1 The Capitulations
Shortly after the conquest and surrender of the Islamic city of Granada in January 1492, the Christian conquerors began to discuss the religious significance of the conquest in the history of Christianity and to construct a Christian discourse about it. Isabelle Poutrin has argued that it was the expectation of a rapid massive conversion of all Muslims to Christianity, rather than the preservation of a status quo ante—that is, a continuation of the Mudejar situation—that permeated the spirit of the capitulations of the city of Granada.1 What this early-sixteenth-century discourse lacked, however, was a role for pristine Christian origins. In fact, Granada could not claim much in this respect. It had been ruled by Muslims for many centuries and then became a frontier between the worlds of Christianity and Islam. But according to the Aragonese and Castilians, many Muslims living in Granada had been descendants of converts from Christianity and Islam was only a superficial layer.2 Such assessments must be considered ideology-driven and meant to justify the efforts towards a rapid conversion of the Muslims. More reliable figures indicate that the number of Christian converts to Islam living in Granada must have been about three hundred.3 The city and the Granadan kingdoms had also been associated with a very long Jewish history, and Jews had lived there as a minority until the conquest of the city by the Catholic Monarchs, but, as is well known, shortly after the conquest the Monarchs decided to expel the Jews, and those who remained behind were punished by the death penalty if they refused to convert.4
In the emerging Christian discourse the city was seen as the New Jerusalem and Spain as the New Israel, and a messianic role was projected onto the Catholic Monarchs, whose conquest of Jerusalem as well as the defeat of Islam and the spread of Christianity over the whole world, beginning with North Africa, was assumed to be near.5 Oran would indeed be conquered in 1506, and later on strongholds were established on the North African coast.6 While many Muslims fled the city, others stayed behind as Mudejars while still others converted to Christianity.7
Figure 1
Granada around 1565. Engraving by Simon Novellanus, perhaps after a drawing by Joris Hoefnagel, meant to be included in Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg, Civitates orbis terrarum, Cologne 1572–1617 (6 vols.), vol. 5: Urbium praecipuarum mundi theatrum quintum. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, object no. BI-1956-1074-8
Reproduced with permission of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The new Christian discourse extolled religious and political unity to the detriment of religious diversity. Judaism and Islam were meant to disappear and the early modern nation-state model began to replace the earlier pluralistic state-religion model. Two religious figures played an important role at this stage: the first was the Hieronymite Hernando de Talavera (1428–1507), the second the Franciscan Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros (1436–1517). While Talavera and Cisneros differed regarding conversion policies, they differed less than hitherto assumed about their view of Islam. While supporting a politics of gradual conversion, Talavera held no less polemical views on Muslims and Islam than Cisneros did.8
Between 1492 and 1499 a campaign was started to achieve the conversion of the Mudejars. In 1492 Talavera founded the Colegio de San Cecilio de Granada, which was meant to serve the spiritual education of the children of the Granadan Mudejars.9 Several works of instruction in Arabic came into being, among them the Arte and Vocabulista (both printed in 1505) by Pedro de Alcalá, who worked in the service of Hernando de Talavera and had prepared these works before the forced conversions of 1499. It is interesting to observe that among the passages meant to be read by the Mudejars in the Arte was also the beginning of the Gospel of John in Andalusī Arabic.10 Talavera also had the Vita Christi by the Catalan Franciscan theologian Francesc Eiximenis (1330–1409) translated into Castilian and adapted, so that it fitted the alleged need for a Life of Mary and Jesus that accentuated elements that were acceptable from a Muslim point of view. Further, he tried to spread the devotion of Mary among the Mudejars by promoting the manufacture of images of her.11 He also used the printing press and the Castilian language as means to evangelize the Muslims. According to Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza the Muslim population called Talavera el santo alfaquí de los cristianos (the pious faqih of the Christians).12
Figure 2
The Sacromonte Abbey and Colegio, the caves of the ‘martyrs’ in the foreground and the Alhambra in the background. (from: Abadía y Colegio del Sacro Monte, Granada, n.p. n.d., ca. 1930)
Reproduced with permission of the Sacromonte Abbey
Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros, cardinal of Toledo and inquisitor in the city of Granada between 1499 and 4 February 1500, was the main force behind the harsher policies towards the children of Christian converts to Islam (elches, rumías) that led to the revolt that broke out in the Muslim quarter, the Albaicín.13 Elches had had their rights guaranteed in the capitulations, but it seems that it was Cisneros’s method to secure their return to Christianity in December 1499 that led to the said revolt in the Albaicín, which spread to the Alpujarras and was put down by military force in 1501. Massive conversions followed, while still more Muslims took the opportunity to emigrate to Islamic territories.
2 After the Conversion
The partly voluntary (i.e., of the so-called collaborators) and partly forced conversions of the Granadan Mudejars to Christianity between 1499 and 1501 were followed by continued campaigns of evangelization and repressive measures by which the authorities aimed to eradicate all memory of Islamic life among the new converts and transform the city from a Muslim to a Christian one. One of these was the edict to burn all Islamic books in the entire Kingdom, including Qurans. The orders to do so date from 12 October 1501.14 In February 1502 the Mudejars of Castile (which included Granada) were offered the choice of conversion, emigration or death.15 In their international diplomatic efforts in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire to justify the events, the Catholic Monarchs argued that the rebellion had nullified the capitulations and that thus a forced conversion was justified.16
We may conclude from the difficulties placed in the way of those who opted for emigration (they could only leave via the harbors in the Bay of Biscay and had to abandon most of their possessions) that conversion was what the Castilian authorities in fact sought to achieve. In addition to those who remained Muslims in secret, to whom we will turn below, other Mudejars accepted Christian rule and beliefs. Among them were members of the Nasrid elite, even the nobility, and religious scholars, who had collaborated with the Christians during the conquest and had accepted their dominant position.
Shortly after the conquest, the Catholic Monarchs had founded a hermitage very close to the place where the keys of the Alhambra had been handed over to them, and close to the mazmorras, the underground caves where Christian captives had been held in the Muslim period. They did so as a commemoration of the martyrs who had died in the city during the Muslim period, among them the Franciscans Pedro de Dueñas (1377–1397) and Juan Lorenzo de Cetina (1340–1397).17 Today this place is called the Garden of the Martyrs (Carmen de los mártires). Isabella ordered a (now lost) retable to be made that showed the earliest martyrs of the church: Saints Sebastian, Marcellus, Stephen, and Hermenegild, along with the Franciscan friars who had been martyred in Granada and another martyr, Saint Peter Pascual (c. 1227–1300).18 Dedicated the martyrs and Saints Cosmas and Damian, the hermitage became a place of veneration by the medical doctors of the city, very likely also those of Muslim descent, of which there were many, both women and men.19
Next to this visible commemorative marker of the history of Christianity and its history of martyrdom, very early on a start was made in transforming the Islamic urban cityscape into a Christian one. The call to prayer ceased and both muʾadhdhins converted to Christianity.20 In 1502 Christian worship began to be celebrated in the interior of the great mosque, and later the new cathedral was to be built on that very same spot. An extensive building program was begun, aimed at transforming the city.21 Many of the New Converts (Sp. nuevos convertidos de Moros), expected the effects of baptism to be temporary and hoped to be able to practice Islam openly again. But they would not. Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Abī Jumʿa al-Maghrāwī al-Wahrānī (d. 917/1511), a mufti at Fez, wrote around 1504 a fatwā for Muslims living as “strangers” (Ar. ghurabāʾ) who were forced to express unbelief and dissimulate their Islamic beliefs.22 His advice, which was soon translated from Arabic into Spanish for the crypto-Muslims, or Moriscos, as they were called by the Old Christian population, was that they might, if forced, dissimulate (taqiyya): they were allowed to express unbelief and dispense with the obligations connected with ritual ablutions and prayer.
3 Mounting Tensions and Conflict
During the sixteenth century tensions between Christians and Muslims in Granada mounted. In 1567 Francisco Nuñez Muley, an elderly Granadan nobleman—in his youth a page in the household of Archbishop Hernando de Talavera—voiced in a discourse the Morisco protest against a number of imminent measures to be taken at the highest level of church and state.23 These measures aimed at prohibiting the wearing of the almalafa by Morisco women, the use of baths, and even the use of written and spoken Arabic. His protest was in vain.
In 1568 the Granadan Moriscos revolted.24 The revolt spread to the Alpujarras, a mountainous region to the southeast of Granada, and was especially virulent there, with many killings on both sides.
Figure 3
The uprising of the Moriscos in the Alpujarras, showing the martyrs of Mairena: the bachiller Joan Martínez Xaurgui (A) and two children, Gonçalo and Melchor (B). Engraving by Francisco Heylan. Francisco Heylan was an artist from Flanders, probably Antwerp, who had settled in Granada and made a series of engravings illustrating the Christian character of the Lead Books.
Reproduced with permission of the Sacromonte Abbey
The war lasted for two years and could be repressed, but only at the cost of many lives and disappointment in the possibilities of a peaceful coexistence. Granadan Moriscos actively sought help from Muslim authorities, in particular the Ottomans. They sent diplomats to Istanbul, but the Ottomans prioritized the conquest of Cyprus (which indeed took place in 1571) over military assistance to the Granadan Moriscos.25 Most Granadan Moriscos were expelled from the city and were forcibly dispersed all over Castile. In fact, of the fifteen or twenty thousand Moriscos who lived there at the beginning of the revolt, only three or four thousand remained in 1571.26 Some were able to avoid expulsion to Castile, such as for example the Granadan Morisco physician and translator Alonso del Castillo and his family, because he had been of great service to king during the rebellion, as we will see below.
The consequences of the expulsion of the Granadan Moriscos to Castile were profound. It is from this time onwards that the sources start to speak of a “Morisco problem” in Castile and in Spain in general, as Granadan Moriscos formed networks of open or silent resistance. On the surface, the expulsion ended Muslim life in Granada. But as we will see, this was not the whole story. Islam in Granada appeared to be remarkably persistent. In order to explain how that persistence came about, we must return to the fifteenth-century conquest of the Kingdom.
During the long conquest and for some time after it had been effected, Granada, as a frontier society, had attracted many people from other parts of Iberia and even beyond, among them many Mudejars from Castile.27 For these migrants Granada offered many economic possibilities. Apparently, many of the Granadan Moriscos were able to acquire considerable wealth and good positions as notaries, medical doctors, and advocates of the Royal Chancellery.28 Some even rose to the nobility. The most notable example of such a person was Pedro de Granada Venegas, who became the first Marquis of Campotéjar (1559–1643). According to Enrique Soria Mesa, not all families which flourished were of noble Nasrid birth; many stemmed from the lower classes. The research by Soria Mesa and others has in recent years led to a drastic revision of the established image of Moriscos as belonging to the margins of Spanish society. They now appear to have been very much a part of that society and were integrated so well that they were able to escape, first, the expulsion to Castile after the revolt in 1568–1570, and then, much later, the expulsion from Spain to North Africa.
The main way in which they achieved this, as research into archival documents by Enrique Soria Mesa shows, was that they were able to produce forged documents that proved their status as faithful collaborators with the Castilian crown before and after the conquest of the city. Many of these Moriscos had probably become sincere and faithful Christians and participated in the Christian social and literary life of the city.29 A number of them, however, while completely assimilating and integrating and hence virtually disappearing, remained Christians only outwardly and Muslims inwardly.30 Even after the forced migrations to Castile in 1571, therefore, Moriscos still lived in Granada, but they had integrated well into the Old Christian society and outwardly lived as Christians. These Moriscos often tried to pursue noble status (hidalguía) in order to prevent a possible expulsion, and for the same reason produced fraudulent documents that they hoped would serve to prove their Old Christian status.31
It was in such a context of revolt, forced migration to Castile, and a continued Morisco presence in Granada that first in 1588 and then between 1595 and 1599/1606 a series of discoveries were made, which seemed to elevate a city that had no Christian past to a city that had been a place where Saint James had lived and with him some Apostolic men including Granada’s first archbishop, Caecilius. But along with that Christian past went the Arabic and Spanish language and a series of documents which in addition to belief raised also many doubts and outright rejection.
Two places occupy an important position in the story of the Parchment and the Lead Books. First, the tower in which the Parchment was found, which was located at the center of the old Islamic city. Second, the Valparaíso hillock on the outskirts of Granada, on which, allegedly hidden in various caves, four Latin plaques, ashes, and twenty-two32 Lead Books were discovered. The tower was said to be very old, allegedly even dating back to Jewish (not Roman) origins, and had served as the minaret of the main mosque in the Nasrid period.33 At the time of the conquest of the city by the Christians it had been extended with a new upper part that served to house the bells. According to others, for example the Granadan chronicler and priest Luis de Cueva (a firm believer in the authenticity of Parchment and Lead Books), the tower had been built by Phoenician Arabs.34 We will see below that one of the Lead Books testifies to the life of such a Phoenician Arab in Granada in the first century!35
At the time of the discovery, the tower was being demolished to make room for the new cathedral. While the Old Christian inhabitants had not attached any particular value to Mount Valparaíso before the discoveries, there are indications that the Morisco population had seen it as a sacred site, associated with the presence of saintly figures and healing as well as cursing practices.36 According to A. Katie Harris, the land where the discoveries occurred had belonged to Moriscos until in 1570 it had been confiscated by the Crown.37
The use of lead may seem strange, but we have to remember that it was not an uncommon writing material in ancient Iberia, and so when the authors invented the Latin plaques and covers, written in pseudo-Iberic script, they also had to invent a corollary in the Arabic equivalent: the Lead Books.38 But the usage is also notable among Granadan Moriscos some years before the discoveries of the Lead Books. Coleman refers to a Morisco resident in Granada, Miguel Hernández Haganí, who in 1571 had been penanced by the Inquisition and sentenced to six years in the galleys for having in his possession “some papers written in Arabic and a plaque of lead (plancha de plomo) with Arabic letters that included some of the sayings of Muhammad.”39
Nowadays, the most conspicuous buildings on the Sacromonte are the Church, the Abbey, the Colegio, and the caves of the martyrs, while at the foot of the mountain Roma live and perform their dances. While it is very likely that the Roma already lived in Granada before the conquest, we do not know whether they lived at Mount Valparaíso.40
Shortly before the discoveries were made, several persons, including the Morisco translator Miguel de Luna, whom we will meet below as one of the main actors in the Lead Book affair, appeared in a long series of witnesses in the records of the evaluation process, and in his testimony claimed to have seen miraculous lights when he was staying in his walled garden (carmen) near the hillock. On that piece of soil Luna had owned a summer house (cenador) for 25 years, i.e., from 1570 onwards.41
In 1598 the hillock was bought by Archbishop Pedro de Castro. He erected the ‘Insigne’ Iglesia Colegial in 1609 (inaugurated in 1610), replacing the small chapel that he had built there earlier, and in that year Castro also started to build the Sacromonte Abbey.
In 1600, the cult of Caecilius and the veneration of the relics were officially approved upon their authentication during a solemn regional council. During the solemn mass of thanksgiving on Sunday, 30 April 1600, the relics were displayed to the “overjoyed public.”42 The following Sunday, thousands of people attended a mass at the Sacromonte, transforming it into a holy site. It soon became a center of (local) pilgrimages and processions, and pilgrims would erect crosses on the mountain to commemorate the martyrs.
In 1610 Castro also founded a college, whose building took a long time.43 The church housed the Lead Books and the saintly remains of the twelve martyrs who had allegedly died on the mount, called thenceforth the Sacro Monte, the Sacred Mountain, and gave access to the caves. According to oral traditions one of these caves had been called in Arabic the cave of the “burned one.”44
The findings were important elements in the transformation of Granada into a Christian city. However, the basis on which the Christian narrative rested remained controversial and became the subject of a very long and heated debate. From the outset the Parchment and the Books were defended by one group as Christian lore, while others rejected them as Muslim heresies and as (Morisco) fabrications.
One may ask how it is possible that the discoveries of these Arabic texts, which were difficult to read, ever found supporters among the religious authorities. Part of the answer must be that in the case of the Parchment the decisive factor was the prophecy written in Spanish, and the Latin list of remains with the signatures of Caecilius and his servant Patricius; while in the case of the Lead Books the first findings were Latin plaques, of which the first, our L1, mentioned the martyr’s death of Mesithon. Mesithon was one of the apostolic men (Sp. varones) who according to certain traditions had brought Christianity to Spain. Furthermore, Hiscius, a disciple of the Apostle James, is mentioned in L2, which also tells us that he was martyred along with his servants Turillus, Panucius, Maronius and Centulius. Thesiphon, whose martyr’s death is mentioned in L3, was among these apostolic men as well; he had died there along with his servants Maximinus and Luparius.
L4, finally, not only mentioned the fourth apostolic man, Caecilius (sic, not Cecilio, as in the Parchment and the Lead Books!), disciple of Saint James, but his ashes were also found together with it.45 The plaques and ashes, therefore, “proved” the historical truth of the tradition of the apostolic men and connected them with the journey to and burial of Saint James in the Iberian Peninsula. Latin was also used in the first two Lead Books: they bear both a Latin and an Arabic title.
The discovery of Caecilius’s remains followed the discoveries of the bodies of other apostolic men in the years preceding it. In 1593 the body of Torquatus, who had allegedly been bishop of Guadix (near Granada), had been found in Celanova, in northwest Spain, where it had been taken from Guadix in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Moors. The body of Secundius was discovered in Ávila at about the same time.46
Very soon, however, critics started to identify Islamic, heretical aspects, but the defenders of the Christian nature of the Books did not pay heed, perhaps because the general population was very soon committed to the findings.47 The question of how these conflicting interpretations came into being and how they continued to exist side by side until well into the twentieth century has been a guiding question for many scholars of the Sacromonte affair, including ourselves. This important question could not be answered as long as the original sources remained out of reach. No interpretation could be tested against the original sources.
In presenting our study and critical edition of the Parchment and the Lead Books we first of all offer an historical overview of the interpretation process of the Parchment and the Lead Books. It is not our aim here to deal with all the aspects of that complex and long process. We will limit ourselves to analyzing the contributions of translators and interpreters who were able to study the original Arabic Lead Book texts and /or the Parchment and who were thus in a position to make an informed assessment. In that way, we surmise, they contributed to the body of knowledge about their contents and in a sense controlled the stream of information, including the possibility that they contributed to their coming into existence (i.e., were authors). In this way, we aim to reconstruct the “genealogy” of the interpretation, which allows us to establish whose authority was followed.
In order to assess the corpus of translations and interpretations we have focused in our research in the archives and libraries on identifying Arabic transcriptions of the Parchment and Lead Books and on determining dates and authorship. Our study concentrates on the rich materials in the Sacromonte Abbey, the Archive of the Real Chancillería (Granada), the Library of the Royal Academy of History, the National Library of Spain, the Museo Lázaro Galdiano (Madrid), the Library and Archive of Zabálburu (Madrid) and the Vatican Archives that were made available to us in the Sacromonte Abbey, as part of the documentation on CD-ROM that had been handed over by the Vatican in 2000.
We will analyze the process in chronological order, taking into account the contexts in which each translator with first-hand knowledge of the sources worked. Our work will discuss those who wrote about the Lead Books on the basis of secondary knowledge about them if this is relevant.
We will start with the discovery of the Parchment and the Lead Books and then analyze the interpretation process in Spain and Rome until their condemnation by Pope Innocent XI (Chapters 1–4). Then we will discuss the academic studies about the Parchment and the Lead Books (Chapter 5). Following this, we will present a general introduction to our edition and translation in Chapters 6 to 9. These chapters will discuss the material and paleographical aspects (Chapter 6), style and language (Chapter 7), the methodology we follow in our edition and translation (Chapter 8), and the structure and contents of the Parchment and the Lead Books, including the question of their authorship (Chapter 9).
Table 1
Chronology and Concordance of the titles of the Lead Books in Arabic, English, Spanish, and Latin
|
Our chronological numbering |
Title |
Hagerty |
Vatican order, ACDF, r7g / MS BCLM 265 |
MS, BNE 10503 (Estepa) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Lat./Ar. Liber Fundamenti Ecclesie/Kitāb Qawāʿid al-Dīn Eng. Book of the fundaments of Religion Sp. Libro de los fundamentos de la ley Lat. Vat. Liber fundamentorum fidei |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
2 |
Lat./Ar. Liber de Essentia Dei/Kitāb Fī al-Dhāt al-Karīma Eng. Book of Tisʿūn ibn ʿAṭṭār on the Venerable Essence Sp. Libro de la esencia de Dios Lat. Vat. Liber de essentia veneranda |
2 |
2 |
2 |
|
3 |
Ar. Duʿāʾ wa-ḥirz li-Yaʿqūb ibn Shamīkh al-Zabadī al-Ḥawārī Eng. Prayer and Amulet against all evils by James, the son of Shamīkh al-Zabadī, the Apostle Sp. Oración de defensorio de Jacobo Lat. Oratio et defensivum Iacobi |
6 |
4 |
6 |
|
4 |
Ar. Kitāb ṣifat al-qurbān Eng. The Book of the Form of the Mass by James the Apostle written by his secretary, Tisʿūn ibn ʿAṭṭār Sp. Libro de la relación de la misa de Jacobo Lat. Liber ordinationis missae Iacobi Apostoli |
3 |
3 |
3 |
|
5 (= 9) |
Ar. Kitāb Nadhrat al-Ḥawāriyyīn Eng. Book of the honorable and blessed apostle James ibn Shamīkh al-Zabadī about the admonition of the Apostles Sp. El Libro del Cathecismo mayor |
|||
|
Lat. Liber beatissimi Apostoli Iacobi filii Zamechii Zebedaei de |
4 |
5 |
4 |
|
|
predicatione Apostolorum et de rebus quas ipsi constituerunt circa hoc. |
||||
|
6 |
Ar. Bukā Bidruh al-Ḥawārī al-Khalīfa Eng. The Weeping of Peter the Apostle, the Vicar Sp. Llanto de San Pedro Lat. Planctus Petri Apostoli Vicarii |
5 |
6 |
Included in 5 (not numbered separately) |
|
7 |
Ar. Kitāb Maḥāsin Sayyidinā Yaṣūʿ wa-Maʿājizihi wa-Ummihi Maryam al-Ṣāliḥa al-ʿAdhra Eng. Book of the Outstanding Qualities and Miracles of our Lord Jesus and his mother Holy Virgin Mary Sp. Libro de los actos de Nuestro Señor Lat. Liber rerum praeclare gestarum Domini nostri Iesu et miraculorum eius et matris eius Mariae sanctae Virginis |
7 |
7 |
7 |
|
8 |
Ar. Kitāb Muntahā ālāt al-Qudra wa-al-Ḥilm wa-al-Sharīʿa fī al-Khalīqa I Eng. Book of the Utmost Instruments of Power, Clemency and Justice in Creation Sp. El Libro de summa Providencia Lat. Liber assequibilium divinae potentiae, clementiae ac iustitiae circa Creaturas |
15 |
14 |
16 |
|
9 (= 5) |
Ar. Kitāb Nadhrat al-Ḥawāriyyīn Eng. See our number 5 Sp. El Libro del Cathecismo Menor Lat. – |
4 |
5 |
5 |
|
10 |
Ar. Kitāb Muntahā ālāt al-qudra, II Eng. Second part of the book of the Ultimate Instruments of Power, Clemency and Justice in Creation Sp. Libro de Providencia Lat. Pars secunda liber assequibilium divinae potentiae |
16 |
15 |
17 |
|
11 |
Ar. Kitāb Tawrīkh Khātam Sulaymān Eng. Book of the History of the Seal of Solomon Sp. La Historia del Sello, ò anillo de Salomon Lat. Liber historiae sigilli Salomonis |
17 |
13 |
18 |
|
12 |
Ar. Kitāb Waṣf Munān Dār al-Salām wa-ʿAdhāb Dār al-Intiqām Eng. Book of the Blessings of the Abode of Peace and the Punishments of the Abode of Revenge Sp. Tratado del Infierno y de la Gloria Lat. Liber relationis doni domus pacis et tormenti domus vindicate |
18 |
17 |
19 |
|
13 |
Ar. Kitāb fī Ṭabīʿat al-Malak wa-Qudratihi Eng. Book on the Nature and Power of the Angel Sp. Libro de la naturaleza del angel y de su poder Lat. De natura angeli et eius potentia |
19 |
16 |
20 |
|
14 |
Ar. Kitāb al-Ḥikām fī al-Dīn Eng. Book of Wisdoms and Sayings (Hadith) for the End of Times Sp. Libro de las sentencias acerca de la ley Lat. Liber sententiarum circa fidem |
11 |
12 |
12 |
|
15 |
Ar. Kitāb Tawrīkh ḥaqīqat al-injīl Eng. Book of the History of the Essence of the Gospel Sp. El Libro de la Historia de la Haqīqa Lat. Liber historiae certificationis Evangeliae |
8 |
8 |
8 |
|
16 |
Ar. Kitāb Munājāt al-Ṣāliḥa Maryam al-ʿAdhra Eng. Book of the Intimate Conversations of the Holy Virgin Mary Sp. El Libro del Coloquio de Nuestra Señora Lat. Liber colloquii Sanctae Mariae Virginis |
10 |
11 |
11 |
|
17 |
Ar. Ḥaqīqat al-Injīl Eng. The Essence of the Gospel Sp. Libro mudo, “Certificación del Evangelio” Lat. Liber mutus |
Apéndice IV |
- |
- |
|
18 |
Ar. Kitāb Mawāhib Thawāb Ḥaqīqat al-Injīl Eng. Book of the Gifts of Reward to the Servants of God who believe in the Essence of the Gospel Sp. Libro de los dones del galardon Lat. Liber donorum premii certificationem evangelii credentibus |
9 |
9 |
9 |
|
19 |
Ar. Kitāb al-asrār al-ʿazīma Eng. Book of the Enormous Secrets Sp. Libro de misterios grandes Lat. Liber mysteriorum magnorum |
- |
- |
10 (en sigillos) |
|
20 |
Ar. Kitāb Maḥāsīn Yaʿqūb al-Ḥawārī Eng. Book of the Outstanding Qualities of James Sp. Libro de las acciones de Jacobo Lat. Liber rerum praeclare gestarum Iacobi Apostoli et miraculorum eius |
12 |
18 |
13 |
|
21 |
Ar. Kitāb Maḥāsīn Yaʿqūb al-Ḥawārī Eng. Second Book of the Outstanding Qualities of James Sp. Libro de las acciones de Jacobo Lat. Pars secunda liber rerum praeclare gestarum Iacobi pars II |
13 |
19 |
14 |
|
22 |
Ar. Kitāb al-asrār al-ʿazīma Eng. Book of the Enormous Secrets Sp. Libro de misterios grandes Lat. Liber mysteriorum magnorum |
14 |
10 |
15 |
Poutrin, “Los derechos de los vencidos.”
García-Arenal, “Granada as New Jerusalem,” 33.
Salvador Miguel, “Cisneros en Granada,” 157.
On fifteenth-century Nasrid Granada and its transition to the sixteenth century, see, for example, Leonard Patrick Harvey, Islamic Spain 1250–1500, 1–44, Celia del Moral, ed., El epílogo del islam andalusí, Manuel Barrios Aguilera and Ángel Galán Sánchez, eds., La Historia del Reino de Granada a Debate. Viejos y nuevos temas. Perspectivas de Estudio.
Ferdinand el Católico received the title King of Jerusalem in 1510, a title that the Spanish monarchy has kept ever since.
García-Arenal, “Granada as a New Jerusalem,” 16; Galán Sánchez, “De Mudéjares a Moriscos,” 326; Salvador Miguel, “Cisneros en Granada,” 167; Pastore and García-Arenal, eds., Visiones imperiales y profecía. Roma, España, Nuevo Mundo.
For late-fifteenth-century migrations see the Arabic chronicle translated as Fragmento de la Época, ed. Bustani; for the migrations and settlement in the Maghrib after 1610, see for example García-Arenal, “The Moriscos in Morocco”; Razūq, Al-Andalusiyyūn wa hijratuhum ilā ʾl-maghrib.
García-Arenal, “Granada as a New Jerusalem,” 36–40; Biersack and Martínez Medina, Fray Hernando de Talavera.
Valdés Sánchez, El Poder persuasivo de Maryam, 221–222.
Alcalá, Arte, F fol. 6b–7a. The said passage does not seem to be the source of the Arabic translation of John 1–14 in the Parchment.
Valdés Sánchez, El Poder persuasivo de Maryam, esp. 207 ff. On the campaigns, the role of images and the stress on shared beliefs, albeit in a polemical way, the fundamental study is Pereda, Images of Discord. Poetics and Politics of the Sacred Image in Fifteenth-Century Spain.; see also García-Arenal et al., “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity.”
Bermúdez de Pedraza, Historia Eclesiástica, fol. 186b. Don Francisco Núñez Muley (Garrad, “The Original Memorial of Don Francisco Núñez Muley,” 215) tells us that he had worked as a page in Talavera’s household for three years and travelled with him to the Alpujarras, where Talavera celebrated a mass accompanied by traditional Granadan music by ‘Mudejar’ musicians. Núñez Muley calls Talavera the ‘santo Alçobispo’ [sic].
Salvador Miguel, “Cisneros en Granada,” 156, 161.
Ladero Quesada, Los Mudéjares de Castilla, doc. 146. The association of the book burning with Cisneros seems to be of a later date, as Salvador Miguel, “Cisneros en Granada,” has argued.
Ladero Quesada, Los Mudéjares de Castilla, doc. 148; Wiegers, “Moriscos” in EI3.
Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 45 ff.
Padial Bailón, “Venerable hermandad de los santos mártires Cosme y Damián,” 2.
Antolínez de Burgos, Historia eclesiástica de Granada, 126.
See Harvey, “In Granada under the Catholic Monarchs,” 73–74.
Salvador Miguel, “Cisneros en Granada,” 161–162.
García-Arenal, “Granada as New Jerusalem,” 28 ff., esp. 30; Coleman, Creating Christian Granada; Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada.
See Stewart, “Dissimulation in Sunni Islam and Morisco taqiyya”; García-Arenal and Glazer-Eytan, eds., Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam; Richardson, Roma in the Medieval Islamic World, 79–80.
Garrad, “The Original Memorial of Don Francisco Núñez Muley.”
See on this period Domínguez Ortiz and Vincent, Historia de los Moriscos, 25–26; Harvey, Muslims in Spain 1500–1614, 204–237.
Krstić, “The Elusive Intermediaries: Moriscos in Ottoman and Western European Diplomatic Sources from Constantinople, 1560s–1630s.”
Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, 185.
See López de Coca Castañer, “La emigración mudéjar al reino de Granada”; Salvador Miguel, “Cisneros en Granada,” 158.
Soria Mesa, Los últimos moriscos, 15.
See on them García-Arenal, “El Entorno de los plomos”; ead., “Alonso del Castillo, Miguel de Luna y otros Moriscos: Una propuesta para la autoría de los plomos”; Childers, “Disappearing Moriscos.”
The Muslim identities of these individuals remained hidden to the outside world and, if not for research into Morisco sources and the Inquisition trials discussed below, would never have become known.
Childers, “An Extensive Network of Morisco Merchants.”
The secondary literature mentions various numbers, ranging from 19 to 22 Lead Books. We will return to this variation below.
Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada, 118; Archivo y Biblioteca de Francisco Zabálburu, Altamira 161, GD 5, carpeta 129.
These Arabs had even maintained ties with King Solomon, see his Diálogos de las cosas notables de Granada, Sevilla 1603: see García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain, 181 ff., and on Cueva also Collado Ruiz, “El médico romanceador,” passim. On the historical background of the building see also Urquízar-Herrera, Admiration and Awe, 121–122; 169–181.
See LP20, fol. 34a. It should be noted, however, that this Lead Book surfaced only in 1606—after the publication of Cueva’s work.
Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada, 114–117.
Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada, 118.
Lafon, “Les écritures anciennes en usage dans la péninsule ibérique, d’après des travaux récents,” passim.
Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, 193 and n. 69. The source is AHN, Inquisición, legajo 1953, no. 5, penitent #26. The same incident is also discussed in García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain, 95, who refer to him as Miguel Hernández Hagim, a chandler, and assume that these lead texts were related to the seeking of fortunes. See for lead texts circulating in Granada the appendix.
Richardson, Roma in the Medieval Islamic World, 79–80, referring to a cemetery of the Roma (also called in Arabic ghurabāʾ) in the fourteenth century across the Río Genil, close the former hermitage of San Antón el Viejo.
ASMG, C 49, fol. 31a ff. Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada, 113.
Quoted in Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada, 128.
Barrios Aguilera, “El Sacromonte de Granada,” 22–23; Sánchez Ocaña, El Sacro Monte, 159 ff.
Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada, 114.
These seven apostolic men were Caecilius, Torquatus, Ctesiphon, Euphrasius, Indaletius, Hesychius and Secundius. On the legend of the seven men see Kendrick, Saint James in Spain, 72. See on the legend of James and its later connection to the legend of the apostolic men: Márquez Villlanueva, Santiago: Trayectoria de un mito, 47.
Kendrick, Saint James in Spain, 72.
Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, 195. According to Coleman, it was the support of the Granadan people rather than that of the secular and religious authorities (including the Chapter and Archbishop Pedro de Castro) that acted in the crucial years 1595–1596 as a moving force: “Yet the cathedral chapter, the municipal council, and even Archbishop Castro himself all appear in the key events of 1595–1596 to have acted in ways that were more responsive than directive, following rather than leading the broad-based devotional fervor” (ibid., 196). Coleman assumes that the forgers aimed to create a reform towards a more inclusive and open society. As we will see, however, the Lead Books threaten with a curse those who will not believe in the Essence of the Gospel (see LP18, question 1).