Document Highlights

October 2001

A View of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial seen from the Garden of the Monks.

DOCUMENT CITATION:
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato 4949, fol. 530
(Entry 2931 in the "Documentary Sources" database.)

TRANSLATION:
I will tell Your Lordship about a fine joke at the Escorial. One evening the Crown Princess [Isabel de Borbón] and some of her ladies were enjoying the fresh air at a window overlooking the garden right below the church. They heard a noise coming from amidst the trees but didn’t see what caused it and were frightened since it’s been said that spirits frequent that place. And so everyone believed there was a ghost, especially since the people they sent to check out the noise didn’t see anyone there at all. Then immediately the story spread and gave rise to the most wonderful speculations that the fervid imaginations of these courtiers can conceive. In fact, the same rustling was heard another evening at the same time and once again the soldiers of the guard went over the kitchen garden and couldn’t find the source. Since the whole palace really began to believe that there were spirits and ghosts, the monks wanted to get to the bottom of things because the place was getting a bad name. So, on the third night, when they heard the same noise and the same coming and going, they set out with lit torches to go over the kitchen garden. And what they found was a donkey amusing itself and eating the grass. They said that they had seen the donkey there on the previous occasions but it had not occurred to them that he might have been responsible for the noise. So in short, for many days a donkey has been a topic of discussion for the entire court.

TRANSCRIPTION:
[...] Conterò a V.S.Ill.ma una burla avvenuta all'Escoriale; stava la s.ra Principessa [Isabel de Borbón] una sera di notte per pigliare il fresco alla finestra con alcune dame verso il giardino che cade a pie della Chiesa, e sentirono romoreggiare fra gli alberi, non vedendo che cosa fusse, et hebbero paura, perchè si era detto che andavano attorno degli spiriti, e tutte credettero che fusse una fantasma, aiutate poi da coloro che mandarono a vedere chi faceva il romore, che non trovarono nessuno. Si divulgò a un tratto che si era sentito una fantasma, e sopra questo subito si destarono bellissimi discorsi imaginati dalle passioni de cortigiani. In effetto un'altra sera su la medesima hora fu sentito l'istesso frascheggiare, et andare per l'orto, e non fu similmente da soldati della guardia ritrovata la causa. Si che tutto il Palazzo cominciò a credere davero, che fussero spiriti, e fantasme ma come questo era in discredito del luogo, i frati volsero chiarire il fatto, così la terza sera, sentitosi il rumore et il passeggiare solito, andarono con torce accese a correre l'orto, e trovarono che quivi stava a diporto un asino pascendo di quell'erbe, e questo dissero gli altri haver le sere avanti veduto, ma non essere caduti in che da lui potesse nascere la causa di quel rumore. Insomma un asino è stato molti giorni materia a discorsivi di Palazzo e di tutta la Corte [...]

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
If ever a place seemed designed for ghostly infestation, it was the Escorial—the vast, brooding amalgam of monastery, palace and tomb constructed by King Felipe II in the midst of the Castillian plain. "El Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial", as it was known, was not only one of the principal seats of the Spanish Court but also the most celebrated embodiment of its peculiar aura of austere sacrality.

Though the incident of the "Ghost Donkey" might seem to have been lifted intact from a comic story or operetta, it was a deadly serious matter for at least some of its participants, most notably the Augustinian Friars of the Monastery. In the seventeenth century (as is still the case) there was no strict article of the Catholic faith regarding such supernatural presences. There was, however, a significant body of orthodox belief as well as impeccable biblical precedents (for example, the appearance of the spirit of the Prophet Samuel to King Saul.) In any case, it seems that the denizens of the Spanish Court (including Isabel de Borbón, the future queen of Felipe IV), were strongly disposed to credit their existence.

As Giulio Inghirami observed, "the monks wanted to get to the bottom of things because the place was getting a bad name." Though it was by no means clear that ghosts were necessarily evil or to be feared, their aura was negative since they represented an element of cosmic disorder. Why did ghosts appear and what did they mean? Were they angelic or demonic or simply illusions? Was there an unquiet grave, an impending doom, a sin to be expiated or a wrong to be righted? Such speculation was anything but welcome in a great religious establishment in the penumbra of the Spanish Crown.

Giulio Inghirami (1589-1639), Secretary to the Tuscan Embassy in Spain from 1616 to 1622, did not conceal his relish in the burlesque antics of the Spanish courtiers. He could have expected to find an appreciative audience in Curzio Picchena (1554-1622), who was then First Secretary of State to Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici. A generation earlier, from 1579 to 1583, the young Picchena had filled exactly the same position as Inghirami at the Tuscan Embassy in Spain and presumably had his own store of recollections and anecdotes.

Were educated and cultivated Spaniards in the seventeenth century really more superstitious and gullible than their Tuscan counterparts? Certainly the Tuscans liked to think so, and in fact, it is difficult to imagine a similar ghost scare at the court of Cosimo II de’ Medici (for example, in the Boboli Gardens behind Palazzo Pitti.) Supernatural apparitions would have had to contend with the creeping scepticism that still characterizes Florentines today and their practical insistence on hard fact. It is also worth noting that in 1620, at the time of these events at the Escorial, the Florentine scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1638) had been an established presence at the Medici Court for ten years. Galileo held the title of "First Mathematician and Philosopher" to Cosimo II and he might well have had some interesting observations to share on the phenomenon of "Ghost Donkeys in Spain".

ILLUSTRATION NOTES:

A View of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial seen from the Garden of the Monks. http://www.banesto.es/banesto/escorial/i9700050.htm

Por temor no pierdas honor ("Do not lose honour through fear") by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes; etching, aquatint and drypoint; plate 2 from the series "Los Proverbios", begun circa 1815. From the collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (accession number 1949/2.4). http://www.si.umich.edu/Art_History/UMMA/1949/1949_2.4.jpg

Si sabrá mas el discipulo? ("Might not the pupil know more?") by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes; etching, aquatint and engraving; plate 37 from the series "Los Caprichos", 1797-98. From the collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (accession number 1930.12). http://www.si.umich.edu/Art_History/UMMA/1930/1930.12.jpg

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