Pedro de Castro y Quiñones

Pedro de Castro y Quiñones was a Spanish churchman and jurist who became archbishop of Granada in 1590. During his episcopate, relics and inscribed lead discs were discovered on the hill later known as Sacromonte. Castro accepted the finds as evidence of Granada’s apostolic Christian origins and sponsored investigation, devotion and the institutional development that culminated in the Abbey of Sacromonte.

He promoted the authenticity of the texts despite doubts raised by scholars and by Roman authorities. The Lead Books were eventually condemned as forgeries in 1682, long after his death. Castro’s actions demonstrate how antiquarian discovery, local prestige, Counter-Reformation devotion and the politics of a recently conquered and forcibly converted city could reinforce one another.

Elizabeth Drayson’s The Lead Books of Granada makes Pedro de Castro y Quiñones one of the central authorities through whom the Sacromonte discoveries were investigated and promoted. As archbishop of Granada, he treated the supposed ancient Christian texts as potentially authentic relics of the city’s apostolic past, and the book shows how his patronage, religious priorities and determination to defend the finds helped turn a local discovery into a long-running controversy over forgery, conversion and memory after the conquest of Granada.