Sobre el pergamino y lminas de Granada

Introduction

When, in 1607, Pedro de Valencia was asked to write this critique

Sobre el pergamino y lminas de Granada he was reluctant to do so,
aware that his views would be unacceptable to many of his
contemporaries. These relics of supposedly early Christian martyrs
and the various texts that purported to be from apostolic times had
attracted widespread public support. Quevedo had written a treatise in
honour of them called Discurso de las lminas del Monte Santo de
Granada, which has since been lost.1 Gngora wrote a sonnet whose
opening line refers to the many crosses erected on the Sacromonte Hill
by pilgrims: Este monte coronado de cruces. The poet compares the
hill to Mount Etna, under which lay the mythological Titans, banished
there after rebelling against the gods of Olympus; under the
Sacromonte lay the bones and ashes of the Christian martyrs, spiritual
Titans to be revered by pilgrims.2
Valencia finally agreed to give his considered opinion on two
grounds: he felt that the cause of true religion demanded that this
superstitious travesty be challenged and he was concerned, also, that
Spains reputation abroad would be adversely affected, unless the case
being made in Rome were dropped. The report was written at the
request of Cardinal Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, Primate of Spain
and Inquisitor General. Pope Paul V had been pressing for more infor-

F. de Quevedo y Villegas, Prouidencia de Dios padecida de los qve la niegan y

gozada de los qve la confiessan. Doctrina estvdiada en los gvsanos y
persecvciones de Job (Zaragoza: Pascual Bueno, 1700), fol. C4r.
L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain. 1500 to 1614 (Chicago/ London: Chicago
University Press, 2005), pp. 399400; L. de Gngora, Sonetos completos, ed. B.
Cliplijauskait (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1981), no.
1598, p. 445.

mation about the controversial discoveries and so Philip III decided

to set up a committee of investigation. The Duke of Lerma, in a letter
dated 28 October 1607, entrusted the organisation of this group to the
Archbishop of Toledo who then requested a preliminary report from
Valencia.3
The Parecer is dated 26 November 1607 and, as the committee
first met in December, the pressure of time referred to by Valencia in
the opening paragraphs of the manuscript must have been considerable. Two later manuscripts give the date as 26 November 1618.
Elsewhere, I have suggested that the 1607 manuscript was resubmitted in 1618, when controversy about the plomos de Granada
was at its height.4 There is a description of the three manuscripts in the
section The Manuscripts and Editorial Practices.
The papacy had been requesting, through various papal Nuncios,
that it be sent a reliable account of these Libros plmbeos. Clement
VIII had issued a brief on 15 December 1603 asking the Archbishop
of Granada, Don Pedro de Castro Cabeza de Vaca y Quiones, to send
the Lead Tablets to Rome. The request of 1607 may have been
precipitated by the letters and report sent to the papacy by a Morisco
Jesuit, Padre Ignacio de Las Casas. The latter had, initially, accepted
the Lead Tablets as genuine but later he became one of their most
vociferous critics. Through the Nuncios Ginnasio and Mellini he had
sent two reports to Rome, one in July of 1605 to Clement VIII
(Clement had died by the time it arrived and it was read by his
successor), and the second to Paul V in 1607.5 R. Bentez SnchezBlanco has traced his change from enthusiastic supporter of some of
the books to outspoken denunciator.6

3
4
5
6

M. J. Hagerty, Los libros plmbeos del Sacromonte (Madrid: Nacional, 1980),

p. 43.
G. Magnier, The Dating of Pedro de Valencias Sobre el pergamino y lminas
de Granada, Sharq al-Andalus, XIV-XV (19971998), 353373.
C. Alonso, Los apcrifos de Sacromonte (Valladolid: Estudio Agustino, 1979),
pp. 165166.
R. Bentez Snchez-Blanco, De Pablo a Saulo: traduccin, crtica y denuncia
de los libros plmbeos por el P. Ignacio de Las Casas, S. J, Al-Qantara, XXIII,
2 (2002), 403436.

xix

What, exactly, were this parchment and these Lead Tablets and
why had they given rise to immense controversy within Spain and to a
diplomatic battle between the papacy and the Archbishop of
Granada?7 Their impact on sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century
Spain has been likened by L. P. Harvey to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls
in our own time.8 In his book Muslims in Spain 15001614 Professor
Harvey very aptly describes the pergamino and the plomos (both lead
discs and plaques) as a sort of supplement to the Acts of the
Apostles, when seen from a Christian point of view.9 However
Moriscos were using ostensibly Christian vehicles to convey
essentially Islamic messages (p. 267). Their enthusiastic reception by
many cristianos viejos has to be seen in the context of the struggle for
primacy in the Spanish Church between cities such as Toledo,
Santiago de Compostella and, since the discovery of the plomos,
Granada.10 The plomos proved that Granada was the first city in
Spain to be evangelised by Santiago and also provided evidence for
his Spanish mission. Granada thus acquired a pre-Islamic
ecclesiastical history that compensated for its absence from the annals
of the Church from 711 until 1492. Sections of the pergamino and all
the Lead Tablets are written in Arabic, which is presented as the
vernacular language in Hispania at the time of Santiago. St. Cecilius
and his disciple Thesiphon are introduced as Arabs who changed their
names on conversion to Christianity. The newly-discovered texts also
supported the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, a
firm belief of many in Spain but one that did not become a dogma of
the Church until the nineteenth century. Controversy about the plomos
7

9
10

xx

The literature in Spanish constantly refers to libros plmbeos or Lead Books.

I have decided to call them tablets rather than books as this is a more accurate
description, as will be apparent in the section The Parchment, the Plaques and
the Lead Tablets.
L. P. Harvey, The Moriscos and Don Quixote. Inaugural Lecture in the
Cervantes Chair of Spanish at University of London, Kings College, 11
November 1974 (London: Kings College, 1975), p. 8.
Harvey, Muslims in Spain, p. 265.
T. D. Kendrick, St. James in Spain (London: Methuen, 1960), pp. 5359; M.
Barrios Aguilera, Granada morisca, la convivencia negada (Granada: Editorial
Comares, 2002), p. 512.

continued on into the eighteenth century even after the final

anathematization by Pope Innocent XI on 6 March 1682.

Discovery of the Lead Box

On 18 March 1588, St. Gabriels day (Gabriel was the archangel who
conveyed the Qurn to Muhammad), the labourers working on
Granadas new cathedral, designed by Diego de Silo,11 were
demolishing the Torre Vieja, the minaret of the former great mosque.
This was necessary to make way for the building of the third nave. In
all probability the labourers were Moriscos, as Miguel Jos Hagerty
has pointed out that Heylans depiction of the event shows them
wearing Morisco gorras.12 A lead box that had been tarred both inside
and out was discovered amidst the rubble. Padre Ignacio de Las Casas
gives its dimension as [] una caxa de plomo de cerca de una quarta
[it is known also as a palmo, which is about twenty-one centimetres or
the approximate distance between the little finger and the thumb when
the fingers are outstretched] de largo y mas de quatro dedos [a palmo
menor or the space between index and little fingers when close
together] de alto.13

11

12

13

Diego de Silo was a sculptor and architect. He was born in the second half of
the fifteenth century and died in 1563. On his death his plans were taken over
by the architects who succeeded him: Enciclopedia universal ilustrada
(europeo-americana), LVI, p. 195, 70 vols, indices and supplements.
This engraving is reproduced by Julio Caro Baroja: J. Caro Baroja, Las
falsificaciones de la historia (en relacin con la de Espaa) (Barcelona: Seix
Barral, 1992), foll. p. 120. Franz Heylan produced the engravings used in the
large tome rather ironically called Relacion breve de las reliquias que se
hallaron en la ciudad de Granada []. Some of them are reproduced in this
book. They are the engravings from the Real Academia de la Historia (RAH).
Padre I. de las Casas, Relain de las lminas, libros y lo dems hallado en la
Ciudad de Granada y erca de ella el ao de 1588 hasta el de 1598 dada a
nuestro S. Smo Padre V por Ignaio de Las Casas de la Compaia de HIS este
ao de 1607, MS 7187, BNM, fol. 68r.

xxi

When opened the next day the box was found to contain a little
wooden painted plaque of Our Lady wearing a traje egipciano or
gypsy-style dress and carrying the Child Jesus, who is holding a little
golden apple. Madonna and Child are surmounted by a cross.14 In the
box there were, also, a triangular piece of rough canvas (this is how
Las Casas describes it, although most modern commentators call it a
veil), a small bone, some grains of blue-black sand, and what was to
prove the most exciting find of all, a rolled-up parchment or
pergamino. The original pergamino has now been returned to Spain
by the Holy Office and the Leiden scholars P. S. von Koningsveld and
G. A. Wiegers have studied it in detail. They give its dimmensions as
63,5 by 49 cms (there is a more detailed description in the paragraph
entitled The Parchment of the Torre Turpiana).15 The parchment
looked very old and was written in three languages, Arabic, Castilian
and Latin. It purported to be an apocalyptic prophecy of St. John the
Evangelist concerning the end of the world, and relics that dated
from apostolic times: the small bone was apparently from the thumb
of the protomartyr St. Stephen and the fragment of cloth had been part
of Our Ladys veil. Both objects had been brought to Granada by its
first bishop, Cecilius. Seven years later, in 1595, the lminas or
funerary plaques were discovered, and the first of the libros
plmbeos.

Millenarian Prophecy in 1588

The year 1588 was one for which extraordinary events had been
foretold. There was to be a solar eclipse, two lunar eclipses and a
grand conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. These conjunctions
were associated with major world events and changes in the great
14
15

xxii

This is described in the Relacion breve, p. 6. Las Casas does not mention it.
P. S. van Koningsveld & G. A. Wiegers, The parchment of the Torre Turpiana: the Original Document and its Early Interpreters, Al-Qantara, XIV, 2
(2003), 327358.

religions.16 Astrological predictions for 1588 saw it as the year of

cataclysm.17 These forebodings were considered to be based on
numerology that derived from Revelation and the Book of Daniel,
Chapter XII: since the birth of Christ all history had been divided into
permutations of the numbers ten and seven with each cycle closed by
some such momentous event. The Protestant theologian Philip
Melancthon considered that Luthers defiance of the papacy had ended
such a cycle. Thus a final cycle of ten multiplied by seven, which
equalled, also, the period of the Babylonian captivity, signalled 1588
as a year to be reckoned with.18
The astronomical picture of the heavens forecast for 1588 had
been drawn up in the fifteenth century by the astronomer Johann
Mller of Knigsberg, generally known as Regiomontanus. His Latin
verses referring to this annus mirabilis and predicting major changes
in world empires were known throughout Europe.19 The biographer of
the founder of the Sacromonte Abbey, Archbishop Pedro de Castro,
cites Regiomontanus as the authority for other astronomical marvels:20
Alcanzo a ver el celebre astrologo aleman, Juan Regio Montano, que avia de ser
este ao admirable y prodigioso, y pronosticandolo asi [] En Dithamarca,
pequea provincia de la Dania, se dejaron de ver cinco soles en el cielo por el
mes de febrero de este ao. En Binaria, a la mitad del dia 26 de junio, estando el
cielo claro y sereno, se oscurecio de repente el sol, dejandose ver cerca de el, el
raro phenomeno de una espada desnuda. En Grifivalidia, ciudad de la
Pomerania, el dia 22 de mayo, se dexo ver vn maravilloso pez en cuya piel se
admiraban dibujadas, con primor y propriedad, cruzes, letras, espadas, puales,
vanderas, cabezas de cavallos, naves y cosas semejantes.21
16
17

18
19
20
21

R. Kagan, Lucrecias Dreams. Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century

Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 94.
R. B. Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the
Lutheran Reformation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp.
163165.
G. Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (London: Jonathan Cape,
1959), Penguin edition (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 166.
Mattingly, Spanish Armada, pp. 166168.
This Abbey was built on the Holy Mountain, within which the relics and
plomos had been discovered.
D. N. de Heredia Barnuevo, Mystico ramillete historico, cronologico,
panegirico texido de las tres fragantes flores del nobilissimo antiguo Origen,

xxiii

In Spain a self-appointed prophet called Miguel de Piedrola

Beaumont had been predicting that in this year of 1588 there would
take place a Spanish apocalypse. Most Spaniards would perish apart
from a chosen few, who would take refuge in a specially prepared
cave in Toledo.22 The Inquisition imprisoned Piedrola and his mantle
was taken up by another visionary called Lucrecia de Len, who
predicted the holocaust for August of 1588. The House of Hapsburg
would come to an end because of the sins of Philip II and would be
replaced by a new dynasty headed by Piedrola. In Lucrecias visions
Spain was invaded by heretics and infidels: Lutherans and English
would come from the north and west, the Moors would invade from
the south and the Moriscos within Spain would rise up in rebellion.
Her visions featured a version of the seven-headed dragon of the
Apocalypse and heavenly battles. In fact, the cave of La Sopea
outside Toledo had been specially prepared to harbour the elect and
had been furbished by Philip IIs architect, Juan de Herrera, though
without the approval of the king. Lucrecias anti-Hapsburg visions,
together with her association with supporters of Antonio Prez, led to
her arrest in 1590.
Although August passed by without any sign of the prophecy
being fulfilled, in the following year a new religious order called La
Congregacin de la Nueva Restauracin was founded. It numbered
many illustrious families among its members.23
Reports of unusual events and evil portents were commonplace
and prophecy was in the air in this extraordinary year of 1588. The

22

23

xxiv

exemplarissima, y meritissima Fama posthuma del Ambrosio de Granada,

segundo Isidoro de Sevilla, y segundo Ildefonso de Espaa, Espejo de Juezes
Seculares, y exemplar de Eclesiasticos Pastores, el Illmo y V. Sr. Don Pedro de
Castro Vaca y Quiones [] (Granada: Imprenta Real, 1741), p. 11.
Messianic prophecy was commonplace throughout the Iberian Peninsula from
the late fifteenth century onwards. Crypto Muslims, crypto Jews and Christians
all produced prophets with eschatological warnings of the Last Days, which
many believed were imminent: M. Garca Arenal, Un reconfort pour ceux qui
sont dans lattente. Prophtie et millnarisme dans la pninsule Ibrique et au
Magreb (XVI-XVII sicles), Revue de lHistoire des Religions, CCXX, 4
(2003), 445486.
Kagan, Lucrecias Dreams, pp. 127128.

Moriscos were obviously aware of the astrological significance of this

year, as there are many references to the practice of astrology in the
libros plmbeos.24 In an attempt to provide some guidelines for
judging such phenomena the arcediano of Segovia cathedral, Juan de
Horozco y Covarrubias, published his Tratado de la verdadera y falsa
profecia in which there are many reports of strange happenings and in
which he doubts the veracity of the pergamino.25

The Parchment of the Torre Turpiana

The parchment found in the lead box became known as that of the
Torre Turpiana, although neither oral nor written history had any
record of such a name.26 The parchment claimed to be an apocalyptic
prophecy, written by St. John. It was in the style of an Islamic Hadth,
which date back to the time of Muhammad.27 The Spanish Moriscos
termed such prophecies jofores and many of them encouraged them to
believe that Islam, the one true religion, would ultimately vanquish
Christianity. St. Isidore was cited to praise those who remained on in
Al-Andalus.28 Three of the jofores in circulation at the time of the
24
25
26
27

28

Hagerty, Libros plmbeos, p. 17.

J. de Horozco y Covarrubias, Tratado de la verdadera y falsa profeca
(Segovia: Juan de la Cuesta, 1588).
The funerary plaque of St. Cecilius named it thus. Adn Centurin, Marqus de
Estepa, to be mentioned below, considered that the tower was Phoenician.
The Hadth were the sayings and deeds of Muhammad preserved in the
Traditions. They were authenticated by being traced back to the Prophet by an
unbroken line of reputable Muslims: J. Bloom & S. Blair, Islam. A Thousand
Years of Faith and Power (New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 2002),
p. 45.
L. Lpez Baralt, La problemticas profecas de San Isidoro de Sevilla y de
Ali ibnu Yebir Alferisiyo en torno al Islam espaol del siglo XVI: tres
aljofores del Ms aljamiado 774 de la Biblioteca Nacional de Pars, NRFH,
XXIX (1980), 343366; A. Chejne, Islam and the West: the Moriscos (Albany:
State University of New York, 1983); L. Lpez Baralt, El orculo de Mahoma
sobre la Andaluca musulmana de los ltimos tiempos en un manuscrito

xxv

Second War of the Alpujarras were given to Luis del Mrmol y

Carvajal by the Morisco Alonso del Castillo. Mrmol included these
in his history of the war.29 These jofores urged the Moriscos to believe
that the triumph of Islam over Christianity was nigh. The pseudoIsidorian prophecy Guay de ti Espaa (Woe to thee, Oh Spain)
encouraged many Moriscos to join the Revolt of the Alpujarras,
convinced that the destruction of Spain was imminent.30 M. Garca
Arenal has suggested a link between the pergamino and the plomos;
there was a contemporary belief that the written word had potentially
magic properties: treasure hunters believed that: [] el hallazgo de
un antiguo pergamino o escrito precediera y facilitara el hallazgo de
un tesoro.31 There was a tradition among the three religions of the
Book, Jews, Christians and Muslims, of the discovery of mysterious
hidden texts that needed decyphering by the initiated; this hidden
manuscript or book was linked to alchemy, the Kabbala and magic in
all three religious traditions.32 The historian from Granada, Francisco
Bermdez de Pedraza, linked the discovery of the pergamino with that
of the Book of Deuteronomy, as described in the Book of Kings (2
Reg 22, 810.33 Pedro de Valencia also referred to this passage, in Part
II, section 14, albeit from a different perspective: as God authenticated
this book he will do likewise for the plomos, if they are geniune.
However, the outcome must not be prejudged. (See note 72.)

29
30
31

32

33

xxvi

aljamiado-morisco de la Biblioteca Nacional de Pars, HR, LII (1984), 4157;

L.P. Harvey, A Morisco Collection of Apocryphal Hadiths on the virtues of
Al-Andalus, Al-Masaq, II (1989), 2539.
L. del Mrmol y Carvajal, Historia de la rebelion y castigo de los moriscos del
reino de Granada (Mlaga: Juan Ren, 1600), BAE, XXI, pp. 169174.
Garca Arenal, Prophtie et millnarisme, p. 451.
M. Garca Arenal, El entorno de los plomos: historiografa y linaje, AlQantara, XXIV, 2 (2003), p. 296; F. Delpech, Libros y tesoros en la cultura
espaola del Siglo de Oro. Aspectos de una contaminacin simblica, El
escrito en el Siglo de Oro. Prcticas y representaciones (Salamanca:
Universidad de Salamanca, 1998), pp. 95109.
F. Delpech, El hallazgo del escrito oculto en la literatura espaola del Siglo de
Oro: elementos para una mitologa del libro, Revista de Dialectologa y
Tradiciones Populares, LIII (1998), pp. 1922.
Delpech, El hallazgo del escrito oculto, p. 29.

There is a copy of the pergamino in the library of El Escorial.34 It

was made, rather ironically, by Alonso del Castillo who had, probably,
been among those who composed it. The document is made up of an
introductory section in Arabic followed by what looks like a childs
word sleuth puzzle (48 x 29 little boxes). In each box is a letter and
these are written alternately in red and black ink. Most of the letters
are from the Latin alphabet but there are some Greek letters
interspersed amongst them. On first reading the letters make no sense,
but if one follows the advice of Padre Ignacio de Las Casas and reads
first the black letters and then the red ones, the prophecy can be
decyphered.35 Underneath the prophecy is another section in Arabic.
Finally there is a recapitulation of the contents of the two Arabic
sections, written in Latin, in a different hand, allegedly by the priest
Patricius, a follower of Cecilius.
The pergamino in El Escorial is of course a copy. The detailed
study by van Koningsveld and Wiegers of the original document (its
authenticity is vouched for by the fact that it was returned to Spain by
the Holy Office in the year 2000) makes the following points: the
Arabic sections are completely devoid of diacritic marks and there are
virtually no vowels. There are also many fancy and hybrid elements:
Pedro de Valencia also noticed this: No a menester Dios imbeniones, ni pergaminos, ni lminas ni algedriios, pintados con
letras de diuersos colores, y diciones griegas y latinas puestas por las
mrgenes y dentro intilmente para gala, y para haer estraordinaria y
vendible la mercadura (fol. 17r-17v). Letters are connected contrary
to usual practice, some letter forms are vaguely reminiscent of
Hebrew and Syriac script and others like Greek script. All the Arabic
passages employ a deliberate process of mystification which usually
results in an incomprehensible and meaningless text.36
The Leiden scholars describe in detail all the sections of the
parchment and compare some of the early translations. In all the
Arabic sections the lack of diacritic marks and vowels can give rise to

34
35
36

A. del Castillo, Traslado del pergamino de la Torre Turpiana, Esc. R. II. 15.
Las Casas, Relain, fols 68v69r.
Van Koningsveld & Wiegers, The Parchment, pp. 329330.

xxvii

great ambiguity.37 Thus, translators who approached the text

unobjectively could make the translation fit their particular viewpoint.
For example the opening passage of the pergamino as translated by
Alonso del Castillo and Miguel de Luna refers to the Trinity. Yet, as
the Morisco author al-Hajar pointed out, in a reference to this passage
in his autobiographical Kitb Nsir ad-dn (The Supporter of Religion
against the Infidel), the text speaks of mutabba which means una
esencia pura y no mezclada.38 There was no linguistic justification for
translations such as Deidad Diuina trina y vna (M. de Luna, leg. VI,
1, fol. 1r, AS), essenia diuina trina y vna (A. del Castillo, leg. VI, 2.
fol. 1r, AS) or muy honorfica Trinidad (A. del Castillo),39 but they
did fit the fervent expectations of many in Granada.40 A passage from
the Libro de los fundamentos de la ley has quite different meanings in
the translation of Valencias associate Francisco de Gurmendi (1617)
and that of the Marqus de Estepa (1632). Gurmendis version reads:
Mand a los apstoles [] que l que se purificase con el agua,
creyese y hiciese buenas obras sera bienventurado, which Gurmendi
links with the Morisco rite of purification, the guado or guadox;
Estepa translates thus: Y l que fuere bautizado con agua y creyere y
obrare justamente ser salvo.41
37
38

39

40

41

Van Koningsveld & Wiegers, The Parchment, p. 329; Harvey, Muslims in

Spain, p. 385.
Al-Hajar, Ahmad ibn Qsim, Kitb nsir al-dn al l-qawm al-kfirn, eds
P. S. van Koningsveld, Q. al-Samarrai & G. A. Wiegers (Madrid: CSIC, 1997),
p. 197.
Hagerty, Libros plmbeos, p. 18. Hagertys source is also the archive of the
Sacromonte and he gives the reference of C-28. He does not give a date. The
earlier translation from the Sacromonte was ostensibly made for Archbishop
Juan Mndez de Salvatierra who died on 24 August 1588. It is dated 5 May
1588.
L. F. Bernab Pons, Los mecanismos de una resistencia: los libros plmbeos
del Sacromonte y el Evangelio de Bernab, Al Qantara, XXIII, 2 (2002),
p. 485; M. J. Hagerty, La traduccin interesada. El caso del Marqus de Estepa
y los libros plmbeos, Homenaje al prof. Jacinto Basch Vil, II (1991),
pp. 11791186; J. Godoy Alcntara, Historia crtica de los falsos cronicones
(Madrid: RAH, 1868).
Gurmendi wrote his Libelo segundo in response to a memorial of a supporter of
Castro. The memorialistas assertion that the passage referred to the sacrament

xxviii