Sobre el pergamino y láminas de Sacromonte (review)

An early triumph of the revival of learning was Lorenzo Valla's revelation in 1440, on philological grounds, that the Donation of Constantine, the document which gave temporal power to the Pope over the Emperor, was a fake. Some one and a half centuries later, Pedro de Valencia, one of Spain's most distinguished philologists, similarly unmasked the Sacromonte manuscript and lead tablets.

In 1588 a manuscript and plomos (lead disks and plaques) were discovered by labourers demolishing the Torre Vieja, the minaret of the former mosque. The manuscript purported to be a prophecy by St John the Evangelist; with the documents were relics of apostolic times brought to Granada by its first bishop, Cecilius, a disciple of St James. In 1595, the láminas and libros plúmbeos came to light: the plomos were in Arabic, the manuscripts in Arabic, Spanish and Latin; these commemorated the martyrdoms of Mesiton, Hesychius and Thesiphon. Early reports on the documents and relics were favourable; they are now thought to have been faked by Moriscos in order to halt the growing movement for their expulsion.

Pedro de Valencia (1555–1620) is best remembered by Hispanism as Góngora's friendly but unsparing first reader, author of the 'Cartas de Pedro de Valencia escritas a don Luis de Góngora en censura de sus poesías' of 1613. His works, chiefly in Latin and unprinted in his lifetime, are wide-ranging, covering spirituality, witchcraft and the Indies. Pope Paul V pressed Philip III for further information on the Sacromonte. The chain of command passed from the King to the Duke of Lerma, to Bernardo de Rojas y Sandoval, Archbishop of Toledo, to Pedro de Valencia. It was for the Archbishop that Valencia prepared his report in 1607. His report, arranged under 50 heads, is edited here with a comprehensive introductory study in English by Grace Magnier. His arguments use the technical skills of the humanist to reveal that the Sacromonte documents cannot be genuine: the parchment is old, but treated to look older, the script is an imitation of old writing, it is written with a modern quill and not the reed calamus of the ancients, etc. At the level of content, the prophecies either predict things that have already happened, or are deliberately vague ('que es fáçil de acomodarlo a algo que acontezca, o que se quede esperándolo para siempre, no hauiéndose de cumplir jamás' (3)).

For Valencia's work there are three witnesses, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional 2316, BNM 7187, and one in the Archivo Secreto of the Sacromonte Abbey in Granada. BNM 2316, a scribal copy, is taken as the base text. Dr Magnier edits in an appendix the Parecer on the Sacromonte documents of Juan Bautista Pérez, Bishop of Segovia; and the Prophecy of St John the Evangelist.

The edition is well prepared and fully annotated. The editor's introductory study places the Sacromonte question in the context of millenarianism, the falsification of documents and the state of the Moriscos in the 1580s, and will be read with profit by religious, cultural and political historians.