their province, supply the Patriarch Noah with more sons than those mentioned in the canonical texts; they place new characters with him in the Ark, more than those whom Moses and St. Peter mention either positively or negatively.”26 This manuscript recalls another Spanish

or has an important connection to its Arab history. Its usefulness is so well known that it needs no recommendation, as will be seen in the Arabic Chronology that I have been commissioned to write by the Royal Academy of History./ Madrid, November 30, 1754./ Campomanes” (“También prevengo que Inveges, en la Historia de Sicilia, publicó algo de Amad eldin tocante a la Chronología de los Sarracenos en Sicilia, de lo qual nada ay en esta traducción./ Por lo qual me inclino a que esta obra no es íntegra, sino una traduc- ción literal de lo que pertenece a España o tiene preciosa conexión con la historia Árabe de ella. Su utilidad es tan notoria que no necesita recomendación, como se verá en mi Chronología Árabe, que estoy escribiendo de orden de mi Academia Real de la Historia./ Madrid y noviembre 30 de 1754./ Campomanes”): M. Dobelio, Suma, FUE, Papeles de Cam- pomanes, ms. 4–1, fol. 1r. 25 Marqués de Mondéjar, Obras chronológicas de don Gaspar Ibáñez de Segovia Peralta i Mendoza [. . .]. Las publica, de orden i a expensas de la academia Valenciana, don Gregorio Mayàns i Siscàr, Censor de dicha Academia (Valencia: por Antonio Bordazar de Artazú, Impressor Académico, 1744). 26 “[E]l prolongado término de siglos que exçede su Cronología a la nuestra”; “los errores particulares de los Egipçios que para dar más lustre y antigüedad a su Probin- the orient in spain 405 translation of a Turkish chronicle of which we shall speak, the Annals of Egypt by Mustafa Çelebi Celâlzade. This small group of works on chronological themes seems to have been consulted not so much for Spanish as for world and especially Egyptian history. Here the interests of a small group of Spanish Orientalists, originally centered on the exact date of the Muslim conquest of their country, turned toward a more general objective: a concern for the origins of the world, within a global perspective that situated Spain’s past within that of Eastern lands. We have touched on certain favorite topics, like the Phoe- nicians, that placed Spain in relation to the East. We shall now turn to two others, closely connected to each other: Judaism and Egypt.

The Orient in Spain: Judaism

We have referred repeatedly to the fact that many Spanish historians, from at least the second half of the sixteenth century onward, were deeply attracted to explanations of an Orientalist character. In search of an ancient presence of the East in Spain they had grasped at a number of explanations: the Phoenicians, the pre-Islamic Arabs, and the Jews of the lost tribes of Israel. Traces of the Orient could be found in many different places: in toponymy, in language, in archaeological remains, and in certain customs. As an example of the latter, Father Tomás de León showed a continuous interest in the Eastern, supposedly Hebrew, origin of the arras in the Spanish wedding ceremony: he mentioned it several times in his correspondence in more or less developed form. In a letter of 1659 he claimed to be working on the topic for “a larger volume” that would be called De moribus et republica hebraeorum (“a matter,” he added, “on which Sigonio, Cuna[. . .], Menochio, and others have worked”).27 Although we have not identified this treatise nor is it certain that León completed it, its proposed title is significant and points, as the learned Jesuit himself indicated, to other well-known works of the time: De republica hebraeorum was, in fact, the exact title of several books, among them those by Giovanni Stefano Menochio, Carlo Sigonio, and Petrus Cunaeus,

çia añaden más hijos al Patriarcha Noé de los que se hallan en los volúmenes Canónicos yntroduçiendo con él en el Arca nuevas personas y más de las que positiva y negativa- mente refieren Moysén y San Pedro.” 27 Letter from Tomás de León to an unknown addressee, February 20, 1569, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 44v. 406 chapter eighteen some of which were very widely read.28 All formed part of a solid scholarly tradition that, aside from its concern with the Hebrew language, entered into the ancient history of the Jewish people and in particular its political institutions and system of laws. Among these Buxtorf ’s Synagoga Iudaica, already mentioned, was of special importance. Tomás de León’s preoccupation with the arras was at bottom a juridi- cal issue. In the library of the Hospital Real in Granada there is a response, probably by León himself, to a legal query, defined as “The Spanish arras, what they are and what is their origin.”29 It is a brief analysis of the types of matrimonial donations made in Spain, in particular the arras, a dowry given by the bridegroom to the bride that remained in her possession if the marriage was dissolved. León’s historical-legal study of the issue led him to believe that its origins were Eastern and Hebrew. As he expressed it, And as we shall see, among the Orientals the husband endowed his wife with, and bought for her, and gave her, gifts; these gifts, no matter what might happen, belonged to the wife, and she kept them; therefore, these gifts correspond entirely to the arras in Castile. Whereby we observe that the Spanish arras began to be used after Spain was recovered, perhaps in imitation of the Arabs and peoples of the East with whom [Spaniards] were in neighborly contact, and did not derive from the Goths and Romans.30 Tomás de León went into more detail in his letters on the Eastern origin of this type of dowry, which could be traced to the bracelets that Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, gave to Rebecca;31 he was inspired to make several asides on topics like the Eastern etymology of ajorca ‘bracelet.’32 An

28 C. Sigonio, De rep. Hebraeorum libri 7 [. . .] (Bologna: apud Ioannem Rossium, 1582); P. Cunaeus, De republica hebraeorum libri 3 (Louvain: apud Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1617); and G. Menochio, De republica hebraeorum libri octo [. . .] (Paris: sumptibus Antonii Ber- tier, 1648). 29 BHR, caja A-042. 30 “Y assí como veremos luego, entre los orientales dotava el marido a su muger y la comprava y la dava dones, estos dones en cualquier acontecimiento pertenecían a la muger y las llevava por lo qual estos dones en todo corresponden a las arrhas de Castilla. Con que se vee que las arras españolas se comenzaron a usar después de la restauración de España y quizá por emulación de los Árabes y naciones de orientales con quienes se avezindavan y comunicavan y no se derivó de los Godos y Romanos”: ibid., fol. 51r. 31 Letter from Tomás de León to Antonio de Araoz, November 7, 1658, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fols. 1–2. As a curiosity we might recall that Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, in order to demonstrate the ancient presence of Jews in the Kingdom of Toledo, adduced the discovery of a very old dowry document when a wall of the Trujeque cemetery was pulled down: see Historia eclesiástica de la imperial ciudad de Toledo, vol. II, BNE ms. 8193, fol. 103v. 32 Letter from Tomás de León to Antonio de Araoz, December 10, 1658, ibid., fol. 17. the orient in spain 407 interesting moment in the correspondence came when he thanked his interlocutor—possibly the Marquis of Mondéjar33—for having recommended a book that had proved useful for his dissertation on the arras: it was a work of Selden’s whose title, although not stated, can be deduced. León claimed to know several of John Selden’s works, among them De Dîs Syris and the Marmora Arundelliana—and also to admire “the English and their singular elegance in translating Latin verse”—, but not the one that Mondéjar was now recommending. We may assume that the latter was Uxor ebraica seu De nuptiis & divortiis ex iure civili, id est, divino & talmudico, veterum Ebraeorum libri tres [. . .].34 The book’s title reveals a great deal about John Selden’s project and his interest in studying ancient Hebrew legislation, which was highly relevant to his political and legal opinions in England at the time. Selden’s concern was to establish the difference between natural law, which had been granted by God to all humanity (based, by rabbinical tradition, on God’s seven commandments to the sons of Noah),35 and civil law, which concerned the particular norms of each nation and could not be extended to all mankind. Jewish civil law, in other words, belonged only to the Jewish people, could not be applied to England, and therefore could not be invoked by bishops to legitimize their own rights as an ecclesiastical body. The ultimate consequence of this reasoning, at a time of conflict between civil and ecclesiastical power, was to invest Parliament with final authority in religious matters. It is significant that Selden was one of the first European Hebraists to show interest in the Karaites; he often incorporated their tradition into his works as proof that an ideology based exclusively on scriptural fundamentalism would meet serious obstacles if used as a concrete program for political action.36

33 Letter from Tomás de León possibly to the Marquis of Mondéjar, February 20, 1659, ibid., fol. 44. 34 J. Selden, Uxor ebraica seu De nuptiis & divortiis ex iure civili, id est, divino & Talmu- dico, veterum Ebraeorum libri tres stupenda & Christianis quasi inaudita Karaeorum seu judaeorum scripturariorum de Incestu dogmata interserunt, accedunt non pauca de contra- hendis sovendisque matrimoniis paganorum, mahumedanorum, atque christianorum, idque ex jure tum caesareo aliarumque gentium complurium, tum pontificio tam orientis quàm occidentis, quà sive ex Ebraeorum moribus desfluxerint, sive eis cognata videantur (London: typis Richardi Bishopii, 1646). 35 J. P. Rosenblatt, “John Selden’s De Jure Naturali . . . Juxta Disciplina Ebraeorum and Religious Toleration,” in A. P. Coudert and J. S. Shoulson (eds.), Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, 2004), 102–124. On Selden see G. Toumer, John Selden. A Life in Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2009). 36 J. R. Ziskind, “Introduction,” in John Selden on Jewish Marriage Law. The Uxor Hebra- ica, transl. and comm. by [. . .] (Leiden, 1991). 408 chapter eighteen

We have already observed that Tomás de León was disturbed by Selden’s use of his research into Jewish laws and institutions as a basis for his own legal and parliamentary positions. At one point in his correspondence, for example, referring to the parts of the Englishman’s argument that we have just discussed, he wrote that “Selden’s conclusion is very curious, and I must deal with it.” He went on to say, “As for the precepts given to the sons of Noah, we have the decision by the Apostles in their Acts in the dispute over whether the Gentiles should be circumcised, when it was determined that only the precepts of the Idolothytos should be followed”;37 this argument should be viewed, of course, in the light of the concept of Jewish laws as the basis for a law that would be valid for all peoples. The problematic nature of Selden’s work was, in any event, no barrier to its circulation among the members of this learned circle of Spanish Orientalists like Juan Lucas Cortés, Mondéjar, and Tomás de León. We may well ask how they used this sensitive material, or what position they took vis-à-vis Continental debates in which Jewish tradition was deployed either to uphold the theocratic basis of the State or to oppose it. What we do observe here is a significant difference in how ancient Spanish history and its Oriental connections were now being used: we no longer see references to the millenial presence of Jews in Spain or to the lost tribes of Israel as supposed founders of the city of Granada. Through the vehicle of scholarly exchange, the topic of the East (in this case Jewish antiquity) had been integrated into the political, historical, and theological discussions that were so fundamental to European culture in the seventeenth century. In this process, access to original sources was of the utmost importance. We have just seen the same problem posed in regard to chronology. John Selden himself had undertaken a study of Hebrew chronology in his De anno civili & calendario veteris Ecclesiae seu Reipublicae judaicae dissertatio,38 as the Marquis of Mondéjar had also done in his chronological studies when he wrote a treatise on “The inconstancy of rabbinical and modern writings, uncertain and various, origin and age of their calculations, what they believe about Christ and about the age in which he flourished. Differences in adapting the years of the creation, and from

37 “De los preceptos de los hijos de Noé, tenemos nosotros la decisión de los Apóstoles en los Actos suios, quando se controvirtió si se avían de circumcidar los gentiles, y se deter- minó que sólo quedassen los preceptos de los Idolothytos”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, April 2, 1659, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 50v. 38 J. Selden, De anno civili & calendario veteris Ecclesiae seu Reipublicae judaicae dissertatio [. . .] (London: excudebat Richardus Bishopius, 1644). the orient in spain 409 what time they used this calendar.”39 The piece intended to “demonstrate the inconstancy, improbability, and lack of substance that can be deduced from rabbinical writings.” Mondéjar was seeking to prove that the Jews had not written about chronology before Jesus’s time, and that their motive was in part to falsify the date at which Jesus lived so that they could deny that the destruction of the Second Temple was a punishment for the Jews’ deicide. Mondéjar likewise tried to show that the rabbinical calendar that began with the creation of the world was inconsistent and various, as occurred also in the Samaritan tradition. He incorporated into his treatise references to rabbinical literature and Samaritan texts, the latter having been accorded new importance in Europe through the work of Jean Morin and Walton’s Polyglot Bible. Mondéjar’s ultimate goal was to separate Chris- tianity clearly from Judaism; he deplored the uses made of the Biblical text by the rabbis, and also criticized the Kabbala severely.40 But on this point he entered sensitive territory, that of the chronology of the Biblical account and the Bible’s status as a reliable chronological source. We shall return shortly to this subject to explore how Mondéjar faced the problem of Biblical chronologies, but first we shall refer to one of the principal themes that underlay the presence of the Orient in Spain: Egypt.

The Orient in Spain: Egypt

Tomás de León’s letters reveal that it was “our Kircher” whose intellectual influence on him was the most direct, clear, and lasting. We have alluded to his letters to the master, some of which Kircher edited for inclusion in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus. The diverse topics of their correspondence were related to their common interests. For example, when León sent Kircher the strange inscriptions connected with the discovery of the Cross of Caravaca—which Miguel de Luna, claiming that they were Arabic, had

39 “Inconstancia de los escritos de sus cómputos, qué sienten de Christo y de la edad en que floreció. Diversidad de ajustar los años de la creación y desde quándo usaron esta quenta”: Marqués de Mondéjar, Contestación a los reparos hechos a las Disertaciones ecle- siásticas, vol. I, BNE ms. 5557, fols. 54r ff. 40 “This Kabbalistic science that the modern Hebrews esteem so greatly, and that they imagine proves their wildest conjectures, is not only scorned and despised by Catholics, but even the most learned among them [i.e., other Jews, like Maimonides] censure it” (“Esta ciencia cabalística tan estimada de los Ebreos modernos como aquélla con que fan- tásticamente comprueban sus delirios, no sólo la desprecian y abominan los cathólicos, pero aun entre ellos mismos la vituperan los más eruditos”): ibid., fol. 61v. 410 chapter eighteen translated—the two scholars doubtless shared a concern with the relationship between writing and knowledge; this, as we have seen, nurtured their relatively unsuccessful studies of hieroglyphics, which they supposed to be ideograms that contained an essential wisdom. We can trace some of León’s and Mondéjar’s interest in ancient Egypt through this intellectual friendship with Kircher and the resulting interchange of opinions and of books, many of which were found in the library of the Jesuits’ San Pablo College in Granada.41 In a letter to the Marquis of Mondéjar, Tomás de León replied to two questions relative to Egypt that the former had posed. The first was as follows: How, among these scholars, columns are the same as pyramids, for neither the form nor the writing distinguish them; and both of them were altars, and only their material was more or less precious; and the object expressed in writing made them rare and different from public ones. The second question had to do with the chronology of ancient Egyptian and Hebrew dynasties: In which I prove, based on certain eras in Egyptian history and the foundation of its monarchy, that the dynasties listed by Manethon are concurrent. I confess that this author and other rascals, through their ambition and vanity, tried to make them successive, in order to sell his reign as the oldest; but Moses foresaw this and convinced us that it was vanity [. . .]. It is reasonable that in the sequence of the kings of Israel the dynasties should be successive, for that of Egypt became a monarchy in spite of not having been one at the beginning.42 These paragraphs touch on two of the questions that most preoccupied scholars of Egypt at the time. One was the problem of writing, which we have discussed above and which, in Spain, had occasionally linked discus-

41 We could mention other common interests of León and Kircher, such as squaring the circle, that are not directly relevant to the present study: see, for example, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 29r. 42 “Cómo lo mismo es entre estos sabios colunas que pyrámides, pues ni la diferenciava la forma ni la escritura, y unas y otras eran altares, y sólo la materia más o menos preciosa, y el objeto que se expressava en la escritura las hacía arcanas y differentes de las públicas”; “. . . en que por épochas ciertas de la historia aegyptia y primera fundación de su monar- quía pruevo que las dynastías de Manethón son concurrentes, bien confiesso que este autor y otros gitanos, con la ambición y vanidad quisieron, para vender por [sic] su reyno por el más antiguo de todas hazerlas succesivas, pero esta vanidad la previno Moysés y nos la dexó convenzida [. . .]. Que en el concurso de los reyes de Israel sean successivas tiene su razón, pues ya llegó a ser Monarquía la de Egypto no aviendo sido en su principio tal”: letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, October 7, 1549, ibid., fol. 21r. the orient in spain 411 sion of Solomonic characters to that of other forms of ancient script, especially Eastern ones. The second was the problem of chronology, a signal concern at the time; it had to deal with the discrepancy between Biblical chronology and those of other ancient peoples like the Egyptians and the Chinese, which seemed to be much older. In fact the two issues were closely related, because they were attempt- ing to insert the study of Oriental wisdom and writing into a coherent chronological framework in which Church history could no longer ignore evidence from a variety of non-European cultures and languages. By this logic Mondéjar, León and their colleagues could no longer approach the ecclesiastical history of Spain without integrating it into world history. For León in particular, that connection was made largely thanks to his relationship with Kircher; it led him, for instance, to an interest in studying the Coptic language. At one point, in a discussion about the origins of writing, León invoked the authority of “the Hebrew Abén Nephi,” who had agreed with Arab authors for whom Enoch, called Idrīs in Arabic, had been the first writer. The reference was to Barachias Nephi, a mysterious Babylonian rabbi and author of a manuscript that Kircher claimed to own: an Arabic text that he had copied from one in the library of the Elector of Mainz, and that allowed him to decipher all of the manuscripts found in Rome. From the time of his arrival in France in 1632 Kircher had been alluding to this manuscript, which had aroused great expectation among prominent scholars like Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. The latter hoped that Kircher would help him to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics—a disappointed hope, since the Jesuit never allowed him to see the manuscript.43 Kircher made use of this unseen text in his works: he cited it, for instance, as his authority for classifying different types of letters.44 He believed that the first ideograms had evolved into Coptic characters, which he thought were the prototypes for Greek letters.45 It is within this general framework that we can better understand Tomás de León’s interest in Coptic, which had probably been present throughout his life as a scholar. As we mentioned above, the copy of Kircher’s Prodromus

43 P. Findlen, “The Last Man Who Knew Everything . . . or Did He? Athanasius Kircher, S. J. (1602–80) and His World,” in P. Findlen, Athanasius Kircher, op. cit., 1–48, esp. 12–13. 44 E. Iversen, The Myth of Egypt, op. cit., 96 and 161 n. 32. 45 On Kircher, Coptic, and relations in general between Europe and Coptic Christian- ity in the Early Modern and Modern periods see A. Hamilton, The Copts and the West, 1439–1822. The European Discovery of the Egyptian Church (Oxford, 2009), esp. 196–228. 412 chapter eighteen coptus that belonged to the San Pablo College in Granada had been a gift from the author himself. In discussing the Coptic alphabet, Kircher had introduced the topic of Solomonic writing and illustrated it with an alphabet taken from the Sacromonte Lead Books. Although Kircher did not mention Granada, a marginal note (possibly by León himself ) stated that Kircher here “alludit ad characteres librorum Montis Ilipulitani Granatensis.”46 Following in Kircher’s footsteps, León attempted a historical description of the languages and scripts used in the history of Egypt. Although his explanation was not always clear and contained many obscure passages, its essence was as follows: in Egypt there were three types of script, the hieroglyphic, the ancient Egyptian, and the Hellenic. The first of these was the oldest, a writing system not “of sounds and syllables, but of concepts (razones)”; it was difficult to comprehend, few people knew it, and it required translation, but the ancient Hebrews had understood it. Sub- sequently the so-called Egyptian characters were used, and then the Hel- lenic, which were the same as the “ancient Egyptian, but in a different order and with the addition of some letters.” These Hellenic characters were not the Greek ones, but rather a special Egyptian form of writing.47 As for the languages, Greek had been introduced into Egypt as the court language through the conquests of Alexander the Great. In Alexan- dria and the Nile Delta Greek had been the spoken language in the early Christian era, and therefore the Egyptian spoken in the Upper Thebiad contained many Greek loanwords. In spite of that mixing the Egyptian language spoken by Christians, that is to say Coptic, was unrelated to Greek; it had its own grammar, and its lexicon of Greek origin occurred only in the language of the church. This Coptic language, then, was the same as ancient Egyptian, but was not the pure form that had been spoken before Alexander’s time.48 To buttress his arguments León cited, among others, the Scala Magna or al-Sullam al-kabīr by Ibn Kabar, a Coptic-Arabic dic-

46 A. Kircher, Prodromus coptus sive aegyptiacus [. . .] (Rome: Typis S. Cong. de propag. Fide, 1636), 198–200. 47 Letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, December 14, 1659, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 3r ff. 48 León did not agree with Kircher’s opinion that Coptic was ancient Egyptian. He was aware of Samuel Boschart’s criticisms of Kircher: see his letter to the Marquis of Mondéjar, July 8, 1664, ibid., fols. 23v–24r. the orient in spain 413 tionary that Kircher had edited and translated into Latin in his Lingua aegyptiaca restituta.49

Egyptian Chronology

As we have remarked, this investigation into the Coptic and ancient Egyptian languages and their several writing systems was connected to broader research on the history of Egypt and the chronology of its dynasties. We have seen how Tomás de León spoke of the problem of adjusting the chronology of the Pharaohs, which was the more ancient, to that of the Hebrews. One of the difficulties that Mondéjar hoped to solve, in fact, by consulting Arabic sources was “to adjust the successive order of the ancient Kings of Egypt according to the thinking of the Arabs”; he cited some of those histories by way of Abraham Zacuto, who named among other rulers of ancient Egypt Mizraim, Talma, Carson, and Tutis. None of these corresponded to names assigned by the Greeks, as Samuel Boschart had already pointed out, but they did occur in Schickhard’s Tarich (Series of Persian Kings) and in Hottinger’s Historia Orientalis. Mondéjar, however, was in possession of a special volume that would help him: On this subject I have better sources than others, for I possess a good-sized Turkish manuscript, written by a judge in Cairo, that contains only the history of Egypt; and although it was composed just over one hundred years ago, it offers very exact information that is vouched for by the archives and the writing of that province.50 It seemed that Mondéjar’s manuscript might make a substantial contribution to a question that had preoccupied scholars as eminent as Boschart, Ecchellensis, and Hottinger. We hear more about it in the course of the same correspondence on learning, from an anonymous letter, that it was being translated: Curiosity, and persuasion by others whom I am bound to respect, moved me to undertake the translation of this history of Egypt. And although I realized

49 A. Kircher, Lingua aegyptia restituta opus tripartitum [. . .] (Rome: sumptibus Her- manni Sheus, apud Ludovicum Grignanum, 1643). On fol. 41r: “Scala Magna, hoc est Nomenclator Aegyptiaco-Arabicus cum interpretatione latin.” The copy from the Hospi- tal Real library, originally from the San Pablo College, bears a manuscript note: “Donum authoris, Romae 15 aprilis 1646.” 50 Letter from the Marquis of Mondéjar, probably to Tomás de León, n.d., Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 228v. 414 chapter eighteen

from the beginning that it was composed from uncertain materials, I still believed that mixed with them there was information of no common sort— especially for the Spanish milieu, which is so far removed from the customs, rites, and government of the Orientals. And I thought that reading it would not be disagreeable as long as it was preceded by those warnings that are necessary for most works which, having been written by infidels, are presented to a Catholic audience.51 We have been unable to determine with certainty the identity of this history of Egypt written in Turkish, nor the name of its translator. The year 1678 saw the publication in Madrid of Anales de Egipto, a translation of a work by the sixteenth-century Turkish historian Mustafa Çelebi Celâlzade; its translator was Vicente (or Vincenzo) Bratuti of Ragusa, who had served as interpreter of Oriental languages for Emperor Ferdinand III of Germany and later for Philip IV and Charles II of Spain.52 We cannot establish that the latter work was the same one that Mondéjar wrote about, but even if the two were different the similarity between the two projects was striking, both being Turkish chronicles that recounted the history of Egypt from its beginnings. Our anonymous letter-writer spoke frankly not only about the value of translations from Eastern languages but also about their problematic quality; yet the usefulness of making little-known information about the East available in Spanish should outweigh its uncertain nature. One had to assume that because the author is a Mohammedan (their minds being naturally superstitious) he allows himself to be seduced by the fantastic fictions with which the Egyptians intertwined their origins. He reproduces, without examination

51 “La curiosidad y la persuaçión de algunos a cuyo respecto no pudo faltar mi obedien- çia me hiço emprender la traduçión desta historia de Egipto, y aunque reconoçí desde los umbrales de su fábrica la ynçertidumbre de los materiales de que se formaba, me pareçió sin embargo se mezclavan entre ellos notiçias no vulgares, espeçialmente al estilo Español, tan remoto de las costumbres, ritos y Govierno de los Orientales, y que no desagradaría su lecçión, si la preçediesen aquellos advertimientos de que neçessitan por la mayor parte las obras todas que, compuestas de ynfieles se haçen públicas al teatro Cathólico”: Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 255r. 52 Anales de Egipto, en que se trata de las cosas más principales que han sucedido desde el principio del mundo hasta de cien años a esta parte. Compuestos por Salih Gelil, historiador turco, y aora traducidos de lengua turca en castellana por don Vicente Bratuti, Ragusés, traductor de lenguas de Carlos Segundo el Grande [. . .] (Madrid: Melchor Álvarez, 1678). On Bratuti see J. A. Pellicer y Saforcada, Ensayo de una bibliotheca de traductores españoles, donde se da noticia de las traducciones que hay en castellano de la Sagrada Escritura [. . .] (Madrid, 1778; facsimile ed., Badajoz, 2002), 166–167; and F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Frag- mentos,” op. cit., 260–261. Bratuti also translated into Spanish a Turkish version of Kalīla wa-Dimna, published with the title Espejo político y moral para príncipes, ministros y todo género de personas (Madrid, 1654). the orient in spain 415

or judgment, everything that he found in their histories, which our Classical Greek and Latin authors have considered for centuries to be chimerical and invented.53 This Muslim author, by accepting ancient Egyptian texts uncritically, had introduced into his narrative exaggerated events and imaginary rulers, together with “an excessive number of centuries by which their chronology exceeds our own.” Moreover he had followed the Qurʾān and had combined it with the errors of the Egyptians, who, in their zeal to enhance their province’s age and fame, had invented new sons of Noah and more passengers in the Ark than the canonical number given by Moses in the Bible. The translator had decided to leave such “scandalous and unwor- thy” stories intact because they were integral to his narrative. He had also taken at face value the Greek and Latin writers “who, hating and insulting the Hebrew people, had tried to soil the purity of their ancient religion with horrible accounts of abominable stupidities, falsely subjecting them to calumny.” In this regard the interpreters of Tacitus were especially guilty: “in turning him into our own language, they translated that scandalous false account that he gave of the origin and religion of the Jews.” Finally, the Turkish text contained too many “magical fictions,” which should be taken as altogether superstitious and false—even though all the authors had already stressed the Egyptians’ dedication to magic, and the Bible itself told how the Egyptians had tried to discredit Moses by means of it. Therefore it was best to reserve judgment even in the face of the strangest events.54 This text provides excellent insight into the type of information that Spaniards were seeking in all these chronicles of Egypt. Taken as a whole— the translations of the histories of Abū l-Fidāʾ and Ibn al-Shiḥna, as well as these two translations from Turkish—they illustrate two basic characteristics of the Spanish scholarship of the time. First, the conviction of belonging to a “Republic of Letters” deeply dependent on European books, ideas, and debates; and second, a viewpoint on Spanish history informed

53 “[S]iendo el autor Mahometano, cuyos genios son por naturaleça supersticiosos, se dexa fáçilmente llevar de las ficçiones fantásticas con que los Egipçios enmarañaron sus orígenes, refiriendo sin examen ni juiçio quanto halló en sus historias, tantos siglos ha notadas de nuestros escritores clásicos, así Griegos como Latinos, de quiméricas y soñadas.” 54 “[Q]ue, en odio y vituperio del pueblo Hebreo, yntentaron manchar la pureça de su religión antigua con horribles testimonios d[e] abominables torpeças que falsamente les calumniaron”; “que familiariçándole a nuestra lengua traduxeron aquel escandaloso diseño que falsamente hiço [Tácito] del origen y religión de los Judíos”: Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 255. 416 chapter eighteen by certain key issues, notably ancient history, that were of Europe-wide concern. It is not surprising that chronology should appear as a recurrent topic in these texts, since it exemplifies the development of a critical historiographic tool that was beginning to challenge the prevailing official wisdom. But how boldly were Spanish scholars prepared to enter into the intellectual debates of their time, and how far could those debates be taken?

“The Perverse Domestic Enemies of the Church”

We have recounted the debates that the Marquis of Mondéjar maintained with some of his contemporaries, like José de Moret, about the date of the Hijra and its importance for writing the history of Spain. For Mon- déjar, the issue was no longer the technical details used to calculate the equivalence between the lunar and solar calendars; it was the absolute necessity of consulting Arabic sources in order to establish the chronology of Spanish history. We cannot understand this discussion without taking into account the influence of Scaliger and the debates that surrounded his work. Scaliger, faced with a historiographic tradition whose basic sources for ancient history were no more than the Bible and, in some cases, the inventions of Annius of Viterbo, had insisted on the need to consult pagan, non-Biblical sources in order to establish a rigorous chronology.55 The increasing presence of Oriental texts in the marketplace of European scholarship made it easier to argue for this course. We have seen how those works had come to be known in Spain and had inspired local scholars to broaden their historiographic horizons, encouraging them to move from purely Spanish to world history, or rather to Spain as a part of world history, and of the history of the East in particular. We should place within this context the interest of Mondéjar, León, and their colleagues in the Arabic and Turkish chronicles we have just cited, through which the matter of Egypt had acquired new meanings. Tomás de León followed his friend Kircher in believing that Egypt offered the chance to reconstruct the ancient wisdom that was hidden in its hieroglyphs. On the other hand, Scaliger had foregrounded the debate about Egyptian dynasties: in editing and publishing the works of Manethon (an ancient author to whom, as with the Chaldean Berosus, Annius of Viterbo

55 A. Grafton, “Joseph Scaliger and Historical Chronology,” op. cit., 168–169. the orient in spain 417 had attributed false texts of his own invention) he had revealed the existence of dynasties that, according to Biblical reckoning, would have existed even before the Creation. As the learned men of Europe digested Scaliger’s work, they began to realize the extraordinary implications of what he had proposed and to react in different ways. Gerardus Vossius, for example, tried to argue that those ancient Egyptian dynasties must have been not successive but simultaneous, thus allowing them to have emerged later than the Creation. Shortly afterward Isaac La Peyrère wrote his famous treatise on the Pre-Adamites, which maintained that the Bible did not contain the history of all mankind but only that of the Chosen People, so that there had been men who lived before Adam. Thus the debate about Egyptian dynasties moved beyond the technical framework of chronology and entered a broader polemical sphere in which the issue—no longer strictly scientific—became a very serious one: how much authority should be accorded to the Bible?56 Here lay, without doubt, one of the crucial points of these Orientalist discussions. Kircher’s work was the culmination of a cultural effort to restore a magical-hermetic vision of the world, in contrast to the one imagined by “mechanical philosophy.” It was a world penetrated by a dynamic force that emanated from divine truth, which had been inscribed in the world since its beginnings and could be apprehended through intuitive, esoteric, and secret knowledge of the hieroglyphs that were its key. History was not a forward progress, but a return to that original truth. For Kircher, the truth of Christianity already inhered in the ancient truth that lay hidden in Egyptian hieroglyphics. But this view had its own radical consequences: if it were possible to relate Christianity to original truth, what would be the role of Holy Scripture? If the Bible no longer had value as Revela- tion, the way was opened to all sorts of deist thinking that could defend a universal and original revelation and thus erase the boundary between sacred and profane history. The success of the Egyptophile thesis among scholars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the production of grand historical constructs that linked the Egyptian and the Hebrew worlds, were one of the consequences. The figure of Moses was, of course, central to that linkage.57

56 Ibid., 170 ff., and A. Grafton, “Kircher’s Chronology,” in P. Findlen (ed.), Athanasius Kircher, op. cit., 171–187. 57 We follow the argumentation of P. Rossi, I segni del tempo. Storia della Terra e storia delle nazioni da Hooke a Vico (Milan, 1979, 2nd ed. 2003), 150 ff. See also, for example, G. Cipriani, Gli obelischi egizi, op. cit., 77–167. 418 chapter eighteen

In one of his polemical treatises, the Marquis of Mondéjar took up the subject of whether or not Moses had been the first writer in history.58 As its title indicates, the treatise was written against Agostino Mascardi (1590–1640),59 a theorist of history and rhetoric, whose eventful life included a teaching post at La Sapienza and service to several patrons, among them Allessandro d’Este, Carlo de’ Medici, and Pope Urban VIII. At the outset of his polemic Mondéjar explained his reasons for writing it: he had originally intended to compose an ancient history of Spain, which required evaluating the authors and historians on which it was based in order to establish the authority of each and the parallels and divergences among them. This work of critical historiography was to conclude by affirming the preeminence of Moses as the first writer, not only among the Jews but also among the Greeks and barbarians. This precedence was not merely chronological, but presupposed a primacy in the strength of Moses’s inspiration and his receipt of divine revelation, which would be the foundation of all later writing. Nonetheless, this preeminence—already confirmed, according to Mondéjar, by the Church Fathers—had been questioned by some, prompting the Marquis to take up his pen in its defense. There- fore, although his first aim had been to serve “my homeland” with his scholarship “and reveal its glories—most of them hidden or unknown, both through the neglect of our early writers and through the malice of foreigners,” it was now incumbent upon him to defend the Church against its enemies. Mondéjar submitted his treatise to his friends Martín Vázquez Siruela and Tomás de León for their comments. In a long and fascinating letter, the former offered the suggestions that we have quoted above: he advised that it would have been better to write in Latin rather than in Spanish so as not to quote rabbinical texts in the common tongue, leading unschooled readers to take them for magic formulas; that it was unwise to publicize the Qurʾān in a Christian country, especially when the author was as famous as Mondéjar; and that such books should be cited “only

58 Marqués de Mondéjar, “Razón y asunto de esta obra: Moysén, universalmente celebrado por primer escritor. Opónese Mascardo a esta verdad, impugnando el sentir de todos los padres de la Iglesia,” [Contestación a los reparos hechos a las Disertaciones eclesiásticas], vol. I, BNE ms. 5557, fol. 276r ff. 59 M. Betterini, Agostino Mascardi, scrittore e teorico della storiografia nel Seicento (Verona, 1953); and E. Bellini, Agostino Mascardi tra “ars poetica” e “ars historica” (Milan, 2002). Mascardi deals with Moses in Chapter 1 of Dell’arte historica, ed. A. Bartoli (Flor- ence: Felice Le Monnier, 1859). the orient in spain 419 casually, giving them little weight, rather than affirming that they support what one writes.”60 Mondéjar had in fact quoted from a large number of profane writers, in the belief that in them, “although they are obscure, there can be found very mysterious traces of Catholic truth.” Tomás de León, for his part, criticized from a different angle. Citing the authority of, among others, Johann Eusebius Nieremberg (De origine sacrae scripturae), he declared that Mascardi should be censured if he had affirmed that Moses was not the first ecclesiastical writer, or was not earlier than the Greeks, for both of those theological questions had been addressed by Bellarmino, Athenagoras, Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria, and others. But he was not censurable if he had merely stated that other books, attributed to Adam, Seth, Enoch, Melchisedec, Eliezer, or Abra- ham, could have been written before those of Moses.61 The Marquis of Mondéjar did go very far in his criticism of Mascardi, whose work, it is worth noting, had been called perfect by Pope Urban VIII himself.62 But Mondéjar seemed to be framing the discussion more widely than a simple polemic against Mascardi would suggest. In reality, severe textual critiques of the Bible had been going on for some time. No longer did they concern only the possibility—one that many resisted— that books could have been written before the time of Moses, who was thought to be the author of the Pentateuch. The famous Book of Enoch, for instance, had been talked of since ancient times. A greater problem was that internal criticism of the Bible had begun to find inconsistencies and errors that cast Moses’s authorship into serious question.63 We have noted that the figure of Moses was central to sacred history: through him the theological, historical, and cultural relationships of Chris- tianity with Judaism and ancient Egypt could be apprehended. Mondéjar, by penning such a vigorous defense of Moses’s scriptural primacy, wished not only to oppose Mascardi but to defend the Catholic Church against its enemies; among these were the Greek and Roman Gentiles, who in negating Moses’s preeminence were trying to undermine the true faith. It was the case that some of their errors could be explained by their ignorance of Oriental languages, “which blinded all of the ancients, limiting their knowledge to Greek only, which for them was the fount of all the

60 Letter from Martín Vázquez Siruela to the Marquis of Mondéjar, March 7, 1659, Varias cartas de erudición, BNE ms. 9881, fol. 133. 61 Letter from Tomás de León to the Marquis of Mondéjar, June 10, 1656, ibid., fol. 52r ff. 62 M. Betterini, Agostino Mascardi, op. cit., 16. 63 C. Poulouin, Le temps des origines, 111. 420 chapter eighteen sciences.” But Mondéjar was inveighing against “the perverse domestic enemies of the Church.” It is not hard to understand the intent of this phrase, “the perverse domestic enemies of the Church,” coming as it did from the pen of a writer in whose tertulia a favorite subject was “modern philosophy,” as Dr. Zapata noted. The Marquis of Mondéjar seems here to have reached a limit in his own task as a critic, a limit that he shared with many of his contemporaries: they were unable to countenance the radical challenge to Biblical authority that had begun to spread through certain learned European circles. In a different context, we observed another self-imposed limitation when Mondéjar referred to the prudent silence he had maintained on the subject of the Lead Books. His internal struggles were no trivial matter. In 1671, when he had published his Disertaciones eclesiás- ticas with their strong criticisms of the false chronicles and in particular of the efforts of the Church in Segovia to legitimate the cult of Saint Hierotheus, Mondéjar had faced ferocious opposition. He himself referred to a letter that circulated under the (perhaps false) name of Joseph de Aguilar y Losada and that attacked his Disertaciones in a violent fashion. It appears that this criticism came to the attention of the Holy Office, requir- ing Mondéjar to write a defense of his opinions.64 One of the arguments made in the letter, as quoted by the Marquis himself, was as follows: “Foreign writers who despise our glories are to him like evangelists; the most learned Spaniards he calls ignorant and even defamers; the most Classical pens he terms fabulists; the most illustrious writers he deems mechanical

64 “But I later learned that the author of this letter, not content with the insinuations that he scatters through it—in order to rouse against me that crowd of ignoramuses who are easily persuaded by those who know no more than they—has gone on to denounce six of my propositions, hoping to pass off his ignorance as Holy Writ. He has forced me to argue for them in a paper that I wrote in their defense, after certain persons were able to inform me; and so the objections that he presented to the Supreme Tribunal of the Inquisi- tion were disallowed, and those same propositions of mine to which he had objected were judged to be accepted and orthodox” (“Pero haviendo llegado después a mí noticia que no contento el author desta carta con las suposiciones que esparce en ella para irritar contra mí la turba de los ignorantes que se conmueve fácilmente con la persuasión de los que les igualan en el saber se ha pasado de delatar seis proposiciones mías, pretendiendo hacer de Fe sus ignorancias, aunque necesitándome a convencerlas en un papel que formé en su defensa por havérmelas participado quien pudo con que se desestimaron sus reparos en el Supremo Tribunal de la Inquisición, donde las presentó, calificando de regulares y seguras las mismas proposiciones mías, que se procuravan censurar en ellos”): Marqués de Mon- déjar, “Desvanecimiento de las calumnias que impone una carta con nombre supuesto a las Disertaciones Ecclesiásticas que publicó el Marqués de Agrópoli,” in Contestación a los reparos hechos a las Disertaciones eclesiásticas, vol. I, BNE ms. 5557, fol. 134r ff. the orient in spain 421

and trivial—he might as well call them, like Don Quixote, scoundrels— and then he justifies himself, so modestly, by pronouncing nemini sciens detraxit.” Then begins number 12, in which he says of me, “the others who make up the Triumvirate of Madrid are cut from this same cloth, forged in this same persistent fire, or swollen to this same Boreas of vanity.”65 That “Triumvirate of Madrid” refers to the intellectual circle in which both foreign books and “modern philosophy” were welcomed. Throughout these pages we have spoken of some of the foreign books that circulated among Mondéjar’s colleagues, and we have observed several polemics on the topic of Oriental languages, during which he was forced to defend the value of Arabic sources against historians like Father Moret or even Mar- tín Vázquez Siruela; the latter, in spite of being a dedicated Orientalist, believed that Arabic and Hebrew texts should be kept within a very select circle. Vázquez Siruela, like Father León, was a committed defender of the Lead Books. These are examples of how, in a vacillating and sometimes incoherent manner, the study of Oriental languages, especially Arabic, was taking shape as a field of learning within this group of intellectuals and critics. It formed part of the development of a history of Spain in which the Islamic past—entwined with the complex Morisco question— had become the more general problem of Spain’s ancient history. This problem was radically transformed by contact with the books and the debates that proceeded from the European “Republic of Letters.”

65 “ ‘Los autores estrangeros que aborrecen nuestras glorias son para él evangelistas, los españoles más doctos dice que son ignorantes y aun malsines, a las plumas más clásicas llama invencioneras, a los escritores más ilustres mecánicos y triviales, arto es que no les llame a modo de Don Quixote malandrines, y luego muy recoleto se nos justifica con decir nemini sciens detraxit.’ Luego empieza el num. 12, en que habla de mí diciendo ‘de esta misma tela son los demás que constituyen el triumvirato de Madrid templados al mismo fuego del tesón o inchados al mismo bóreas de la vanidad’ ”: ibid., fols. 137v–138r.

epilogue

We come to the end of our book at a point that seems far removed from the place where we began. Those Moriscos of Granada who struggled with such scarce and limited access to the sources of their own religious and cultural traditions appear distant from the European scholars who had at their disposal almost everything that they could want in the way of books, manuscripts, discussions, and ideas. And yet the connections exist. We have described how Thomas van Erpen or Erpenius, the professor of Arabic at Leiden, and his disciple Jacob Golius were in constant contact with a Morisco exiled to Morocco from Spain, Aḥmad ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī; this author of Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn (which is, among other things, an anti- Christian polemic) visited them in Leiden and corresponded with both of them after his return to Morocco. The letters tell us that on several occasions al-Ḥajarī asked Golius to send him Arabic books that he could not find in Morocco but that were available in Holland. It is worthy of note that an Islamic polemic against Christianity could exist in the context of this relationship. We have also pointed out at how the polemical work of the morisco Juan Andrés (this one in polemics with Islam, his old religion) was used in Europe by people like Filippo Guadagnoli or Tirso González de Santalla. The Confusión was translated to many languages and became very influential among orientalists in Europe. Guillaume Postel praised it, Jacob Golius prepared a Latin translation, Adrien Reland commended its usefulness for the study of Islam.1 Richard Popkin, the famous American historian of ideas, has explored a parallel theme: how a series of anti-Christian polemical treatises that had circulated exclusively within European Jewish communities in the Early Modern age emerged from those circles to be employed by non-Jews in their criticism of all organized religion. Dissident and radical authors in pre-Enlightenment times made use of those texts, turning them against the religious institutions of their own day and recycling them to conform to their own ends. In this way the methodology, arguments, and denunciations of interconfessional polemic were applied outside of their original context. We perceive something similar in the way that treatises written

1 Gerard Wiegers, “Moriscos and Arabic studies in Europe,” Al-Qanṭara, 31 (2010), 587–610. 424 epilogue by Moriscos were employed by anti-Trinitarians in northern Europe. A significant case is that of Muhammad Alguazir, whose Apología contra la ley cristiana, a particularly anti-Trinitarian polemic, was translated into Latin and circulated in the north of Europe, especially in England, where several manuscript copies of it survive. Another notable instance is the apocryphal Evangelio de Bernabé, an Islamic gospel and anti-Christian polemic in one, which several scholars have traced to a Morisco milieu: it was taken up by John Tolan, a radical Irishman of Catholic origin, in his Nazarenus. The Gospel of Barnabas was a fabricated gospel supposedly older than Islam, a construct very similar to the Lead Books of the Sacromonte.2 The fact is that once works of Islamic thought and anti-Christian polemic were translated into European languages (Latin or vernacular), many different opportunities arose to exploit their voices for other ends. In particular, Islam was used as a tool with which dissident elements reinforced a radical critique of Christianity and the Christian world. The criticisms raised by Islam focused on certain key points: first, the authenticity of Revelation and the integrity of the textual transmission of Scripture, through the Islamic doctrine of taḥrīf (distortion), which argued that the Old and New Testaments had been manipulated and corrupted. The method of taḥrīf consisted of identifying with meticulous care the contradictions, lacunae, absurd elements, and textual corruptions in Scripture. Muslim critics also set in motion, ready to be exploited by Europeans, arguments and denunciations against the Trinity and its associated dogmas such as the substance, person, and nature of Christ. Islam was used, then, to criticize both the transmission and the perversion of Scripture. All those who, from Servet to the Socinians, wished to attack the Trinity could view Islam as the form that they wished Christianity would take— a more rational and more tolerant religion. In the seventeenth century Islam was once more the vehicle for criticizing an intolerant Christianity, and in this process the Moriscos and their writings played a role that we are only now beginning to understand.

2 J. Toland, Nazarenus, ed. J. Champion (Oxford, 1999), esp. Champion’s Introduction. Toland had drawn on the Evangelio de Bernabé even earlier, in Christianisme Judaique et Mahométan, ou Rélation de l’ancien évangile de Barnabas et l’Évangile moderne des Maho- metans (Leiden, 1710). sources and bibliography

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Illustrations

illustrations 451

Figure 1. The “Torre de los Obispos” (Bishops’ Tower) with portraits of the bishops of Granada. Engraving by F. Heylan. From Justino Antolínez de Burgos, Historia Eclesiástica de Granada (Granada, 1611); new ed. and study by Manuel Sotomayor (Granada, 1996), 102–103. 452 illustrations

Figure 2. Portrait of Pedro Granada Venegas. Casa de los Tiros Museum, Granada. illustrations 453

Figure 3. Aḥmad b. Qāsim al-Ḥajarī reproduces a Seal of Solomon. From al-Ḥajarī, Aḥmad b. Qāsim, Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn ʿalā l-qawm al-kāfirīn (The Supporter of Reli- gion Against the Infidel), study, critical edition, and English translation by P. S. van Koningsveld, Q. al-Samarrai, and G. A. Wiegers (Madrid, 1997), 259. 454 illustrations

Figure 4. Transcription from the Lead Books by Diego de Urrea and Miguel de Luna. Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid. illustrations 455

Figure 5. Transcriptions from the Lead Books. From Darío Cabanelas, El morisco granadino Alonso del Castillo (Granada, 1965, 2nd ed. 1991). 456 illustrations L una, with A -2. A lonso del Castillo and Miguel de AAS G, libro L ead Books made by A rchbishop Pedro de Castro, comments by Figure Figure 6. T ranslations and transcriptions from the illustrations 457

Figure 7. Translations and transcriptions from the Lead Books made by Alonso del Castillo and Miguel de Luna, with comments by Archbishop Pedro de Castro, AASG, libro A-2. 458 illustrations

Figure 8. The forgeries from the Alcazaba of Granada, eighteenth century. AGS, MPD, 36, 052, hoja 21. illustrations 459 Información para la historia del Sacromonte, llamado de Valparaíso y L ead Book. From Marqués de Estepa, patrón de las Españas, Santiago, y otros santos discípulos dellos, y sus libros escritos en láminas de plomo (Granada, 1632), fol. 41r. Figure 9. R eproduction of Figure a antiguamente Illipulitano junto a Granada, donde aparecieron las cenizas de S. Cecilio, S. Thesiphón y S. Hiscio, discípulos del Apóstol, Hiscio, y S. único Thesiphón S. Cecilio, S. de cenizas las aparecieron donde antiguamente a Granada, Illipulitano junto 460 illustrations

Figure 10. Reproduction of a Lead Tablet from the Sacromonte. Archivo de la Abadía del Sacromonte, Grenade. Index of Persons

Aaron 222 Aḥmad al-Manṣūr 108, 129, 131, 133–137, Abarca, Pedro 387, 388 n. 21 142, 147, 226, 235 Abbuferquer Mahomed 263 Aḥmad b. Qāsim b. Aḥmad b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbdallah al-Ghālib, Sultan 130, 133 ‘Umar 281 ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, Sultan 76 Aḥmad b. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn 302, 304 ʿAbd al-Malik, Sultan 131, 133–134 Álamos de Barrientos, Baltasar 114 n. 60 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I, Emir 215, 287 n. 73 Álava, Gerónimo de 107, 337 Abdelaziz 161–162 Alba, Duke of 114 Abdarrahamán. See ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I Alba de Liste, Count of 225 n. 2, 226 Abén Aboo 78, 80, 111–112, 128–129 Albanell, Galcerán 320 n. 35 Abén Daud 47, 58 Albagtenius. See al-Battānī Abén Hatar. See Ctesifon Albotodo, Juan de 42, 54, 114, 128 Abén Rodán. See Ibn Riḍwān, ʿAlī Albumasar. See Abū Ma⁠ʾshar al-Balkhī Abençaybona, Pedro. See Çaybona, Pedro Alcalá, Duke of 323 Abencerrajes 87, 160 n. 19 Alcalá, Pedro de 39–40, 43, 57, 127, 297, Abenedem, Francisco 54 304–305, 339 Abenhumeya. See Córdoba y Válor, Alchindo. See al-Kindī Fernando Aldobrandini, Cardinal 247 Abenragel. See Ibn Abī l-Rijāl, ʿAlī Aldobrandino, Pedro 247 Abentarique, Abulcasim Tarif 90, Aldrete, Bernardo de 127, 278 156–157, 161, 182, 284 Alejandro VI 11 Abenzelín 70 Alexander the Great 412 Abenzohar. See Ibn Zuhr Alfonso, infante 70, 79, 86 al-Abharī, Mufaḍḍal 256 Alfraganus. See al-Farghānī Abi Senna. See Avicenna Alguacil, Diego. V. Alguazir, Abinagiomoa. See Ibn Abī Jumʾa Muhammad 277–278, 291, 293 Abraham 71–72, 148, 296–297, 362, 406, Alguazir, Muhammad 277–278, 292–293, 419 335, 424 Abū l-Faraj, Gregory. See Bar Hebraeus Alhasan. See Ibn al-Haytham, al-Ḥasan Abū l-Fidāʾ, Ismāʿīl 259–262, 267, 390, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib 255, 284, 325 393, 403–405, 415 ʿAlī b. Sūdūn 257 Abū l-Ḥasan 118 n. 77, 255 Almançor, Iacob 157, 161 Abū Ma⁠ʾshar al-Balkhī 357, 377 Almodfer 263 Abū ʿUbayda, Ma'mar 255 Alonso, Carlos 28 Abū Zayd ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 215, 287 Alonso Aragonés, Juan 291 Abulcasis. See al-Zahrawī, Abū l-Qāsim Alphonse X 20, 399 Abuzeyt. V. Zeyt Abuceyt 215–217 Alphragano. See al-Farghānī Acuña, Hernando de 89 Álvarez Gato, Juan 59 Adam 283, 288, 362, 417, 419 Ambrogius Albonesi, Theseus 208 n. 37 Afán de Ribera, Fernando. See Alcalá, Amico, Antonio dʾ 260–262 Duke of Andrés, maestro 127 África, don Felipe de. See al-Shayj, Andrés, Juan 303, 318, 423 Muley Ansaldo, Francisco 332 Africano, Guglielmo 362 Antolí, Jacob 402 n. 19 Agar 286 Antolínez de Burgos, Justino 91 Aguilar y Losada, Joseph 420 Antonio, Nicolás 7, 9, 202, 205, 224, 261, Aguilar Terrones, Francisco 212 262 n. 69, 266–267, 307, 320, 326–327, 462 index of persons

329–330, 332, 342, 384, 385 n. 19, al-Battānī, Muḥammad 59 391–393, 394 n. 35, 404 Bazán Hacén, Alonso de 82 n. 52 Don Antonio, Prior do Crato 135 Bedwell, William 250, 254, 259, 376 Apollo 199 Bejarano, Diego. See al-Ḥajarī, Aḥmad ibn Apolonius of Perga 240–241, 258 Qāsim Aquila, Antonio dellʾ 31, 298, 300 Bellarmino, Roberto 301, 419 Aquinas, Philip 347 Belvís, family 68 Arce, Pedro 271 Benajara, family 68 Aragón, Miguel de 74 Benimerines. See Banū Marīn Araoz, Antonio de 324 n. 48, Benisac. V. Ibn Isḥāq, 342 n. 25, 343 n. 28, 344 n. 32, 377, Muḥammad 176–177 378 n. 5, 379 n. 6, 380, 381 n. 8, Berasategui, María 97, 155 406 nn. 31–32 Bermúdez de Pedraza, Francisco 167, 196 Arévalo de Zuazo 112, 123 Bermudo, Pedro 383 n. 17 Arguellada, Juan de 50 n. 50, 77 Bernabé Pons, Luis F. 15 n. 4, 151 n. 38, Arias Montano, Benito 21–22, 26, 29, 152 45, 107, 114, 172–173, 197, 207 n. 35, 230, Beroaldus, Matthaeus 402 n. 21 337–338 Berosus 6, 196–198, 398, 416 Ariosto, Ludovico 89 Berrotarán y Mendiola, Martín 243 Aristotle 256, 258, 377–378 Beuter, Pere Antoni 395–396 Arón. See Aaron Biclarense, Juan 399 Asturio, Bishop 367 Blancas, Jerónimo de 233–234 Athenagoras 419 Bleda, Jaime 159, 387, 388 n. 21 Augusto 207 Boabdil 116 Austria, Don John of 75, 78, 80, 109, Boreli, Alfonso 240 112–113, 125, 160, 358 Borgia, family 58, 356 Ávalos, Gaspar de 49 Borja, Francisco de 47, 58, 312 n. 8 Averroes 256, 353, 377–378, 379 n. 6, 380 Borja, Gaspar de 356 Avicenna 256, 258, 354, 355 n. 4, 377–378, Borelli, Alfonso 240 380 Borromeo, Federico 238, 343 Ávila, Juan de 58 Boschart, Samuel 413 Ávila, Martín de 101 Bouza, Fernando 161 n. 21 Avin-Rhoi. See Averroes Bratuti, Vincenzo 267, 414 Avís, family 68 Briecius, Philippus 402 n. 21 Ayala, Gonzalo de 107, 337 Britti da Cosenza, Giovan Battista 361 Aybar, Cristóbal de 247, 278–279 Briviesca de Muntañones 112 nn. 56–57 Brown, Peter 195 Bacon, Francis 377 n. 4, 382 Bucholcerus, Abraham 402 n. 21 Baḥīrā 284–285 al-Bukhārī 258 al-Bakrī 280, 285–288 Buluqiya 283, 285 Banū Abī l-As 150, 151 n. 36, 287 al-Būnī, Aḥmad 177, 230 Banū Marīn 69, 76 Burriel, Andrés 224 Banū Sa⁠ʾd. SeeSa⁠ʾ dids Buthayna 256 Bar Bahlul 347 Buxtorf, Johann 11, 347, 348 n. 46, Bar Hebraeus 350 349–350, 382 n. 12, 406 Barachias, Rabbí 348 n. 46 Barachias Nephi 411 Cabanelas, Darío 13 n. 1, 96, 108, 112 n. 54, Barahona de Soto, Luis 89, 183 163 n. 25, 310 Barbará, Francisco 332 Caecilius 14–17, 20, 23–25, 90 n. 81, 120, Barberini, Cardinal 248, 249 n. 16, 356 169, 171–174, 183–185, 221, 283 Baronio, Cesare 203, 250 Caecilius Aben Alradi. See Caecilius Barredo, Francisco 128–129, 130 n. 34, 136 Calderón, Juan 222 Bataillon, Marcel 59 Calvo, Juan. See Qalbu al-Andalusī, Yūsuf index of persons 463

Campomanes, Count of 260–261, 403 Christ 6–7, 19, 48 n. 45, 60, 72, 84, 188, Cansino, family 325 202, 210, 218–219, 221, 252, 269, 286, 292, Capita (?), Francesco 246 294, 304, 316–317, 363, 368, 398 n. 10, Capomanes, Pedro Rodríguez 261, 263 408, 424 Cappel, Louis 382 Christmann, Jakob 402 n. 19 Caramuel, Juan 383 n. 17 Cicero 379, 381 Cárcamo, Alonso de 205 Cidi Hamete Benengeli 191 Caro, Rodrigo 222, 329 Cifuentes, Alonso de 279 Caro Baroja, Julio 13 n. 1, 160 n. 20 Cinquarbres, Jean 380 Carpio, Bernardo del 89 Ciriza, Gregorio de 242 n. 57 Carpio, Marquis of 328 Cisneros, Francisco de 3, 41, 42 n. 28, 71 Carrasco Urgoiti, María Soledad 87 Cixila, Archbishop of Toledo 205 Carson 413 Clavisius, Seth 402 n. 21 Casanate, Geronimo 201 Clavius, Christopher 378 Casas, Ignacio de las 28–29, 40, 42, 44, Clement of Alexandria 419 48, 51, 181–182, 227, 231 n. 20, 297, 305 Clement VIII, Pope 28, 203, 246 Casaubon, Isaac 249–250, 252, 254 Clénard, Nicolas 105, 337, 339, 341 Casiri, Michael 260 Clepero, Jacobo. See Kepler, Johann (?) Castell, Edmund 347–348 Cohen de Lara, David 347 Castro, Francisco de 247 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 332 n. 68 Castillo, Alonso del 14–15, 22, 27, 76, 92, Costa, Francisco da 246 96–97, 98 n. 14, 100, 103, 105, 121–123, Córdoba, family 68 125–126, 128–129, 131, 134, 136, 139–140, Córdoba, Gaspar de 212 145–146, 155, 171, 175 n. 13, 186, 207, 253, Córdoba el Ungi, Hernando de 85, 287 270, 336–337, 388 Córdoba y Válor, Fernando 82–83 Castillo, Diego del 59 Corral, Pedro de 158–159 Castillo, García del 103 n. 26 Costa, Francisco da 246 Castillo, Juan del 59–60 Covarrubias, Sebastián de 126–127, 228, Castillo el Acahal, Hernando del 97 361 Castillo el Viejo. See Castillo el Acahal, Cremona, Gerardo de 201 Hernando del Crotates 199 Castro, Count of 75 Cruz, Isabel de la 59 Castro, Francisco de 247 Cuco, King of 230 Castro, Pedro de 1, 15, 20–21, 24, 26–27, Ctesiphon 16, 23, 25, 120, 184 n. 41, 221, 28–30, 32, 45, 48 n. 47, 90–92, 95 n. 2, 252, 283, 363 99 n. 15, 107 n. 43, 108, 111, 117, 122, 140, Cueva, Luis de la 96, 181, 221 142, 144–145, 164 n. 27, 174, 175 n. 13, 180, Cuevas, María de las 26 192, 195, 207, 208 n. 37, 209, 211, 220, 223, Cunaeus, Petrus 405 230, 235, 245–246, 251–252, 269, 278, 297, 337, 357 David 263 Çaybona, Pedro 92 n. 87 Dávila, Inés 75 n. 31 Celebi Celâlzade, Mustafa 405, 414 Delicado, Francisco 168 Centurión, Adán. See Estepa, Marquis of Descartes, René 333 Cervantes, Miguel de 191–193, 237 Deza, Pedro de 47, 62 n. 81, 66, 78, 84, Cesi, Federico 238–241, 249 105, 111, 114, 126, 129, 132, 166 Céspedes, Pablo de 219–220, 365, 375 Diaconus, Paulus 399 Chapiz, family 68, 98, 100–103, 155, Díaz del Castillo, Bernal 158 288 Díaz de Rivas, Pedro 222, 370–373 Charles II 260 n. 66 Diego Felipe 95 Charles V 6, 47, 49, 74, 78 n. 42, 81, 103, Dillon, Robert 311 196, 199, 200 n. 15 Dillon, Thomas. See León, Tomás de Chaves, Isabel de 100 Dobelio, Marcos 8–9, 29–30, 93, 100, 242, Chaves el Chapiz, Alonso de 100 244–267, 269–274, 280–282, 284–297, Chirinos, monk 215, 218–219 305, 307, 336, 340, 386–388, 390, 393, 403 464 index of persons

Dorador, Bartolomé 43, 305 Espina, Fray Alonso de 399 Dordux, family 68 Espinosa, Diego de 112 n. 56 al-Duʿaylī, Saʿīd 131–133, 137 Espinosa, Francisco de 115 n. 65, Dupuy, Cristophe 250 285 n. 66 Durán de Torres, Juan 390–394, 404 Espinosa, Isabel de 25 Dyonisius the Aeropagite 16 Este, Alessandro dʾ 418 Estepa, Marquis of 23 n. 11, 30, 179, 231, Éboli, Princess of 276 235, 252, 266, 318 Ecchellensis, Abraham 180–181, 240, Estrauchio, Egidio. See Strauchius, 298–301, 322, 325, 330–331, 346, 348, AEgidius 394, 413 Etor. See Hector El Boni. See al-Būnī, Aḥmad Euclides 258 El Çafar, Juan 98 n. 12 Euphrasius 16 El Chapiz, Lorenzo 98–102, 107, 150–151, 191 Eusebius 419 El Farrá, Hernando 118 Eutychius 329 El Ferza, Fernando 118 El Habaquí, Hernando 84, 87, 125 Fabri de Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude 411 El Haguim, Sebastián 95 n. 4 Fajardo, José 14, 171 El Joraique 126 Fandila 199 El Meriní 91, 92 n. 86, 93 n. 90 al-Farghānī, Aḥmad 402 El Meriní, Alonso 92 n. 87 Faría, Joan de 90–91, 183–185 El Mudéjar, Yúçef. See González de Fátima, slave 25 Mendoza, Pedro al-Fayyūmī, Aḥmad 255 El Nubiense. See al-Idrīsī Félix, Luis 246 El Partal, monfí 142 Felipe, Diego 95 El Partal, Antón 82 n. 54 Ferdinand, Prince 200 El Partal, Martín 82 Ferdinand the Catholic 41 El Ramí, Mateo 79 Ferdinad III, Emperor 414 El Rindatí, Andrés 129 Ferdinand VI 32 El Tuzani 87 Fernández de Castro, Pedro. See Lemos, El Xamri 176 Count of El Xeniz, Gonzalo 128–129, 137 Fernández de Córdoba, Joan 91 El Zagal, Muḥammad XIII 70 Fernández de la Madrid, A. 57 El Zaguer, Fernando 84, 117 Fernández el Meriní, Gaspar 92 n. 87 El Zegrí, Francisco 49, 72, 75 n. 31, 100 Fernández el Partal, Francisco 82 El Zegrí, Muḥammad. See Fernández El Fernández el Partal, Lorenzo 82 Zegrí, Gonzalo Fernández de Velasco, Juan 203–204 Elcaerçi, Álvaro 83 Fernández el Zegrí, Gonzalo 71, 82 n. 54 Elena, See Heyla Fernández el Zegrí, Luis 75 Elgazi, Sebastián 54 Fez, Fernando de 76, 78, 99 Eliano, Giovanni Battista 339 Fez Muley, family 68, 76–78 Eliezer 406, 419 Fez Muley, Fernando de 68, 77, 99–100 Elisabeth I of England 137 Figueroa, Magdalena de 75 n. 31 Elmacino. See al-Makīn, Jirjis b. al-ʿAmīd Figueroa, Pedro de 85 Enoch 411, 419 al-Fīrūzābādī, Muḥammad 238, 254, 343, Enríquez, Francisco 187 344 n. 31 Enríquez de Guzmán, Diego. See Alba de Flavius Dextrus 222, 279 Liste, Count of Flores y Odduz, Juan de 32 Erasmus of Rotterdam 57 Fonseca, Juan 173 Eraso, Francisco de. See Humanes, Fregoso, Francisco 366 Conde de Erkules. See Hercules Gabano, Alonso 53 Erpenius, Thomas 9–10, 143–144, 245, Gabriel 288 254, 259, 264, 307, 318, 342–343, 350, 377, Gabrieli, Giuseppe 237, 241, 249 402, 423 Gad, tribe 221 index of persons 465

Galeno 379 n. 6 Gurmendi, Francisco de 29, 179, 241–244, Galileo 238–240 250, 252–253, 259, 297, 386–387 Galíndez de Carvajal, Lorenzo 50 Gallego Morell, Antonio 328–329 Hacén, Muley, sultán nazarí 82 n. 52 Garibay, Esteban de 158, 182, 196–197, Ḥafṣ b. Albar al-Qūṭī 37 n. 6 205, 353, 387, 399 Haedo, Diego de 371 Gayangos, Pascual de 105 n. 32, 252 Haga, Cornelis 150 al-Ghazzālī 280, 388 Hagerty, Miguel José 2, 13 n. 1, 23 n. 11, Geber. See Jābir b. Ḥayyān 30, 230 n. 19 Génébrard, Gilbert 380 Hagim, Leonor 95 Genebrardo. See Génébrard, Gilbert al-Ḥajarī, Aḥmad ibn Qāsim 93, 98, Germano, Domenico 342 139–152, 245, 277, 287, 423 Giattini, Giambattista 31, 298, 300 Hanel, Melchior 348 Giggeo, Antonio 342–343, 344 n. 31 Hapsburg, dynasty 200 Ginnasi, Cardenal 247 Haro, Gaspar de. See Carpio, Marquis of Godoy Alcántara, A. 13 n. 1 Hasan Aga 226 Golius, Jacobus 143–144, 344, 347, al-Ḥasan al-Rammāʾ 258 402 n. 19, 423 Ḥassān, Muley 76 Gómez de Silva, Ruy 275 Hector 117 n. 70 Góngora, Luis de 237, 329, 372 Heleca 222 González de Mendoza, Pedro 71 Helvicius, Chistophorus 402 n. 21 González de Santalla, Tirso 315, 317, 350 Henríquez de la Jorquera, Francisco 81 Goropius Becanus, Johannes 180 Henry, king of Portugal 135 Gorsse, Odette 330 Henry IV of Castile 69 Grafton, Anthony 204, 249 n. 17 Henry IV of France 250 Gramaire, Juan 402 n. 21 Herbélot, Barthélémy d› 387 Granada, Fray Luis de 57, 226 Hercules 117 n. 70, 196 n. 7, 198, 213–214, Granada Venegas, family 68, 72–75, 217 78, 79 n. 45, 86, 91, 103, 157, 160, 186 Heredia Barnuevo, Diego Nicolás 21 n. 9, Granada Venegas, Alfonso de 70, 78 32 Granada Venegas, Pedro I de (Yaḥyā Hermes, family 68, 100 al-Najjār) 70, 75 Hermes, Álvaro 100 Granada Venegas, Pedro II 82, 88–89, 91 Hermes, Diego 100 Granada Venegas y Rengifo, Alonso de 78 Hermes, Jerónimo 100 Grandami, Jacques 402 n. 21 Hernández, Francisco 140 n. 4 Grandamico, Iacobo. See Grandami, Hernández El Chapiz, Felipe 100, 276 Jacques Hernández El Chapiz, Lorenzo 98–99 Granjon, Robert 362 Hernández Hagim, Miguel 95 Gravius. See Greaves, John Herodotus 210 Greaves, John 260, 402 Herrera, Jerónimo de 122 n. 4, 174, 212, Greek Comendador. See Núñez Pinciano, 231 Hernán Herrera, José de 338 Gregorio Abū l-Faraj. See Bar Hebraeus Hesronite, John 246, 297, 350 Guadalajara, Marcos de 136 Hesychius 16 Guadagnoli, Filippo 31, 298, 300, Heyla 215–217 302–304, 342–343, 423 al-Hilāl, Yaʿqūb. See Luna, Giacomo Guadix, Diego de 360, 362, 364 Hilarion, Abbot 347 Guerra de Lorca, Pedro 22, 37–38, 57, al-Ḥillī, Ṣafy al-Dīn 256 172–173, 220–221 Hinojosa, Pedro de 75 Guerrero, Pedro 43, 122 Hippocrates 105, 166 Guevara, Doctor 190 Hiram 180 Guevara, Antonio de 49 Hiscio. See Hesychius Guglielmo Africano 362 Homer 211 Gumersindus 370 Hornius, George 402 466 index of persons

Hottinger, Johann Heinrich 106, 344–346, al-Jawharī, Ismāʾīl 175, 254, 343–344, 347, 394, 413 388 Hubert, Etienne 143 Jerónimo Javier 302 Hucein. See al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī Joanna I 42 Humanes, Count of 273–274 John, Prince 200 Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego 79, 86, John II 69 130 n. 34, 140 n. 5, 275 John of Seville 402 n. 19 al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī 287 Joseph, Patriarch 388 Judas 292 Ibáñez de Segovia, Gaspar. See Mondéjar, Julius Caesar 211, 396 Marquis of Ibarra, Francisco 106 n. 36 Kempis, Thomas à 9, 57 Ibn Abī l-Rijāl, ʿAlī 357 Kepler, Johann 402 Ibn Abī Jumʿa al-Maghrāwī, Aḥmad 290 Kendrick, T.D. 13 n. 1, 199 n. 12 Ibn al-Ajurrūm, Muḥammad 255 Khalīl b. Aḥmad 254 Ibn al-Bayṭār, ʿAbdallah 255 al-Kindī 357 Ibn Burd al-Aṣghar, Aḥmad 257 Kircher, Athanasius 31, 180, 298, 300, Ibn al-Farīd, ʿUmar 256 322–323, 325, 331, 348, 378, 380–381, Ibn Ḥabīb, ʿAbd al-Malik 118 n. 77 382 n. 11, 383, 402, 409–413, 416–417 Ibn al-Ḥājib, ʿUthmān 255, 257, 340–341 al-Kisāʾī 283 Ibn al-Haytham, al-Ḥasan 256 Ibn Isḥāq, Muḥammad 258 Laboraría, José Juan 32 Ibn Kabar 412 Lara, Francisco de 349 Ibn Malik, Muḥammad 255 Lasarte, family 152 Ibn Masawayh 377 Le Jay, Guy Michel 348 Ibn Masʿūd 258 n. 61 Le Roux 159 Ibn Nubāta, Muḥammad 257 Leibniz 382 Ibn Riḍwān, ʿAlī 357 Lemos, Count of 236–237, 239 Ibn al- Shiḥna, Muḥammad 393–394, 415 Leo Africanus 360 Ibn Tūda, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd León, Fray Luis de 21, 373 al-Karīm 140–142, 147 León, Tomás de 10, 310–315, 318–320, 321 Ibn Zuhr 353 nn. 37–39, 322–324, 326–327, 331–333, Idiáquez, Juan de 242 335, 341–346, 347 n. 43, 348–319, Idrīs 116, 411 377–378, 379 n. 6, 380–381, 383–384, al-Idrīsī, Muḥammad 350, 372–373, 402 388–389, 390 n. 24, 392 n. 28, 394, al-ʿIlj, Fāris 145 405–406, 407 n. 33, 408–411, 412 n. 47, Indalecio 440 413, 416, 418–419 Ingoli, Francesco 299 Leonardo de Argensola, Bartolomé Innocent XI, Pope 31 225 n. 2, 227 n. 5, 233, 234 n. 31, 237 Inveges, Agostino 260, 262 n. 70 Leonardo de Argensola, Irarrazábal, Francisco de 55 Lupercio 232–233, 237, 337 ʿĪsā ibn Jābir 330 Leonís 105 Isaac 148, 149 n. 30 Leonor, Princess 47 Isacius 199 Leonor, Queen 295 n. 1 Isabella the Catholic 116, 198 Lerma, Duke of 243 Isabella of Portugal 200 Levi della Vida, Giorgio 248–249, ʿIyāḍ, Qāḍī 146, 280, 286 250 n. 19, 252, 260–261, 356 n. 9 Levita, Elia 382 al-Jabbīs 93, 98 Lipsio, Justo 379 Jābir b. Ḥayyān 357, 377 Liutprand 201, 207, 210, 355 n. 4 Jaʿfar 357 Llorente 279, 337 Japheth 196 Llull, Ramon 39 Jamīl al-ʿUdhrī 256 Loaysa, García de 27, 203, 230 Jammes, Robert 330, 331 n. 65 Lodulfo. See Ludolf, Hiob index of persons 467

Lomelino, Estéfano 75 Mármol, Luis del 21–22, 47 n. 42, López, Sebastián 22 54 n. 60, 58 n. 71, 71 n. 18, 77 n. 39, 89, López Abenaxar, Diego. See López 91–92, 97, 106 n. 36, 110, 112, 115–118, Benajara, Diego 120, 123, 125, 128, 131, 142 n. 9, 287 n. 73, López Abençaybona, Pedro 92 n. 87 358–360, 387, 388 n. 21, 396–397, López-Baralt, Luce 283 399–400, 403 López Benajara, Diego 74 Marqus al-Duʿābilī. See Marcos Dobelio López de Celaín, Juan 59, 61 Marracci, Ludovico 31, 298, 300–302 López Hacera, Diego 85 Martelloti, Francesco 342 López de Husillos, Diego 59 Martí, Raimundo 345 n. 45 López Madera, Gregorio 27, 101 Martínez de Cantalapiedra, Martín 21 López Tamarid, Francisco 14–15, 93, Martínez Silíceo, Juan 202 124–126, 156, 171, 174, 191, 388 Mártir Rizo, Juan Pablo 218 n. 70 López Zaibona, family 68 Maruán. See Marwān Lucas Cortés, Juan 329, 332, 391 n. 26, Marwān, caliph 287 408 Mary, Virgin 144, 272, 288 Lucan 354 Mary of Portugal 200 Lucidus, Johannes 399 Mascardi, Agostino 418 Ludolf, Hiob 347 Masīḥ b. al-Ḥakam 356 Luna, Alonso de 96–97, 98 n. 13, 150–151, Massimo, Camillo 286 n. 69 152 n. 40 al-Masʾūdī 144 Luna, Giacomo 362 Mateo de Berrío, Gonzalo 89 Luna, Miguel de 4, 7, 14–15, 25, 27, Matute, Juan de 246–248 48 n. 47, 80, 90–92, 96–97, 99 n. 15, Maximus 7, 197, 201, 207, 222 105–106, 108, 126–127, 139, 144, 147, Mayáns y Siscar, Gregorio 127, 205 n. 27, 155–156, 157 n. 8, 159–160, 162, 207 n. 34, 224 n. 86, 320 n. 36, 330, 164–166, 171, 173–174, 175 n. 13, 332 n. 67, 404 176 n. 14, 177–178, 180, 182–183, Medici, Carlo de 418 185–187, 190–193, 196, 209, 213–214, Medici, Ferdinando deʾ 37 216–217, 230, 231 n. 21, 233, 247, 273, Medina, Pedro 354–355 284, 293, 323, 336, 340 n. 14, 358, 365, Medina Conde, Cristóbal de 32 368, 386–387, 409 Medinasidonia, Duke of 189 Luther, Martin 117 Medrano, García de 81 Melchisedec 419 Magnier, Grace 117 n. 73, 179 n. 23, 244 Melich. See Malik b. Anas Mahoma. See Muhammad, prophet Méndez Salvatierra, Juan 14, 20–21 Maignan, Emmanuel 333 Mendoza, family 66, 75 Maimonides 409 n. 40 Mendoza, Alonso de 276 al-Makīn, Jirjis b. al-ʿAmīd 428 Mendoza, Ana de 275 Mālik b. Anas 177, 255 Mendoza, Isabel de 277 Malvasia, Bonaventura 303 n. 24 Mendoza, Juana de 75 Mancebo de Arévalo 9 Mendoza, María de 58, 75 Manrique de Mendoza, María 75 Mendoza, Pedro de 71, 282 Manethon 398, 410, 416 Mendoza El Seis 91, 92 n. 86 al-Maqrīzī, Taqī l-dīn 283 Mendoza Fez Muley, Hernando de Marcá, Pedro de 387 92 n. 87 Marcus Aurelius 184 n. 41 Mendoza y Aragón, María Gregoria 309 Margaritha, Antonius 349 n. 48 Menochio, Giovanni Stefano 405 Mariana, Juan de 6, 26, 182, 203–204, Mercator, Gerardo 399 233–234, 320 n. 36, 353, 398–400, Meriní, family 76 402 n. 21 Mesithon 23, 91 Marín, Diego 123–126, 128–137, 226 Mesue. See Ibn Māsawayh Marín, Diego (nephew) 124, 133–134, Mira de Amescua, Antonio 237 136 Miranda, Diego de 246 468 index of persons

Mondéjar, Marquis of (Gaspar Ibáñez de Núñez Muley, Francisco 38, 49, 74, 77, Segovia) 9, 309 122 Mondéjar, Marquis of (Íñigo López de Núñez de Valdivia y Mendoza 164 Mendoza) 46, 179 Mondéjar, Marquis of (Luis Hurtado de Obicini de Novara, Tommaso 342 Mendoza) 75 Obregón, Lope de 318 Mora, Count of 223 Ocampo, Florián de 7, 196 Morales, Ambrosio de 20, 106, 184, 222, Omar. See ʿUmar 353, 354 n. 2, 366, 367 n. 32, 397 Ordóñez, Diego de 47 Morales, Hernando de 140 n. 4 Orsini, Paolo 362 Morata, Nemesio 228 n. 13, 229 Osiris 196 n. 7, 198 Morato Aga. See Urrea, Diego de Osorio, Francisco 25 Moret, Joseph de 400 Osuna, Duques de 89 Moreto, captain 225 Osuna, Francisco de 57 Morin, Jean 348, 409 Morocho, Gaspar 28, 247 Pacense, Isidoro 387 Moscoso y Sandoval, Baltasar de Pacheco, Francisco 320 n. 36 222–223 Pacheco, Pedro 274, 275 n. 18 Moses 11, 197, 281, 284, 410, 415, 418–419 Palacios, family 68 Muça Belín 158 n. 10 Palera 102 Muḥammad, prophet 18, 60, 62, 192, 255, Palma, Diego de 132 280, 283, 285–286, 390, 399 Pastor de los Cobos, Vicente 32 Muḥammad al-Shaikh al-Ma⁠ʾmūn. See Pastrana, Juan de 242 Xeque, Muley Pardo Tomás, José 332 Muḥammad ibn Abī l-Asi 93 Partal, family 82 Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rāfiʿ 55, 145, Patricius 14, 17 150 n. 36, 151, 287 Paul V, Pope 247 Muḥammad b. ‘Abdallah al-Mutawakkil, Pedraza, Luis de 14 Sultan 76, 135 Pellicer, José 159, 332 n. 67, 350, 368, Muhammed Vulhaç 98, 150, 152 n. 40 392 Mulerus, Nicolás. See Mullerus, Nicolaus Pellot, Claude François 332 Muley, family 68, 77–78 Penelas, Mayte 37 n. 6 Muley, Fernando 77 Pérez, Brianda 83 Muley de Fez, Fernando 78 Pérez, Juan Bautista 26, 205, 207, 210, Muley de Fez, Luis 78 227, 273, 338 n. 8, 383 Mullerus, Nicolaus 402 Pérez, Julián 208 Münzer, Jerónimo 127 n. 25 Pérez, Mari 124 Mur, Jerónimo 339 Pérez de Ayala, Martín 43 Mūsā b. Ṭufayl 161 Pérez de Berrio, Luis 54 al-Mutanabbī 256 Pérez de Hita, Ginés 72, 80, 86–87, 89, Muza 234 160–161 Pérez de Mesa, Diego 246, 355–357, 377 Naṣr, Muley 135–136 Pérez de Torres, Fernán 370–372 Nebuchadnezzar 195, 197, 221 Pérez Vulhaç. See Muhammed Vulhaç Nero 25, 184 Petavio, Dyonisio. See Pétau, Denis Nieremberg, Juan Eusebio 419 Pétau, Denis 402 Niʾmatallah, Ignatius 240 Pettorano, Bartolomeo de 31, 298, 300 Nimrod 196 Peyrère, Isaac de la 417 Niño de Guevara, Fernando 28, 213 Philip II 15, 26–28, 82, 85, 98, 114, 122, 130, Noah 161, 180, 196, 198, 219, 404, 415 133–136, 140, 156, 160, 182, 195, 200, 205, Novara, Campano de 399 227–229 Núñez Pinciano, Hernán 339, 341 Philip III 28, 85, 140, 203, 230, 235 Núñez de León, Duarte 127 Philip IV 263–264, 414 index of persons 469

Phitecus 281 n. 41 Rodríguez de Montalvo, Garci 158 Piazza, Francesco 238 Rojas, Agustín de 89 Piemontese, Angelo Michele 37 n. 6 Rojas, Jerónimo de 140–141, 149, 187 Pimentel, Domingo 391 Rojas, Juan Luis 226, 235 Pinto 99 n. 15 Rojas de Sandoval, Bernardo 250 Plantin, Cristophe 342 Román de la Higuera, Jerónimo 7, 181, Plato 258 186, 195, 197, 201, 206 n. 31, 213–214, 216, Pliny 210 218–219, 223, 406 n. 31 Plutarch 379 Romaymía, María 82 n. 54 Pococke, Edward 259, 350 Romus 213 Polo, Baltasar 137 Ron, Antonio de 332 Pompeius 211 Rubiera, María Jesús 76 n. 34 Popkin, Richard 423 Rubio, Mohamed 146, 148, 287 Porta, Giovan Battista della 238–239, Ruiz de Alcaraz, Pedro 59, 275 241, 249 Rufo, Juan 160 Postel, Guillaume 342 n. 24, 423 Rute. See Ruti, Yaacob Ptolemy 211, 357 Ruti, Yaacob 136

Qalbu al-Andalusī, Yūsuf 146–147 Sa⁠ʾdids, dynasty 130 al-Qazwīnī, Abū Yaḥyā Zakariyyā 258 al-Ṣafadī, Ṣalāḥ al-dīn 257 Quinquarbores. See Cinquarbres, Jean Saʿīd b. al-Biṭrīq. See Eutychius Don Quixote 192–193, 421 Saʿīd of Toledo 258 Saint Barnabas 152 Rabadán, Muḥammad 285 Saint Bonosus 222 Rabut, René 157 Saint Braulius 222 Rachman 324 Saint Ctesiphon Abenathar, See Ctesiphon Raimondi, Giovanni Battista 240, Saint Eulogius 372 246–247, 259, 341, 378 Saint Gumersindus 370 Ramírez de Alba, Pedro 58 Saint Hierotheus 420 Ramírez de Prado, Lorenzo 355 n. 4 Saint Hiscius. See Hesychius al-Rammāḥ, al- Ḥasan 258 Saint Ildefonsus 354 Raphelengius, Franciscus 342 Saint Isidore 115, 117, 354 Rasis 261, 353 Saint James the Greater 1 Raya, Alonso de 276 Saint John 1, 14, 16–18, 22–23 Raya, Gaspar de 276 n. 22 Saint John of the Cross 57 Raymundo, Juan Baptista. See Raimondi, San Julian 217 n. 70 Giovan Battista Saint Justus 367–368 al-Rāzī, Abū Bakr 258 Saint Mark 329–330 Rebecca 406 Saint Maximilian 222 Reina, family 68 Saint Pastor 367–368 Reland, Adrien 423 Saint Paul 16, 60, 296, 340 Rengifo, María 75 Saint Peter 16, 404 Reuben, tribe 221 Saint Stephen 1, 14 Rey Chico. See Boabdil Saint Thyrsus 204–205 Reyes Católicos 41 n. 23, 65 n. 1 Saldanha, Antonio de 133–135 Rhasi. See al-Rāzī, Abū Bakr Salucio, Agustín 164–165 Ribera, Juan de 44, 227 al-Samarqandī, Abū l-Layth 388 Riccioli, Giovanni Battista 402 San Tirso. See Saint Thyrsus Robles, Diego de 323 Sánchez, Sebastián 329 n. 56 Robles Corbalán, Juan de 215, 219 Sánchez el Cenati, Daniel 99 Roderick, King 213 Saints Justus and Pastor 368 Don Rodrigo. See Roderick Sarmiento, Martín 159 Rodríguez de Lucero, Diego 41, 57 Sasportas, Jacob 324 470 index of persons

Sasportas, Salomon 325 Theodosius 354 Sasportas, Samuel 324, 331 al-Thaʿālibī 281, 283, 388 Scaliger, Joseph Justus 11, 180, 381, 398, Theodolo 246 416 Tiro, Marcus Tulius 379, 381 Schickhard, Wilhelm 344–345, 413 Toledano, Francisco 152 Schindler, Valentin 347–348 Toland, John 424 n. 2 Schipano, Mario 241 Top, Alexander 381 Scialac, Vittorio 299, 301–302 Torcuatus 16 Don Sebastian 108, 131, 133, 135 Torres, Pedro de 57, 383 n. 17 Secundus 16 Torrijos, Francisco de 122 n. 3, 125, 128 Selden, John 10–11, 329–330, 346, 349, Tribaldos de Toledo, Luis 231, 235 n. 33 394, 407–408 Trillo y Figueroa, Francisco 328 Seldeno, Juan. See Selden, John Trithemius, Johannes 383 Selenus, Gustavus 382 n. 11 Tubal 196 Senior, Abraham 71–72 al-Ṭurṭūshī, Muḥammad 243, 259 Serapion 377 Tutis 413 Serna Cantoral, Diego de la 32, 319 Servet, Miguel 424 al-Ukayhil 98, 145–146 Servusdei 370 Uluj Ali 226 Sessa, Duke of 53, 109, 111, 125 Ulug Beg 402 Seth 419 ʿUmar, caliph 401 Sevilla, Juan de. See John of Seville ʿUmāra b. Wathīma 282 al-Sharīf al-Rāḍī, Muḥammad 255 Urban VIII, Pope 31 al-Shaykh, Muley 135, 140 Urrea, Diego de 8–9, 27, 29, 93, 99 n. 15, Sheba, Queen of 181 177, 225–228, 230, 231 n. 21, 232, 235–240, Shem 161 242, 249–250, 253, 259, 264, 307, Sigonio, Carlo 405 336–337, 340–341, 343, 358, 361, Silus, king of Toledo 205 386–387 Silva, family 100 Sionite, Gabriel 301–302, 350 Vaca de Castro, Cristóbal 21 Socrates 258 Vaca de Castro y Quiñones, Pedro. See Solís, Antonio 392 Castro, Pedro de Solomon 176, 178–181, 197, 210, 270–273, Valcárcel, Gonzalo de 26, 210 n. 45, 273, 281, 283, 289, 324 n. 50 383 Soria Mesa, Enrique 67 n. 5, 68 nn. 10, 12, Valencia, Pedro de 22, 29, 40, 43–44, 75 n. 30, 86 n. 67 99 n. 15, 164, 204, 216, 244, 375, 376 n. 1, Soto de Rojas, Pedro 329 396 Sprenger, Jacob 273 Valera, Cipriano de 147 Strabo 210 Valeriano Bolzano, Pierio 314 Strauchius, AEgidius 402 Valle, Pietro della 241, 259 Suárez, Pedro 199 Van Erpen, Thomas. See Erpenius, al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn 257 Thomás Syracuse, Philistos of 376 Vanegas, Francisco 320 n. 35 Vaseo, Juan 399 al-Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad 394 Vázquez Rengifo, Gil 75 Tacitus 415 Vázquez Siruela, Martín 9, 31, 262, Talavera, Doctor 212 n. 51 266–267, 307, 326–330, 332, 341–342, Talavera, Hernando de 36, 41, 57 350, 355, 366, 372–373, 384–385, Talma 413 386 n. 20, 392–393, 418, 419 n. 60, 421 Tamerlane 402 Vecchietti, Giovan Battista 246, 259, 361 Tarif 284 Vega, Luis de 164 Tarifa, Marquis of 323 Velarde de Ribera, Pedro 88, 121, 221, al-Taybili, Ibrahim 277 n. 30 337–338 Tendilla, Count of 41 Venegas, Fernando 74 index of persons 471

Venegas, María de 75 Xeque, Muley 102, 235–236 Venegas de Alarcón, Alonso 91 Ximenes, Francisco 124 n. 10 Venegas de Córdoba, Pedro 133 Ximénez de Rada, Rodrigo 396 Vergara Cabeças, Fernando de 365 Vesga, Pedro de 104 Yaḥyā al-Najjār. See Granada Venegas, Viana y Bustos, Francisco de 32 Pedro I de Vico, Ambrosio de 220 Yaḥyā, Cidi. See Granada Venegas, Pedro Villanueva, Beatriz de 243 de Villanueva, Martín 212 Yáñez Herrera, FranciscoYepes, Diego de Villaroel, Cristóbal de 191 222 Villena, Marqués de 323 Yūḥannā ibn Jirjis 246 Vimioso, Count of 134 Virgil 273 Zacuto, Abraham 413 Viterbo, Annius of 6, 161, 196–197, 398, al-Zahrāwī, Abū l-Qāsim 256 416 al-Zamakhsharī, Maḥmūd. b. Voisin, Joseph de 344–345 ʿUmar 339 n. 11 Vorstius, Willem 325 al-Zanjānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb 341 Vossius, Gerard 417 Zapata, Diego 332 Zapata, Luis 146 Walton, Brian 180, 347–348, 409 Zaydān, Muley 27, 142 Wamba 369 Zegrí, family 102 al-Wansharīshī, Aḥmad 290 Zegrí Dávila, Juan 75 n. 31 Wemmers, Jacob 347 Zeyt Abuceyt 215–217 Weymers. See Wemmers, Jacob Zidan, Muley. See Zaydān, Muley Wiegers, Gerard 18, 101 n. 21, 150, Zúñiga, Jerónimo de 100–102 152 n. 40, 186, 291 Zurita, Jerónimo 232, 369

Xarifa, Leonor 53 n. 58 Xarton 158 n. 10 Index of Places

Spain, Europe, Granada, Orient, Iberian Peninsula and Sacromonte are not included

Abla 16 Andalusia 16, 58, 179 n. 24, 180–181, Abula. See Abla 184 n. 41, 210, 235, 311 n. 8, 365, 373, 392 Acci. See Guadix Andarax 125 Acre 283 Andújar 140, 313 n. 11 Adra 112 n. 54 Antas 125 África 20, 22, 35, 67, 72, 97, 126, 129, 131, Antequera 113 152, 177 n. 19, 179 n. 24, 189–190, 213, Antioquia 240, 361 226–227, 234–235, 260–261, 287 n. 73, Arabia 211 n. 46, 221, 273 291, 325, 338, 354, 355 n. 3, 358, 360, 371, Aragón 3, 164, 165 n. 29, 216, 232, 373 285 n. 66 Aguila, street 129, 130 n. 34 Arjona 222 Al-Andalus 9–10, 87, 118, 139, 146, 218, Arzila 140 262, 273, 283–284, 287, 297, 308, 351, 353, Asia 234, 376 n. 1 356 n. 9, 357–358, 360, 364, 366, 369, Assyria 396 375, 386, 393, 403 Athens 16 Albaicín (Granada) 36, 41–42, 54, 76, 95 n. 4, 98, 114, 329 Babel 180, 184, 196–197, 381 Albaicín (Pastrana) 276, 279 Babylon 7, 356, 411 Alcaicería 83 Baeza 54, 98, 99 n. 15, 101, 106, 155, 162, Alcalá de Henares 9, 28, 227, 246, 336, 222, 278 354 n. 2, 355, 367 Baghdad 258 Alcazarquivir 131–136, 140 Barbary. See North Africa Alcaná 187, 188 n. 48, 191 Barera 124 Alcolea de la Alpujarra 83 Basra 255 Aleppo 248, 259, 350, 390 Baza 41 n. 23, 69–70 Alexandria 329–330, 412, 419 Bédar 123–124, 132 Algeciras 161 Benaguaciles 124 Algiers 43 n. 33, 74–75, 109, 130, 133, 371 Benitagla 124 Alhama 365–366 Berja 16 Alhambra 6, 54, 65, 78, 80, 106, 108, Bisinzone [Besançon?] 246 118–119, 173, 175, 176 n. 14, 179, 276, 338 Borge 328 Almagro 280, 289–290 Braga 202 Almanzora, river 54, 125 Bukhara 354 Almazán 281 Burgos 271 Almería 79 n. 46, 123–124, 125 n. 14, 127, 132, 134, 373 Cabrera 132 Almonacid de la Sierra 282 Cáceres 16 Almuñécar 129, 132 Cádiz 143, 147, 189, 211 n. 46, 312 Alpujarras 4–5, 20–22, 32, 35, 38, 41 n. 23, Cairo 139, 390, 413 42, 47–48, 50, 52–53, 55, 58, 62–63, 66, Calabria 225 72, 74–75, 77, 79, 82–84, 86–87, 92, 95, Calahorra 21 99, 101, 104–105, 108–111, 116–118, 121–123, Calatrava 70, 72, 75, 277 128, 130–132, 142, 160, 162, 200, 211, 287, Caldea 357 n. 11 351, 358 Campotéjar 74–75 America 3, 134 Carabanchel 141 Amsterdam 144 Caravaca de la Cruz 323 index of places 473

Carcere. See Cáceres Guadalajara 100, 152, 274 Carmona 235–236 Guadalquivir, river 369, 370 n. 38 Carthage 376 Guadalupe 133 Casa del Chapiz 98 Guadix 16, 38, 43, 70 n. 14, 71 n. 19, 112, Castelferro 112 n. 54 199, 363 Castile 3, 21, 42, 54–55, 57, 62, 66, 69, 75, Güéjar 282 78, 80 n. 47, 86, 100, 104, 114–115, 126, 129, 189, 191, 203, 218–219, 243, 274, 332, 406 Hama 261–263 Cazorla 101 Heidelberg 350 Ceuta 189 Hercules, Tower 117 n. 70, 213–214, 217 Clavijo, battle of 203 Hispania 86, 201, 204 Collège de France 299 Holland 143–144, 150, 323, 325, 423 Collegio dei Maroniti 246, 298, 300 Hornachos 28, 93, 139–140, 142 n. 8, 143, Collegio Romano 299 146 Collegio Urbaniano 299 Humanes 274 Constantinople. See Istanbul Cordova 5, 55, 57, 106, 165, 199, 214 n. 59, Iliberris/Iliberri 16 219, 278, 287 n. 73, 312, 353–354, 365, Iliturgi. See Mengíbar 368–372 Ireland 310, 312 Cremona 201, 402 n. 19 Israel 195, 219, 221, 405, 408, 410 Cuenca 215, 218–219, 228, 274 Istanbul 98 n. 13, 102, 150–152, 277 Cuevas de Almanzora 132 Italy 31, 79, 204, 221, 236, 238, 244–245, Cyprus 25, 149, 152 250, 259, 297, 299, 356–357

Dalías 112 n. 54 Jaén 55, 106, 222 Damascus 258, 287 n. 73 Jayena 75 Darrical 125, 128 Jerez de la Frontera 103 n. 26 Jerusalem 3, 6, 16, 197, 199, 209, 215, 219 Egypt 7, 51, 146, 198, 314, 322, 378, 394, Juviles 112 n. 54 404–405, 409–410, 412–416, 419 El Escorial 9, 15, 19, 37 n. 6, 90, 106–108, La Mancha 277 117 n. 73, 127 n. 24, 135, 139, 156–157, 171, La Pangía 276 175–176, 177 n. 18, 183, 200, 207, 228–229, La Sapienza, University 8, 29, 180, 245, 233, 242, 253, 260, 279, 320 n. 35, 340, 247–248, 269, 299, 302, 387, 418 359, 387, 394 Lanzarote 131 El Provencio 285 n. 66 Larache 102 n. 25, 133, 134 n. 39, 135–136, Elvira 16 235–236, 372 England 10, 137, 249–250, 254, 259, Leiden 10, 143–144, 245, 318, 344, 423 345 n. 33, 347 n. 42, 387, 407, 424 León 127 Extremadura 113, 133, 139 Lepanto 22, 358 Lisbon 63, 133–135, 189 Fez 102 n. 25, 105, 116, 135–136, 226, 235, Low Countries. See Holland 240, 290, 315, 316 n. 25 Lucena 100 Flanders 114 Lyon 32 Florence 12, 240, 395 France 143, 250, 299–300, 387, 411 Madrid 9, 29–31, 86, 91, 98 n. 14, 100, 105, Fulda, monastery 201 122, 135, 139–140, 142, 156, 162, 171–172, 189, 200, 212, 214, 231, 252 n. 24, 261, 263, Galera 113, 114 n. 59 265–266, 282 n. 49, 286 n. 69, 290, 309, Gandía 42, 339 n. 9 313, 315, 317, 328, 332, 349, 392 n. 30, 414, Generalife 70, 75, 78, 80 421 Genil, river 173 n. 7 Maghrib. See North Africa Gibraltar 130, 141, 143 Mainz 411 Greece 7, 198 Málaga 53, 112, 123, 235, 262, 318, 348–349 474 index of places

Marbella 315, 316 n. 25 Ricla 285 Marrakech 131–132, 134, 137, 142, 144, 146, Riyāḍ al-Zaytūn 131 235, 277, 290, 292 Roa 21 Marseille 101 Rome 1, 7–8, 10, 13, 28–32, 37, 54, 93, Mauritania 184 163–164, 180, 198, 200, 203–204, 222–223, Mazagan 135, 142 238, 244–248, 251–252, 254, 259, 269, Medina de Rioseco 59 286 n. 69, 296–302, 305, 310, 312, Melilla 3, 130 322–323, 330–331, 341–342, 344, 346–349, Mengíbar 16 356–367, 360 n. 16, 361–363, 379–381, Mérida 161 387, 391–392, 411 Mexico 25 Ronda 42, 355 Milan 37 nn. 6–7, 238, 275, 343 Royal Chapel, Granada 50, 106, 200 n. 15, Mojácar 124 388 Monserrat, monastery 261 Morocco 22, 28, 82, 93, 102, 123, 128–137, Saint Jean de Luz 143 140–148, 226, 227 n. 5, 234–236, 277, 288, Salamanca 14, 21, 171, 212, 216, 227, 246, 292, 339, 358–360, 423 340, 355, 391 Murcia 101, 112 Saldaña 21 Sale 146 New Spain 158, 338 Samaria 221 Naples 4, 31, 112, 232, 236–240, 323 San Antón, hermitage 193 Nile 412 San Cecilio (Granada) 14, 90, 183 North Africa 4, 35, 55, 58, 67, 74, 107, 109, San Clemente, monastery 295 152, 161, 189–190, 226, 235, 291, 336, 358, San Cristóbal, monastery 370–371 360, 371, 373–374 San Dionisio, college 328 San Hermenegildo, colegio 312 Ocaña 101, 178 San Juan de los Reyes, Church 70 Oran 3, 74, 220, 280, 289–290, 324–325, San Marcos, Church 182 n. 37 331 San Miguel, Parish 76, 83, 120 Órgiva la Nueva. See Riyāḍ al-Zaytūn San Nicolás, Parish 97, 98 n. 12, 372 Órgiva 111 San Pablo, College 310, 312, 315, 318–319, Oria 54 323 n. 43, 410, 412, 413 n. 49 Osuna 54, 57, 89–90 San Pietro in Montorio 299 Otranto 197 San Salvador, Parish 82 n. 54, 221, 328 Oxford 292 n. 87, 292–293, 350 Sanlúcar de Barrameda 189 Santa Fe de Granada 82 Padules 112 n. 54 Santa Justa, Church 208 Palermo 260, 262 n. 70 Santiago de Compostela 199, 202 Palestine 323 Saragossa 157, 222, 282, 369 Pantelleria 226 Segorbe 26, 179 n. 23, 207, 227, 338 n. 8 Paris 12, 143–144, 150, 250, 301, 345 Serena 123–124 Pastrana 100–102, 152, 274–282, 285–286, Seville 5, 21–22, 30, 36, 77, 113, 140, 289, 291–293, 388 142–144, 165, 182, 189, 202, 246, 251, 254, Persia 227 n. 5, 246, 302, 345, 356, 267, 278–279, 310, 312–314, 322, 328–329, 357 n. 11, 396 354, 355 n. 4, 391–393, 402 n. 19 Peru 21, 338 Sheba 181 Portugal 131, 133, 135, 200, 202, 216, 235, Sicily 4, 89, 226, 260–262, 403 n. 24 339 Siena 79 Portugos 112 n. 54 Sinai 285 Praga 348 n. 46 Socuéllamos 54 Puerto de Santa María 142–143 Sorbas 124–125, 127 Suria. See Syria Quesada 101 Syria 51, 248, 283, 287 index of places 475

Tabor 284 Úbeda 101, 312 Tánger 236 Uclés 285 Tarifa 143, 323 Ujíjar 112 n. 54 Tarragona 21, 202 Urci. See Almería Tarsis 180 Urgabona. See Arjona al-Ṭayyibīn, mosque. See San Juan de los Urrea de Jalón 285 Reyes Utrera 135–136 Tendilla 41, 173 Teresa 124, 132 Valdeinfierno 282 Tetuan 131–132 Valdelecrín 41 n. 23 Tlemcen 225, 236 Valencia 43–44, 99 n. 15, 157, 164, 216, Toledo 6–7, 57, 78 n. 42, 101, 104, 140, 227, 318, 338 n. 8, 396 165, 181, 182 n. 37, 187–191, 197, 199, Valladolid 21, 78 n. 42, 101, 177 n. 19 201–208, 212–213, 214 n. 59, 217–220, Valparaíso 16 n. 6, 22, 26, 96 222–223, 231, 250, 252, 258, 269 n. 1, Vatican 1, 12, 28, 30–31, 95 n. 2, 145, 279, 280 n. 39, 284, 295, 342 n. 24, 354, 181 n. 35, 201, 248–249, 252, 264, 274, 355 n. 3, 406 n. 31 286, 294, 296, 398, 300, 302, 304–305, Tolosa 102 n. 23 331, 356 Transoxiana 402 Vélez de la Gomera 72, 106 n. 36, 130 Trent 8, 299 Vélez Málaga 99 Tropea 225 Vera 124–126, 127 n. 25 Troy 197 Vergi. See Berja Trujeque 406 n. 31 Vuno 246 Tübingen 345 Tunis 74, 102 n. 24, 130, 142, 145–148, Yebra 276 150–151, 246, 287 Yuste 200 Turkey 84, 348 n. 46 Turpiana Tower 1, 13, 16, 20–23, 27, 32, Zarauz 241–242 126 n. 18, 155, 203 Zurgena 124 Tyre 180