Chapter 1
On the Hands of the Monks
The Sixteenth Century

On doors, windows, and stairs, and arches and tables and all things put their names in writing, so that they may know their names and, lastly, all for the good, indicate them to them by signs.
—manuscript attributed to Pedro Ponce de León

The most correct procedure for deaf-mutes is to begin with writing.
—Francisco Vallés

During the sixteenth century, Spanish monks undertook the teaching of young deaf aristocrats entrusted to their care, and the Benedictine Pedro Ponce de León attracted much attention and admiration when he taught his deaf disciples to talk. The achievement directly challenged the conventional wisdom of the day, which held that deaf people were ineducable, could not learn to speak, and could not achieve salvation. His pupils' successes contributed to a gradual shift in consciousness regarding deaf people and their place in society.

In the mid-sixteenth century two deaf brothers, Francisco and Pedro Fernández de Velasco y Tovar, were sequestered in the Benedictine monastery of San Salvador at Oña by order of their father, Juan Fernández de Velasco y Tovar, marquis of Berlanga and Astudillo. In sending his sons to the monastery at Oña, Juan de Velasco followed the time-honored tradition of wealthy families who concealed their "defective" children—those who were deaf, retarded, mentally ill, and the like—in convents and in monasteries.^[1] The shame of an "imperfect" offspring

was best hidden from the public eye, for the birth of such a child was taken as proof of God's disfavor toward human depravity, the sins of the parents visited upon their children.^[2] Thus, Pedro and Francisco de Velasco were sent to Oña, where they donned Benedictine robes and prepared to live out their lives among the monks.

The deaf siblings belonged to one of Spain's most powerful families: the Velascos were feudal lords of most of the towns in the vicinity of Oña, and the boys' uncle, Pedro de Velasco, was the constable of Castile, a post equivalent to vice-king.^[3] The brothers' parents, Juan de Velasco and Juana Enríquez de Rivera, were blood relatives whose union produced at least nine children; no fewer than four of them, Francisco, Pedro, Juliana, and Bernardina, were deaf.^[4] For the Velascos, as for other noble families, marriage among relatives had long provided a means of increasing wealth and influence while avoiding dispersion of familial holdings. Over time, many of Spain's most important families had come to be related through marriage, resulting in a high incidence of hereditary deafness among the nobility, for as many as ten percent of children born of consanguineous marriages are likely to be deaf.

In late 1544 or early 1545 Juliana de Velasco, who was probably the eldest of the four deaf siblings, entered the convent of Santa Clara de Medina de Pomar. Three years later her sister Bernardina was sent to the convent of the Concepcionistas de Berlanga, and it was probably around then that Francisco and Pedro de Velasco joined the monks at Oña. Francisco would have been about eleven years old at the time, and his brother Pedro about seven.^[5]

The new arrivals passed through parapeted walls guarded by massive towers and emblazoned with the wolf and tree of the Velasco coat of arms—mute testimony to the family's munificent patronage. Cradled in the mountains of Burgos in northern Spain, the boys' new home resembled a medieval fortress. San Salvador at Oña was one of the kingdom's greatest Benedictine monasteries. Its abbots were men of extraordinary power and influence who attended the royal councils; its monks were renowned for their brilliance and their virtue. Royalty and nobility regaled the monastery with gifts and special privileges, and many sought burial there. During the sixteenth century, as Spain was on its way to becoming the richest and mightiest nation on earth, San Salvador was at the height of its power and prestige, and what was about to transpire there would ultimately lead to a change in consciousness regarding deaf people, their education, and their place in society.

Figure 1.
Monastery of San Salvador at Oña.
From Enrique Herrera Oria, "Pedro Ponce de
Léon en el monasterio de Oña,"  La Paraula
3, 1920–1921. Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.

The day of their arrival at Oña, the Velasco brothers displayed a particular affection for a monk by the name of Pedro Ponce de León, and the abbot, observing the boys' attachment to Ponce, entrusted them to his care. Fray Pedro took a liking to his young charges and, moved by their deafness, he undertook to teach them.^[6]

Like Francisco and Pedro de Velasco, Pedro Ponce de León was of noble lineage, a descendent of Count Ponce de Minerva.^[7] The name Ponce de León figured prominently in the history of Spain and the conquest of the Americas, and it could be found in the genealogies of most of the kingdom's first class of grandees.^[8] The monk had been born in the early years of the sixteenth century in Sahagún, in the present-day province of León.^[9] He entered the Benedictine monastery of San Benito el Real in 1526, but he spent most of his life at the monastery of San Salvador at Oña.^[10] As a novice Fray Pedro would have studied

theology, canon law, and liberal arts at the monastery school. Beyond this, he seems to have received no higher education, although he was, in the words of a contemporary, "much inclined to the profession of herbalist and other natural secrets."^[11]

The facts surrounding Pedro Ponce's birth are shrouded in silence, and there is no known record of his parentage, but circumstantial evidence suggests he may well have been illegitimate.^[12] Although one document from the monastery at Oña referred to Ponce as a man of noble birth on his father and grandfather's side,^[13] the remarks of his contemporary Fray Romualdo Escalona, historiographer of the monastery at Sahagún, suggest that something may have been amiss: Escalona was the first to trumpet the noble parentage of his fellow religious, and there can be no doubt but that he knew all about the illustrious Ponce de León family, yet when writing about Fray Pedro, he described him merely as "a native of this town."^[14]

The hypothesis that Ponce was illegitimate may also explain another fact about his life: although he was a man of talent and accomplishment who was highly esteemed by his community, in all his years at Oña he seems never to have held an important post—not in the monastery, nor in his congregation, nor in any of the monastery's priories. One monk at Sahagún sought to attribute this to excessive modesty, but legislation of the day prohibiting the illegitimate from occupying such offices may provide a more plausible explanation.^[15]

In Francisco and Pedro de Velasco's era it was generally believed that deaf people were inherently ineducable, and that they could not learn to speak.^[16] Support for these assumptions was adduced from a variety of fields, including medicine, philosophy, the Church, and the law. Physicians attributed a common origin in the brain to both speech and hearing, the commune sensorium, believing that a lesion to this region would result in both deafness and muteness. The crucial link between speech and hearing had yet to be recognized.^[17]

Philosophers throughout the classical and medieval periods and up through the Velasco brothers' day did not clearly distinguish between language and speech. Language is a mental representation and speech is but one of its possible manifestations, but speech, rather than language, was viewed as the mark of our species, the crucial attribute that distinguished humans from beasts. (The Spanish word for "language" is lengua, which also means "tongue," clearly suggesting the conceptual link between language and speech; the same is true in other Romance languages as well.) Speech was believed to be not an acquired skill but

an instinct, from which it followed that speech could not be taught. Indeed, even to attempt such instruction would be folly. If speech was the identifying characteristic of humans—at least, hearing humans—the identifying characteristic of deaf humans was apparently taken to be not their lack of hearing, but their inability to speak. To this day, both Spanish Sign Language and American Sign Language make the sign for "hearing" (as in "a hearing person") not at the ear but at the lips, and in American Sign Language this same sign can also mean "speech," thus designating hearing people not by their auditory capacity but by their ability to talk. And until the end of the eighteenth century, the usage in many languages was to refer to deaf people who could not speak as "mutes."^[18] Speech distinguished humans from the beasts, and speech was inevitably lacking in those who were deaf from birth or from an early age. The negative implications for deaf people who could not talk were obvious.

In the centuries preceding the Velasco brothers' arrival at Oña and up through their time as well, the pronouncements on deafness of one philosopher in particular were quoted, and misquoted, repeatedly: Aristotle, whose work was venerated throughout the Middle Ages, asserted that those deaf from birth were inevitably mute. He held that deaf people, like animals, could make vocal sounds but could not articulate.^[19] Speech was the result of the soul acting on those body parts that humans shared with animals, which had no soul. Speech flowed from the soul, animals had no soul, and speech was absent in both animals and deaf people. Again, the negative implications for deaf persons who were also mute were clear.

For Aristotle, hearing was the sense most crucial to knowledge and learning. Yet he understood that the role of hearing in education was not essential but rather, accidental, because hearing conveyed sound, which he took to be the vehicle of thought.^[20] Theoretically, then, there could be other ways to access the mind. Although Aristotle never wrote that deaf people could not be taught, in time his remarks came to be so construed, and the belief that deaf individuals were ineducable, wrongly attributed to him, was widely accepted.^[21]

The views of the Church held out no hope for deaf people either. The apostle Paul had written that "faith cometh by hearing," and according to Saint Augustine, deafness "hinders faith itself."^[22] Although the intent may well have been no more literal than that of such pronouncements as, "There are none so blind as those who will not see," eventually the saints' words were taken to mean that deaf people could not be taught

the Christian faith, and once again the implications for the deaf were disastrous.^[23]

In a society that believed them to be beyond the pale, outside the realm of both learning and salvation, deaf people—or more accurately, deaf people who could not speak—fared no better in the eyes of the law. The law had long distinguished between deaf-mutes and those who were merely deaf ex accidente, that is, deaf people who could talk, and only the latter were recognized as persons at law. Deaf-mutes, in contrast, were routinely classified with minors, the mentally defective, and the insane. In the thirteenth century the Spanish king Alfonso X had denied them the right to bear witness, to make a will, or to inherit a feudal estate, but he had allowed that they could assent to marriage by way of signs, observing that "signs that demonstrate consent among the mute do as much as words among those who speak."^[24]

If deaf people in Francisco and Pedro de Velasco's time were generally considered incapable of receiving instruction, this view was occasionally challenged by empirical observation. Thus, the Renaissance humanist Rudolph Agricola recounted having seen a person "deaf from the cradle, and by consequence mute," who could express his thoughts and understand those of others by way of writing.^[25] But Agricola's account was greeted with skepticism by the Spanish philosopher and humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540). Citing Aristotle's remark that hearing was the "learning sense" and interpreting it to mean that without hearing, learning could not take place, he remarked, "For this reason I am more than surprised that there has been a person born deaf and mute who learned to read and write."^[26] Oddly enough, however, Vives explicitly recognized the potential for manual communication elsewhere in this same discussion: "Nature gave man, by far the most eminent of intelligent beings in this world, an external tool, to which nothing at all can be compared: to wit, his hand.... The hand by itself can even replace words; that can be observed in mute persons."^[27] Yet it seems not to have occurred to him that the hand might supplant the spoken word, the eye might become the "learning sense," and deaf people might be educated through it.

Like others of his time, Vives believed that speech and reason were inextricably linked. "Speech flows immediately from reason and from intelligence like a fountain," he wrote, "and because speech is born of reason, the former is as natural as the latter in man, since wherever is the spring, there also is the stream that it forms."^[28] This line of thinking might easily lead one to conclude that the absence of speech implied the absence of reason: if the stream was nowhere to be found, perhaps it was

because the spring was likewise lacking.^[29] If so, it was clear that deaf people could never receive instruction.

While Agricola's account led Vives to defer uncritically to the doctrine of Aristotle—or at least, what Vives took to be the doctrine of Aristotle—it stimulated another Renaissance thinker, the Italian Girolamo Cardano, to reflect on the possibilities of educating a deaf person.^[30] Cardano theorized that such an individual might be taught to "hear" by reading and to "speak" by writing. The memory would come to understand that bread, for instance, refers to that which is eaten, and the written word would be directly associated with the concept.^[31] Cardano thus called into question the commonly assumed link between speech and reason, asserting that it was possible to think without speech. Also implicit in these speculations was the distinction between language and speech: deaf people, this author hypothesized, could acquire language by way of writing, without the intervention of speech.

What influence, if any, did these thinkers exert on Pedro Ponce, the man who would instruct Francisco and Pedro Velasco? The monk was no doubt familiar with the works of Aristotle, Paul the apostle, and Saint Augustine. But what about Agricola and Cardano? It is clear that Cardano's writings could not have inspired Fray Pedro's teaching, since they were still unpublished decades after he had successfully instructed Francisco and Pedro de Velasco.^[32] Nevertheless, because the monastery at Oña maintained contact with both Spanish and foreign universities, and because some of its monks traveled widely throughout Europe, either Agricola's account of the deaf person who understood and communicated by writing or Cardano's ideas on how to teach deaf pupils might have reached Ponce by word of mouth, inspiring him to consider teaching the deaf children residing at Oña.^[33]

Another possible inducement for Ponce to try his hand at deaf education was the example of educated deaf people of his day, who by their achievements proved that they could be taught. One such man was Ponce's contemporary, Juan Fernández Navarrete, painter to Philip II.^[34] Fernández Navarrete, like Francisco and Pedro de Velasco, was of noble birth, and when illness left him deaf at the age of two and a half, Navarrete, like the Velasco brothers, was sent to the monks.^[35] Under the tutelage of a certain Fray Vicente de Santo Domingo of the Order of Saint Jerome, he learned the rudiments of drawing at the monastery of La Estrella in Logroño, in what is now La Rioja province in northern Spain. Later Fernández Navarrete traveled to Italy, where, over a period of some twenty years, he perfected his art. Upon returning to his homeland, he came to the attention of the Spanish king, in whose employ he

decorated the monastery of El Escorial with paintings in a style closely resembling that of Titian.^[36]

Fernández Navarrete was called El Mudo (the mute) because he could not talk. Yet no one would have suggested that the artist was lacking in reason—especially not at the Spanish court, where he was well known for his intelligence, and for his skill at the gaming table, and the precision with which he kept score of wins and losses.^[37] In a petition to the king requesting that he be allowed to leave a will, enter into contracts, and do all those things he would be permitted to do if he were not deaf and mute, Navarrete described himself as one "different from other mutes, because although he lacks speech and hearing, God chose to give him a shrewd and able intelligence." Thus, El Mudo portrayed himself as the exception to the rule: his keen intelligence made him unlike other mutes. The artist then went on to enumerate his other accomplishments, stating that he "understands what he sees, and makes himself understood easily to those of his acquaintance by way of signs and gestures as appropriate and exact as others do by speaking, and he knows how to write and sign his name and how to reckon, and in the art of painting he is an extraordinary and perfect craftsman and he has knowledge of the Scriptures and of history and paints precisely according to them, and he confesses and takes communion and performs the other acts of a faithful Christian with real understanding, he keeps to himself and is thrifty with his estate, so that what he lacks in speech he more than makes up for in intelligence."^[38] On his deathbed Navarrete penned his own testament, and according to the parish priest who attended him, his last confession, delivered by way of signs, was as complete as that of any hearing person, for "what he lacked in speech, he compensated for completely with signs and gestures."^[39]

Fernández Navarrete's fame spread throughout Spain, and his talent was celebrated in the following verse, dedicated to him by Lope de Vega Carpio, the most important playwright of Spain's Golden Age: "Heaven denied me speech,/that by my understanding/I might greater feeling give to the things I painted;/and such great life did I give them/with my skillful brush/that, as I could not speak,/I made them speak for me." But the example he provided of an educated deaf person, considerable fame notwithstanding, could hardly have inspired Pedro Ponce's teaching, for the monk had been instructing his pupils for decades before he could have learned of the deaf artist: Francisco and Pedro de Velasco arrived at Oña around the middle of the sixteenth century, and Fernández Navarrete did not return to Spain from Italy until

some twenty years later. Yet even without knowledge of educated deaf people such as El Mudo, even without Agricola's account of the deaf and mute man who could read and write and without Cardano's reflections on the subject, Spain's intellectual climate was such that Ponce might well have surmised on his own that deaf people could be educated, for his was an age characterized by a new interest in pedagogy and in the education of society's marginal classes. In 1531 Alejo de Vanegas wrote on teaching blind people to read, and the following year Luis Vives, who seemingly dismissed the possibility of teaching a deaf person, advocated the education of poor children, blind people, and even the mentally retarded.^[40]

But perhaps most important, Ponce had evidence quite close at hand, within the monastery itself, that must have shown him that the absence of speech need not go hand in hand with a lack of reason, and that consequently, deaf people might indeed be educable. The monks at Oña, as in many other monasteries throughout Europe, were obliged to observe total silence in certain areas—in the chapel, in the refectory during meals, in the dormitory, and so on—and at certain hours of the day.^[41] Silence was considered both a sign of humility and a way to avoid inadvertently sinning against God through a thoughtless word. Centuries earlier, however, the monks had already discovered that they could communicate without violating obligatory silence by using manual signs, and by Ponce's day the Benedictines had at their disposal "signs for all the most important things, [with which] they made themselves understood," according to one chronicler of the order.^[42] The signs referred mainly to objects of daily life in the immediate environment, such as eating utensils, objects used in the mass, garments, foods, and tools, as well as habitual actions, emotional states, dignitaries of the monastery and of the Church, and so on. There were signs for the most significant elements of religious life, such as God, the Virgin Mary, Saint Benedict, book, water, wine, and mass. Pedro Ponce must have understood, then, that it was possible to express reason without speech, for he himself did so each time he conveyed his thoughts by way of monastic signs.

When Francisco and Pedro de Velasco entered the monastery at Oña, they too must have employed a gestural system of communication. Deaf children raised in an oral environment are known to invent their own sign system, called home sign.^[43] The phenomenon is testimony to our innate biological capacity for language and our need to communicate, and it reveals our flexibility and resourcefulness: language, when blocked in the hearing-speaking mode, emerges in a visual-signing mode.

Beginning as simple gestures to describe people, objects, and actions, home signs eventually become more stylized and arbitrary, and various signs may be strung together to produce simple sentences. With time, these elementary gestural systems may develop the rudiments of syntax and morphology.^[44] They do not, however, develop a full-blown grammar; a community of signers and several generations are necessary for a real language to evolve. Young Francisco and Pedro de Velasco must have had a well developed system of home sign—after all, they came from a family with four deaf children—and their signed communication would have served to confirm what Fray Pedro already knew: the absence of speech need not imply a lack of reason.

By custom, newcomers to the monastery at Oña were assigned a "guardian angel," a paternal older member of the community whose duty it was to provide for their physical needs, instruct them in reading and arithmetic, and teach them the prayers and ceremonies of the order—not the least of which were the signs used in silent communication.^[45] When Francisco and Pedro de Velasco were placed in the care of their "guardian angel," Pedro Ponce, manual exchanges between the deaf brothers and the monk must have occurred almost immediately, as the Benedictine taught his signs to the deaf boys—and most likely they taught theirs to him.^[46] And so we may conjecture that the Velasco brothers themselves, with their home signs, may well have set Ponce on the path to their instruction.

Although both the monk and his charges communicated with signs, there were, nevertheless, important differences between Fray Pedro's monastic sign and the deaf Velascos' home sign. Monastic sign is merely a manual lexicon without a grammar, a collection of signs used with the native language as a point of reference; thus, it is not really a language at all.^[47] The syntax of the monastic sign used at Oña would reflect that of the monks' spoken Spanish, while the same signs on the hands of their brethren in France would reflect the syntax of spoken French. The grammar of home sign, in contrast, is not based on any oral language. Instead, it emerges from the language capacity of the individuals themselves. Monastic orders deliberately limit their lexicon to a list of officially approved signs—the goal here is to keep communication to a minimum—but deaf children 'in a non-signing environment encounter no such artificial restrictions, and giving free reign to their linguistic creativity, they may invent many, many signs.^[48]

Thus, the arrival at Oña of two deaf brothers who communicated by way of home sign may have paved the way for Pedro Ponce to teach them. In so doing, the monk disproved the commonly-held belief that

deaf people were ineducable. Given the intellectual climate of the times, bearing in mind that the Velasco children, like the monks, communicated manually, and remembering that one of Ponce's first duties was to teach these youngsters the signs of his order, the feasibility of their instruction would have been difficult to ignore. It must have been clear to Ponce that speech was not the only possible conveyor of reason. Reason could also be conveyed on the hands.^[49]

Under these same favorable circumstances, it is easy to surmise that another silent monk in another silent monastery could have also taught a deaf child. Indeed, someone must have taught the deaf artist Fernández Navarrete, for how else can we account for his knowledge of reading, writing, history, and the Scriptures? At the Order of Saint Jerome—an order that practiced obligatory silence—might not Fray Vicente de Santo Domingo have taught El Mudo something more than art?^[50]

Fernández Navarrete joined the monks of Saint Jerome more than a decade before the Velascos took up residence among the Benedictines. If Navarrete was indeed taught by Vicente de Santo Domingo, the monk at La Estrella had already instructed a deaf person before Pedro Ponce began his teaching. We cannot be certain, however, about the nature of Vicente de Santo Domingo's pedagogical activities, other than that he instructed Fernández Navarrete in drawing, and it is Pedro Ponce whom Spaniards hail as their nation's first teacher of the deaf.^[51] It is not difficult to explain why the name of El Mudo's teacher—and conceivably those of others as well—has been lost, while Ponce's fame has endured: Fray Pedro alone got his disciples to talk.^[52] In an era in which speech was held to be an instinct, and deafness and muteness were believed to be inextricably linked, apparently Ponce was the first to challenge the conventional wisdom, and the news that persons deaf from birth had been taught to speak was greeted with amazement, and heralded as "unheard of," "new," and even "miraculous."^[53]

And why would Ponce teach speech to his disciples? No doubt one factor was the law, and in particular, the constraints it could impose on deaf people's right to succeed. As we have seen, deaf-mutes, unlike those who were merely deaf, were not considered persons at law; hence, they might be excluded from the line of succession. This question worried Francisco and Pedro's father, Juan de Velasco y Tovar, for he was anxious to avoid the dismemberment of his entailed estates. The Tovar and Berlanga estates excluded only females, but the more recently established ones of Osma and Gandul y Marchinilla also excluded descendants affected by certain physical and psychic conditions, among them, deaf-mutism. In 1543 Juan de Velasco petitioned the Holy Roman

Emperor to make the conditions for succession of all his dominions conform to those of the Tovar and Berlanga estates. His request was granted that same year, thus ensuring that any of his sons, deaf or hearing, could legally inherit the title of the house of Tovar and all the estates annexed to it.^[54] In his will, Juan de Velasco specified that if his brother Pedro, the constable of Castile, were to die without issue and if Juan's first son Iñigo, who was hearing, were then to inherit the Velasco estate, under these circumstances Francisco, the deaf second son, should inherit his father's estate, that of Tovar, reasoning that although "it was Our Lord's will to deprive [Francisco] of speech, I would not because of that deprive him of his possessions."^[55]

So Juan de Velasco had secured his deaf sons' right to succeed (at least in theory) some years before Pedro Ponce ever began to teach them.^[56] But even though the emperor had allowed that deaf-mutes could succeed to any of Juan de Velasco's estates, there was, of course, nothing to preclude a legal challenge should any interested person attempt one, and indeed, such challenges were not unheard of.^[57] Thus, because the right to succeed might be denied to persons who were both deaf and mute, it would surely suit the interests of the powerful Velasco family for Francisco and Pedro de Velasco to learn to talk.

What other barriers would fall if Francisco and Pedro de Velasco could speak? In addition to being excluded from succeeding to certain entailed estates, they were also subject to numerous other legal restrictions that, under civil law, applied to persons both deaf and mute. We have already seen that they could not bear witness, for instance, or leave a will. Moreover, canon law barred them from the priesthood, on the grounds that they could not pronounce the words of the Eucharist necessary for the transubstantiation, the conversion of the host and the sacramental wine into the body and blood of Christ. In short, deaf-mutes were routinely denied rights and privileges accorded deaf people who could talk.

But it should follow, then, that mutes taught to speak would attain those rights denied them under civil law on account of their muteness. It should also follow that they could be admitted to the priesthood if they could utter the words needed for the consecration of the Eucharist. And this is exactly what was argued by the Licenciado Lasso, a jurist from Madrid who had heard of the astonishing events at Oña and went to the monastery in 1550 to see for himself.^[58] During his sojourn there, Lasso spoke at length with Ponce and came to know Francisco and Pedro de Velasco. He was not disappointed by what he saw. That men

"mute by nature" should speak, read and write, and say confession, and that they should lack none of those things bestowed by nature save the sense of hearing, Lasso claimed to find so astounding that not even after having witnessed it himself could he cease to be incredulous.^[59] A talking deaf-mute was in Lasso's words a "mysterious novelty and such a great miracle" (16). For the feat of teaching deaf people to speak, the lawyer from Madrid exalted Pedro Ponce over Archimedes, Plato, Seneca, and "all the other philosophers and even jurists that there have been in the world" (10). Moreover, although Lasso repeatedly used the term "miraculous," he made clear that the monk had achieved it all through "industry, judgment, and curiosity" (22).^[60] Indeed, Ponce himself attributed his success not to miracles but to "the industry God has been pleased to give me in this Holy House, through the merits of Saint John the Baptist and our father Saint Iñigo," patron saint of the monastery at Oña who had been its first abbot.^[61] Deaf-mutes had been outcasts, outside the circle of humanity, yet by dint of "industry" Pedro Ponce had ushered in two of them, Francisco and Pedro de Velasco.

During his stay at Oña, Lasso penned a legal treatise on the rights of deaf-mutes, written in Spanish rather than in Latin because of the author's "laudable desire ... to make known what until now was not believed possible in nature or in law" (15). The manuscript, dated October 8, 1550, was not to see publication until more than three and a half centuries later, however.^[62] The treatise took the form of a letter addressed to "the most illustrious Señor Don Francisco de Tovar, legitimate heir to the marquisate of Berlanga and oldest relative of the house of Tovar," and in it the author repeated many commonly held views of his day. He accepted, for instance, the notion that deafness and muteness were inextricably linked, explicitly rejecting the idea that deaf individuals were mute merely because they could not hear, and maintaining instead that deafness alone was not sufficient to cause muteness. "It is clear that if a man had no other impediment but that of the ear, guided and assisted by nature he would still speak, although not as soon as those who hear," he insisted, because "speech is natural in men"—that is, an instinct (34). If those who were deaf were also mute, the author stated, it was because the same illness that caused the deafness also rendered useless the organs needed for speech. As Lasso put it, "at the same time that with illness the sense of hearing is blocked, the delicate parts employed in speech come to be blocked and closed" (35). In his view of speech (as opposed to language) as the mark of our species, Lasso likewise repeated the conventional wisdom of the day: "Birds and

animals have voices," he wrote, "[but] only rational animals [i.e., humans] have significant voice [i.e., speech]."^[63]

But Lasso broke new ground when he discounted some commonly held beliefs of his era. His central thesis, to which he returned again and again, was that mutes excluded from succeeding to entailed estates should not be so excluded if they learned to talk. He argued that mutes taught to speak should also be able to leave a will, to be ordained—in short, to enjoy those legal rights and privileges commonly denied them on account of their muteness. The jurist's logic was irrefutable: the mute who had learned to speak was no longer mute, and consequently legal restrictions imposed because of muteness should no longer apply. Lasso went on to reject the legal distinction between deaf persons who were mutes (those mute "by nature") and deaf people who could speak (those deafened "ex accidente," by illness). Muteness, he maintained, was due to illness, and it followed then that "there is no mute even though he be mute from birth who is not so ex accidente, because of some illness" (42). If so, the mute who learned to speak should have the same legal rights as the person deafened ex accidente . Finally, in considering the ancient injunction to shun "those whom nature has marked," Lasso argued that it did not apply to deaf-mutes, because they were not marked by nature but rather by illness. Muteness was but a sign, then, of "lack of disposition of the material nature had to work with" (93). Lasso's view of deaf people as "ill" was no doubt an advance of sorts over the more sinister claim that they were marked by nature. Deafness and muteness thus construed constituted a physical defect, rather than a moral one. His vision of deaf people as impaired persists to this day in the infirmity model of deafness.

Lasso stated that professional curiosity alone was "the motive and final cause of my study" (29), and he insisted that he had written his treatise "with no [personal] interest whatsoever" (96). But there is reason to question this disclaimer. In his dedication to Francisco de Velasco, the author expressed a wish "to be able to do more and to be more worthy in order to occupy myself in more that may arise in the service of Your Grace" (7), and elsewhere he pointed to "the debt I have to the service of Your Grace" (78). This suggests a commissioned work, and the writer's desire to curry favor with the influential Velascos should not be overlooked.

The lawyer's arguments concerning the rights of talking deaf-mutes to inherit an entailed estate were never put to the test; despite the steps taken by Juan de Velasco to secure his deaf sons' right of succession,

events did not unfold as he had anticipated. When Juan died in 1545, his eldest son, Iñigo, inherited the title of the house of Tovar, and when Juan's brother Pedro, the fourth constable of Castile, died fourteen years later without legitimate heirs, Iñigo then inherited the titles of the house of Velasco as well. Thus arose the situation that Juan de Velasco had foreseen, in which one of his deaf sons could inherit the dominions of Tovar and the town of Berlanga. Francisco, the elder deaf son, had died at an early age, probably well before the death of his uncle the constable.^[64] The inheritance might then have passed to Francisco's younger brother Pedro. By this time, however, Iñigo had two children of his own: Juan, future heir of the house of Velasco, and Pedro, who as the second son would now inherit the marquisate of Tovar and Berlanga. Hence Juan de Velasco's sons were no longer first in the line of succession to their father's estates, and Lasso's arguments concerning their right to succeed were rendered moot.^[65]

The jurist's claim that mutes taught to speak should not be barred from the priesthood was vindicated, for Pedro de Velasco was ordained with papal dispensation and became, quite possibly, Spain's first deaf priest.^[66]

By Lasso's own account, Francisco and Pedro de Velasco possessed many accomplishments, but clearly the one that most impressed him, and the only one that mattered in the campaign to redeem mutes in the eyes of the law, was speech. The visitor to Oña belonged solely to the hearing and speaking world, and although he spent some time at the monastery, there is no reason to suppose he learned the system of manual communication employed there by deaf and hearing residents alike. In fact, no mention of it appears in his manuscript. And while he argued that through speech, mutes could obtain their legal rights, a position that was ahead of its time, apparently it did not occur to him that these same rights might also be extended to deaf people who could not speak but could express themselves either in sign language or by writing. Because it was speech, not signs or writing, that was taken to indicate the presence of reason, in Lasso's view speech was what was needed for deaf people to attain full legal rights and privileges—indeed, to attain their full measure of humanity. Interestingly enough, however, this author maintained that in order to testify, the ability to speak should not be required. Instead, it should suffice for neighbors or relatives familiar with the mute's signs to interpret for him, and testimony so rendered should be

given as much weight as if the mute had given it "with his own mouth" (90). Implicit here was the recognition that deaf-mutes were both rational and intelligent.

Lasso may have been the first to formulate the oralist claim that speech could "restore deaf people to society." The insistence on speech, and the concomitant devaluation of sign language, are characteristic of the pathological model of deafness, a version of which, as we have seen, Lasso espoused. Deaf people, instead of being accepted on their own terms, are "pathologized," stigmatized, and defined as handicapped; in Lasso's terms, they are "ill." Their sign language is portrayed not as a real language but merely a crude gesture system, and speech is held up as the redeemer. The issue of the role of speech for deaf people, raised for the first time in Lasso's treatise, continues to be central to questions concerning their education and, ultimately, their place in society.

It is important to realize, however, that Ponce's teaching was not limited to speech alone. Documents of the era reserved special praise for Pedro de Velasco, who was Ponce's most accomplished student and, in the words of one chronicler, "a perfect man and very capable in all subjects."^[67] Widely acclaimed for his intellect and for his prodigious achievements, Don Pedro could speak, read, and write Spanish, he could pronounce and write Latin with almost no solecisms, at times even with elegance, and he could write Greek letters.^[68] According to his nephew, Baltasar de Zúñiga, he made such good use of Ponce's teachings that "without hearing any more than a stone, he spoke, but like men who stammer; he wrote with an excellent hand, he read and understood books in Italian and Latin, [and] conversed on any subject with as much judgment and taste as any well informed person. He came sometimes to Salamanca to see his sister the countess [Zúñiga's mother, Inés de Velasco, who was married to Jerónimo Fonseca y Zúñiga, the count of Monterrey], and afforded her and her children much pleasure and amusement on account of his great wit and prudence. And although his pronunciation was somewhat irritating, he more than made up for it with the subtlety of his arguments."^[69]

Pedro de Velasco was undoubtedly devoted to his teacher, and when the monk's most gifted pupil died in 1572—"in the flower of his youth"^[70] —he bequeathed to Fray Pedro, whom he referred to as "my teacher and my father," three wooden chests and his bed with its mat-

tresses, bedding, and blue canopy. He emphasized that Ponce was to have his silver saltshaker and sugar bowl "for himself," and he left the monk all his books except those in Italian, which he bequeathed to his valet, Francisco Frenado.^[71]

Over the years Ponce taught some ten or twelve deaf students in all, among them a deaf sister of Francisco and Pedro de Velasco, Gaspar de Gurrea, son of the governor of Aragon, and the noble Gaspar de Burgos.^[72] Gaspar de Gurrea came to read and express himself easily in writing, and he had some knowledge of Latin as well.^[73] Gaspar de Burgos learned some speech, enough, according to a Benedictine chronicler, "to confess and recite Christian doctrine and other such things," and although he spoke but little, he wrote very well; he became an excellent scribe and illuminator of manuscripts and served most diligently as the monastery's sexton.^[74] Of his pupils, Ponce said,

I have had disciples who were deaf and mute from birth, sons of great nobles and men of distinction, whom I taught to speak, and read, and write, and reckon, to pray, to assist at mass and to know Christian doctrine and to confess by speech, and to some I taught Latin, and to others Latin and Greek, and to understand the Italian language, and one came to be ordained and to hold an office and benefice of the Church, and to pray the Canonical Hours; also this one and some others came to know and understand natural philosophy and astrology; and another was heir to an estate and marquisate, and was to follow the career of arms, in addition to all that he knew, as has been said, he was instructed in the use of all kinds of arms, and was a very skillful equestrian. Besides all this they were great historians of Spanish and foreign history; and above all, they made use of the Doctrine, Policy and Discipline of which Aristotle had deprived them.^[75]

The situation at Oña was, in many respects, ideal for teaching deaf children. A small group of students from cultured, privileged families were taught by a devoted "guardian angel" in a community in which speech was at times already proscribed and signed communication had long been established.^[76] Under such favorable circumstances, it is not surprising that the results should be spectacular.

Just how did Ponce go about instructing his pupils? According to one observer, he began by teaching them to write, pointing to the objects designated by the written words, then proceeded to teach pronunciation.^[77] Another contemporary related that the monk communicated

Figure 2.
Fray Pedro Ponce de Léon teaching a
deaf student. Gallaudet University Archives.

with his pupils in signs or in writing, and they in turn responded orally or with the written word.^[78] And according to one of Pedro de Velasco's hearing nephews, Fray Pedro instructed them that when addressing their deaf uncle, they should use a manual alphabet, a way of spelling in the air by forming letters with the fingers.^[79] Asked by a visitor to the monastery how he had begun the teaching, Ponce put the question to Pedro de Velasco, and his best student replied first orally, then in writing:

I would have Your Grace know that when I was a child who knew nothing, like a stone, I began to write first the things my teacher taught me, and then to write all the Spanish words in my notebook, which for this purpose had been made. Next with the help of God I began to join the sounds together, and next to pronounce with all the strength I could, although there came from me an abundance of saliva. I began then to read histories, and

in ten years I have read histories of the whole world, and next I learned Latin, and it was all by the great mercy of God, without which no mute could survive.^[80]

According to several of his contemporaries, Pedro Ponce himself wrote an account of how he taught his students. The first known reference to Ponce's manuscript appeared in the Licenciado Lasso's treatise. Writing in the year 1550, Lasso stated that he would not comment on the monk's method because the inventor "has it recorded, stored away, and reserved for himself" (10–11). This writer urged that Ponce publish his work and make it known to all because of the great benefit to be derived from it, but apparently our Benedictine had no intention of following this suggestion, for Lasso added that Pope Julius III and the emperor Charles V should order him to do so. Some thirty years later a fellow monk at Oña, Juan de Castañiza, wrote that Fray Pedro had discovered how to teach deaf-mutes to talk and that he would "leave it well demonstrated in a book he has written about it."^[81]

Ponce's work was never published, however, and there remains todaybut a single page, which, to judge from the handwriting and its contents, may have formed part of his manuscript.^[82] The text, whose intended reader was the teacher of deaf students, advocated writing the letters of the alphabet on the joints of the pupil's hand.^[83] (Although space was left on the page for the drawing of a hand with letters represented on it, the illustration itself was not included.) By writing words and pointing to the appropriate letters on the fingers, the student learned the names of objects, beginning with common foods with short names, for instance, pan (bread), miel (honey), and so on. In this way, according to the author, "the senses and the faculty of mind are exercised, for up until now he has them and has had them like a brute because they have been so closed off and shriveled up, due to having no door nor way to make use of them." Much emphasis was placed on penmanship: "their continual drill is and should be writing the letters and attempting to make them good and clean." The student was admonished to indicate with periods the separation between words: "Have him always write it with the letters together and the parts separated, . with periods . on each part so he knows what is part or word," the author advised. The outward signs of the Christian religion were introduced early on, and as soon as the student knew the alphabet by heart, he learned the words, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and to cross himself. Vocabulary was taught by labeling objects with their names in writing and conveying their meaning with signs: "Show him words,"

said the author. "On doors, windows, and stairs, and arches and tables and all things put their names in writing, so that they may know their names and, lastly, all for the good, indicate them to them by signs." And as for pronunciation—and gait—the writer counseled, "The teacher should take care that the mute not pronounce through the nose but rather through the mouth, correcting them that they not walk dragging their feet."^[84]

Ponce continued his teaching at Oña for more than three decades, and the students brought together there may have constituted Spain's first deaf community. In their hands, Spanish Sign Language no doubt flourished. Given these circumstances—a community of deaf people that remains together over time—the rude home sign created by deaf children raised in an otherwise oral environment would eventually become a real language, on a par in complexity and sophistication with any spoken language. The deaf residents were apparently well integrated into monastic life—no doubt because manual signs provided a mode of communication equally accessible to deaf and hearing brethren alike.^[85] Thus, Gaspar de Burgos served as sexton, and according to the Licenciado Lasso, Pedro de Velasco sang plainchant with his fellow monks. "Not that he was able to follow the tune and order of what was sung in that monastery," the lawyer added, "because he was deprived by nature of hearing; but when Don Pedro commenced to sing according to the time and notes of the plainchant, the monks who were present and singing with him followed him, and helped him to follow their tune and time, by which the music was kept in perfect order" (23). And so it seems that harmony prevailed among deaf and hearing residents at Oña, as all parties accommodated one anothers' needs, and lived and worked together.

The deaf pupils' life among the monks was neither austere nor reclusive. Considerable amounts of money—all that the children's families paid Ponce for educating them and more—was lavished on their food, servants, and guests who regularly came to call.^[86] During the years that the deaf community existed at Oña, the monastery was honored by the visits of various rulers and members of their families. In 1556 the emperor Charles V (King Charles I of Spain), accompanied by his sisters Queen Eleanor of France and Queen Marie of Hungary, stopped there while in route to Yuste, as did his son, King Philip II, on his return from England some three years later. Among the royal retinue on this latter occa-

sion was the fifth constable of Castile, Iñigo de Velasco, whose deaf brothers Francisco and Pedro were among Ponce's disciples.

If Ponce's pupils led rather worldly lives, so too did their teacher. True, contemporaries praised Fray Pedro as "a monk of very good customs," a man of "good, pure life and religion" and commendable for his humility, and Ponce himself displayed considerable modesty when he credited his achievements not to any special talent of his own but rather to God, Saint John the Baptist, and Saint Iñigo.^[87] Nevertheless, the familiar image of Ponce as a secluded monk devoted solely to prayer and meditation is surely unwarranted. Far from remaining in the silence of the cloister, where time hung heavy on his hands and there was nothing better to do than ponder the instruction of his charges, the record suggests that Spain's most celebrated educator of deaf children was a busy, worldly man, engaged in a whirlwind of activities that competed for his attention. From 1546 to 1548 he served as teniente mayordomo, an administrative position concerned with rent payments, tithes, first fruits, and contributions to the Church. And in an era in which monasteries were frequently embroiled in litigation, more than once he served as procurator, a post that would have required him to leave the cloister to defend monastery interests in the court of law.^[88]

Our celebrated Benedictine also devoted himself wholeheartedly to another worldly activity, that of money lender. (To judge from the number of loans recorded in Ponce's name, "one might think ... that the humble and charitable monk had organized in the monastery something like a mortgage bank," according to one author.)^[89] The loans Ponce extended were censos redimibles (redeemable rent charges), and toward the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth such loans became widespread. Secured by debtors' property at an annual interest charge of 7.14 percent—a rate that was regulated by law and accepted by the Church—the loans often led to the passage of property from small landowners to powerful moneylenders. Treatises of the day, asserting that redeemable rent charges would lead to the ruin of agriculture, condemned them on economic grounds—and on moral grounds as well, for they were viewed as a form of usury. Ponce issued a good many of these loans, so many that it seems he was eventually overwhelmed by the responsibilities they entailed, for he authorized a resident of Oña, one Alonso Díaz, to collect payments on his behalf.^[90] Over the years, the loans earned Fray Pedro the moneylender a handsome profit that, together with the valuable gifts and monies bestowed on him by his students' wealthy families, enriched both his community

and the monk himself—bringing him into direct conflict with the vow of poverty he had made at profession.^[91]

No doubt Ponce was kept busy by his various activities, so busy that he often failed to attend memorial services and masses.^[92] Although he was excused by his superiors from participating, clearly the arrangement weighed on his conscience. On his deathbed in August 1584 he lamented, "because I was busy ... with license of my ecclesiastical superiors both in this monastery and outside of it, I was not present in memorial services and anniversaries of the kings, counts and founders and I could not say, nor did I say, masses for the benefactors when they were to be said and for the monks of this house and outside of it who were dying, nor for the parents and brothers and sisters of the monks who were dying, being as I was obliged to correspond as a member of the Order, even though I was obeying orders that excused me."^[93]

Ponce was entombed within the church, in front of the pulpit where the transept crosses the nave, an honor that had never before been bestowed on one who was not an abbot.^[94] On his sepulcher was inscribed, "Here lies the venerable Father Fray Pedro Ponce, worthy of eternal memory for the gift God gave him of teaching the mute to speak."

Inevitably, Ponce's fame grew. Talk of the astonishing events at Oña must have spread throughout the kingdom, since the deaf students belonged to Spain's most prominent families. The news would have been carried abroad as well, for Poncc's fellow monks maintained contact with their brethren throughout Europe. Visitors to Oña—emperor and king Charles I, the queens of France and Hungary, the Spanish king Philip II, and the Licenciado Lasso, among them—would have put out the word. Publication of various eyewitness accounts likewise documented what the industrious Benedictine had wrought. Another monk, Fray Juan de Castañiza, described Ponce's feat in a book on the life of Saint Benedict, and Philip II's historian, Ambrosio Morales, writing about his nation's most illustrious sons, lauded Ponce as an "eminent Spaniard of singular genius and incredible industry."^[95] Fray Pedro's friend Francisco Vallés, the king's physician, also visited the monastery, and based on what he witnessed there, he published proof of what the Italian Girolamo Cardano had merely hypothesized: deaf people could be instructed by way of writing. "Those who cannot hear can use writing in place of speech," Vallés affirmed. And what was more, from wri-

ting they could proceed to speech, for neither mode of expression was inherently primary: "It is not the natural order that one first learn to speak and afterwards to write; it is practiced that way because it is easier; but that one can do the opposite has been shown by Pedro Ponce, a Benedictine monk and a friend of mine, who—admirable thing!—teaches mutes to speak with no other method than teaching them first to write, pointing out to them with his finger the objects that correspond to the written words, then teaching them the movements that in speech correspond to the letters, and just as with those who hear one begins with speech, with mutes one begins with writing." Vallés went on to refute the commonly held belief, unjustly attributed to Saint Augustine and to the apostle Paul, that deaf people could not achieve salvation: "By way of sight, as others do by way of hearing, they can receive word of the sacred," he affirmed. The physician's testimony was not to be doubted, for he had firsthand knowledge of his subject: "To all this I am witness in my friend's disciples," he concluded.^[96]

In rejecting the "commonsense" views of his day, Ponce had refuted beliefs that had gone unquestioned for centuries. He had shown that deaf people could be taught and that they could receive the Sacraments. He was committed to articulation as part of their education, quite likely because of the legal restrictions imposed on deaf people who could not talk, and specifically because of the prohibition against succeeding to an entailed estate, which could have affected some of his aristocratic pupils.

Although a deaf community of sorts must have existed at Ofia during these years, there is no reason to believe the monk ever viewed deaf people in general, or his deaf pupils in particular, as such. Deaf residents seem to have been integrated into monastic life to a considerable extent, and the hearing brethren also signed. Ponce's instruction was limited to the privileged few^[97] —several centuries would pass before deaf education would be extended beyond the aristocracy—yet his work contributed to a shift in consciousness regarding deaf people.

For his achievements, Pedro Ponce was, according to his funeral eulogy, "renowned in all the world."^[98] "All Spaniards and foreigners honored [him] because of his miraculous creativity," wrote another Benedictine some years later. But as this same monk went on to observe, "He never tried to teach [his method] to another; and we all know how much more it is to form teachers in a profession than to be one."^[99] And thus, at Ponce's death in 1584, the teaching of deaf pupils at Oña came to an end.