Unification in Opposition: The Strategy of Ambivalence

Abstract

Early on an October morning in 1618, a carriage and horses waited patiently in the small square outside the Dominican convent of Santa Cruz la Real in Granada. Soon the figure of a man emerged from a side door and hastened towards the carriage, as he had done every morning for the last month. His name was Juan Bautista Hesronita, the Maronite Archbishop of Mount Lebanon, and formerly the interpreter from Arabic of Pope Paul V. He was about to follow the steep, winding road to the Sacro Monte, through the Plaza Nueva and the narrow streets running alongside the river Darro, up the Cuesta de Chapiz and onto the road snaking its way up the mountainside. At his desk inside the abbey built on the Sacro Monte, the Archbishop of Seville and formerly of Granada, Don Pedro de Castro, awaited his guest with an enthusiasm that belied his 84 years. Before him lay four keys, belonging to the chapter of the Sacro Monte, the officials of the Archbishop of Granada, the City Council and the Royal Chancery, keys which would play a significant role in events a quarter of a century later. But today they were lying ready to open the great chest beside the gospel at the high altar of the abbey church, the chest that contained the priceless treasure of the abbey and of the city of Granada, the Lead Books. The Maronite priest had formerly been sceptical about the plomos, but now he was actually in Granada, things were different.