Chapter Four
Counterlegends

All of the narratives we have seen up to this point portray Fray Leopoldo responding positively to a challenge. Although the particulars of this challenge vary, the friar's exemplary response does not. Counterlegends present a striking contrast to this by now familiar pattern. Some of the tales we will examine here revolve around an unmistakably negative response. Others, which do portray the friar in a favorable manner, center on the opposition he encounters in the course of a positive response. Although it is true that Fray Leopoldo is shown to resolve a given problem in this second instance, the true focus of the tale has shifted.

Both the structure and the often explicit anticlericalism distinguish Counterlegends from Legends. And yet the former, like the latter, reveals a wide range of attitudes toward Fray Leopoldo and the supernatural that sets them apart from the formal Life.

In the first part of this chapter, I discuss the primary characteristics of Counterlegends. I then argue that the diversity of viewpoints so evident in both Legend and Counterlegend does more than confirm their insistent pluralism; it also indicates a rejection of all manner of institutions. Even though Legends rarely, if ever, reveal the virulent anticlericalism evident in Counterlegends, they, too, often champion the individual and the local in the face of institutional authority.

Counterlegends and the Life

Before embarking on an examination of representative narratives, the reader once again may profit from a brief description of the storytellers.

As already noted, tellers of Counterlegends are on the whole less apt than Legend tellers to have had access to schooling and they therefore tend to hold lower-paying, lower-status jobs. They are also considerably less apt to engage in formal religious activities.

As in the case of Legend tellers, however, one can find exceptions to this pattern. Many of those who told extremely anticlerical stories, for instance, turned out to attend mass every Sunday. Likewise, some of the severest critics of the Fray Leopoldo devotion had made various successful vows (promesas ) to the friar.

One good example of a Counterlegend teller is the shoemaker, Manolo. Short and stocky in the bright blue long-sleeved coveralls worn by Spanish workmen, he loves to listen to jokes, rumors, and all manner of stories, which he promptly passes on to others. He also likes to argue for hours about politics.

Unlike the majority of his peers, Manolo has never married. Now forty-four years old, he continues to live with his parents and an invalid sister—a nun until her illness—in a subsidized housing project. ("Our house may be ugly, but it's cheap," he says with a laugh.)

Manolo grew up in the Albaicín—the old Moorish quarter of the city where Doña Hortensia once lived—during the difficult period following the civil war. A former student of one of Padre Andrés Manjón's Ave María schools, he has strong reservations about his education ("we were so busy praying," he notes, "that we barely learned to read"). He joined his father in the shoe repair trade when he was a teen-ager. In the slow summer months, the two sold watermelons on a streetcorner. ("The richest customers would always make us cut a slice, then purse their lips and say, 'Oh no, too wet, too dry, too sweet, too sour,' "he says with a grimace and a wink.)

Like Dori, Manolo believes in the evil eye, which he describes as "a scientific fact." In contrast, he refers to religion as mere superstition. Although a calendar with Fray Leopoldo's picture hangs in Manolo's shoe shop ("someone gave it to me," he says hastily), he dismisses the friar as an invention of the Capuchins. "This business of the saints is just a business," he declares loudly. When his Aunt Mari chides him ("you have no respect," she says), he gleefully agrees.

Rosi, a large, handsome woman who does not look her nearly fifty years, shares Manolo's lack of enthusiasm for Fray Leopoldo. As a child, she lived with her parents and seven siblings in an alley behind the Capuchin monastery and often played at hide-and-seek in the monastery garden. She compares the friars' privileged situation ("they had pigs, roosters, rabbits, vegetables of every sort, and the biggest, sweetest lem-

ons") with the hunger of the populace at large ("I could never understand how Fray Leopoldo went about asking for alms," she says, "when those friars had so much to eat right in their own backyard").

Despite harsh memories of her own early years, Rosi feels an unmistakable nostalgia for a time when "everybody knew their neighbors." Certainly her own life has changed dramatically in the last few decades. Although her mother took her out of school when she was eight years old ("she said I had learned all I would ever need to know"), Rosi later taught herself to read and write. Married at an early age, she soon grew restless ("all my husband wanted to do was go drinking with his friends," she says). She therefore took a part-time job without his knowledge. After mastering the rudiments of arithmetic, she set up her own churros (fried doughnut) business, which she ran with the help of her two children, her older sister Chela, and a friend.

Presently separated from her husband ("I still feel bad about it, but I wouldn't take him back for anything"), she now sells jewelry and clothing on the installment plan. "Today," she explains, "even cleaning women own a pair of gold earrings, a string of pearls, a diamond ring." Because her customers can afford this type of purchase only on installment, Rosi spends a good deal of her time collecting money. When, as frequently happens, she encounters the client empty-handed, she simply schedules an hour to return. "These people do not have a lot of money," she says matter-of-factly. "If I'm patient, they will pay me and later on buy something else."

Rosi and Chela presently share an apartment in the largely working-class district of Chana on the outskirts of Granada. The poetic names of many of the streets—Pensamiento (thought), Geranio (geranium), and Rubén Darío (the Nicaraguan poet)—contrast with the humdrum, look-alike apartment houses. All but a few lone trees have been cut down to clear space for the massive concrete buildings, yet one of Rosi's windows looks out on a field of grazing cows. "Until just a few years ago," she muses, "the men used to bring the hay through the streets at harvest time."

Despite her claims to be a skeptic, Rosi attends mass every Sunday and believes in the saints' power to work miracles. She notes that she herself once received a seemingly impossible favor from the patron of her parish church, Saint Micaela. "When I told the nuns about it, they all laughed," she says, herself chuckling. "But, after all, it wasn't they Saint Micaela helped, now was it?"

Unlike Manolo and Rosi, Ernesto—tall, with dark beard and eyes, and, at twenty-eight, the same age as Luís Antonio—is too young to

remember either Fray Leopoldo or the early Franco years. Although his father, an employee of the Spanish armed forces, died almost ten years ago, the family retains the right to live in a military-owned apartment complex, a dingy building with a breathtaking view of the snow-capped sierra. His mother is a cleaning woman who looks forward to the day she can retire. The little room Ernesto shares with his younger brother is decorated with a poster of Ché Guevara and a photograph of the Alhambra with the caption, "Granada—perfume of a dream." Like Doña Hortensia at his age, Ernesto's greatest wish is to travel ("my first stop would be the Inca ruins," he declares). In the meantime he turns up his records of Andean music as high as the stereo and the next-door neighbors will permit.

One of the many young people who cannot find steady jobs in Spain today, Ernesto has worked for years at a long succession of part-time and temporary jobs. The most promising position he has held so far is that of label salesman. "Everyone needs labels," he explains enthusiastically, "funeral parlors, drugstores, record shops. There is a real market for labels. It isn't like some things where people see you coming and then, quick, slam the door."

Chronically short of money, he and his friends know a variety of shortcuts under railroad bridges and through backyards of abandoned buildings that will spare them the price of a bus ride. They regularly sneak into the city's most expensive concerts during intermission and attend innumerable free lectures and cut-rate movies. Often, they go singing through the streets at midnight until a window opens and someone yells, "Hey kids, that's enough!" They will then move on to a friend's house where they sit listening to music, taking drags on a shared cigarette, and drinking wine or tea. Long after the rest of the city is asleep, they set out for home. Theirs is, in many ways, the semibohemian life of a student. In contrast to most students, however, they are approaching their thirtieth birthdays with no guarantee that the future will be any different from the past.

Like most of his friends, Ernesto claims to have no interest in organized religion. He nonetheless owns a large stack of books about Eastern mysticism and the powers of the mind. He enjoys hearing and repeating various stories about Fray Leopoldo, particularly jocular ones that allege the friar had a roving eye. For Ernesto, the protagonist of these stories is above all a symbol of an older Granada, aspects of which have changed beyond all recognition. "How surprised Fray Leopoldo would be," Ernesto comments, "if he were to return today."

The Structure of Counterlegends

A good number of Counterlegends (about a third of those in my collection) are the mirror image of Legends. Like the latter, they portray a situation of need involving members of the lay population. Here, however, Fray Leopoldo fails to meet the challenge set before him. Instead of the generosity and concern for others which we saw time and again in Legends, he now displays hypocrisy, avarice, and egotism.^[1]

These negative-response tales and, indeed, Counterlegends as a body, tend to be briefer than Legends. Although some stories do include considerable detail, the tellers—not unlike the author of the Life—have a point to make. In contrast to their often lengthy descriptions of the friar's time, their presentations of Fray Leopoldo himself are usually concise. Their narratives (like the Legends) often center on specific incidents, but they may also offer considerably more general assessments of Fray Leopoldo.

Stories that focus on the friar's negative response to a challenge occasionally begin with a denial of the truth of a particular Legend or with a more general dismissal of the Capuchins' claims for the friar ("all that they say is lies"). The teller then proceeds to offer the "real," decidedly less flattering version of Fray Leopoldo's life. On other occasions, he or she simply launches into this account without a preface.

As with Legends, storytellers may purport to have witnessed the event in question or to otherwise have proof of its veracity. Rosi, for instance, recounts the following incident involving a hungry child as if she herself had seen it. Upon questioning, she admits that the incident was related to her by a neighbor "whom one can greatly trust" (de gran confianza). She notes, however, that she and her sister once knocked on the monastery door asking for something to eat and that the friar who answered turned them away ("he said to come back the next day," she says, "but we never did"). The bitterly sarcastic conclusion is typical of many of these accounts.

16. It was an impossibly hard life. And there was Fray Leopoldo, walking through the streets every day with his basket, asking alms for the monastery. For the friars, you understand, only for the friars. "In the house of the priest,

[1] Stories concerning the foibles of the members of religious orders are certainly nothing new to the tradition of the saint's legend. See appropriate motifs listed under "friar" and "priest, cleric, monk" in Thompson, Motif-Index , vol. 6, pp. 316 and 605-7. See also Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles , pp. 75-76 and 117.

there's always a feast," as the proverb says. For the people in the streets, nothing. Absolutely nothing. We were dying of hunger, but they paid us no attention. Look, there was a little eight-year-old girl who asked them for food one day and they told her there was nothing to eat in the monastery. Nothing to eat! So how can one explain that all the friars went about looking so well-fed? Undoubtedly they lived on air. Air and prayers, of course.

Other stories take the form of unflattering comparisons between Fray Leopoldo and a "real" saint. As in Legends, the latter is often the sixteenth-century San Juan de Dios, or else Padre Andrés Manjón, who, as noted in chapter 1, established a series of schools in working-class sections of the city and took a special interest in the gypsy population.^[2] Born twenty years before Fray Leopoldo, the priest, like the friar, is presently a candidate for canonization.

These sorts of negative comparisons generally depict either San Juan or Padre Manjón as an active champion of the poor. Fray Leopoldo, in contrast, appears as a passive member of a religious order whose welfare he systematically places above that of the lay population. In the following account, Manolo depicts Padre Manjón not only as more assertive and quick-witted than Fray Leopoldo but also as more dedicated to the poor ("and that is what a saint is, it is someone who helps the person who has nothing to his name"). In analyzing his account, however, one should keep in mind Manolo's critical comments about his own experience as a student in one of Padre Manjón's schools. The reservations he expresses on these other occasions suggest that his celebration of the priest here serves above all to highlight objections to the friar and the Capuchins.

Manolo begins by telling the story of how Padre Manjón, "a lawyer as well as a professor of professors" (abogado y también catedrático de catedráticos), decides one day to buy a plot of land on which to found a school.^[3] At exactly nine o'clock, the priest appears at the appointed site. The auctioneer in charge does not want to begin at the set hour "because, of course, at nine o'clock, all the rich are still in bed." Padre Manjón, however, uses his knowledge of the law to force the man to start the bidding. As he has no competitors, he is able to buy the

[2] For a laudatory biography of San Juan de Dios see Gómez-Moreno, Primicias históricas de San Juan de Dios . For Padre Manjón see Pino Sabio, ed., Don Andrés Manjón , and (n.a.) Vida de don Andrés Manjén y Manjén .

[3] Padre Manjón was a professor of church history and of canon law. A catedrático is a senior professor.

land for an otherwise impossibly low price. "And so you see," Manolo concludes:

17. He lived to serve the most needy. Fray Leopoldo, no, he thought only about filling his own belly. He and those other friars, they didn't think of anything else. Look, today they talk about how he went through the streets barefoot in winter, but I myself fixed his sandals and they had thick soles, I assure you!

While both Manolo and Rosi focus on reports of Fray Leopoldo's lack of concern for the least fortunate in a time of widespread hunger, other storytellers accuse him of hypocrisy in his activities as alms collector. One elderly seamstress, for instance, asserts that the friar was far less interested in helping the poor than in promoting the Capuchin order. According to her, he took advantage of his access to people's homes to paint a glowing picture of the religious life for impressionable younger members of the family. "That was all he was good for," she asserts indignantly. "People talk about his generosity, but all he really wanted was to make converts for them, for the Capuchins."^[4]

Allegations of Fray Leopoldo's insensitivity to those outside the immediate circle of the monastery present a dramatic contrast to Legends and certainly to the Life. They are nonetheless considerably less startling to the outsider than that small, but significant, cluster of narratives depicting him as a libertine. Although the friar eventually repents in a number of these stories, his misdeeds dominate the action. The following description of the friar's exploits in Granada's red light district is an excellent example. The storyteller's numerous disclaimers do not diminish her willingness to pass on accusations she has heard from others.

18. They say that he went to bed with the whole neighborhood of San Lázaro [a well-known red light section of the city], but I don't know. It might well be a lie, but they say that in his day he was a friend of those women who, who [sentence trails off]. It might well be that he repented of having gone to bed with so many women toward the end of his life and thus went on to do penance as an alms collector. That might well be. But they say that he remained in the street until four in the morning

[4] Woman, age sixty-two, born Granada, some grade school. Married, works at home, attends mass regularly, "but that doesn't mean that I think all priests are saints."

drinking and doing all sorts of scandalous things. That is what people say.

Woman, age fifty-two, born Granada, grade-school education. Married, owns small bakery shop with husband, "never" attends mass .

Even, and indeed especially, when storytellers claim to be jesting about Fray Leopoldo's promiscuity, they may create lingering doubts in the listener's mind. Thus despite Ernesto's reference to the friar's kindness to those individuals scorned by polite society (including, to be sure, the other Capuchins), his initial pleasantry casts a shadow of uncertainty over the remainder of the tale. "It's that this Fray Leopoldo went about a lot in the zone," he says with a chuckle:

19. He confessed the prostitutes; he helped them a lot. He taught them to read and write, he brought them food, and then immediately afterwards [here he winks suggestively]. No, no, I'm joking. I swear that I am joking. He really helped them. Yes, he did. Because a friend of mine told me how he went through the streets, barefoot, among the women of ill repute with whom no one wanted anything to do. Least of all the Capuchins. It was they themselves who started saying ugly things about him, you know.

Although these stories present a strikingly different and less flattering portrait of Fray Leopoldo, they are ultimately almost never personal attacks. The protagonist of these accounts is first and foremost a representative of the Capuchins and, through them, of the entire ecclesiastical establishment. Not infrequently, storytellers begin with a proverb directed specifically at the religious orders or at the church in general. "Beato y tuno, todo es uno" (Scoundrel and saint, one and the same), they may declare, or "Gente de sotana, logra lo que le da la gana" (Persons in clerics' attire get whatever they desire). Other common sayings that find their way into many of this first type of Counter-legend are "Portero de frailes, no pregunta al que llega, '¿Qué quiere?' sino '¿Qué trae?'" (The friars' doorman doesn't ask the visitor, "What do you wish?" but rather, "What have you brought?") and "Boca de fraile, só1o el pedir la abre" (A friar's mouth only opens to ask for something).

The religious establishment as a whole is often the ultimate target of these stories. The tellers, however, may be bitterly critical of the Capuchins in particular. Of course, this singling out of the Capuchins may be a result of Fray Leopoldo's association with the order. But the frequent

harshness of their comments almost certainly stems from the traditional proximity of members of religious orders, and particularly the Franciscans, to the general population. By casting aside their vows of poverty and simplicity, the friars in these stories betray not only Fray Leopoldo but also the lay community that has come to trust and confide in them. "One would expect such behavior of the Jesuits," declares one middle-aged storyteller. "After all, they have always been proud and overbearing. But to see these friars [the Capuchins], once so poor, now so given to luxury [cosas de lujo], is really very irritating."^[5]

In a number of these negative-response tales, Fray Leopoldo is less a villain than a victim of his considerably more culpable fellows. The Capuchins, for instance, may insist on pressing the friar into service despite his advanced age and physical infirmities. "He had to bring them a certain sum of money—let's say thirty duros [about $1.50]—every day," a housewife in her fifties explains with a disapproving cluck of the tongue.

20. Without fail. And if he didn't get it, the other friars would not let him enter. He had to sleep there in the monastery door, poor thing! For this reason, people felt sorry for him because he was one of these clean, nice-looking old men. And so they would give him a coin or two so that he could sleep in his own bed.

Woman, age fifty-seven, born Granada, grade-school education. Married, housewife, attends mass "from time to time."

These storytellers may go on to suggest that Fray Leopoldo would have been horrified to find himself the center of a devotion that they dismiss as a teatro (theatrical production), a charada (charade), or a tinglado or montaje (both meaning farce). Although the friar may not look good in their narratives, the Capuchins who have cynically transformed him into an hombre-tragaperras (human coin machine) look considerably worse. "He was not a bad person," a friend of Manolo says a bit grudgingly, "but there is nothing good about those friars who are now making a business of him" ("era un hombre nada molo pero estos frailes que están haciendo comercio de él ahora no tienen nada de bueno").^[6]

[5] Woman, age forty-nine, born Granada, no formal schooling, "but my mother taught all of us to read." Married, part-time supermarket clerk, attends mass occasionally.

[6] Man, age forty-four, born Granada, some grade school. Separated, part-time carpenter and other odd jobs, does not attend mass.

"Poor little one," says an older woman whose husband was a close friend of Ernesto's father, "In life he never had a decent robe, but now, suddenly, he has acquired hundreds which those other friars divide into tiny pieces to sell as relics."^[7] Her sister, who hastens to assert her own belief in a multitude of other saints, explicitly rejects Fray Leopoldo as an invention of the Capuchins. In this case as in others, the objection is not really to the friar but rather to his fellows' willingness to exalt him for their own ends.

21. Me? Yes, I believe in the saints, and I believe in miracles. I do. Now then, this business of Fray Leopoldo is no more than idle chatter. The Capuchins didn't pay Fray Leopoldo the slightest attention, poor thing. In addition, there was more than one of them who made fun of him. Today? No, of course not. They have him on a throne. Because the miracles are a big business. So many candles, so many flowers, so many things!

Woman, age fifty-eight, born Granada, three years grade school. Widowed, cook for hospital, occasionally attends mass .

A second group of Counterlegends stands in contrast to those we have seen so far in this chapter in their extremely positive assessments of the friar. Their challenge structure—that is, their depiction of needs that Fray Leopoldo steps in to alleviate—links them to Legends. Moreover, the Fray Leopoldo of these stories often displays not only human virtues but also the superhuman powers evident in Legends as well as in the Life. He may, for instance, cure an apparently fatal illness, transform one substance into another, prophesy the future, or exhibit bilocation.

But these accounts reveal a critical difference even when they deal with the most familiar incidents, such as that of the frightened mules or the stubborn stone. Counterlegends invariably use the friar's response to need as a way to set him apart from very specific would-be detractors. As a result, the narrative becomes an extended contest in which Fray Leopoldo's ultimate victory often represents less a confirmation of those principles he champions than a denunciation of particular institutions and interest groups.

As suggested by the examples in preceding pages, the most common (though certainly not the only) targets of these stories are the Capuchins and, through them, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the larger social sys-

[7] Woman, age sixty-nine, born Granada, no formal education. Married, works at home, attends mass from time to time.

tem with which it is perceived as being allied. In these "anticlerical tales" (I am using the term broadly to include the members of religious orders), Fray Leopoldo's flawless behavior is the exception that calls attention to the rule.

Even those narrators most admiring of the friar may thoroughly lambaste his fellows. Like Manolo, who emphasizes Padre Manjón's triumphs as a foil to Fray Leopoldo's failures, they may use the friar's virtues to call attention to the Capuchins' vices. The following storyteller calls attention to both Fray Leopoldo's supernatural powers and unfailing kindness. Her account nevertheless constitutes a clear attack on the other members of his order. At the same time that she emphasizes the friar's humility, she summarily rejects their explanations of why he went barefoot through the city streets.

22. So then, Fray Leopoldo performed many miracles, many good things in these parts. He cured the sick, the blind. He even took off his shoes in order to give them to the most needy. He gave away so many pairs of shoes to the poor in this manner that the Capuchins told him, "Look, Fray Leopoldo, we're not going to give you more shoes if you keep on in this manner." Today they say that Fray Leopoldo was accustomed to going barefoot even in winter because he was so humble. When the truth is that they didn't want to give him so much as a pair of alpargatas [rustic leather sandals]. Of course he went barefoot. What else could the poor thing do?

Woman, age forty-nine, born Granada, some high school. Married, housewife, irregular attendance at mass .

The tellers of Counterlegends are unusually quick to specify a variety of motives for the hostility of Fray Leopoldo's fellow Capuchins. The most common of these—the friar's poverty, his peasant background and lack of formal education—reveal the storytellers unmistakable class consciousness. "He was the poor one of the monastery, the others were rich; they had money," explains one of Rosi's great-aunts, who began washing dishes in a bar when she was nine years old:

23. And he was a nonordained friar [un lego ], poor thing, so he had to serve them. Because these people [members of religious orders who are also priests] are like that, you know. They always want to give the orders. So then, he swept the courtyards, did all the kitchen chores. He had to shine the others' shoes every day. He washed the bed linen and scrubbed the floor. Everything the others didn't want to do. Because he

was poor, he didn't know how to read, so that they laughed at him and treated him as if he were their servant.

Woman, age seventy-one, born Granada, "a few months" grade school. Single (fiancé killed in civil war), cook and dishwasher in restaurant (recently retired), attends mass "when I can."

The Capuchins' standoffish, when not frankly condescending, treatment of Fray Leopoldo in these stories suggests their own feelings of inadequacy in the face of his virtue. A kind of masculine Cinderella figure, the friar displays a generosity and concern for others that irk his small-minded fellows who cannot hope to inspire the same devotion in the population at large. "Of course they couldn't stand him," one man, a clerk in a beer-bottling factory, remarks. "He made them very angry because he had grown up without studies and yet still knew more than they. They did not like the fact he spent his days in places where not one of them, you can be sure, would ever poke his nose."^[8]

In the Counterlegends, the Capuchins' knowledge or suspicion that this individual of inferior social position is morally superior to them simply compounds their hostility. Envious of the powers beyond their understanding, they mercilessly mock his rustic ways. The following preface to an otherwise unremarkable account of how the friar turns a copper coin to gold contrasts his humility with their arrogant behavior.^[9]

24. They hated Fray Leopoldo. For this reason they sent him to ask alms of the señoritos , of the pompa of Granada. (What does pompa mean? Pompa is a millionaire, it's the person who has a bank, who has a lot of land.) So then he went to ask alms in those homes in which the lady of the house was accustomed to giving the altar flowers and this type of thing. He spent all afternoon asking for alms, barefoot in sun or rain, with great humility. And when he returned to the monastery he had to endure the others' laughter. They ate the bread he had gotten for them, but they laughed at him. Although he performed many miracles. For example, that of the gold coin.

Woman, age sixty-four, born Granada, grade school. Widowed, does "a little sewing," usually attends mass .

[8] Man, age forty-one, born Granada, grade-school education. Married, clerk in beer-bottling factory, rarely attends mass.

[9] The transformation of objects into gold is motif D475.1 in Thompson. The real interest of the story, to be sure, is in this indignant introduction.

More often than not in these stories, the other Capuchins are relieved when Fray Leopoldo dies. "He was a tremendous nuisance," they confide to one another when they think they are alone. Seeking to create the greatest possible distance between themselves and the individual who was for so long the bane of their existence, they hurriedly bury Fray Leopoldo in the public cemetery.^[10] When his followers protest, they try to justify their actions by citing the absence of that special dispensation required for interment in the monastery graveyard. Like the storyteller quoted above, the following man prefaces his account of one of the friar's extraordinary actions with a negative description of his fellows. "During his life," he explains:

25. Fray Leopoldo did a lot, a lot for the poor people of Granada. But those other friars didn't pay him any attention. They said that everything was a lie—fanaticism. And after he was dead, they stuck him in the public cemetery, very far from everything. The friars and the nuns all got together to bury him. With a sad face but happy inside. They wanted to forget about him. They were sick of all those miracles of his that had caused them so much trouble.

Man, age fifty-one, born Granada, grade school. Married, taxi driver, rarely attends mass .

Even after death, however, Fray Leopoldo stubbornly continues to perform extraordinary deeds on behalf of those who seek help in his name. In some stories the beneficiaries of the friar's posthumous intercession demand that the Capuchins move his corpse into the church to facilitate its veneration by the faithful. Unable to resist the mounting pressure from the lay population on whose support they depend for their own well being, his fellows reluctantly exhume the body. Often, as in many traditional saints' legends, they discover it to be incorrupt and exuding the "odor of sanctity."^[11]

At first the other friars express indignation at visitors' insistence on treating Fray Leopoldo "as if he were a saint—imagine!" But their opposition rapidly subsides as the friar's visitors begin to fill the monas-

[10] Fray Leopoldo was buried in the public cemetery located near the palaces of the Alhambra following his death on 9 February 1956. His remains were transferred to the old Capuchin church in May of 1958 and installed, permanently, in the crypt of the new church in October 1969.

[11] See Thompson, V222.4.1 ("aromatic smell of saint's body"). For numerous analogues see Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles , pp. 510-12, and Loomis, White Magic , pp. 54-55.

tery's coffers. With just a portion of this money, the Capuchins are soon able to construct not only a crypt to house the body but also a whole new church. "And so the poor man is now the wealth of the monastery" (Y así que el pobre es ahora la riqueza del convento), the storyteller may conclude with more than a trace of irony. He or she may also describe how the friars cut up Fray Leopoldo's robes into tiny pieces, which they sell for an exorbitant price.^[12]

In other, related narratives, the friars do an about-face after Fray Leopoldo intervenes to save the previously hostile head of the monastery from a fatal illness or natural disaster. In spite of this individual's formerly bitter opposition to Fray Leopoldo, the friar intercedes on his behalf. In heartfelt appreciation (or at least grudging recognition) of this aid, the abbot orders a lavish new edifice constructed to house his benefactor's remains. The following tale recalls a number of Legends that portray Fray Leopoldo's cure of a seemingly hopeless affliction. The identity of the sick man in this case and the pointed reference to his narrow escape from the flames of hell, however, are a dramatic departure from the standard challenge pattern.

26. None of the Capuchins liked Hermanico Leopoldo—the head of the monastery above all. He was always saying horrible things about him. Lies, all lies, you understand. Until one day this man took sick. He became very sick; he was on the verge of death. Well then, at this point he suddenly thinks of the Hermanico , he makes a vow to him so that he won't die and go to hell. And he is saved. He is saved, yes sir. So then, wishing to acknowledge such a great miracle, he orders the construction of a church. The Triunfo Plaza Church. Something very luxurious, everybody knows it.

Man, age fifty-three, born Jaén, thirty-four years in Granada, some high school. Married, drugstore supplier, occasionally attends mass .

Even though Fray Leopoldo's exemplary conduct provides a necessary contrast to others' bad behavior in these stories, a number of the tellers

[12] In point of fact, the money to construct the new church came in large part from the sale of a part of the monastery property on which the forementioned Huerta de la Alegría stood. According to Fray Angel, offerings left by visitors to the crypt are used to finance the costly canonization effort and a portion of the expenses of the Fray Leopoldo Home for the Elderly.

Shreds of cloth said to have been part of the friar's robes are indeed affixed to prayer cards found throughout Granada. These, however, appear to be distributed free of charge. At Fray Leopoldo's funeral so many of those in attendance snipped pieces of his robe to take with them as mementos that the Capuchins found themselves obliged to replace his outer garments three times.

accord him relatively little attention. In the following tale, for instance, the narrator is so intent on denouncing the greedy landowner that he barely mentions the friar.^[13] Although he concludes by pronouncing Fray Leopoldo "very miraculous," this decidedly anticlimactic declaration leaves the listener wondering exactly what the friar did to thwart the rich scoundrel's scheme.

27. In the past there were a lot of bad people—really very bad. And the poor were all very innocent. They didn't know how to defend themselves. Today, no, things are different. Everybody has a grandson who is a lawyer and who says, "Look, Grandad, leave this life of sacrifice and come live in the city, because things are much better here." But back in the old days, for example, there was one of those very bad, very powerful landowners who wanted to take one of his worker's land. He insisted so very much that the poor man almost handed it over to him. Because he made some terrible threats that practically caused the man to die of fear. So that this shameless individual would have robbed him for sure if Fray Leopoldo hadn't shown up in that town at exactly the right moment. He was a very miraculous friar.

Man, age fifty-one, born Granada, four years grade school. Married, deliveryman, occasionally attends mass .

Although very clear in their denunciations of the friar's opponents, Counterlegends are not necessarily without humor. A number, indeed, are quite funny. Although, as we have seen, some storytellers express indignation at the abuses the friar suffers, others appear less outraged than amused by the foolish behavior of his fellow friars. Rather than condemning these individuals for their hypocrisy and malice, the narrators are frequently content to poke fun at their obtuseness.^[14] A number pass over Fray Leopoldo's ill treatment at the hands of his would-be superiors to concentrate instead on how he outwits them.

Humor leavens the account of a man who credits the friar with his recovery from a serious illness. When this individual first relates his experience to the Capuchins, they either assure him he is greatly mis-

[13] For an understanding of the roots of this agricultural system and the popular hostility it engendered see Díaz del Moral, Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas , and Bernal, La propiedad de la tierra y las luchas andaluzas .

[14] For examples of this sort of humor in a number of traditional saints' legends see Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles , pp. 528-30. A number of Marian miracles in particular treat the shortcomings of human beings—and often, members of religious orders—with a certain levity.

taken or accuse him of prevarication. When, however, it dawns on them that he intends to make a monetary contribution to the order as a token of his gratitude, they change their tune so fast that the would-be donor wonders if he is not witnessing a second of Fray Leopoldo's miracles. Once again, although an apparently supernatural action is fundamental to the story, the Capuchins' laughably blatant self-interest is the teller's real concern.

In another particularly appealing example of this type of humorous denunciation, Fray Leopoldo spends a long day of distributing food to the hungry in the war-ravaged countryside. Only as the sun begins to set does he suddenly remember that the other friars are counting on him to bring them dinner. Realizing he has nothing left but a few crumbs, he rushes back in desperation to the monastery. As he crosses the threshold, the empty knapsack suddenly becomes heavy with fragrant, golden loaves of bread.^[15]

Fray Leopoldo's fellows, of course, do not have the foggiest notion of the miracle that has just occurred on their doorstep. In fact, they proceed to berate him for his delay. Although this portrait of them, which appears below, is ultimately no more flattering than many of our other examples, an unmistakable difference nevertheless exists between these childish friars and the blackhearted miscreants who appear in a number of other Counterlegends. Note the change in tense accompanying the bread's mysterious appearance and the storyteller's apparently unintentional lapse, whereby Fray Leopoldo's "basket" becomes a "knapsack" in the course of his account.^[16]

28. He passed through the countryside with his basket full of grain. At harvest time, the sun in his face, the fields all gold with sun, gold with grain. Today there is a good highway, but in that time there was only a dirt road. He was accustomed to spending all day asking for food and distributing it along the way because there was a lot of hunger in those days, the people suffered a lot. So it was only when it started getting dark that he suddenly remembered the friars who were waiting for him in the monastery. Because they were too proud to beg, they

[15] See Thompson, D2106.1.5 ("saint multiplies food"). Loomis notes that bread, being the commonest form of traditional nourishment, is subjected most often to miraculous increase (see p. 86), and Brewer offers numerous examples of saints' multiplication of food (pp. 145-50). One of the instances he cites involves Saint Theodosius's conversion of a crumb of bread into a quantity so large that by the next day it has filled the monastery larder and run out through the door "in great abundance."

[16] See Schiffrin, "Tense Variation in Narrative," and Wolfson, "A Feature of Performed Narrative."

depended on him for food. So then he didn't know what to do. He ran back to the monastery very worried because he had nothing left but a few grains of wheat that wouldn't have filled the stomach of a bird. But when he opens the monastery door he feels the knapsack very heavy. Because it had filled with bread. Just like that. So then he hurries to serve the Capuchins, who were already at the table. "Finally!" they say to him. "You delayed a long time on the road. And we here dying of hunger! What selfishness!" [Here the speaker and a dozen listeners bang the table with their fists and laugh delightedly.]

Man, age forty-one, born Málaga, some high school. Separated, owns small bar-bingo parlor, attends mass "on occasion."

Attitudes Toward the Supernatural and Saints

The stories we have seen up to this point stand apart from Legends in their structure. Although the differences are more dramatic in some cases than others, the tales can dearly be divided into two groups. The storytellers' attitudes toward the events described are less varied than is the case with Legends. Because the tellers of Counterlegends are often consciously reacting to what they perceive to be the official version of the friar's life, they are more apt than their counterparts to insist on the truth of their stories. An individual will sometimes hedge his or her account in an attempt not to offend listeners, as in the case of the storyteller who reported how the friar went to bed with all the women in a well-known red light district of Granada ("it might well be a lie," she said, but went on to recount the tale). In general, however, tellers of Counterlegends are more uniform than Legend tellers in their attitudes toward the events they describe.

This relative consensus on the clerical establishment does not, however, imply a common stance on miracles and saints. The stories just recounted in the preceding pages reveal varied attitudes toward the supernatural—reminiscent of the diversity we encountered in Legends. Although miraculous actions, as already noted, seldom figure as prominently in Counterlegends as they do in Legends, their very presence is significant. While some storytellers attribute extraordinary powers to saints in general or to Fray Leopoldo in particular, others maintain a conspicuous silence. Then too, as in our last chapter, still others explicitly deny all possibility of miracles, and thus implicitly or explicitly demand new definitions of what makes a saint.

A negative assessment of Fray Leopoldo or of the Capuchins does not necessarily signal disbelief in the supernatural. The storyteller may contrast an acknowledged miracle worker such as San Juan de Dios or Saint Teresa with the apparently humdrum friar as proof that he was not "a real saint." ("Me? Yes, I believe in the saints," an earlier storyteller asserted, "and I believe in miracles. Now then, this business of Fray Leopoldo is no more than idle chatter.")

We have also seen how the tellers of Counterlegends present others' blindness to Fray Leopoldo's miracles as proof of their larger failings. The Capuchins' ignorance of the extraordinary event that occurs beneath their noses in the story of the empty knapsack that fills with bread, for instance, illustrates a more general insensitivity on their part.

In contrast, however, to those storytellers who stress the marvelous quality of Fray Leopoldo's actions for purposes of contrast, there are others who gloss over his exploits in their eagerness to stress his opponents' failings. We have noted that the listener never learns exactly how Fray Leopoldo keeps the rich landowner from taking over the poor worker's land. Likewise, the details of the repentant abbot's recovery are left unexplained. And the listener is not offered a single example of "all those miracles" that so annoy the friar's fellow Capuchins during his lifetime. Nonetheless, storytellers in these and similar cases continue to attribute extraordinary powers to Fray Leopoldo.

Other individuals take no explicit stand on miracles. Like a number of Legend tellers, they may stress his kindness and concern for others in their stories. If asked whether the friar worked miracles, they may skirt the issue or answer indirectly. "I consider myself very Catholic," the owner of a tiny confectionery explains, "But to believe in the sky one doesn't have to stop looking at the things of this earth. Here, have a cookie. For me, Fray Leopoldo was a good man and, in the end, isn't that what is important?"^[17]

Still other storytellers redefine miracles in distinctly this-world terms. One of the most appealing redefinitions occurs in an account of Fray Leopoldo's actions at a banquet in the palaces of the Alhambra. His hosts are variously described as "the rich people of Granada," "the Fascists," "the Franquists," or "the señoricos de la tierra," the latter a pejorative term for the traditional landowning aristocracy. (Because of the already noted close association of wealthy rural property holders with the Falangist and Franco movements, a number of storytellers use the

[17] Woman, age forty-nine, born Granada, some high school. Married, confectionery owner, attends mass "most of the time."

above terms synonymously.) Although these members of the elite are normally deaf to pleas for aid, the friar convinces them on this occasion to dip into their pockets.

In one of a half-dozen variants I collected of this story, Fray Leopoldo is a poor man ("poor and small, he was so small, poor thing!") used to waiting on potential benefactors' doorsteps while a cold winter rain pours down upon his head. The teller, who is almost certainly thinking of the Salesian high school previously located down the street from the Capuchin monastery, identifies the friar as founder and mainstay of "a nearby vocational school."^[18]

When Fray Leopoldo arrives at the banquet, he finds himself surrounded by crystal goblets, fine French china, and gold-embroidered table linens, which the teller delights in describing at length. He says:

29. They turned on the lights, and it became a thing of enchantment with that little song of the water. There was wine of the very finest which exists in all of Spain, meat of every type.... [Here the storyteller describes the various dinner courses in sumptuous detail.] At the end of the banquet, they served an ice-cream cake which was so pretty that it made one sorry to eat it, it was a castle, but all of ice cream. What a marvel!

Man, age sixty-six, born Granada, "a few years" grade school. Widower, unemployed (formerly trash collector), rarely attends mass .

This lavish display, while clearly intended to impress the listener, fails to move the barefoot friar. He informs his hosts politely but firmly that he cannot eat with them while his students are going hungry. True to his word, he refuses to touch the champagne sparkling in his goblet and calls instead for water. As the other guests devour mountains of the finest food ("They say the bread was baked in Paris"), he calmly munches on a handful of migas (fried crumbs, the poor man's staple) with which he has filled his pockets in preparation for the occasion. "So then, the Franquists," says the speaker, "gave him notes of five, ten, twenty thousand. Just so they could eat in peace. Because it made them uncomfortable to have Fray Leopoldo eating crumbs and drinking water while they drank champagne and heaped their plates with meat."

When asked if Fray Leopoldo went on to perform a miracle on this occasion, the storyteller laughs. "To my mind, getting money out of

[18] The storyteller is probably also confusing Fray Leopoldo with Padre Andrés Manjón, who did found a number of vocational schools for Granada's poor, and whose activities are discussed later on in this chapter.

rich people is the greatest wonder of all," he says. In response to the question of whether the friar ever broke physical laws, he simply shrugs. "I don't say Fray Leopoldo could not do these things," he says, "But I ask you, why should he? To my mind, he had no need. Miracles, indeed!"

Other storytellers who display a similar disbelief or lack of interest in the miraculous have almost certainly confused Fray Leopoldo with some other individual of his or her acquaintance. The result is a composite image that bears scant resemblance to the protagonist of the formal Life. Rather than simple cases of mistaken identity, however, these inventions suggest an affirmation of values not usually attributed to the friar or his fellow holy figures.

The following speaker, for example, describes with obvious approval the friar's almost picaresque behavior. Far from looking down on commerce as a base, materialistic activity to be avoided, her Fray Leopoldo clearly enjoys the drama of buying and selling in this account in which the monastery garden is transformed into a cattle ranch. The unmistakable pleasure with which he bargains in the following description suggests that even the saints are members of a larger community that appreciates quick wits and a sharp tongue. "Fray Leopoldo?" the woman demands:

30. Yes, I knew him well. It was he who always came in a van full of animal hides. We used to have a leather factory and we bought the hides from the Capuchins, who in that time had many cattle. I don't know where they kept them, but they ate the meat and sold us the hides. Well then, we would add up the bill and if the total were something like three hundred, Fray Leopoldo would always say, "No, no! Five hundred, five hundred," in jest, you know. And he would laugh and laugh because he was a saint. But he was also an Andalusian, you understand, and even our saints like to bargain.

Woman, age fifty-seven, born Granada, some high school. Widowed, part owner of small shoe shop, attends mass every Sunday ("that is, I always try to") .

Although miracles are conspicuous only by their absence in this latter narrative, other storytellers are once again quick to deny all possibility of supernatural actions. Thus the plumber who works next door to Manolo's shoe repair shop begins his account of Fray Leopoldo's distinctly quotidian activities in the streets and plazas of Granada with a heated rejection of not just supernatural actions but also of the whole

concept of the afterlife. "Now this talk of miracles is pure invention," he declares.

31. He [Fray Leopoldo] did nothing. That is, nothing extraordinary. Furthermore, I don't believe in miracles—in the end, what good are they? In my opinion all that exists is that which is human. The good we do, the bad we do, it all remains right here on earth. And if we were all to do good unto one another, this world would be a cup of oil [una balsa de aceite , meaning "something very good"].

Man, age fifty-seven, born Granada, no formal education. Married, plumber, rarely attends mass .

The Fray Leopoldo whom he goes on to describe spends every morning collecting alms in the central square known as Plaza Nueva. Once he has filled his knapsack with a sufficient quantity of food and money for the monastery, he retires to the Café Spain, or rather, "what used to be the Café Spain because it no longer exists." There he orders his habitual cortado (black coffee cut by a few drops of milk). Strumming the zither he always carries, he goes on to talk for hours with fellow customers and passersby.

This figure, who bears a notable resemblance to an itinerant musician known as "El Austríaco" or "The Austrian," who lived in Granada during this period, has exchanged the usual ragged robe and sandals for a pair of black loose-fitting trousers.^[19] He also wears a jaunty hat and a black shirt with a small white button on each of the two pockets. "Campechano, pero muy campechano" (good-hearted, exceptionally good-hearted), he is also more than a bit of a bohemian. "Don't get me wrong," the speaker says. "He always did his duty. But he was not one of these holier-than-thou friars who spends his whole life cooped up in a church."

The man in question goes on to explain that in Fray Leopoldo's time the Plaza Nueva was home to many veleros , old men who received a few coins for accompanying, candle in hand, the funeral processions that passed through the plaza on their way to the public cemetery. "So then," he concludes:

32. Fray Leopoldo sat down with them, he gave them bread, he gave them sausage, whatever he might happen to have. The only thing he didn't give them was money, because that was

[19] I am grateful to Professor José Cazorla Pérez of the University of Granada for identifying this individual.

for the monastery. Though if it had been up to him, you can be sure, those oldsters would have had the money too!

Still other storytellers, almost all young and relatively well educated, see Fray Leopoldo as a sort of guru. Their accounts of him are interspersed with references to reincarnation, karma, magnetic forces, astrology, and Tarot cards. Although quite willing to pronounce the friar remarkable, they nonetheless insist on the rational nature of his seemingly extraordinary qualities. No longer inexplicable infractions of otherwise binding natural laws, his actions now illustrate a potential in all human beings.^[20]

The Fray Leopoldo of these narratives also loses his specifically Roman Catholic and Christian identity. Despite the fact that tellers may acknowledge his affiliation with the Capuchins, most present him first and foremost as a member of an international community of holy men and seers. "Fray Leopoldo," Ernesto explains, "was undoubtedly a vidente . That is, he could look into a person's mind and say exactly what he was thinking. People in his time thought he was working miracles, but today we know there is a scientific reason."

The single best example I can offer of Fray Leopoldo-as-guru is not a narrative someone recounted to me, but, rather, an experience in which I shared. One day around noon, I happened to come upon two acquaintances in a café. They introduced me to a friend of theirs, a travel agent in his thirties who had moved with his family from Italy to Granada some twenty years before. Upon learning I was conducting research on Fray Leopoldo, he assured me enthusiastically that he himself was a great admirer of the friar as well as a number of Eastern holy men and mystics whom he found to possess many of the same psychic capacities. He winked good-naturedly when his friends teasingly accused him of seeking to impress me, producing a small picture of Fray Leopoldo from his wallet as proof of his sincerity.

Increasingly hungry, the four of us decided to have lunch in a restaurant in the mountains just outside Granada. We therefore clambered into the travel agent's car. In an attempt to get out of the city before the already heavy traffic increased, he drove quickly down the narrow and crowded streets. At one intersection a bicyclist suddenly appeared from around the corner, resulting in a near-collision. The cyclist was thrown, his sack full of yogurt tinting the street various shades of pastel. Although unscathed, he, like us, was shaken. Our apprehension mounted

[20] The language of Eastern spirituality has become an international idiom for religious individualists. See Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart , pp. 219-49.

when a police car appeared. But the officer did not appear to notice anything amiss. After examining bones and bicycle, the cyclist gingerly pedaled off, prompting the travel agent to heave a deep sigh of relief. "Who knows what would have happened if we hadn't been talking about Fray Leopoldo just moments before?" he demanded.

Eager to forget the incident, his friends laughed uneasily at the suggestion. Their discomfiture annoyed the man, who insisted he was not joking. Although he said nothing more about Fray Leopoldo, he remained very quiet through lunch. When I asked him over coffee if he believed the friar had worked a miracle, he shrugged impatiently. "Of course not," he replied. "Miracles are just a way for the church to make money. They are wholly irrational. I, for my part, believe in the powers of the mind."^[21]

Legends and Counterlegends as Rejections of Institutional Authority

In this and the preceding chapter, I have shown how stories of Fray Leopoldo reveal a wide variety of attitudes toward their protagonist as well as toward the supernatural, toward sanctity, and, at times, toward the very actions they describe. I have suggested that the tales' multiplicity reflects important differences among their tellers. I will now argue that it also constitutes a coherent, if not necessarily fully conscious rejection, of all manner of institutions. The Fray Leopoldo stories are thus united not only by a readily obvious debate about saints and miracles but also by a potent, if often considerably more subtle, undercurrent of antiauthoritarianism.

We are not talking here about that more obvious sort of anticlerical-ism characterizing a good number of Counterlegends, but rather, a more generalized distaste for constituted authority often discernible in even those Legends that may bear the most marked resemblance to the Life.^[22] This distaste may be taken as a reaffirmation and intensification of the stubborn localism that has always characterized one important subgroup of saints' legends. It also represents a confirmation of the very long and

[21] Man, age thirty-seven, born Palermo (Italy), high-school education. Separated, travel agent, does not attend mass.

[22] It is this same impulse, I would argue, that has found its most dramatic expression in a series of Anarchist and Socialist political movements during the last century. For two excellent discussions of twentieth-century manifestations of this antiauthoritarian spirit see Mintz, The Anarchists of Casas Viejas , and George A. Collier, Socialists of Rural Andalusia .

powerful tradition of anti-institutionalism in Spain—described in chapter 1—which finds its most immediate target in Franco's self-described "National Catholic" regime.^[23]

This deeply rooted antiauthoritarian impulse shows up most notably in the stories' tendency to redefine, de-emphasize, or subjectivize the supernatural, to delimit the friar's sphere of operations, and to picture him actively seeking out needy members of the lay population. It is discernible as well in the insistence on Fray Leopoldo's identity as friend rather than arbiter and in storytellers' recurring insistence on their tales' subjective truth.

Redefinition and sometimes outright rejection of miracles characterize many of the tales, Legend and Counterlegend alike. Thus, together with accounts of how Fray Leopoldo causes a lemon tree to burst into flower in the chill of winter or finds his empty knapsack filled with bread, there are numerous instances in which he simply offers sympathy or counsel. Unlike many traditional saints' tales in which the natural and supernatural form a continuum where some things are more or less probable than others, the tales we have studied reveal a clear demarcation between the possible and the impossible.^[24] Although individual storytellers may and do decide to cross this conceptual great divide, few if any fail to acknowledge its existence.

One might dismiss this generalized downplaying of the supernatural as nothing more than a response to the sort of rationalization generally associated with industrialization and the introduction of new technologies. From this standpoint, the woman who hastens to assure her listeners that Fray Leopoldo did indeed raise her dead niece ("Yes, yes, yes, yes, she was dead when he arrived") and the man who insists that the friar bumped his head on the cathedral ceiling are both proposing an exception to rules both they and the community accept.

[23] As one might well expect, this sort of anti-institutionalism is considerably more visible in the local legends that have come down to us in assorted shrine books, rather than written collections of saints' lives authored by members of monastic orders. It is obvious as well in a number of those Marian miracles that present an alternative to the stern, all-powerful male patron.

[24] See Keith Thomas's discussion of the relationship between medieval religion and occult forces in his Religion and the Decline of Magic , pp. 253-79.
Here and elsewhere in this section, I have used the term "traditional legend" very loosely. I am thinking here primarily of those stories appearing in such standard collections as Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogue on Miracles; Voragine, The Golden Legend; and Butler, Lives of the Saints , as well as a number of the local legends that have come down to us through shrine books. There are, to be sure, numerous differences among these narratives. For a study of this sort of variation over time, as well as apparent constants in a number of Spanish saints' lives, see Wyatt, "Representations of Holiness in Some Spanish Hagiographical Works."

One could, however, just as easily see storytellers' generalized de-emphasis of the miraculous (and also their reluctance or refusal to expound on supernatural actions on other occasions) as a rejection of official criteria of sanctity and, by extension, of the church's definitive control over the canonization process and religious experience in general. From this perspective, the friar's insistence that the workers do not need his miraculous intervention to move an obstinate slab of granite is neither an acknowledgment of the supremacy of reason nor an attempt to conceal his inability to help the needy. Rather, it is an endorsement of an emphatically nonhierarchical, this-world approach to human problems.

The limited scale of both Legends and Counterlegends invites a similar interpretation. Nowhere in either the Life or the wide array of oral stories we have seen does Fray Leopoldo lead an army into battle, rid Granada of an epidemic, or multiply a single loaf of bread before the eyes of a hungry multitude.^[25] But (in contrast to the Life, where he does appear alone at times) the great majority of the tales we have examined portray him in the company of others. The friar inevitably appears alongside another individual or individuals—a handful of workers, a mule driver and a few curious passersby, a sick child and his anxious parents.

A few of the texts presented do involve a somewhat larger than usual number of persons. We have seen how Fray Leopoldo levitates in full view of the worshipers cramming the city cathedral and have noted his presence at a great banquet in the palaces of the Alhambra. Even in these cases, a single face often stands out among the crowd. In several versions of the cathedral story, for instance, a young boy is the first to notice the friar's ascent. In addition, we have noted the numerous references—particularly in Legends, but also in a number of Counterlegends—to proper names, distinguishing physical features, and family connections. Whereas the Life speaks of "a certain man," the oral accounts refer to "the youngest brother of the García family that used to own the barbershop on Recogidas Street" or "a fruitseller, lame from birth in the left leg, who lived for many years across the street from my Great-Aunt Elvira."

This focus on small groups of very ordinary people could be taken as an illustration of the increasing privatization of religious experience, which some scholars have observed in various complex industrial

[25] For numerous examples of these sorts of occurrences consult appropriate headings in Loomis, White Magic , and Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles .

societies.^[26] One could argue that the friar deals almost exclusively with small numbers of people because he—and the religious establishment with which he is associated—has largely lost the hold it once commanded over public institutions.^[27]

It is equally possible, however, to see Fray Leopoldo's notably limited circle of activities as an affirmation of the individual and the near-at-hand. The woman who describes how Fray Leopoldo cures her husband beneath the Elvira Arch or the newspaper vendor who relates how an acquaintance witnesses an empty jug fill to the brim with cooking oil reveal a proximity to the events in question that stands in contrast to the distance cultivated by the friar's biographer. The absence of crowds and the highly idiosyncratic actors in both Legends and Counterlegends may constitute a further rejection of the anonymity and massification often synonymous with bureaucratic process.

A third general characteristic of the stories cited in the preceding pages is their situation of the friar in not just concrete, but familiar and public places such as plazas, shops, and historical landmarks. Time and again, he remains on the threshold instead of disappearing behind the doors of a private residence. Even those Counterlegends that depict the friar amidst his fellow Capuchins customarily include scenes of his activities in the countryside or city streets. Fray Leopoldo may come trudging back to Granada along a dirt road "gold with sun, gold with grain," or spend long hours helping the prostitutes in a section of the city where "no priest, you can be sure, would ever poke his nose."

Moreover, the friar is not simply situated within the public domain. Rather, he moves within it. Legends and Counterlegends alike show him circumnavigating Granada and its immediate environs, rather than staying in the monastery or one of the churches mentioned in the Life. In the course of his travels, he regularly happens on situations of need. Although people do sometimes seek out the friar with problems, he is far more likely to intervene of his own accord at a critical moment. Just as a scheming landowner is about to browbeat a poor farmer into sur-

[26] Clearly, this privatization does not occur in all cases. Theories of modernization, extremely influential in the 1960s and the early 1970s, fell out of favor precisely because their globalizing predictions were emphatically belied by developments in a number of non-Western nations. In addition, one could argue that "privatization" in the Spanish case often has a quite different meaning than in other, apparently similar contexts.

[27] See Berger, Sacred Canopy , pp. 127-53, for a discussion of the diminished power of religious institutions in modern, industrial societies. Although Berger's generalizations would not be true for some societies, there is no question but that the Spanish church occupied a privileged position during the Franco era which it no longer enjoys. For an overview of secularization as a sociological concept see Martin, General Theory of Secularization , and Glasner, Sociology of Secularisation .

rendering his tiny plot, at the very moment that a mule driver despairs of being able to feed his family, exactly when a small child who has just lost his mother feels most alone, the friar appears.

It is noteworthy that the beneficiaries of Fray Leopoldo's intervention do not necessarily call on him for help. In this respect, the tales depart from not only the Life but also from many other saints' legends in which the needy go to considerable pains to seek out the holy figure. (Recall the repentant man in chapter 2 who crosses town to implore Fray Leopoldo's aid at three o'clock in the morning.) The oral accounts are wholly devoid of these arduous pilgrimages. On the contrary, it is the friar who is the pilgrim in these stories, and he who makes the rounds of countryside and city.

Fray Leopoldo's extreme accessibility might be seen as an attempt to drum up business in a time of increasing competition among proliferating sects.^[28] But this same accessibility can also be viewed as a rejection of a hierarchical model in which spiritual aid must be actively solicited, often at considerable cost to the needy party. The friar's spontaneous appearance in critical moments suggests the ready availability of such assistance. Because Fray Leopoldo knows without their having to say so when people need him, they do not have to importune him or to offer gifts (constituting a kind of advance payment) for his help. He continues to think of them even when their mind is elsewhere. Unlike official saints, he is not located physically or metaphorically in a separate sphere—that of the religious institution—but remains close at hand.

Moreover, the friar shares not only the plazas and the streets with storytellers but also a common status. Not by chance do so many storytellers insist on his diminutive stature, lack of formal education, rustic accent, and shabby clothes. While the author of the Life repeatedly refers to him as a Servant of God—a title given to candidates for canonization—and a "varón de Dios" (man of God), storytellers ignore these high-sounding appellations in favor of others that stress his supreme ordinariness and thus his proximity to them. In their eyes he is an endearing, vaguely humorous, and unequivocally intimate frailecico (little friar), viejito (little old man), and santico (little saint). We have seen that the very family roles he represents—abuelito (grandfather) and hermanico (little brother)—undercut, while never wholly rejecting, patriarchal authority. As "father emeritus" and lay member of a religious order, he is at once within and outside the system.

[28] Berger compares the pluralistic situation to a market economy in which religious "products" must be marketed to a population of uncoerced consumers. (Sacred Canopy , p. 145)

The Life resembles many older hagiographical models in its portrayal of the friar as stern and demanding in all matters concerning religious thought and practice. Although Fray Leopoldo does not engage in the more spectacular displays of displeasure in which a long line of saints throughout the centuries have indulged, he regularly chides wrongdoers (who, one may note, are usually women of inferior social status). He is, for instance, quick to admonish a young servant who lies about her mistress's whereabouts and to scold a nun for thinking about forsaking her religious vows. In addition, the friar's biographer makes reference to one instance in which lightning strikes a boy who fails to follow the future friar in taking refuge from a thunderstorm.

Oral accounts, in contrast, rarely if ever show Fray Leopoldo chastising a would-be offender. Although the Hermanico recalls a number of traditional holy figures in his readiness to console and counsel, his reluctance to punish those who challenge his authority makes him more like a friend. It is therefore not surprising that the three versions I recorded of the story of the thunderstorm make no mention of a challenge to Fray Leopoldo, but instead portray all of the frightened children huddling behind a rock.^[29] No more than half a dozen of all of the tales in my collection do so much as hint at the redress of a personal wrong. In both Legends and Counterlegends, actions that would almost certainly be taken as affronts in the Life regularly pass without notice. Whereas, for instance, hagiographic tradition dictates that the disgruntled worker who abandons the group in one version of the stubborn stone should suffer for his action, our storyteller reports his departure as a simple fact.^[30]

Likewise, accounts of the blow Fray Leopoldo receives upon asking two men in a café for alms omit any reference to retribution ("that was not his way," storytellers explain if pressed). The friar is content to respond with a play on the verb dar , which means both "to strike" and "to give." Then too, although his hosts at the Alhambra banquet finally contribute to his school, they do so not out of remorse, but rather, to be

[29] Significantly, I collected all three versions of this story in the hamlet of Alpandeire. Although the tale appears in the formal Life, no one in Granada repeated it to me, which would appear to suggest either a lack of interest or discomfort with the theme of retribution among residents of the city.

[30] "Punishment for opposition to saint" is motif number Q559.5 in Thompson. For a wide array of punishments by saints see Loomis, White Magic , pp. 55, 84-85, 98-99, 101-2, and Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles , pp. 275-78. A list of studies of medieval punishment stories appears in Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults , pp. 401-2. For more general discussions of divine wrath see Halpert, "Supernatural Sanctions and the Legend," and Hand, "Deformity, Disease, and Physical Ailment as Divine Retribution."

rid of him so they can go on with their lavish meal. In striking contrast to a number of saints' tales from other times and places, none of the stories I collected includes the slightest suggestion of reform.^[31]

Fray Leopoldo's pacific and even passive behavior in the great majority of stories may be taken as another, quite straightforward indication of the diminished power of religious ideology and institutions in some modern industrial states. Unable to command allegiance to a once theoretically uniform code of behavior, the friar has no other option than to coax and cajole.^[32] One can also interpret the stories, however, as a considerably more subtle rejection of the saint as arbiter. From this standpoint, Fray Leopoldo does not exact moral compliance, because the tellers have rejected force on principle. Rather than a reflection of his diminished power and obvious indication of weakness, his failure to assert authority in the most varied oral accounts becomes a statement of principle and show of strength. The stories would thus appear to confirm the demise of patronage as an ideal, but not that of the holy figure as a metaphor.^[33]

Finally, if the profound multiplicity we have taken pains to document can be understood as a unifying factor, so can storytellers' insistence on the subjective truth of their narratives. ("There's no arguing about faith," they say time and again. Or "Well, this story's true for me.") This insistence may in part reflect individuals' perception of an increasingly pluralistic Spain. Unanimity, however, may strike storytellers not simply as impossible but, above all, as undesirable. As such, the tales signal a long-standing and, indeed, premodern agreement to disagree.

In short then, oral accounts of Fray Leopoldo, while profoundly diverse in some respects are nonetheless united by their antiauthoritarian-ism. Although individual stories may recall specific narrative features of the Capuchins' biography, as well as its more general guiding vision, the tales as a body represent a debate about the friar, about sanctity, and

[31] Reform routinely accompanies retribution in traditional saints' legends. Those individuals who do not die as a consequence of their insulting behavior (and there are a good number of these) customarily become staunch followers of the holy figure who has vented his or her wrath upon them.

[32] Berger explains these codes as legitimating or "plausibility" structures. See Sacred Canopy , pp. 45-47.

[33] For a discussion of the relationship between popular religious practice and the ideal of patronage see Maddox, "Religion, Honor, and Patronage." In their use of a holy figure to attack the concept of the all-powerful male patron, the stories cast doubt on the thesis put forward by some scholars in the 1970s that the decline of patronage as both ideology and socioeconomic system necessarily results in the diminution of the symbolic power of the saints. (See, for example, Boissevain, "When the Saints Go Marching Out.")

about the role or nonrole of the supernatural in everyday life—a debate that is wholly alien to the printed text. Moreover, Legends and Counterlegends alike reveal a number of narrative constants that affirm the individual and local in the face of all manner of institutions and thus provide a striking contrast to the Life.