1. Navarro Tomás suggests that some members of religious orders must have continued Ponce's work after he died, speculating that one of them was the abbot of Rute, another, the Franciscan Fray Michael de Arblán (Navarro Tomás 1924, 239). Yet eight years after Ponce died, the duke of Monterrey, related by marriage to the Velasco family, apparently did not search out a teacher for his sons, both deaf and mute, which may suggest that Ponce had no successors. Because of his muteness, the elder son could not inherit all of his father's entailed estates. It was recorded that "the grief which the Duke suffered when he saw that his eldest son was dumb, was all the greater since he must have learnt that his estate, which ... consisted of several mayoralties, would be divided, the deaf-mute son being able to take over only some of them as his inheritance. He approached leading scholars in order to discover a way of avoiding this partition, using his astute mind to formulate great plans for overcoming this misfortune. But no solution could be found which would not discriminate against either the elder or younger son. Therefore the Duke and Duchess ordered many prayers to be said in the hope of averting this misfortune" (Baltasar de Zúñiga, Sumario de la descendencia de los condes de Monterrey, fol. 139r, cited in Werner 1932, 247-248).

2. According to Werner, Alonso Fernández de Córdoba's family produced, in addition to their deaf offspring, "a large number of generally unviable children" (Werner 1931, 217).

3. Juana Enríquez de Rivera y Cortés (1534-1649) was the daughter of the third duke of Alcalá de los Gazules. Pedro Fernández de Córdoba y Figueroa V (1563-1606) was the fourth marquis of Priego, second marquis of Villafranca, and first marquis of Montalbán. Francisco Fernández de Béthencourt observes that Don Pedro, like his maternal grandfather, suffered from poor health, and for this reason he lived a reclusive life on his estates at Montilla (Bethencourt 1905, 205).

4. Alonso's aunt, Ana Ponce de León, was sent to the nuns of Santa Clara in Montilla, and his sister, Ana Fernández de Córdoba y Figueroa, was sent to the convent of the Madre de Dios in Baena.

5. Juana Enríquez de Rivera y Girón, 1584-1649.

6. Three died in infancy and six more in childhood. One of the daughters, Josefa Fernández de Córdoba, would marry Iñigo Melchor de Velasco, the son of Bernardino de Velasco, seventh constable of Castile and the nephew of Bernardino's deaf brother Luis, discussed in this chapter.

7. Manuel Ramírez de Carrión, 1579-1650.

8. José Pellicer [de Tovar], Obras varias, BN, ms 2,236, II, fol. 39, cited in Navarro Tomás, 1924, 239. De Carrión himself stated that his first student was Alonso Fernández de Córdoba, the marquis of Priego (in preface to Maravillas de Naturaleza [Montilla: Juan Bautista de Morales, 1629], reproduced in Andrés Morell 1794, ix). If the first student had been of humble birth, this might explain de Carrión's failure to mention him.

9. De Carrión, preface to Maravillas, reproduced in Andrés Morell 1794, ix. Juan de Velasco, sixth constable of Castile, had died in 1613.

10. Luis Fernández de Velasco had been born in 1610. According to Juan Pablo Bonet, secretary to the Velasco household, the boy had been born hearing but had become deaf at the age of two (Bonet [1620] 1930, 27), while according to a genealogy of the house of Velasco, he was deaf from birth (Compendio genealógico de la noble casa de Velasco, Biblioteca de la Academia de la Historia, Colección Salazar, ms B-87, fol. 63v, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 245 n. 2). An Englishman who met Luis when the boy was in his thirteenth year also stated that he had been born deaf (Digby 1645, 307).

11. Bonet [1620] 1930, 27.

12. The third and youngest child, a hearing daughter, Mariana Fernández de Velasco, would later reside in the royal palace, where she entered the service of Isabel de Borbón, wife of Philip IV.

13. Francisco and Pedro de Velasco's nephew, Baltazar de Zúñiga, was also among those who entreated Ramírez to teach Luis de Velasco (Pellicer, Obras varias, BN, ms 2,236, fols. 36-37, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 242).

14. Bernardino had been born in 1609.

15. De Carrión, preface to Maravillas, reproduced in Andrés Morell 1794, xi.

16. Official approval and permission to publish the book was granted that same year (Navarro Tomás 1924, 252).

17. Juan Bautista de Morales, Pronunciaciones generales de lenguas, ortografía, escuela de leer y contar y significación de letras por la mano, Montilla: Juan Bautista de Morales, 1623. The book is dedicated to Alonso Fernández de Córdoba y Figueroa, the fifth marquis of Priego.

18. Antonio Nebrija, Tratado de ortografía (Madrid, 1735), 24-25, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 120; on other authors who advocated this same procedure, see 121.

19. Juan Bautista de Morales, Pronunciaciones generales de lenguas, ortografía, escuela de leer, escribir y contar y significación de letras en la mano (Montilla: Juan Bautista de Morales, 1623), 28, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 303.

20. Melchor Yebra (1526-1586) was a Spanish Franciscan whose book was published posthumously (Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1593). The complete title was Libro llamado Refugium infirmorum, muy útil y provechoso para todo género de gente, en el cual se contienen muchos avisos espirituales para socorro de los afligidos enfermos, y para ayudar a bien morir a los que están en lo último de su vida; con un alfabeto de San buenaventura para hablar por la mano (Book called refuge of the sick, very useful and beneficial for all kinds of people, in which is contained much spiritual advice for assistance of distressed sick persons, and for helping those who are at the end of their lives to die well; with Saint Bonaventure's alphabet to speak by the hand).

21. As Yebra wrote, the alphabet might have helped a man no longer able to speak who died ''with anguish in his soul" because, although he knew the finger letters and by this means tried to make his needs known, neither the priest called to hear his confession nor any of those present were able to understand him (Yebra, Refugium infirmorum, fols. 172v-173r, cited in Ivars 1920, 10).

22. In the seventh century in his Ecclesiastical History the Venerable Bede, an Anglo-Saxon Benedictine, had described a system for representing the letters of the alphabet with the fingers ( The History of the Church of England, trans. T. Stapleton [Antwerp: Laet, 1565], bk. 5, ch. ii, cited in Lane 1984, 68), and in 1579 Cosme Rosselio published a manual alphabet in Italy (Cosme Rossellio, Thesaurus artificiosa memoria [Venice: 1579], cited in Bejarano y Sánchez 1905, 25). Bejarano attributes the reference to Rosselio to an "erudite note" left by the former director of Spain's National School for the Deaf, Miguel Fernández Villabrille. It will be recalled that Ponce's students had also used a hand alphabet.

23. Yebra, Refugium infirmorum, fol. 173v, cited in Andrés Ivars 1920, 10. Because the reference here was unequivocally to deaf people who had lost their hearing after having acquired spoken language, Werner's claim that "this account ... shows that deaf-mutes who could make themselves understood by means of a sophisticated hand alphabet were in no way uncommon" cannot be maintained (Werner 1932, 377-378).

24. De Carrión, preface to Maravillas, fols. vii-viii, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 248.

25. Juan Pablo Bonet (1579-1633) was born in Torres de Berrellén (formerly Torres de Castellar), in what is today the province of Zaragoza. His parents, Juan Pablo and María Bonet, were prominent old Christian hidalgos, and his maternal uncle, Pedro Bonet, was secretary to the Inquisition in Zaragoza.

26. By some accounts, Bonet held a doctorate from the University of Salamanca (Granell y Forcadell 1929a, 442; Martínez Medrano 1982, 183).

27. Bonet [1620] 1930, 27.

28. Pellicer, Obras varias, BN, ms 2,236, fols. 36-37, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 242-243.

29. Bonet [1620] 1930, 27. Successive page references in the text are to Orellana Garrido and Gascón Portero's 1930 edition of Bonet 1620.

30. Bonet referred to "mutes ... who from the movements of the lips of those who speak to them understand much of what is said to them" at another point in the book as well (ibid., 37). On Bonet's remarks about teachers who took credit for their pupils' lipreading abilities see note 117. For early documented accounts of deaf-mutes who could lip-read see Van Cleve and Crouch 1989, 8, 17. José Miguel Alea, writing in 1795, referred to "many deaf-mutes" without formal education who could lip-read and follow the gist of a conversation but by no means make out every word (Alea 1795, 357, 358).

31. Bonet's remark undercuts claims that he taught "by means of sign language" (Lane 1984, 86) and "advocated the use of manual communication" (Winefield 1987, 5).

32. On this occasion Kenelm Digby met the illustrious teacher and his pupil Luis de Velasco. Navarro Tomás speculates that this was most likely the last trip de Carrión made to Madrid to complete Luis's instruction (Navarro Tomás 1924, 243).

33. Manuel Ramírez de Carrión, Maravillas de naturaleza, en que se contienen dos mil secretos de cosas naturales, dispuestos por abecedario a modo de aforismos fáciles y breves, de mucha curiosidad y propecho, recogidos de la lección de diversos y graves autores (Montilla: Juan Bautista de Morales, 1629). The book was published in 1629 both in Montilla, by de Carrión's friend Juan Bautista de Morales, and in Cordoba, by Francisco García (Navarro Tomás 1924, 246-247). Nicolás Antonio believed that there existed an earlier edition, published in Madrid in 1622 (Antonio [1672] 1783-1788, 1:354), and Andrés Morell, apparently on the authority of Antonio, also mentioned a 1622 edition (Andrés Morell 1794, 18).

34. The principal authors cited include Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, Avicenna, Columella, and Saint Isidore, as well as de Carrión's contemporaries Andrés Laguna, Vicente Espinel, and Sebastián de Covarrubias.

35. De Carrión, Maravillas, fols. 1, 3, 8, 45, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 246.

36. Ibid., preface, reproduced in Andrés Morell 1794, ix-x.

37. De Carrión, preface, Maravillas, reproduced in Andrés Morell 1794, x-xi. The Order of Alcántara had been founded in mid-twelfth century as a religious and military organization to fight against the Moors; it had been secularized by this time. Members were required to prove that they descended from at least four generations of nobles, and that their forebears included neither Jews nor Moors.

38. Ibid., fols. 127-129, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 249.

39. De Castro was born in Bayona—perhaps the Bayona close to Madrid or the one in Galicia, rather than the French Bayonne—and died in 1661. Based on his last name, Hervás y Panduro concluded that he was in all probability a Spaniard (Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:311-313).

40. Pedro de Castro, La commare di Scipione Mercurio, accresciuta d'un trattato del colostro dell'eccellentis sig. Pietro di Castro medico fisico avignonense (Venice, 1:676), 4, punt. 3, 335, cited in Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:38-39. The deaf child de Castro was supposed to have taught reportedly came to speak perfectly after two months (Felipe Jaime Sachs de Lezvenheimb, Miscellanea medico-physica academiae naturae curiosorum, sive emphemeridum medico-physicarum germanicarum annus primus MDCLXX [Leipzig, 1670], 4, observatio 3, 5, 112, cited in Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:40). Various authors have claimed that de Castro instructed the prince of Carignan as well (e.g., Nebreda y López 1870b, 15, M. Fernández Villabrille 1883, 11, Bejarano y Sánchez 1903, 13), but this appears to be a confusion with Ramírez de Carrión, to whorn de Castro himself attributed the prince's instruction (de Castro, La commare di Scipione Mercurio, 4, punt. 3, 335, cited in Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:38).

41. Sachs, Miscellanea medico-physica, 4, observatio 35, 112, cited in Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:40-41.

42. Sachs, Miscellanea wedico-physica, 4. observatio 35, 112, cited in Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:41.

43. Around 1578 Antonio Pérez (1559-1637) came to Oña from Silos, where he had entered the Benedictine Order, Years later, when he was abbot of San Martín in Madrid, the Royal Council solicited his evaluation of Bonct's book. Pérez approved it, noting that natives and foreigners had honored Ponce for his miraculous inventiveness but that he had trained no successors, for which reason "this work seems to me very worthy of publication" (Pérez, Censura del Reverendísimo Padre Maestro, in Bonet 1620, n.p.).

44. Romualdo Escalona, Historia del real monasterio de Sahagún (Madrid, 1782), bk.7, ch. 2, 206, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 286-287; Antonio [1672] 1783-1788, 1:354, 754-755, and 2:228; Feijóo y, Montenegro 1759, vol. 4, carta 7, párrafo 9, 86. Eguiluz Angoitia argues that Police's manuscript, the students' notebooks, and so on, most likely, remained in the monastery at Oña until the nineteenth Century, and if so, neither Bonet nor Ramírez could have consulted them (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 309). Navarro Tomás points out that Bonet could not have merely published Ponce's manuscript in its original form, for the majority of the works he cites were published after Ponce's death; interestingly enough, almost all these books were in the library of the sixth constable of Castile, Juan Fernández de Velasco (Navarro Tomá 1920-1921, 34).

45. Thus it seems that Lane's claim (1984, 91) that Bonet was "the source of [Ramírez de Carrión's] method" cannot be sustained.

46. Navarro Tomás conjectures that others continued Ponce's teaching after the monk's death (see note 1) and that de Carrión could have learned the procedures from one of these successors, but the evidence he presents is extremely weak.

47. Lane Speculates that to orchestrate Luis's instruction, his parents, the sixth constable of Castile and the duchess of Frías, would have consulted older family relatives and perhaps even obtained Ponce's manuscript from the monastery at Oña, then hired Ramírez de Carrión to implement Ponce's method (Lane 1984, 93). But Bonet's procedures do not seem consistent with what is known of Ponce's approach.

48. Manuscript attributed to Pedro Ponce, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 2.25.

49. Bonet [1620] 1930, 117.

50. Juan Bautista de Morales, Pronunciaciones generales de lenguas, ortografía, escuela de leer, escribir y contar y significación de letras en la mano (Montilla: Juan Bautista de Morales, 1623), 28, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 303.

51. Eguiluz Angoitia speculates that Ponce might have used this phonic approach, for the pedagogy was known in his day, and the technique appeared in the primer used to teach reading to Iñigo de Velasco, fifth constable of Castile and brother of Ponce's deaf students Pedro and Francisco (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 261). The primer in question is Juan de Robles's Cartilla menor para enseñar a leer en romance (Berlanga, n.d.), cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 261. Eguiluz also observes that Ponce may have been acquainted with Antonio Venegas's Tractado de orthographia (Toledo, 1531); this work contains detailed descriptions of the articulation of the sounds corresponding to each letter (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 261).

52. According to Pedro Tovar, cited in Ambrosio Morales, Antigüedades de las ciudades de España (Alcalá de Henares: Juan Iñiguez de Lequerica, 1575), 29, c, reproduced in Pérez de Urbel 1973, 240.

53. Francisco Vallés, De sacra philosophia (Lyons, 1652), 53, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 254.

54. Bonet compares the deaf pupil at this point to "those who read Latin very well, but do not understand it" (Bonet [1620] 1930, 142).

55. A. Rodríguez Villa, Etiquetas de la casa de Austria (Madrid), 21, cited in Navarro Tomás 1920-1921, 28 n. z.

56. Into Bonet's trunk and suitcase went apparel and personal effects that included a green suit decorated with black and green trim and a satin waistcoat with silver braid and black fringe, another suit trimmed in green and adorned with gold scalloped lace, with matching stockings and garters, a suit of cloth from Segovia with a short cloak, doublet and breeches, trimmed with dark brown buttons, complete with a coordinated dark brown satin waiscoat with braid, black satin laced breeches decorated with ornate braid, six hats, ten pairs of shoes, two pairs of boots, two hundred fifty gold escudos, two gold chains, a watch on a narrow ribbon that dangled from a diamond brooch, a diamond ring, another with rubies and another without stones, two hundred fifty enameled gold buttons, two silver candlesticks, a silver spoon, goblet, and salt and pepper shakers, three shotguns, and other belongings ("Relación de los bestidos, xoyas, i otras cossas que yo Juan Pablo llevo a Roma para el servicio de mi persona," 1621, AGS, Cámara de Castilla, leg. 1,116, f. 27, cited in Navarro Tomás 1920-1921, 37).

57. The order was founded in the twelfth century as a military order to protect pilgrims journeying to Santiago de Compostela against the Moors. When Ferdinand and Isabel brought it under the jurisdiction of the crown, the title of Knight of Santiago became purely honorific.

58. A paper Bonet wrote at this time presented Spain's position in a dispute with France, while obliquely revealing the author's considerable knowledge of the international intrigues and political maneuvers of his day (Juan Pablo Bonet, Discurso acerca de la conveniencia o disconventencia de la embajada que llevaban a Roma los señores Obispo de Córdoba y don Juan Chumacero y materias que habían de tratar, BN, ms 18,434, last ten folios, cited in Navarro Tomás 1920-1921, 29-30).

59. This account occurs in Pellicer, Obras varias, BN, ms 2,236,fols. 36-37, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 243. Ramírez apparently made his last journey to the Velasco home in 1623; the duchess of Frías, who had expended so much effort on her son's behalf, died the following year.

60. De Carrión, preface, Maravillas, reproduced in Andrés Morell 1794, ix-x.

61. Compendio genealógico de la noble casa de Velasco, Biblioteca de la Academia de la Historia, Colección Salazar, ms B-87, fol. 63v, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 245 n. z.

62. José Pellicery Tovar Justificación de la grandeza y cobertura de primera clase del marqués de Priego (Madrid: 1649), fol. 41v, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 241-242 n. 3. Grandees of the first class were primarily descendants of those created by Charles I, among them, the marquis of Priego.

63. Fernández de Córdoba, abbot of Rute, stated that the marquis of Priego communicated in writing (Historia de la casa de Córdoba, BN, ms 3,271, fol. 151, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 241 n. 2); that he also communicated in signs has been noted in the text above and documented in note 62.

64. The Order of the Golden Fleece was founded in 1429 by Philip the Good, the duke of Borgoña, to protect the Christian religion. Only persons of noble birth could be elected to its ranks.

65. Ballesteros 1836, xii.

66. Béthencourt 1905, 6:210.

67. F. Llamas y Aguilar, Arbol genealógico de la casa de Priego, 1667, BN, ms 18, 126, fol. 51v, cited in Werner 1932, 273 n. 2.

68. Emmanuele Filiberto Amadeus II (1628-1709) was deaf from birth (his younger siblings—five brothers and two sisters—were all hearing). When Philip IV sent for Ramírez de Carrión, the prince was around eight years of age.

69. The suggestion is made in Farrar 1890, 43, and repeated in Lane 1984, 88. Duke Thomas was general of the Spanish armies from 1635 to 1640.

70. José Pellicer de Tovar, preface to Pirámide baptismal de doña María Teresa Bibiana de Austria, Madrid, October 26, 1638, reproduced in Audrés Morell 1794, i. Pellicer de Tovar (1602-1679), also referred to as Pellicer y Tovar Abarca, was a prolific writer and chronicler of the realm.

71. Ibid., ii-iv.

72. Later from the prince of Carignan, September 14, 1645 (Turin, Archivio di Stato, Savoia, principi di Carignano, G.77, cited in Werner 1932, 289-290 n. 1).

73. To judge by a letter from Miguel Ramírez written in Montilla and dated May 18, 1660 (Turin, Archivio di Stato, lettere particolari R.4, cited in Werner 1932, 290 n. 1).

74. Letter from Emmanuele Filiberto Amadeus to Count Melchior Buneo, Compiègne, June 10, 1649 (Turin, Archivio di Stato, Savoia, principi di Carignano, G.77, cited in Werner 1932, 291 n. 1).

75. Lane 1984, 427 u. 78.

76. Louis de Rouvroy, duke of Saint-Simon, Mémoires (1694-1723), in T. Denis, ''L'instituteur du prince de Carignan," Revue française de l'éducation des sourds-muets 3 (1887): 197-204, cited in Lane 1984, 89. The passage is also quoted in Werner 1932, 286-287.

77. Louis de Rouvroy, duke of Saint-Simon, Mémoires (1694-1723), in T. Denis, "L'instituteur du prince dc Carignan," Revue française de l'éducation des sourds-muets 3 (1887): 197-204, cited in Lane 1984, 89. The passage is also quoted in Werner 1932, 287 (his translation is slightly different). Despite Saint-Simon's claim that the prince could "grasp everything from the movements of the lips and a few gestures," Jean Frèzet states that although he "learned not only to read and write, but even to comprehend the most abstract ideas ... it was not possible to speak to his eyes except by signs" (Frézet 1827, 3:645).

78. Bonet [1620] 1930, 27.

79. De Carrión, preface, Maravillas, reproduced in Andrés Moréll 1794, ix. There has been no lack of confusion surrounding Ramírez de Carrión on other questions as well. A contemporary, Mateo Velázquez, while recognizing that Bonet was the author of the book on how to teach deaf people to speak, had heard it said that Luis de Velasco's teacher was "a foreigner" (Velázquez, El filósofo del aldea [Zaragoza, n.d.], fol. 5, cited in Werner 1932, 2.62 n. 1). And the Bibliographie universelle would have it that de Carrión was himself a deafmute (Paris, 1824, 37:49, cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 238-239 n. z), a story repeated widely in Spain, France, and the United States. Hervás y Panduro referred to him as a physician (Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:42), and this was in turn repeated by Faustino Barberá (1911, 348).

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

81. Authors referring to Ponce after his death include the Jesuit Juan de Torres ( Filosofia moral de príncipes [Burgos, 1598]), the chronicler Baltasar de Zúñiga (Sumario de la descendencia, written at the beginning of the seventeenth century), and the Benedictines Juan de Castañiza ( Aprobación de la reglay orden del gloriosissimo padre Sant Benito [Salamanca, 1583]), Antonio Yepes ( Crónica general de la orden de San Benito [Salamanca, 1607]), Gregorio Argaiz ( Soledad laureada [Madrid, 1675]), Feijóo y Montenegro (1730, 1759), and Romualdo Escalona ( Historia del real monasterio de Sahagún [Madrid, 1782]). Antonio Pérez, the abbot who mentioned Pedro Ponce when bestowing his approval on Bonet's book, was also a Benedictine (see note 43). At the end of the eighteenth century two Jesuits, Juan Andrés Morcll and Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, would attempt to revive the memory of Pedro Ponce, as discussed in the next chapter.

82. Lope de Vega, in the verses printed at the beginning of Bonet's book, as well as in the dedication of his play Jorge Toledano (Madrid 1622) and in a rhyming letter published in La circe (Madrid 1624); Juan Pérez de Montalbán in Para todos (Seville, 1645, 7th cd., fol. 199); Pedro Díaz Morante in his Arte de escribir (Madrid, 1624, part two, fol. 4) and in Enseñanza de príncipes (Madrid, 1624, fol. 5); Caramuel in his Apparatus philosophicus (Cologne, 1665, 11-12); López de Zárate and Constantino Susias in the epigrams that appear at the beginning of Bonet's book (references cited in Navarro Tomás 1924, 227 n. 1, and in Werner 1932, 312-313).

83. Some thirty years later, Nicolás Antonio would write that de Carrión "Without a doubt ... invented the art, or surely in his era he alone practiced it, teaching mutes the use of writing and in a certain manner speech" (Antonio [1672] 1783-1788, 1:354) but Antonio was aware (2:228) that Ponce had practiced the teaching too.

84. Pellicer de Tovar, preface to Pirámide baptismal, reproduced in Andrés Morell 1794, ii, v. In this same work, Pellicer made it clear that he had not forgotten about Pedro Ponce. He opined that Ponce "began [the teaching] with efficacy, but it is not said that he completed it with perfection. Your Grace achieved the feat with considerably more brilliant success in the house of the most excellent Don Bernardino Fernández de Velasco, constable of Castile, who is alive today, than did that monk in the [house] of his grandfathers" (ibid., iv).

85. Velázquez, El filósofo del aldea, fol. 5, cited in Werner 1932, 2.62 n. 1.

86. Pellicer obtained documentation from the duchess of Frías, Luis's brother the constable, the archbishop of Burgos, the president of Castlie, the count of Salazar, and Baltasar de Zúñiga,chronicler of the house of Velasco (Pellicer de Tovar, preface to Pirámide baptismal, reproduced in Andrés Morell 1794, vi).

87. Luis de Velasco noted that he had also seen de Carrión teach Juan Alonso de Medina and Don Antonio de Ocampo y Benavides, mutes who were at that time living in Seville and Zamora, respectively (ibid., reproduced in Andrés Morell 1794, vii).

88. Ibid.

89. Ibid., vii-viii.

90. Pérez de Urbel suggests (1973, 149-150) this turn of events may have been due to deaths and changes among the princes of the house of Savoy, alluded to by Pellicer himself, or conceivably to a lack of gratitude on the part of Emmanuele Filiberto's mother, the princess of' Carignan. Though Andrés Morell reproduced Pellicer's dedication to Ramírez de Carrion when he published the Pirámide baptismal in Austria and Italy in 1793 and in Spain in 1794, even this did not suffice to clarify; the situation, for he referred to de Carrión as having practiced the teaching of deaf people "after" Bonet—a conclusion he may have arrived at based on the respective dates of publication of Bonet's 1620 Arte and Ramírez de Carrión's 1613 Maravillas (Andrés Morell 1794, 53). Andrés wrote (18 n) that he had received the dedication, in which José Pellicer attributed to de Carrión "the glory of the invention," from his friend Eugenio de Llaguno Amirola after having completed his own work-which may explain why he did not revise the remarks about de Carrión.

91. Digby 1645, 307-309. The comments on the impossibility of teaching lipreading are perfectly consistent with Bonet's opinion. About Luis's speaking abilities Digby noted (308): "It is true, one great misbecomingnesse he was apt to fall into, whiles he spoke: which was an uncertainty in the tone of his voyce; for not hearing the sound he made when he spoke, he could not steddily governe the pitch of his voyce; but it would be sometimes higher, sometimes lower; though for the most part, what he delivered together, he ended in the same key as he begun it. But when he had once suffered the passage of his voice to close, at the opening them againe, chance, or the measure of his earnestnesse to speake or to reply, gave him his tone: which he was not capable of moderating by such an artifice."

92. Ibid., 308.

93. Pedro de Castro had also mentioned the prince of Carignan as one of Ramírez de Carrión's disciples (de Castro, La commare di Scipione Mercurio, 4, punt. 3,335, cited in Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:38).

94. Although this is not the place to document this confusion in full detail, suffice it to say that it persisted for centuries. As already noted, Andrés Morell took Ramírez to have practiced the teaching "after" Bonet (see note 90). Hervás y Panduro also seemed to infer that Ramírez de Carrión was a successor of Bonet (Hervás y Panduro 1795, 1:309-310), an opinion that was echoed by Harvey Peet when he referred to Bonet (as well as Ponce) as "predecessors" of Ramírez (Peet 1851a, 156). At mid-nineteenth century an article by Luis María Ramírez las Casas-Dezas might have clarified the situation (Ramírez y las Casas Deza 1852), but apparently it attracted little attention, for more than fifty years later Eloy Bejarano y Sánchez still called Ramírez de Carrión an "emulator" of Bonet (Bejarano y Sánchez 1905, 35). Ramírez y las Casas-Deza's work was reprinted in 1991, and thirteen years later Tomás Navarro Tomás published an article (Navarro Tomás 1924) that, according to one author, "shed an unexpected light upon the whole matter'' (Werner 1932, 263). Navarro Tomás's research contains much information originally published by Ramírez y las Casas-Deza, but Navarro Tomás does not mention his predecessor.

95. Rodrigo Moyano, Memorial, Madrid, Archivo de las Cortes, Cortes de Castilla, Acuerdos, leg. 4, libro 3 (1317-23), cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 174. News of Moyano was first brought to light by Eguiluz (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 274-276).

96. Actas de las cortes de Castilla (Madrid, 1912), 35:226-27; 37:546; Seris, H., Guía de nuevos temas de literatura española (Madrid, 1973), 106-109, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 276. Eguiluz speculates that Bonet knew of Moyano's claim that he could teach students to lip-read and aimed to refute it with his disparaging remarks about teachers who took credit for their pupils' lipreading skills (Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 275).

97. Considering that Miguel was already teaching the prince of Carignan in 1645, he would have been a very old man by the beginning of the 1700s. Information concerning Diego Ramírez is scarce and the few references I have found are often contradictory. Alea, citing José Pellicer's Idea de Cataluña, stated that Diego was the son of Manuel Remírez Carrión [ sic ], and that "in 1709 he was teaching Sor Josefa de Guzmán, Franciscan nun of the house of Medina Sidonia, and deaf from birth, as is recorded in the archives of the duke of Medina Sidonia." According to Alea, these same archives also contained documents revealing that Diego received a pension of twenty-four reales a day for his teaching. The author attributed this information to Santiago Sáez, "king-at-arms of his Catholic Majesty, a person of exquisite erudition, a friend of long standing of the aforementioned house of Medina-Sidonia, and at present a resident of this court [i.c., Madrid]" (Alea 1795, 287). Details of Alea's version are repeated—without attribution—by Vicente de la Fuente and by Miguel Fernández Villabrille (Fuente 1885, 2:516; M. Fernández Villabrille 1883, 11). But Ballesteros states that Diego Ramírez de Carrión was the son of Miguel and grandson of Manuel (Ballesteros 1833-1835, 1:61), and Ibarrondo claims that it was Miguel Ramírez, not Diego, who taught Josefa de Guzmán (Ibarrondo 1934, 8). Eguiluz Angoitia (1986, 316 n. 22) repeats Ibarrondo's claim, which he attributes to both this writer (1934, 7-8) and (incorrectly) to Fernández Villabrille (1883, 11), as well as to Osorio Gullón (L. Osorio Gullón, "Estudio evolutivo de la legislación española en favor de los sordomudos," in Revista española de subnormalidad, invalidez y epilepsia 3 [1972]: 100, cited in Eguiluz Angoitia 1986, 316 n. 22).

98. Barberá 1889, 30. Fenollet, according to Barberá, died in the convent of Santo Domingo in Valencia.

99. Nevertheless, Julio Bernaldo de Quiros and Fany S. Gueler report that in 1724 in Seville a Brother Toribio founded the Instituto de Niños Anormales y Defectuosos del Lenguaje (institute for abnormal children and those with speech defects) (Bernaldo de Quiros and Gueler 1966, 333). It is not clear that the teaching here involved deaf children, and at any rate the name these authors attribute to the school would hardly have been used in the early eighteenth century—which may cast doubt on the entire account.