Fact, Fiction, Myth: The Afterlife of the Lead Books

Abstract

Scholarly debate about the known facts and creative interpretations of the Sacro Monte story intersect in the arena of myth and legend. Since their condemnation in 1682, the polemics surrounding the Lead Books have developed into a vibrant field of research conducted by a small group of mostly Spanish and English scholars, including Arabists, historians, theologians, archaeologists and art historians, while Spanish novelists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have re-created the story in different fictional forms, assuming the mantle of Cervantes, who made the plomos and Miguel de Luna’s Verdadera Historia del Key don Rodrigo fundamental to Don Quijote. The Torre Turpiana parchment and the Lead Books continue to exert a fascination upon those who encounter them, even after 400 years. Why is this the case, and why is the mythical and legendary so central to these issues? What light have the most significant critical stances and fictional developments shed upon those events in late sixteenth-century Granada?