1. E.g., see Arboleda de los enfermos y admiraçion operum dey, written by the Spanish nun Teresa de Cartagena during the second half of the fifteenth century. Unlike Francisco and Pedro de Velasco, who were deaf from birth, the author lost her hearing during her youth, after she had learned to speak, but nevertheless she was sent to the convent. She wrote of the isolation deafness caused, even within her family: "Health forsakes us, friends forget us, relatives become cross, and even one's own mother becomes angry at her sick daughter, and one's own father abhors the child who with continual suffering had disturbed the home" (Teresa de Cartagena 1967, tratado I, 63).

2. According to Saint Augustine, "We acknowledge, indeed, how much pertains to our own transgressions: from what source of culpability does it come that innocent ones deserve to be born sometimes blind, sometimes deaf, which defect, indeed, hinders faith itself, by the witness of the Apostle, who says, 'Faith comes by hearing' (Rom. X, 17). Now, truly, what bears out the assertion that the soul of the 'innocent' is in the image of God, inasmuch as the liberation of the one born foolish is by his rich gift, if not that the bad merited by the parents is transmitted to the children?" (Augustine Traditio catholica [Migne, Opera omnia, vol. 10, bk. 3, ch. 4, line 10], cited in Bender 1970, 27).

3. The office of constable was established by King John I of Castile in 1382. The constable was of royal birth, served as captain-general of the army, and when the need arose, took the place of the king himself. In 1473 King Henry IV bestowed the title on Pedro Fernández de Velasco, count of Haro, not of royal birth; the position became hereditary in the Velasco family. Pedro's son and successor, who had been created duke of Frías, died without issue, and the title passed to his brother Iñigo, who had two sons, Pedro, the fourth constable of Castile, and Juan, the marquis of Berlanga by marriage and father of the deaf brothers Francisco and Pedro de Velasco.

4. Juan de Velasco and Juana Enríquez de Rivera were both descendents of the almirantes of Castile, and Juana Enríquez was related to the Portocarreros, another noble family in which hereditary deafness was frequent. Juana Enríquez de Rivera was Juan de Velasco's second wife, both marriages having required papal dispensation on account of consanguinity. Eguiluz Angoitia states that this second marriage produced at least nine children (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 168), while Ibarrondo places the number at seven (Ibarrondo 1934, 7). The hearing children included Inés (married Jerónimo de Zúñiga y Acevedo, fourth count of Monterrey; two of their children were deaf), Isabel (married Antonio Manrique de Mendoza, fourth count of Castrojerez), Iñigo, fifth constable of Castile, fourth duke of Frías, and sixth count of Haro (married his cousin María Girón y Velasco; they had a deaf daughter, Juana Mencia de Tovar). Besides the deaf siblings Francisco, Pedro, Juliana, and Bernardina de Velasco, another deaf sister, Juana, is mentioned only in the Relación del Monasterio de Oña (Archives of the duke of Frías, Montemayor, Cordoba, leg. 90 5 bis, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 257). Another deaf sibling, a "Doña Catalina de Velasco, mute, nun of the convent of Santa Cruz de Medina," is listed in the Compendio genealógico de la noble casa de Velasco (44v, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 247), but Eguiluz Angoitia states that neither the version he consulted (Archivo de la Historia, Col. Salazar, B-87, 43r-5r) nor other documents on the Velasco family refer to Doña Catalina (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 193 n. 32).

5. The speculations are those of Eguiluz Angoitia (1986, 170), who observes that the brothers may have been sent to the monastery shortly after their father's death in 1545.

6. This account was provided by Baltasar de Zúñiga, chronicler of the house of Monterrey and nephew of the deaf brothers Francisco and Pedro de Velasco (Baltasar de Zúñiga, Sumario de la descendencia de los condes de Monterrey, BN, ms 13,319, fol. 137v-138r, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 19).

7. According to Gregorio Argaiz, a monk at the monastery at Oña ( La soledad laureada [Madrid, 1674], 6:524, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 55. Argaiz gave no source for this information.

8. Piferrer, Nobiliario de los reinos y señores de España, vol. 1, cited in Farrar 1890, 21 n. 2.

9. Romualdo Escalona confirms that Ponce was a native of Sahagún (Escalona, Historia del real monasterio de Sahagún [Madrid, 1782], 206, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 58). Eguiluz places his date of birth somewhere between 1508 and 1512 (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 56).

10. Ponce entered San Benito el Real on November 3, 1526, according to Escalona (cited in ibid). Ponce's name first appears on the list of monks attending meetings at Oña in 1533 (Valladolid, Chancillería, Pleitos civiles [F], La Puerta, leg. 92, carp. 458; Quevedo, leg. 135, carp. 4,326-1, fol. 126v-29r; AHN, Clero, leg. 1,200 and 1,300, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 68). He spent the following year at Sahagún (Valladolid, Chancillería, Pleitos civiles [F], Masas, carp. 634-3; Varela, carp. 357-3; Quevedo, carp. 1,488-2, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 72), then returned once again to Oña in 1536.

11. Baltasar de Zúñiga, Sumario de la descendencia, BN, ms 13,319, fols. 137-138, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 234. According to this same author, who was the nephew of Ponce's students Francisco and Pedro de Velasco, Ponce was a man without higher education ("sin letras fundadas"), which undercuts the claim that Ponce attended the University of Salamanca ( Reseña histórica de la Universidad de Salamanca, 1849, 43, cited in Farrar 1890, 21), made by Davila and Ruiz and repeated by Lane 1984, 91.

12. The hypothesis that Ponce was illegitimate, set forth in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 16-24, and throughout his 1974 work, is picked up by Dídimo Fresno Rico 1978, 8. Eguiluz Angoitia (1986, 55-58) argues against Pérez de Urbel, to my mind unconvincingly. In Ponce's day much less stigma was attached to aristocratic bastards than we would expect from our twentieth-century point of view. The best known may be Don Juan de Austria, bastard son of Charles V and half brother of King Philip II, who forged a brilliant military career.

13. Preguntas para el pleito criminal con Diego de Pereda, AHN, Clero, leg. 1,222, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 49.

14. Escalona, Historia del real monasterio, 206, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 56, and 62 n. 21. In contrast, Escalona referred to Fray Facundo de Torres as the "son of the most noble and distinguished parents that there were at that time in this town" (Escalona, Historia del real monasterio, 209, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 56). On pages 207, 208, 210, 218, 219, and 222 Escalona also included references to monks descended from distinguished families (ibid., cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 56 n. 21) but did not mention Ponce's parents by name. On these grounds, Eguiluz Angoitia discounts the claim that Ponce's father and grandfather were noblemen and contends that since there were many descendents of the Ponce de León family in the region of Sahagún, not all of whom were economically or socially powerful, Escalona's mission might show only that Ponce was of humble birth (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 58). Despite lack of documention on Ponce's father, Pérez de Urbel (1973, 21-24, 1974, 320-322) proposes Juan Ponce de León, seeker of the fountain of youth in the New, World. Born about a league from Sahagún in Santervás, where the monastery had a priory, the young Juan Ponce de León served as a page in the court of Ferdinand, the Catholic monarch, before leaving with Ovando for the New World in 1502. After he returned to Spain, to prepared for the conquest of Florida, which he attempted in 1515. Pérez de Urbel places Juan Ponce in Spain from 1512 to 1514, calculating that if Pedro Ponce was between twelve and fourteen years old when he entered Sahagún in 1526, he must have been born between 1513 and 1514, the period during which Juan was in Spain. Eguiluz Angoitia is not impressed by these chronological and topographical coincidences. He observes that according to their constitution, the Benedictines did not admit boys younger than sixteen to the novitiate, leading him to calculate that when Ponce entered the monastery in 1526, he was at least fourteen to sixteen years old. If so, our monk was born not between 1513 and 1514, as Pérez de Urbel suggests, but rather between 1508 and 1512. Eguiluz cites documents showing that Juan Ponce de León did not return to Spain until April 1514 and concludes that whoever Pedro Ponce's father was, it could not have been Juan Ponce de León (Archivo General de Indias, Contratación 4.674, II Libro Manual del tesoro Matienzo, fol. 48v, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 56).

15. J. B. Guardiola, a monk at Sahagún, wrote that Ponce, "although he was never an abbot, well deserves to be counted among the illustrious men of [Sahagún], since he was so humble that he refused to accept any office" (J. B. Guardiola, Historia del Monasterio de San Benito el Real de Sahagún, BN, ms 2,243, fol. 203, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 40 n. 3). Noting that the monk was apparently absent from Oña for three periods of three years each (1543-1545, 1564-1566, 1574-1576), Eguiluz Angoitia (1986, 79-80) conjectures that Ponce might have been appointed prior of Nuestra Señora la Vieja during his absences from Oña, pointing to a cryptic note found among the documentation of Oña that lists the names of various monks together with those of various priories and includes the notation, "N[ues]tra. S[eño]ra. la Vieja, fray Pedro Ponce." Needless to say, this claim amounts to nothing more than the sheerest speculation.

In support of his hypothesis that Ponce was illegitimate, Pérez de Urbel cites the monk's transfer from Sahagún to Oña. When he pronounced the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, like all Benedictines Ponce also made a fourth vow, to remain at the monastery of his profession for life. But Fray Pedro broke this fourth vow when he left Sahagún for San Salvador at Oña, leading Pérez de Urbel to argue that the reason for his transfer might have been found in the town of Sahagún itself, home to many of Ponce's relatives. Tensions between a powerful family and an illegitimate child, this author suggests, may well have caused Fray Pedro to abandon the monastery of his profession—see Pérez de Urbel 1973, 16-18. If so, it may be that familial difficulties were shared by both the monk and the deaf children he would come to teach. Pérez de Urbel's suggestion that the circumstances of his birth might explain Ponce's move to Oña is disputed, however, by Eguiluz Angoitia, who argues—to my mind, plausibly—that various other reasons could explain the transfer (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 68, 71-72).

Pérez de Urbel (1973, 24) also interprets Ponce's custom of signing his name as "Pedro Ponce," rather than "Pedro Ponce de León," as "repugnance for using the complete name of Ponce de León," hence, a possible indication of illegitimacy. But Eguiluz Angoitia argues that Ponce was merely following the custom of the day, in which using one surname or two was common. Moreover, on formal occasions, Ponce did indeed sign both last names. E.g., n the document of foundation and endowment of the chaplaincy to be established at Ponce's death, he referred to himself as "Fray Pedro Ponze de Leon" (AHN, Clero, leg. 1,306, Escritura de donación al monasterio de los censos, August 20, 1584, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 52).

16. According to Molinoeus, a French jurist of the early sixteenth century, "one born deaf and dumb is entirely undisciplinable—or unamenable to education" (cited in Farrar 1890, 14). Similarly, the jurist Alexander de Imola maintained that those deaf from birth could under no circumstances be taught to speak, or even to write (Alexander de Imola, Prima et secunda super codice, s.l., 1529, fol. 112r; P. de Castro, Secunda super codice, s.l., 1527, fol. 39r-v, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 39).

17. In the fifth century B.C. Greek Hippocratic physicians, observing that those born deaf were invariably mute, hypothesized that the two conditions were inevitably linked. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D. ) also maintained that deafness and muteness were of necessity inseparable, as did the Greek physician Galen (130?-201? A.D. ). In his Oratio de surditate et mutitate (Muremberg, 1591) the German physician Salomon Alberti first refuted the claim, but it continued to be commonly held until the nineteenth century.

18. The Jesuit philologist and anthropologist Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro writing in 1795, may have been the first to observe that in many languages, deaf-mutes, that is, those who were either born deaf or who lost their hearing at such as early age as to preclude the acquisition (or retention) of speech, are designated by their inability to speak, not their inability to hear (Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:1:3-5, 4-5 n. 1).

19. Harlan Lane (1984, 427 n. 88) provides various translations of the passage in question, Aristotle's History of Animals, bk. 4, ch. 9, section 8: "Those who are born deaf all become speechless. They have a voice but are destitute of speech" (T. Arnold, Education of Deaf-Mutes, a Manual for Teachers [London: Wertheimer and Lea, 1888], 5); "All that are born dumb and all children utter sounds but have no language" (trans. R. Creswell [London, Bell, 1891]); "Men that are deaf are in all cases also dumb; that is, they can make vocal sounds but they cannot speak" (trans. D. W. Thompson [Oxford, Clarendon, 1910]). Ruth E. Bender (1970, 20-21, quoting from The Works of Aristotle, ed. J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross, trans. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908-1952], vol. 4, bk. 4, no. 9) reproduces the following passage: ''Viviparous quadrupeds utter vocal sounds of different kinds, but they have no power of converse. In fact, this power, or language, is peculiar to man. For while the capability of talking implies the capability of uttering sounds, the converse does not hold good. Men that are deaf are in all cases also dumb; that is, they make vocal sounds, but they cannot speak.''

20. According to Aristotle, "Of the senses which are subservient to the necessities of life, the sight is more excellent and per se; but the hearing is more excellent incidentally with reference to the intellect. For sight announces ... but the hearing only announces the differences of sound. But, incidentally, hearing greatly contributes to wisdom; for discourse, which is audible, is the cause of discipline (i.e., education), not essentially, but incidentally, for it is composed of names, and every name is a symbol. Hence among those who from their birth are deprived of each of these senses, the blind are more intelligent than deaf-mutes" ( Of Sense and Sensibiles, c. I, quoted in Farrar 1890, 7).

21. Thus, Kenneth W. Hodgson (1953, 62) attributes to Aristotle the statement, "Those who are born deaf all become senseless and incapable of reason." Bender (1970, 21) repeats the explanation of Harvey Peet (1851a, 134) that the Greek kophoi "deaf" and eneos "speechless'' could also mean ''dumb" and "stupid." To illustrate other ideas discussed here, a work published in Spain in 1540 affirmed that speech was characteristic of man and of no other animal, that animals had voice but not speech, and that speech was conceived in the soul, which was lacking in animals (Pedro Mexía, Silva de varia lección, Seville, 1540, cited in Alvaro López Núñez's edition of Licenciado Lasso [1550] 1919, 116-117 n. 40). And the idea that speech was an instinct was expressed in a 1550 treatise on the legal rights of deaf-mutes written at Oña (Lasso [1550] 1919, 34); the latter work is discussed in the text below.

22. On Saint Augustine, see note 2 above.

23. We need not assume that Augustine was referring to deaf people: his acquaintance with a deaf youth who communicated solely by means of signs led him to observe elsewhere that it mattered not whether a person spoke or signed, since "both of these pertain to the soul" (Augustine, De quantitate animae liber unus, ch. 18, quoted in Edward Allen Fay, "What Did St. Augustine Say?" Annals 57 [January 1912]: 119, cited in Van Cleve and Crouch 1989, 6). If signs, like speech, pertain to the soul, then signs too should be effective for communication, and it would follow that deaf people could learn and achieve salvation.

24. Real Academia de la Historia 1807, vol. 3, partida IV, ley V, 14. The legal rights of deaf persons who could speak and those who were also mute are discussed in partidas 4-7. Alfonso X (1221-1284) was king of Castile and Leon.

25. Rodolphi Phrisii Agricolae (1443-1485), De inventione dialectica, 1557, cited in Bender 1970, 32. The first edition was published in 1521.

26. Juan Luis Vives 1963 (1538), 88. (The English translation of this chapter was kindly provided by my friend and teacher George Voyt). As we saw, Aristotle at no point stated that those unable to hear could not learn, and that Vives made this assumption demonstrates how Aristotle's remarks had come to be misinterpreted.

27. Vives 1963 (1538), 91.

28. Vives, Tratado del alma, Madrid, La Lectura, n.d., 130, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 39.

29. Vives certainly took this to be true of animals: "The lack of reason [in animals] manifests itself ... in their lack of speech: if they had such an internal rational guide, they would lack nothing to enable them to speak.... In man vocal sounds are the sign of the entire soul, of fantasy, of affect, of intelligence and of the will; in animals, they are only the sign of their instincts" (Vives, Tratado del alma, 110, 130-131, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 28 n. 11).

30. Girolamo Cardano (1502-1576), Italian physician, philosopher, and mathematician.

31. According to Cardano, "Concerning Deaf and Dumb taught letters Georgius Agricola refers, in his third book of Inventione dialectica to having seen a man born deaf and dumb, who learned to read and write, so that he could express what he wished. Thus we can accomplish that a mute hear by reading and speak by writing. For by thinking his memory understands that bread, for example, means that thing which is eaten. He thus reads, by reason, even as in a picture; for by this means, although nothing is referred to voices, nor only things, but actions and results are made known, and as from a picture the meaning of another picture is formed, so that by reason it may be understood, so also in letters" (Girolamo Cardano, Quo continentur opuscula miscellanea ... Paralipomenis, , 1663, cited in Bender 1970, 32).

32. Cardano's Paralipomenis, believed to have been written between 1562 and 1571, was still unpublished at his death in 1576, if the instructions the author included in his will are to be believed (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 143). In an earlier work, published in 1550, Cardano had also referred in passing to the possibility of teaching a deaf person. First advocating that those who lose their hearing after acquiring speech should be taught to read and write, he suggested this possibility even for those who were deaf from birth ( De utilitate ex adversis capienda, bk. 2, ch. 7, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 143). But Ponce's teaching of Francisco and Pedro de Velasco was already well under way by the time this work was published (as observed in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 144).

33. As noted by Pérez de Urbel, three of the monks at Oña had been procuradores in Rome during the first half of the sixteenth century, the abbot had earned a doctorate in Bologna, and another monk, who also held a doctorate from Bologna, had traveled throughout Italy and Flanders and participated in the Council of Trent (Pérez de Urbel 1973, 67).

34. The suggestion that El Mudo's example might have inspired Ponce to undertake the instruction of his deaf pupils appears in Peet 1851a, 140. The idea seems unfounded, however—as argued in the text below.

Juan Fernández Navarrete died in 1579. Although various dates have been suggested for his birth, Ruiz-Fischler appears to have located his birth certificate, which lists it as September 24, 1540 (entry for Juan Fernández, Libro primero de bautizados desde el 18 de octubre de 1538 hasta el 1569, Logroño, cited in Ruiz-Fischler 1989, 72). Hans Werner claims that there existed in Ponce's day "a whole series of deaf-mutes who were trained to read and write" (Werner 1932, 187). The claim is by no means well documented, however, and one visitor to Oña, the Licenciado Lasso, repeated the belief, apparently common at the time, that deaf people could not be taught to write, citing the authority of "all the ancient scholars" (Lasso [1550] 1919, 38). We must conclude that there was not "a whole series" of literate deaf-mutes, for if there had been, Lasso most likely would have known of their existence and would have modified his views accordingly.

35. Authors do not agree on how old Navarrete was when he lost his hearing, but a sculptor who knew the artist personally testified that he had become deaf at age two and a half ("Memorial de Juan Fernández Navarrete, con parte de una información," testimony of Pompeo Leoni, September 5, 1578, cited in Roque Domínguez Barruete, Boletín de la Sociedad Castellana de Excursiones [Valladolid, 1904], cited in Ibarrondo 1929, 70).

36. Fernández Navarrete is known as the Spanish Titian but probably never studied with the Italian master; his name appears on none of the lists of Titian's disciples ( Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1924], 22:798, s.v. "Juan Fernández de Navarrete, 'El Mudo'").

37. This testimony to his skills comes from the king's chaplain, Hernando Descobar, in "Memorial de Juan Fernández Navarrete, con parte de una información," in Domínguez Barruete, Bolletín, cited in Ibarrondo 1929, 71.

38. Ibid., cited in Ibarrondo 1929, 70.

39. Luis Hurtado's testimony appears in the Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores de las Bellas Artes en España, ed. Cea Bermúdez (Madrid, 1880), cited in Ibarrondo 1929, 69. Hurtado further related that El Mudo confessed three times in the half hour before his death.

40. Alejo de Venegas, Tractado de orthographia y accentos en las tres lenguas principales (Toledo, 1531), parte 3 a, Reg. XIII, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 29; Juan Luis Vives, De subventione pauperum, Lyons, 1532, fol. 49v, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 29.

41. The early Christian founders of monasteries had without exception imposed silence on their disciples. The prohibition of speech may have been introduced for the first time in 328 by Saint Pachomius at the monastery he founded on an island in the upper Nile. This same prohibition eventually appeared in the religious orders of the West as well, among them, the Order of Saint Benedict and those arising from it—the Cluniacs, the Cistercians, and the Trappists. For historical background on monastic sign language, see, e.g., Van Rijnberk 1954, Buyssens 1956, and Barakat 1987.

42. Antonio Yepes, Crónica general de la orden de San Benito (Salamanca, 1607), 300, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 45 n. 52. The fifteenth century Liber cerimoniarum monasterii sancti Benedictini Vallisolentani described 360 signs that must have been used at Oña by Francisco and Pedro de Velasco, Pedro Ponce, and their fellow religious, for the codex contains notes written and signed by monks who entered the monastery of San Salvador between 1577 and 1581 (Bejarano y Sánchez 1905, 20). The first known list of monastic signs had been drawn up in 1068 by a monk named Bernard of Cluny, and it contained 296 entries—a clear indication that the signs had been in use for some time before Bernard recorded them.

43. E.g., see Schlesinger and Meadow 1972.

44. E.g., see Goldin-Meadow and Feldman 1977.

45. Yepes, Crónica general, 300-303, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 60, 157.

46. In another exchange more than two hundred years later, the abbé Roch-Ambroise Sicard taught his native French to Jean Massieu, his deaf pupil, and Massieu in turn taught his signs to Sicard: "Thus by a happy exchange Massieu taught me the signs of his language and I taught him the signs of mine," wrote Sicard (quoted in Lane 1984, 13).The deaf Frenchman Laurence Clerc and the American Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet shared a similar experience when, on a voyage from France to the U.S. that led to the establishment of the first deaf school in North America, each instructed the other in his native tongue, French Sign Language and English, respectively.

47. For further discussion and a description of Cistercian monastic signs, see Barakat 1987.

48. In Barakat's (1987) study of monastic signs used by Cistercians at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, monks invented unauthorized or so-called "useless" signs, which supplemented the officially sanctioned signs, a move that was necessary to meet their communicative needs. Significantly, unauthorized signs far outnumbered official ones at the time of Barakat's study (Barakat 1987, 92).

49. Indeed, this very thought had occurred to another member of a signing order, the twelfth-century Cistercian mystic William, abbot of St. Thierry, who held that reason, the distinctively human trait, could make itself known either by speech or by signs. It would follow, then, that voice and articulation were nonessential human functions, since signs, as well as writing, could convey our thoughts (William of St. Thierry, De natura corporis et animae, vol. 180, cols. 713-714, in Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina, ed. Jacques Paul Migne [Paris, 1844-1864], cited in O'Neill 1980, 129-130).

50. One historiographer referred to silence as that "thing so characteristic of the Order of Saint Jerome" (José de Sigüenza [1600] 1907, 251). So closely was silence associated with the religious life that this author, writing in 1600, asserts, "I hold it impossible that there can be [any] religion that in truth and in reason deserves this name, if it does not glory in the observance of silence" (252). During this period signs were used in many monasteries throughout Europe, but (as far as I have been able to determine) the monks of Saint Jerome did not record a vocabulary of signs in use in their order, in contrast to the Benedictines, the Cistercians, the Cluniacs, and the Trappists. This in no way implies that signs were not employed, and during periods of obligatory silence it seems most probable that they were.

51. The tale of "El Licenciado Vidriera," first published in Madrid in 1613 by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), Spain's most famous writer and the author of Don Quixote, features a monk who could make mutes "understand and in a certain fashion speak"—along with curing the insane (Cervantes Saavedra 1978, 147). Cervantes's monk, like Vicente de Santo Domingo, belonged to the Order of Saint Jerome, perhaps suggesting that the allusion was to Fray Vicente. If so, the hypothesis that Vicente de Santo Domingo taught more than drawing may find support in Cervantes's tale. Nevertheless, various authors have suggested that the allusion was to Pedro Ponce—C. and R. T. Guyot among them (their Liste littéraire philocophe [1842], is cited in Farrar 1890, 32). Farrar takes issue with the Guyots, observing that the monk in Cervantes's story belongs to the Order of St. Jerome. (According to Farrar, the monastery was located a few leagues from Valladolid, while Ponce's was in Oña—and Santo Domingo's was in Logroño. The story of "El Licenciado Vidriera" is set mainly in Valladolid, but I found no reference to the location of the monastery.) Farrar concludes, "It may ... well be that Cervantes has veiled under fictitious terms what he may have known of Ponce de León'' (Farrar 1890, 33).

Bejarano claims that the reference to the monk who taught deaf people demonstrates that Cervantes was aware of Ponce's work (Bejarano y Sánchez 1905, 10-11), while Tomás Navarro Tomás suggests that the reference might be to someone who continued it (Navarro Tomás 1924, 239). As I have already suggested, I believe instead that Cervantes may have had in mind one whose teaching preceded Ponce's, namely, Vicente de Santo Domingo.

The oft-repeated claim that Ponce was the first to teach deaf students was challenged more than 150 years ago by Ferdinand Berthier, who wrote that several isolated attempts at deaf education, which he situated both in France and elsewhere, antedated Ponce's teaching; according to this same author, a Germany contemporary of Ponce, Joachim Pascha (1527-1578), educated two of his own deaf children (Berthier [1840], in Lane 1984, 169).

52. Indeed, according to Werner, the teaching of speech was "the only new factor[,] since deaf-mutes who could read and write were not rare at that time" (Werner 1932, 260 n. 1). The claim is open to dispute, however (see note 34).

53. This was the reaction of the Licenciado Lasso, a jurist from Madrid who, after witnessing Ponce's teaching and meeting Francisco and Pedro de Velasco, wrote a treatise on the legal rights of deaf-mutes, as discussed in the text below (Lasso [1550] 1919, 10).

54. AHN, Consejos, leg. 35,090, Memorial del pleito de don Francisco María, Osuna, leg. 4,136 n. 127 ss, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 163.

55. Testament of Juan de Velasco, cited in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 45.

56. Assuming, following Eguiluz Angoitia (1986, 170), that the brothers most likely entered the monasteryat Oña around 1547. Juan de Velasco's petition to the emperor was approved in 1543.

57. In 1560 the right to succession of the deaf and mute Juan Portocarrero, eldest son of the second marquis of Villanueva del Fresno, was contested by a hearing brother. Similarly, in the following century, the right to succession of the deaf and mute Alonso Fernández de Córdoba y Figueroa, eldest son of the fifth marquis de Priego, was called into dispute, once again by a hearing brother. Both deaf heirs fended off their challengers. The case of Juan Portocarrero is discussed in Eguiluz Angoitia 1836, 113; that of Alonso Fernández de Córdoba is related in Ballesteros 1836, xii.

58. Lasso himself states his profession as jurisprudence (Lasso [1550] 1919, 29), although some authors, for instance Domingo Vaca and Bejarano y Sánchez, have mistakenly maintained that he was a monk at the monastery at Oña (Vaca 1901, 73; Bejarano y Sánchez 1905, 16). The claim is repeated more recently in Lane 1984, 428 n. 97.

59. Lasso [1550] 1919, 16. Successive page references in the text are to López Núñez's 1919 edition of Lasso 1550.

60. Lasso's view was shared by others of his day, for instance, Antonio Yepes, chronicler of the Benedictine Order, who wrote that Ponce's ability to teach deaf people "was a gift that heaven conceded to him ... but it was not the grace to perform miracles that is called gratis datas, but rather, he really had such great inventiveness and such great talent, that he discovered a method to make the mutes talk" (Yepes, Crónica, cited in Werner 1932, 245 n. 1).

61. Ponce's words appeared in a document dated August 24, 1578, and first published by another Benedictine monk, Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, in the mid-eighteenth century (Feijóo y Montenegro 1759, vol. 4, carta VII, párrafo 17, 88).

62. The work was apparently in final form and ready for publication, including even a list of authors. Why it was not published in Lasso's time is not clear. The title Tratado legal sobre los mudos, 'Legal treatise on mutes,' was added in the eighteenth century by the Spanish Royal Library. Although the manuscript remained unpublished until the early twentieth century, Miguel Fernández Villabrille referred to it in 1883 (M. Fernández Villabrille 1883, 9), and a brief description occurred in all 1888 work (Bartolomé José Gallardo, Ensayo de una biblioteca de libros raros y curiosos, formado con los apuntamientos de D. Bartolomé José Gallardo [Madrid, 1888], 3:299-300 to 311-312, cited in Lasso [1550] 1919, xvii-xviii). The treatise remained in manuscript form, however, until 1916, when it was first published by Faustino Barberá Martí ( Tratado legal sobre los mudos, por el Licenciado Lasso. Año 1550 . Manuscrito inédito de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, copiado y dado a luz en 1916 por el Dr. D. Faustino Barberá Martí [Valencia: Revista Valenciana de Ciencias Médicas, 1916]). Three years later a second version was published by López Núñez (Lasso [1550] 1919). Lasso's original manuscript call be found in Madrid in the Biblioteca Nacional, ms 6,330.

63. Lasso attributed the distinction between "significant voice" and "non-significant voice" to the historian Alonso de Palencia, noting that all the Latin authors had agreed that birds and animals "have voices," that is, they are capable of producing sounds, but only man has "significant voice,'' that is, only man is capable of speech (ibid., 86).

64. The Compendio genealógico of the house of Velasco states that Francisco died in childhood, but the date of his passing is not recorded (Compendio genealógico, 44, v., reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 246). The statement also occurs in the Relación y advertencias de mi señora la Marquesa de Berlanga, Doña Juana, Enríquez de Ribera y de su linaje y del Mayorazgo que dejó y fundó, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 260. Eguiluz Angoitia speculates that Francisco entered the monastery around 1547, when he was about eleven years old (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 170). If Eguiluz's calculations are correct, by the time his uncle Iñigo died in 1559, Francisco would have been twenty-three—hardly a child. In all probability, Francisco's life had ended before 1559.

65. Bejarano's assertion that thanks to Ponce's teaching, Francisco Tovar was able to succeed to and administer a marquisate would seem to be mistaken (Bejarano y Sánchez 1905, 8).

66. Documentation of the house of Velasco, written sometime after 1627 and containing reminiscences of times past, states that Pedro was ordained a priest: "It is had for a sure thing that he was ordained by disposition of His Holiness, because he could not hear, and Luis de Zarauz, long-time servant of the constable of Castile Juan Fernández de Velasco, affirmed that he used to help him in the mass many times" ( Relación y advertencias de ... la Marquesa de Berlanga, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 261). Other documentation refers to Pedro de Velasco as "clergyman of the diocese of Burgos" (Chancillería de Valladolid, Pleitos civiles [F], Alonso Rodríguez, leg. 721, carp. 411-3, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 176). Although Lasso wrote in his treatise that both brothers could pronounce clearly the words required for the transubstantiation and were therefore qualified to celebrate mass, he made no mention of Pedro actually being a priest. Thus, he must have been ordained sometime after Lasso's visit to Oña.

67. Relación y advertencias de ... la Marquesa de Berlanga, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 261.

68. Ambrosio de Morales, Antigüedades de las ciudades de España (Alcalá de Henares: Juan Iñiguez de Lequerica, 1575), 28, c, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 243.

69. Baltasar de Zúñiga, Sumario de la descendencia, BN, ms 13,319, fols. 137-138, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 235. Zúñiga's remarks on Don Pedro's speech suggest that Lasso exaggerated somewhat when he referred to the "clarity and perfection" of the brothers' pronounciation and when he claimed that they spoke "in fact really like we [hearing people] do" (Lasso [1550] 1919, 24, 95).

70. Compendio genealógico, 44, v, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel, 1973, 247. According to Pedro's nephew, Baltasar de Zúñiga, his uncle was more than thirty years old when he died (Baltasar de Zúñiga, Sumario de la descendencia, BN, ms 13,319, fols. 137-138, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 234); as Pérez de Urbel observes, this seems a reasonable estimate, considering that when Lasso was at Oña in 1550, Pedro had already learned to speak and to sing plainchant and so must have been around ten or twelve years old. Ambrosio de Morales wrote that Pedro "lived little more than twenty years," however (Morales, Antiguëdades, cited in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 98), and the Relación del Monasterio de Oña states that Pedro died at age twenty-one (Archives of the duke of Frías at Montemayor, Cordoba, leg. 90 5 bis, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 257).

71. Testamento de don Pedro de Velasco, AHN, Clero, leg. 1,311, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 85-87.

72. Baltasar de Zúñiga (Sumario de la descendencia, BN, ms 13,319, 138v, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 188) puts the number of Ponce's students at ten or twelve. Morales ( Antigüedades, 28, c, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 243) mentions that Ponce taught a deaf sister of Francisco and Pedro Velasco.

73. Letter from Juan de Idiáquez, secretary to Phillip II, regarding Gaspar's petition to the pope to be allowed to marry his first cousin ( Miscelánea, BN, ms 1,761, 125r-129r, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 186).

74. Yepes, Crónica, 255-256, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 181; ibid., fol. 428v, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 30. Tradition has it that Gaspar de Burgos entered the monastery intending to become an hermano lego (lay brother) but because he was deaf and mute, he was told that he could only aspire to become a donado perpetuo (another variety of lay brother, apparently of lower rank), or a servant. Ponce supposedly undertook to instruct him because he was displeased with the situation, and as the story goes, thanks to the monk's teaching, Gaspar de Burgos was able to profess his vows as a monk (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 159-160).

75. The reference seems to exemplify the belief, erroneously attributed to Aristotle once again, that deaf people were ineducable. Ponce's words appeared in a document dated August 24, 1578, and first published by Feijóo y Montenegro (1759, vol. 4, carta 7, párrafo 17, 88).

76. Perhaps some of Ponce's students also came from society's humbler classes, for which reason their names were not recorded (see Fresno Rico 1971, 133).

77. Francisco Vallés, De sacra philosophia liber singularis (Turin: Augustoe Taurinor, 1578), ch.3, 71, cited in Ibarrondo 1929, 27-28. Subsequent editions appeared in Lyons (1588, 1592, 1623), Frankfurt (1590, 1608), and London (1562).

78. Morales, Antigüedades, 28, c, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 243.

79. Baltasar de Zúñiga, Sumario de la descendencia, BN, ms 13,319, fol. 139r, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 277.

80. Written testimony of Pedro Tovar, cited by Morales, Antigüedades, 29, c, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 239-240.

81. Juan de Castañiza, Aprobación de la Regla y orden del gloriosissimo padre Sant Benito ... con un Catálogo de Principes eclesiasticos y seglares, de doctores y sanctos sin cuento (Salamanca, 1538), 40-41, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 204.

82. Ponce's manuscript has been the object of great interest and numerous searches. In the mid-eighteenth century Feijóo y Montenegro, having requested information concerning Ponce, received various documents from the monastery at Oña, but the work on teaching deaf students was not among them. The manuscript must have still existed, however, because in 1821 Bartolomé José Gallardo, librarian and archivist of the Spanish Cortes, had his friend Manuel Flores Calderón make a copy of it—which was later lost. (The original was at that time housed in a monastery in Burgos.) In 1839 Gallardo distributed to the Spanish parliament a catalogue of titles of rare works that included one by Pedro Ponce de León, and this rekindled the hope of locating the manuscript. Inquiries instigated around this time by the French Baron Degerando proved futile, as did the efforts of Carlos Nebreda y López, director of the Madrid deaf school, who tried to locate it some thirty years later. Most recently Eguiluz Angoitia, after an exhaustive search, was led to conclude that the original has been lost, probably as a result of the disentailment of 1836 (see Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, especially 216-223). Credit for unearthing the manuscript page attributed to Ponce goes to Eguiluz Angoitia, who provides a detailed description of its contents and physical appearance, along with a reproduction of the original (AHN, Clero, leg. 1,319, in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 223-227).

83. The manual alphabet used by Ponce seems to have resembled the two-handed alphabet employed in Great Britain today, rather than the one-handed alphabet described by Melchor Yebra (in Libro llamado Refugium infirmorum, muy útil y provechoso para todo género de gente . . . con un Alfabeto de San Buenaventura para hablar por la mano [Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1593)]. Yebra's alphabet, which was apparently widely known in Ponce's day, appears with only slight modification in Juan Pablo Bonet's book (1620), as discussed in the following chapter.

84. Manuscript page attributed to Pedro Ponce, reproduced in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 225-226.

85. We are reminded of the situation that existed for several centuries on Martha's Vineyard—see Groce 1985.

86. Escritura de donación de fray Pedro Ponce al monasterio, 20 agosto 1584, AHN, Clero, leg. 1,306, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 158.

87. Baltasar de Zúñiga, Sumario de la descendencia, BN, ms 13,319, fol. 137v-138r, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 19; Lasso [1550] 1919, 23; Juan Benito Guardiola, Historia del Monasterio de San Benito el Real de Sahagún, BN, ms 2,243, fol. 203, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 40 n. 3; Pedro Ponce, document dated August 24, 1578, and cited in Feijóo y Montenegro 1759, vol. 4, carta 7, párrafo 17, 88.

88. In 1546, 1549, 1550, 1553, 1556, and 1560 (AHN, Clero, leg. 1,192, 1,222, 1,228, 1,230, 1,236, 1,238, 1,241, 1,244, 1,281, 1,300, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 74).

89. Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 81. The majority of Ponce's loan contracts is located in AHN, Clero, leg. 1,165, 1,166, 1,203, 1,206, 1,222, 1,257, 1,295, 1,300, 1,301 (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 81).

90. Carta de poder a D. Alonso Díaz, dated September 1, 1580. AHN, Clero, leg. 1,205, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 84-85.

91. Ponce himself referred to possessions received from his disciples, as well as gifts and alms received for his services as executor of wills (Escritura de fundación de una capellanía y misas [24 agosto 1578)] in Feijóo y Montenegro 1759, vol. 4, carte 7, párrafo 17, 88). Monks at the monastery of San Salvador were allowed to have their own monies, although these funds remained at the disposal of their superiors (AHN, Clero, leg. 1,205; E. Zaragoza Pascual, Los Generales de la Congregación de San Benito de Valladolid [Silos, 1980], 3:111, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 84). The monastery benefited greatly from gifts Ponce received from his students' families, such as his donation of jewels and valuables worth three thousand ducados, paid to him by the family of the constables of Castile for teaching Francisco and Pedro de Velasco. The gifts, including monies from redeemable rent charges, a silver lamp for the chapel, money for a shrine for the main altar, candlesticks, a cross, four silver bells, silver crowns for the statue of the Christ Child and Mary, and several silver bowls, are catalogued in the Memoria de lo que el Exc.mo Sr. don Iñigo de Velasco y sus Hermanos dejaron en Oña al Padre Pedro Ponce, sacada del libro de Bienechores (Archives of the duke of Frías at Montemayor, Cordoba, leg. 90 5 bis, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 258). Ponce also paid the salary of a physician employed to treat his sick brethren and provided medicines (Argáiz, La soledad laudeada, 4:524, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 270).

92. Eguiluz documents another activity as well: in 1555 Ponce was appointed along with several other monks to visit three hospitals in Oña (AHN, Clero, leg. 1,310, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 78-79).

93. Escritura de dotación, AHN, Clero, leg. 1,306, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 73-74.

94. Argaiz, La soledad laureada, 6:524, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 270.

95. Fray Juan de Castañiza, Historia de San Benito (Salamanca: 1583), 288, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 245-246. Morales, Antigüedades, 28, c, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 242-243. Pérez de Urbel places the date of Morales's stay at Oña around 1560-1565 (ibid., 97).

96. Vallés, De sacra philosophia liber singularis (Turin, 1587), ch. 3, 71, cited in Ibarrondo 1929, 27-28. Vallés expressed a very enlightened view of sign language: "What else is speech, if not by way of certain slight movements of the tongue to signify things in accord with what is agreed upon with the interlocutor? Certainly, what some are wont to do, especially the mutes, is no different . . . when they express their thoughts to each other mutually by way of different movements of the fingers (Vallés, De sacra philosophia, sive de iis quae in libris sacris physice scripta sunt [Lyons, 1652], 51, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 35). It seems possible that Vallés acquired this perspective at Oña, where deaf disciples and monks alike conversed in signs.

97. But see note 76 above.

98. Partida de un libro antiguo de difuntos, reproduced in Feijóo y Montenegro 1759, vol. 4, carta 7, primera adición, párrafo 16, 87.

99. Stated by Antonio Pérez (1559-1637), a Benedictine monk who professed his vows in 1578 and was sent to Oña to study philosophy, in first censor's approval (Pérez, Censura del Reverendísimo Padre Maestro fray Antonio Pérez Abbad del monasterio de San Martín de Madrid de la orden de San Benito, in Bonet 1620, n.p.).