1. The cases of Gregorio Santa Fe, discussed in this chapter, and Roberto Prádez, discussed in chapter five, must have escaped general notice, for it was commonly believed that there was no teaching of deaf people in Spain at that time. In a speech at the opening ceremony of the Royal School for Deaf-Mutes in 1805, the duke of Osuna remarked that the art had been abandoned in Spain (inaugural address of January 9, 1805, in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 37-38). In the previous chapter we have seen how, decades earlier, Feijóo had voiced the same lament.

Instances of private teaching of deaf individuals can be documented in the early decades of the nineteenth century as well. The first teaching assistant hired by Madrid's Royal School for Deaf-Mutes, Atanasio Royo Fernández, had taught two deaf residents of Madrid, and their instruction was reported to be well advanced ("Historia del establecimiento," January 15, 1805, 62). Shortly after the school opened in 1805, a new student, Domingo Pérez González, was reported to have already received considerable instruction (ARSEM, leg. 170, doc. 8, cited in Negrín Fajardo 1978, 793 n. 190). In 1813 the Diario de Madrid carried the advertisement of a man claiming he could teach deaf pupils to read, write, count, and speak, "as he has already done with some" ( Diario de Madrid, June 14, 1813, #165, 662). And the following year in a speech at the Royal School Agustin de Silva, the duke of Hijar, referred to a "tender mother of two deaf-mutes'' who had taught her own children (Silva 1814, 19). [BACK]

2. Godoy [1836] 1956, 211-212. Alea twice corroborated Godoy's account, stating in 1804 that the "Prince of Peace" had been the first in his nation to appear before the throne "on behalf of these wretched creatures" (Alea 1804-1805, 98 n. 1); again in 1807 he paid him a similar tribute (dedication by Alea, in Sicard 1807).

Manuel Godoy Alvarez de Faria Ríos Sánchez Zarzosa (1767-1851), Spanish statesman, Prince of Peace and of Basano, duke of Alcudia and of Sweden, captain general of the Spanish army and admiral of Spain and of the Indies, was for many years the most influential man in Spain. Born to noble parents of modest means, Godoy joined the Royal Guard in 1784 and promptly became the favorite of Queen María Luisa. By 1792 he had become the lieutenant general of the Royal Guard, and shortly thereafter Charles IV made him secretary of state. Godoy sponsored the instruction of two deaf children, Gonzalo and Rafaela Barat, whose father was deceased (Alea's dedication in Sicard 1807). "This new teaching [of deaf people] was a special object of my affection and my talents," he intoned in his "Memorias" (Godoy [1836] 1956, 212). [BACK]

3. Juan Fernández Navarrete de Santa Bárbara (no relation to Juan Fernández Navarrete, El Mudo, the famous deaf painter of chapter one) was born in Murcia in 1758 and entered the order of the Fathers of Pia in 1774. In 1804 he left the order—according to Nebreda y López, as a consequence of the French invasion (Nebreda y López 1870b, 15).

In a communication dated October 24, 1793, Navarrete's superior, the Provincial Father of the Piarist schools of Castile, was informed of the king's desire that the priest should dedicate himself to the teaching of deaf people, and he was instructed not to impede him from so doing or to distract him with other occupations. A communication of April 26, 1794, conveyed the royal approval of the Provincial Father's request to establish a deaf school in Madrid under the direction of Father Navarrete. In his memoirs Godoy wrote that it had been his idea to open a school for deaf pupils, stating that he had made the suggestion to Charles IV one night in July or August 1794 and that the king decreed the establishment of the school the very next day (Godoy [1836] 1956, 211-212). But the date of the letter to the Provincial Father of the Piarist schools of Castile explaining the king's wish that Navarrete undertake this instruction is October 24, 1793, not 1794, and both communiques to the Provincial Father are signed by the duke of Alcudia—that is, Godoy himself. Thus, at the very least, it would seem that the royal favorite's recollection of the dates is incorrect. ( The documents in question, from the Archivo de las Escuelas Pías de Castilla, Madrid, were provided to me by Father Vicente Hidalgo.) [BACK]

4. Founded in 1729, San Fernando was the first Piarist school established in Madrid. The order had long been known for its excellence in teaching, and during the period under discussion it enjoyed the favor of the crown, for Ferdinand VII's sisters were taught by a Piarist priest, as was the king himself for some months (Ruiz Berrio 1970, 205).

According to some authors (e.g., Barberá 1911, 350; Negrín Fajardo 1982, 8 n. 6), Navarrete's school came under the protection of Madrid's Economic Society of Friends of the Country in 1800, at which time it was housed in a building of the town hall called the Panadería, located on the Plaza Mayor. In May 1802, however, the actas of the Friends of the Country continue to refer to Fernández Navarrete as being at the Lavapiés school (ARSEM, Actas, May 1, 1802). [BACK]

5. That Navarrete had trained for some years in Rome is documented in a letter of October 24, 1793, to the Provincial Father of the Piarist schools of Castile, signed by the duque de Alcudia (AEPC), and in a letter written to the Diario de Madrid by a contemporary, José Miguel Alea (Alea 1795, 262).That Navarrete was a disciple of Silvestri is stated in the Acta de la comisión del colegio de sordomudos of May 24, 1803, cited in the Actas de la Real Sociedad Económica Matritense de Amigos del País of May 28, 1803 (ARSEM). Some authors would have it that Navarrete had studied in Genova with the Plarist father Ottavio Assarotti as well (Granell y Forcadell 1936b, 3; Perelló and Tortosa 1972, 8). [BACK]

6. It is sometimes claimed that Alea was a disciple of de l'Epée (De Gérando 1827, 2:213; Peet 1851a, 157; Bender 1970, 161; Garcia Pico de Ponce 1987, 156), and some authors go so far as to state that he studied at the Paris school (Ferreri 1913, 3:190, Bernaldo de Quiros and Gueler 1966, 332). I have found no documentation in Spain suggesting that Alea ever studied with de l'Epée, however, and if he had, surely he would have said so himself. Moreover, when in 1795 Alea sought out a certain Spaniard who had studied under the French abbé, he stated that he hoped his countryman would inform him about de l'Epée's methods, suggesting that Alea had never visited the Paris school (see the text below). As for the claim that Alea was a disciple of de l'Epée, if anything he seemed more an admirer of Sicard, although he was not an uncritical follower of either man. He wrote that while de l'Epée had begun the public instruction of deaf people, his approach was too limited, and he had revealed himself to be "more a grammarian than a philosopher." Sicard, he felt, had advanced the technique considerably, however (Alea, foreword to Sicard 1807, iii).

It is also common to read that Alea opened a school for deaf students in Madrid (Peet 1851, 157a; Julián Zarco Cuevas, Documentos para la Historia del Monasterio de San Lorenzo el Real de El Escorial [Madrid, Imprenta Helenica, n.d.], 211-213, cited in Bender 1970 161; García Pico de Ponce 1987, 156). This is not strictly so either, although Alea did collaborate in the establishment of the Royal School for Deaf-Mutes (see the text below). And on abates, see discussion in chapter 5. [BACK]

7. AEPC, letter of April 26, 1794, to the Provincial Father of the Piarist schools of Castile, signed by the duke of Alcudia. [BACK]

8. Of the priest's other student, Alea remarked only that he was from outside Madrid. At the time Alea composed his letter, Navarrete was teaching a young girl, and two more deaf children were due to arrive from Galicia. Alea estimated that there were some thirty to forty deaf people then residing in the Spanish court, and perhaps two thousand in the entire kingdom (Alea 1795, 262). [BACK]

9. Ibid., 262. [BACK]

10. Ibid., 359. [BACK]

11. An English visitor attested that "Madrid, though built in a stately style, has been properly called the dullest capital in Europe" (Quin 1824, 118). [BACK]

12. Fischer 1802, 188. Another foreign traveler remarked upon several other pastimes as well: "At Madrid there is a great scarcity of amusements, which are therefore supplied by devotion, and its sister passion love" (Link 1801, 99). [BACK]

13. Alea 1795, 353-354. Querol, the most famous comic actor of the era, performed regularly at the Teatro de la Cruz, one of Madrid's two theaters. According to one of Alea's contemporaries, "The Teatro de la Cruz maintained its ancient ugliness ... [but] the celebrated comic Querol sparkled there" (Alcalá Galiano [1878] 1951, 48, 68). [BACK]

14. Ibid., 360. [BACK]

15. Ibid., 354. [BACK]

16. Menéndez y Pelayo [1883-1891] 1909, 6:120. Manuel José Quintana (1772-1857) elected as his main themes liberty and progress. During Spain's war of independence he sided with the liberals, and at the close of that conflict he was banished and imprisoned under Ferdinand VII, although Queen Isabel II would later crown him poet laureate. Quintana played an important role as a reformer of Spain's educational system at the cortes, or parliament, at Cadiz during the Liberal Triennium (1820-1823), and under the government that followed the reign of Ferdinand VII (see Ruiz Berrio 1970, 3, 15, 26, 53). [BACK]

17. Alcalá Galiano [1878] 1951, 77. Antonio Alcalá Galiano (1789-1865), a celebrated writer and political figure renowned for his fiery oratory, served as representative to the parliament at Cadiz from 1822 to 1823; with the subsequent restoration of absolutist government, he was sentenced to death and emigrated to England. He returned to his homeland in 1835 and resumed his political career, but was soon forced to emigrate again, this time to France. Back in Spain in 1837, he represented the district of Cadiz in parliament, and in his old age wrote his celebrated memoirs, Recuerdos de un anciano . When he first attended Quintana's tertulia in 1806, he was sixteen years old. [BACK]

18. José María Blanco White (1775-1841) was raised a Roman Catholic and was ordained in 1800, but he became skeptical after reading the works of Feijóo and Fénelon. Eventually he became a political liberal and moved to England, where he founded El español (1810-1813) to crusade against Spanish colonialism. For this author's comments on the two rival tertulias, see Blanco White 1822, 377-380.

Poet and dramatist Nicasio Alvarez Cienfuegos (1764-1809) was editor of the Gaceta and El mercurio and held an official position in the State Department (Secretaría de Estado). At the onset of the war of independence he declared his opposition to the French invader. The government of occupation banished him to France, where he died in 1809.

Juan Nicasio Gallego (1777-1853), poet of the Salamanca school, was once imprisoned for his liberal ideas; he later became canon of the cathedral of Seville, and in 1839 he was named secretary to the Real Academia Española.

The Spanish politician and journalist José Marchena Ruiz y Cueto (1768-1821), known as the abate Marchena, was given a religious education and took minor orders at his parents' insistence; he launched his writing career with a letter against ecclesiastical celibacy directed to one of his professors. He was eventually condemned to jail by the Inquisition for ideas acquired from the assiduous reading of Voltaire, but he managed to flee first to Gibraltar, then to France. There he collaborated in the publication of the periodical L'Ami du Peuple . In 1808 he entered Spain with the French general Murat, only to be imprisoned by the Inquisition, then freed by Murat's troops. During the reign of José Bonaparte he wrote for the official Gaceta de Madrid and served as head archivist at the Ministry of the Interior. At the close of the war of independence Marchena emigrated to France, then returned to Spain in 1820, dying in abject poverty the following year. He was the author of numerous literary and critical works. Menéndez y Pelayo characterized him as representative of the "political and antireligious tendencies of his age in the highest degree of exaltation," portraying him as an "indecent sage and [a] monster filled with talent, a propagandist of impiety with missionary and apostolic zeal, corrupter of a great portion of Spanish youth for the better half of a century" (Menéndez y Pelayo [1881] 1956, 2:727, 757).

Eugenio de Tapia (1767-1860), liberal journalist and historian, served as joint editor of the Cadiz Gaceta during the war of independence. At the close of the Liberal Triennium in 1823,Tapia went into exile in France, only to return to honors in his homeland eight years later. He was director of the Biblioteca Nacional from 1843 to 1847.

Antonio de Capmany Suris y de Montpalau (1742-1813) sided with the liberals during the French invasion and served as deputy to the cortes at Cadiz. Eventually he was named secretary of the Royal Academy of History.

Juan Bautista Arriaza y Superviela (1790-1837) was the author of such patriotic works as Poesías patrióticas, Los defensores de la patria, and Himno de la victoria . During the war of independence he would support the absolute monarch Ferdinand VII.

The writer and poet José Somoza y Muñoz (1781-1852) cast his lot with the liberals during the war of independence. He was persecuted and imprisoned first by the French, then by Ferdinand VII. In 1834 and again in 1836 he served as procurador at the Spanish cortes and representative from Avila.

Manuel María de Arjona y de Cubas (1771-1820) was a minor poet and canon of the cathedral at Córdoba. [BACK]

19. Alcalá Galiano [1878] 1951, 77, 60. His Recuerdos de un anciano provides a firsthand account of the two tertulias and some of the participants (59-62, 72-73, 77, 88). [BACK]

20. Ibid., 73. Antonio de Capmany, quoted in Menéndez y Pelayo [1881] 1956, 2:640. [BACK]

21. Leandro Fernández Moratín (1760-1828) was known for his masterful use of language, exquisite taste, and brilliant wit and satire. Having sided with France during the war of independence, he fled to that country in 1817, returned to Barcelona during the Liberal Triennium, then went into exile once again, dying in his adopted homeland in 1828. [BACK]

22. The writer Pedro Estala joined the Piarist fathers but subsequently left the order. He taught literary history at the Reales Estudios de San Isidro in Madrid and during the war of independence was a supporter of José Bonaparte, following the French army to Valencia, where together with Moratín he published a political and literary journal. At the close of the war Estala emigrated to France.

Juan Antonio Melón was editor of the Semanario de agricultura y artes, dirigido a los párrocos (Madrid: Villalpando, 1797), a weekly publication whose purpose was to "extend to the inhabitants of the countryside the knowledge that can improve their lot."

Menéndez y Pelayo describes Juan Tineo as a nephew of Jovellanos who had studied in Bologna, cofounder along with Moratín of the burlesque Academia de Acalófilos (adorers of the ugly), and an avid reader of Latin and Italian. Tineo's publications were, according to this author, limited to a reply to Quintana's observations on Moratín's play La Mojigata and, posthumously, two critical essays, one on Moratín, the other on the poet Juan Valdés Meléndez (1754-1817) (Menéndez y Pelayo [1883-1891] 1904, 6:142).

José Mamerto Gómez y Hermosilla (1771-1837), writer, critic, and Hellenist, held the chairs of Greek and rhetoric at the Estudios de San Isidro in Madrid. During the war of independence he sided with the French and was obliged to emigrate in 1814. In 1820 he returned to Spain, where he continued to write and teach, and was eventually named secretary to the General Inspector of Public Instruction. [BACK]

23. As Moratín's contemporary Blanco White (see note 18 above) explained, "I do not know that [Moratín] has published anything besides his plays, or that he has, as yet, given a collection of them to the public. I conceive that some fears of the Inquisitorial censures are the cause of this delay. There has, indeed, been a time when his play, La Mojigata, or Female Devotee, was scarcely allowed to be acted, it being believed that, but for the patronage of the Prince of Peace, it would long before have been placed in the list of forbidden works" (Blanco White 1822, 380). [BACK]

24. Ibid., 379. [BACK]

25. This, according to Alcalá Galiano [1878] 1951, 59. Such may have been the case of Alea. Although a frequenter of Quintana's tertulia, Alea nevertheless took Gregorio Santa Fe to the quarters of Fernández Navarrete, who was a friend of Moratín's (see the text below). Unlike other participants at Quintana's tertulia, Alea also dedicated at least three of his works to Godoy (see below). Successive page references in the text are to Alea 1795. [BACK]

26. Alea's comments concerning the manual alphabet "for the deaf" are of interest, for here he uses the term sordos rather than sordos y mudos (deaf-mutes), revealing that the hand alphabet was used by persons deafened after having learned to speak. [BACK]

27. According to Father Francisco de Paula Solá (letter of September 9, 1987), there is no record of any Diego Vidal among the Jesuits of Aragon in the years before the expulsion. Miquel Batllori of the Istituto Storico della Compagnia di Gesù (letter of November 24, 1987) also affirms that the name Diego Vidal does not appear in the catalog of Jesuits in Aragon prior to the expulsion, nor on the list compiled by order of the royal official Juan Antonio de Archibauld y Solano (both documents pertain to the Istituto Storico).

According to the Piarist father Dionisio Cueva (letter of January 12, 1987), there was indeed a Jesuit who arrived from Italy to live among the Piarist priests at the convent of Santo Tomás, but he was not Diego Vidal. Furthermore, there is no mention of Diego Vidal in the Archivo de las Escuelas Pías of Saragossa, or in the Archivo de la Curia Provincial (that is, the Archivo Provincial de las Escuelas Pías de Aragón), or in the Archivo Generalicio in Rome. It appears, then, that Diego Vidal was not a Piarist, despite what some would claim (see the following note). Moreover, Father Claudio Vilá attests that the chronicles of the Piarist school in Saragossa, which opened in 1731, record nothing about the teaching of deaf pupils (letter of May 11, 1986). [BACK]

28. To further complicate matters, Granell claims that a Piarist priest by the name of Diego Vidal, who was born in Tauste in 1675 and died in Saragossa in 1740, founded a school for deaf children in the convent of Santo Tomás of Saragossa (Granell y Forcadell 1935). This author, who is not always reliable, cites no sources; moreover, the dates he gives for Vidal's life do not coincide with the years of Gregorio's instruction, and as already observed, the Piarist fathers of Saragossa have no record of Diego Vidal, or of any teaching of deaf children at the school of Santo Tomás. [BACK]

29. The Libros de Aragón numbers 444, 445, 446, 451, 452, 460, 462, 467, AHN, Inquisición, list the people appointed to the Inquisition from 1755 to 1797, but make no mention of Pedro Santa Fe. And letters from the Inquisitorial Tribunal of Saragossa to the Council of Aragon during the years when Vidal supposedly taught Gregorio include nothing signed by Pedro Santa Fe (AHN, Inquisición, leg. 2,356). Had he been secretary to the Inquisition, his signature would surely have appeared on these documents. [BACK]

30. This fact was first brought to my attention by Professor José Martínez Millán, who generously assisted me with this area of my research. [BACK]

31. The Papal Inquisition had functioned in the kingdom of Aragon since the thirteenth century, but the Spanish Inquisition was now to be unified under one central control, that of the Council of the Supreme and General Inquisition, headed by Tomás de Torquemada. In Aragon there was great opposition to introduction of the Castilian model. [BACK]

32. By 1484 Arbués was already on record as rejoicing at the goods expropiated from Saragossa's New Christians (P. Sánchez Moya, Carta autógrafa de San Pedro Arbués a los inquisidores de Teruel, in Teruel, 17-18 [1957], 347, cited in Mur i Raurell 1988, 134). [BACK]

33. Jerónimo de Santa Fe, celebrated Jewish theologian and physician to Benedict XIII, became a Catholic in 1412, and that same year he determined to convert his former coreligionists. Although at his urging more than three thousand Jews accepted the Catholic faith, their conversion probably owed more to political pressure than to the zealous New Christian's efforts to sway their beliefs.

Other prominent conversos involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Pedro Arbués included Sancho Paternoy, the mestre racional at court, Gabriel Sánchez, high treasurer of the kingdom, and Luis Santángel, who had been knighted by the last king for his services in battle. The d'Almacan, Montesa, Santa Cruz, Esperandeu, Abadía, Ram, and Durango families, all New Christians, were also implicated in the plot. [BACK]

34. On September 17, 1485. Arbués was revered as a saint, miracles were attributed to his relics, and he was eventually canonized by the Holy See. [BACK]

35. So many were involved in the conspiracy that people continued to be punished for the next seven years. All together it has been estimated that some two hundred persons were punished for complicity, though Roth believes this figure may be exaggerated (Roth 1974, 50). [BACK]

36. Even so, his cadaver was not to escape the wrath of the Inquisition. The charges were read in the presence of the corpse. After the sentence was pronounced, the body was burned and the remains were placed in a box and thrown in the Ebro River (Memoria de diversos autos de Inquisicion celebrados en aragoça desde el año 1484 hasta el de 1502 en que se refieren las personas castigadas en ellos, Auto 16, 1486, cited in Lea 1922, 1:601). [BACK]

37. In the words of Blanco White, "There exists [a] distinction of blood, which, I think, is peculiar to Spain, and to which the mass of the people are so blindly attached, that the meanest peasant looks upon the want of it as a source of misery and degradation, which he is doomed to transmit to his latest posterity. The least mixture of African, Indian, Moorish, or Jewish blood, taints a whole family to the most distant generation" (Blanco White 1822, 29-30). Statutes requiring purity of the bloodline for entry into certain professions, positions within the Church, universities, and even trade guilds and unions were still in effect at this time, and those rumored to be of converso descent continued to be distrusted and shunned. Not until 1865 did the Spanish parliament abolish the last of the limpieza statutes. [BACK]

38. The anonymous author was anxious that the 1492 expulsion of the Jews should not erase from memory the identities of the remaining families of converso origin. The writer left Saragossa in January 1507 because of an epidemic of the plague and did not return until July of that same year. During his absence he compiled his manuscript, which promptly became a major source of scandal as it was handed along, copied and recopied, augmented, and distorted. Finally, in 1623, the government, unwilling to tolerate this vicious slander of some of the kingdom's most prominent aristocrats, ordered all copies burned—but needless to say, some survived. There were other "green books" as well, such as the infamous Tizón de España (brand of Spain), which showed that many Spanish grandees had Jewish or Moorish blood. [BACK]

39. Cagigas [1507] 1929, 14. [BACK]

40. "Ravi Vsulurguin had a son and two daughters by his wife who was also Jewish[.] The son was micer Francisco de Santaffe who was assessor of the government, [and] who while imprisoned by the Inquisition took his own life and they burned his body for being a judaizing heretic" (Cagigas [1507] 1929, 45-46). Santa Fe (holy faith) was a typical converso last name, as were Santa María (holy Mary), Santa Catalina (Saint Catherine), Santa Cruz (holy cross) and Santángel (holy angel). [BACK]

41. Blanco White remembered especially the converso family's pretty young daughter, whom he encountered regularly. Yet he shrank from establishing even the most superficial personal contact with her, "scarcely venturing to cast a side glance on [her]," he explained, "for fear, as I said to myself, of shaming her." Remarking on Spain's contempt for New Christians, he concluded, "I verily believe, that were St. Peter a Spaniard, he would either deny admittance into heaven to people of tainted blood, or send them to a retired corner, where they might not offend the eyes of the Old Christians" (Blanco White 1822, 30-31). [BACK]

42. This was suggested to me by Professor José Martínez Millán. [BACK]

43. The phenomenon may have been repeated in the nineteenth century as well, when another Spaniard who may have been of Jewish descent, Juan Manuel Ballesteros y Santa María, chose the same vocation—see the conclusion. [BACK]

44. Alea 1795, 360. [BACK]

45. AEPC, letter of June 1802 to the Provincial Father of the Piarist Schools. Navarrete was to teach the boy for one year, with the possibility of extending his stay if the instruction achieved in that time was not sufficient (documentation provided to me by Father Vicente Hidalgo). [BACK]

46. In a letter of May 30, 1802, to the marquis of Fuerte-Híjar, director of Madrid's Economic Society, Rouyer wrote from Barcelona that Albert's school had been closed for some four months because the teacher had gone back to France (ARSEM, leg. 175, doc. 3). [BACK]

47. The letter Rouyer wrote to the Friends of the Country is reproduced in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 17, and 1936c, 3. According to Granell, Rouyer had taught in Navarrete's school before approaching the Economic Society (Granell y Forcadell 1932, 14), but I have seen no evidence of this in the society's archives. Furthermore, the claim seems dubious because the commission to establish the school would later complain that Rouyer had worked only as a dentist and as a French teacher (ARSEM, Report of the commission for the school, leg. 157, doc. 7, cited in Negrín Fajardo 1982, 21 n. 53). [BACK]

48. Antoine-Joseph Rouyer 1818, 3. [BACK]

49. Juan Bautista Rouyer was contracted from Spain to work as the king's dentist in 1753; he was in Paris at the time. He held the post until 1803, the year of his death (AP, Administración, caja 922, expediente 41). [BACK]

50. In this, Rouyer sought to build upon the work of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), whose interests included the development of an ideal language in which each simple idea would be represented by a single symbol. Rouyer had authored a Prospectus d'un alphabet commun à toutes les langues (Paris, n.d.), published by the Paris Institute for Deaf-Mutes—half the profits were earmarked for the school—and in 1792 he published an Essai raisonné de monographie universelle, ou recherche analytique d'un chiffre parfait proper à développer, dans toutes les langues, les vrais principes de l'art d'écrire comme l'on parle (Paris: Clousier). In 1796 the Diario de Madrid published a letter from a " licenciado A. J. Rouyer, teacher of mutes and of the French language" in which the author revealed his interest in the invention of a universal writing system to represent ideas directly, independent of their pronunciation. Because the symbols would stand for ideas, rather than sounds, the writer of the letter explained, it would be mutually intelligible to all who used it, regardless of their mother tongue. He compared such a writing system to the language of signs, which he took to be universal ( Diario de Madrid, January 19, 1796, 73-74). In 1818 Rouyer published Le paladin de la Meuse, observations impartiales d'un philosophe chrétien, ou accord des lumières de la raison et des vérités de la foi (Paris: Choppin fils); on the title page he referred to himself as "maître-ès-arts de l'ancienne Université de Paris." [BACK]

51. ARSEM, leg. 153/16, Informe, April 1804. [BACK]

52. Discurso para la abertura de las Juntas Generales que celebró la Sociedad Bascongada en la Villa de Vergara (1785), cited in Carr 1982, 41. Spain's first organization of the Friends of the Country had been founded in the Basque Country in the mid-1760s, the result of a tertulia of Basque gentry. The Madrid society was established in 1775. [BACK]

53. For discussion of the view of education during the years 1808-1833, see Ruiz Berrio 1970, 10 ff. On the society's educational goals see Negrín Fajardo 1981. [BACK]

54. The Friends of the Country had already revealed their interest in deaf education, for shortly before Rouyer approached the society, a member of that body had asked Sicard to allow two Benedictines from the Congregation of Aranjuez to study with him, so that they might return to Spain and teach with his method. Sicard turned down the proposal, supposedly because he knew of his student Rouyer's plans (Manuel Pinagua 1857, 39; Granell y Forcadell 1932, 15, Negrín Fajardo 1982, 9-10). [BACK]

55. The duke of Aliaga, who in 1808 would become director of the society, commented that unschooled deaf people were "trunks without souls," they were "judged as incapable, reputed to be at the same level as the irrational, and cared only about their animal needs, without stopping to think deeply, or wanting to understand how to explain themselves'' (duke of Aliaga, Discurso pronunciado ... para abrir el examen general de los alumnos del R. Colegio de Sordomudos, 1806, ARSEM, leg. 175, doc. 17, cited in Negrín Fajardo 1978, 713 n. 34). [BACK]

56. Introductory remarks to a letter by Alea in the Diario de Madrid, July 13, 1795, 789. [BACK]

57. Godoy himself expressed the emerging view of deaf people as a social group when he remarked, concerning their instruction, "Government should attend to all the unprotected classes" (Godoy [1836] 1956, 211). [BACK]

58. The question of whether deaf communities existed in Spain before the foundation of schools is an important one that deserves further study. The deaf author Pierre Desloges affirmed that Paris had a deaf community with a common manual language before the abbé de l'Epée opened his school there (Pierre Desloges [1779] in Lane 1984, 36); however, Van Cleve and Crouch suggest that in this respect, "Paris seems to be unique. There is no convincing evidence that deaf communities existed elsewhere until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries" (Van Cleve and Crouch 1989, 1). With respect to Spain, I have found no conclusive evidence about deaf communities before the establishment of their public education, but Bonet's remark, cited in chapter two, about the sign deaf people used for "many," is compatible with the hypothesis that at least as early as the first decades of the seventeenth century, a deaf community with a sign language may have existed in Spain (Bonet [1620] 1930, 167). At any rate, whether Spain had a deaf community (or communities) before the foundation of the Royal School or not, this institution was destined to become the nucleus of the Spanish deaf community. [BACK]

59. Meckenzie 1831, 319. The Puerta del Sol (gate of the sun) is a highly frequented spot in the center of Madrid where a number of busy streets originate—the Red de San Luis, the Calle Mayor, the Calle de San Jerónimo, etc. [BACK]

60. ARSEM, leg. 179, doc. 13, Report of the commission, May 1803. For the same reason, the commission for the foundation of the school would recommend against appointment of Navarrete as spiritual director in 1803. [BACK]

61. ARSEM, leg. 175, doc. 3, letter from Rouyer to the director of the Friends of the Country, dateline Paris, July 3, 1802. [BACK]

62. The royal order allocating 100,000 reales vellón per year is reproduced in the Actas (ARSEM, March 27, 1802) and also in Granell y Forcadell (1932, 18-19). [BACK]

63. ARSEM, Actas, Report of the commission, September 29, 1803. [BACK]

64. Sicard, according to Rouyer, lamented his disciple's leaving at that time—winter of 1803—and offered to write to the society requesting that he be allowed to remain until spring, but Rouyer opted to return at once (ARSEM, leg. 178, doc. 6, letter of January 23, 1803, from Rouyer to the marquis of Fuerte-Híjar). [BACK]

65. ARSEM, leg. 178, doc. 6, letter from Rouyer of March 11, 1804. The dispute was further complicated because Charles IV had stipulated that the Friends of the Country should pay for Rouyer's trip to Paris and for his stay there, but the society later declared itself free of this obligation. Rouyer then protested this decision before the king, who sided with the Frenchman. For details Of the dispute, see ARSEM, Actas of September 20, 1803, and leg. 178, doc. 6. The entire affair is recounted in splendid detail in Negrín Fajardo 1982, 18-23. [BACK]

66. ARSEM, letter from Juan de Dios Loftus y Bazán to the Friends of the Country, leg. 160, doc. 12, cited in Negrín Fajardo 1982, 24 n. 63. [BACK]

67. Ibid., 25 n. 67. [BACK]

68. Letter from Loftus to the Friends of the Country, July 11, 1804 (ARSEM, leg. 160, doc. 12, e, cited in Negrín Fajardo 1982, 25 n. 67). [BACK]

69. ARSEM, Actas, October 27, 1804. [BACK]

70. ARSEM, leg. 175, doc. 3, letter from Rouyer to the marquis of Fuerte-Híjar, May 30, 1802. [BACK]

71. ARSEM, leg. 176, doc. 9, Relación de lo hecho por la comisión de sordo-mudos después de la última junta de premios, n.d. [BACK]

72. Atanasio Royo Fernández had originally been named to the position of assistant, which he soon resigned (ARSEM, leg. 195, doc. 2, report of Josef de Bernedo of June 7, 1805), paving the way for Machado's appointment. [BACK]

73. Granell refers to ''the many clouds that hung over [Machado] for having embezzled 2,500 reales vellón from the regiment of grenadiers, in which he was a second lieutenant" (Granell y Forcadell 1932, 39). Negrín Fajardo suggests that Granell imputed to Machado the misdeed that had actually been committed by Loftus, although he offers no documention to support this claim (Negrín Fajardo 1978, 807 n. 214). [BACK]

74. The dank rooms at that address soon gave the children chilblains; two years after its inauguration, the school was moved to a building known as the Villena, on the Plazuela de las Descalzas (ARSEM, leg. 202, doc. 6, report of January 23, 1807). [BACK]

75. By 1805 Salvador Vieta, a chaplain at the cathedral, was teaching deaf people in Barcelona at his own expense. In July of that year he displayed six students before a meeting of the Royal Academy of Medicine held in Barcelona's Royal Palace of the Inquisition, winning the academy's approbation. Details of the session were recorded in the Gaceta de Madrid, August 9, 1805, no. 64, 683, and in the society's Actas of March 8, 1806, and July 18, 1806. The following year Vieta would contact the society in Madrid, seeking protection for his school. He also sought the society's backing of his request for royal support; he hoped that the crown would relieve him of the obligation of being physically present in his parish while still allowing him to receive the benefice, so that he might dedicate himself more fully to his deaf pupils (ARSEM, leg. 199, doc. 6; leg. 202, doc. 14; leg. 203, doc. 6). [BACK]

76. Reglamento of 1804, ch. 12, art. 1, reproduced in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 33-34 (The entire document is reproduced in ibid., 27-35). The five students present at the opening ceremonies were Juan de Mata Blanco, Manuel Muñoz López, José Hernández Rueda, Juan Miguel Alvarez y Grande, and José María de la Madrid; a sixth boy, Basilio Calvete Tovar, was at home sick (Granell y Forcadell 1932, 38). By 1806 there would be twelve students at the school (ARSEM, leg. 178, doc. 20, cited in Negrín Fajardo 1978, 788-789). [BACK]

77. "Historia del establecimiento," Jan. 15, 1805, 63-64. [BACK]

78. Reglamento of 1804, ch. 2 art. 18, reproduced in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 29. [BACK]

79. Obligations of the board are spelled out in ch. 2 of the Reglamento of 1804; those of the head teacher are stated in ch. 5 (reproduced in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 28-29, 30). [BACK]

80. Reglamento of 1804, ch. 8, ch. 9 art. 1, ch. 10 art. 3, reproduced in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 31-34. By 1806 the number of students had risen to twelve: seven boarders and five day students. Only two, one boarder and one day student, were paying (ARSEM, leg. 178, doc. 20, cited in Negrín Fajardo 1978, 788-789). Two of the day students were hearing persons who suffered from a defect of pronunciation (ARSEM, leg. 178, doc. 20, cited in Negrín Fajardo 1978, 789 n. 183). [BACK]

81. Reglamento of 1804, ch. 10 art. 4, reproduced in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 33. For details on the various classes of students, see chs. 8-11, reproduced in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 31-33. [BACK]

82. Royal order of November 3, 1803, in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 35. [BACK]

83. At this time the majority of Spaniards received only an elementary education, consisting of reading, writing, and arithmetic, the catechism, and basic notions of Spanish history and geography (Ruiz Berrio 1970, 21). [BACK]

84. Reglamento of 1804, ch. 12 n., reproduced in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 34. In primary schools for hearing children, religious education during this era consisted of little more than rote memorization of catechisms—brief summaries of the principles of the Catholic religion in question-and-answer format (Ruiz Berrio 1970, 21). [BACK]

85. Reglamento of 1804, ch. 5 art. 1, reproduced in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 30. [BACK]

86. ARSEM, leg. 175, doc. 2, May 15, 1802. [BACK]

87. Alca applied for admission to the society in June 1803 (ARSEM, leg. 187, doc. 1, expediente no. 7). [BACK]

88. AWSEM, leg. 195, doc. 2, reports that Alea was put in charge of theoretical aspects of instruction. The manuals in question were, presumably, de l'Epée's Institution des sourds-muets par la voie des signes méthodiques (Paris: Nyon, 1776), La véritable manière d'instruire les sourds et muets, conformée par une longue expérience (Paris: Nyon, 1784), by the same author, and Sicard's Cours d'instruction d'un sourd-muet de naissance (Paris: Le Clère, 1800). [BACK]

89. ARSEM, leg. 195, doc. 2, report on the state of the school, June 7, 1805. Roch-Ambroise Sicard, Manuel de l'enfance (Paris: Le Clère, 1797), and Eléments de grammaire générale (Paris: Bourlotton, 1799). [BACK]

90. Harlan Lane Suggests (1984, 112) that many of the schools spawned by the French institute probably adopted the principle of instructing deaf pupils by means of methodical sign, and not the French methodical signs themselves, and this may have been the case at the Madrid school as well. [BACK]

91. ARSEM, leg. 203, doc. 3, document presented by Juan Machado, December 29, 1807. A few years later Loftus continued to employ Sicard's method, adapted to the syntax of the Spanish language (ARSEM, leg. 206, doc. 7). Had Rouyer taught at the school, in all probability he would have employed the same signs used by Sicard. [BACK]

92. ARSEM, leg. 195, doc. 6, letter of June 8, 1805, from Loftus to the society's director. [BACK]

93. As was the case when Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, an American who had studied at the Paris school, and Laurent Clerc, a deaf teacher there, together established the first school for deaf people in the United States at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817. Although the Hartford school adopted French methodical signs, American students' indigenous signs soon entered the lexicon and in 1978—that is, 161 years after initial contact—modern American Sign Language and modern French Sign Language were found to have only about 61 percent cognates in the basic vocabulary (Woodward 1978, 338).

Alvaro Marchesi states that "by different paths" French Sign Language was transported to various European countries, among them Spain, and that it influenced the language of the Spanish deaf communities (Marchesi 1987, 94). Although undocumented and unexplained, this claim is plausible. There exist dictionaries of French signs dating from the early nineteenth century, and the first dictionary of Spanish signs that I am aware of was published in 1851, so it would be possible to compare lexical items from the two languages to determine the percentage of signs of French origin used in Spain in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as the percentage of signs of French origin in use today. Lane cites the following early descriptions and dictionaries of French Sign Language (Lane 1984, 432 n. 9): J. Brouland, Explication d'un dictionnaire des signes du langage mimique (Paris: Imprimcrie de l'Institution des Sourds-Muets, 1855), P. Pélissier, L'enseignement primaire des sourds-muets à la portée de tout le monde, avec une iconographie des signes (Paris: Dupont, 1856), C. M. de l'Epée, Dictionnaire des sourds-muets, publié d'après le manuscrit original et précédé d'une préface par le Dr. J. A. A. Rattel (Paris: Baillière, 1896), R. A. C. Sicard, Théorie des signes pour l'instruction des sourdsmuets ... suivie d'une notice sur l'enfance de Massieu (Paris: Imprimerie de l'Institution des Sourds-Muets, 1808), A. Blanchet, La Surdi-Mutité (Paris: Labé, 1850), L. M. Lambert, Le langage de la physionomie et du geste (Paris: J. Lecoffre, 1865), L. M. Lambert, "Méthode d'instruction des sourds-muets adultes," Le conseiller des sourds-muets (1870), 6, 69-83, 167-174. The earliest Spanish works I know of are Francisco Fernàndez Villabrille, Diccionario usual de mímica y dactilología (Madrid: Colegio de Sordomudos y Ciegos, 1851), and Miguel Fernández Villabrille, Biblioteca de la enseñanza especial de sordomudos y de ciegos: Diccionario de mímica y dactilología (Madrid: Gregorio Hernando, 1876). [BACK]

94. Nebreda y López 1870b, 17, and Pichardo y Casado 1875, 6; Cabello y Madurga 1875b, 10-11. [BACK]

95. Andrés Morell, writing in 1793, referred to Feijóo's work as "very common, printed and reprinted many times, and translated and abridged in various foreign languages." According to this author, Feijóo's work had been translated into French and Italian, extracts were available in England, and the original Spanish version "is to be found everywhere" (Andrés Morell 1794, 8). [BACK]

96. In his letter Alea referred to an arte written by Bonet that was by then rare, but he seems not to have personally consulted the book, for he did not mention the title and erroneously stated the date of publication as 1609, rather than 1620 (Alea 1795, 287). The duke of Aliaga also confirmed that Bonet's book was rare in his day (ARSEM, Leg. 199, doc. 24, Discurso pronunicado por ... el duque de Aliaga, September 10, 1806). In 1803 Alea reported that he had tried to teach articulation using Bonet's book, however (Alea 1803a, 102.). [BACK]

97. "Everyone in Spain knew the excellent work of the abate Don Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, entitled Escuela española de sordomudos, o arte para enseñarles a escribir y hablar el idioma español, " Godoy wrote in his memoirs (Godoy [1836] 1956, 212). [BACK]

98. The opinion is expressed, for example, in the inaugural address pronounced by the duke of Osuna on January 9, 1805, at the opening of the Madrid school (cited in Granell y Forcadell 1932, 37), and in a speech given at the students' first public examination the following year by the duke of Aliaga, who succeeded Godoy as the society's director (ARSEM, leg. 199, doc. 24). [BACK]

99. Manuel José Quintana, quoted in Menéndez y Pelayo [1881] 1956, 2:617. [BACK]

100. The French play by Jean Nicolas Bouilly was translated into Spanish by Juan de Estrada. It was announced in the Diario de Madrid of July 23, 1800, and again on June 10, 1802, and was performed at the Príncipe theater. For discussion of the content of this work, see Lane 1984, 42-66. [BACK]

101. Or among other Spaniards of the day either, as far as I have been able to ascertain. [BACK]

102. According to Ruiz Berrio, between 1808 and 1833, the majority learned to read and write and also mastered some principles of arithmetic, the basics of Spanish history and geography, and the catechism (Ruiz Berrio 1970, 21). [BACK]

103. The observation is due to Professor Anne Quartararo (personal communication, August 1993). [BACK]

104. In his "Memorias" Godoy wrote of Hervás's book, "with the clear and exquisite light that work offered, this teaching [of deaf people] was firmly established and shone brightly not only in the capital of the kingdom, but it was also extended throughout [the realm]" (Godoy [1836] 1956, 212). I have found nothing to support Godoy's claim that Hervás's book exerted any detectable influence on the Friends of the Country, however. [BACK]

105. The comparison is not exact, however, since Methodical Spanish, unlike the spoken minority tongues, is not a natural language. [BACK]