(This post is a continuation of The Travails of Friar Antonio – Parts 1 and 2. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read those posts before reading on here.)
Having returned from Algiers, Friar Antonio tried to take up his old life, or, rather, take up the new life he had been about to embark on before his capture. But there were complications.
Somehow, his past—that he had absconded from the Augustinian order and had been cohabiting with a mistress—came to light. A little over a year after his return, he was officially outed. This, of course, was a very big problem. Among other things, it cost him his chief ally: King Philip II of Spain. It was said of King Philip that “from his smile to the dagger there was little distance.” That is, he could turn on people in an instant. He turned on Friar Antonio—with, from his point of view, good reason: Friar Antonio had deceived him. King Philip had pressed to have Friar Antonio’s position as Sicilian Vicar General made official and final. He had actively worked towards Friar Antonio’s freedom, even contributed money towards his ransom. Now, the King wrote a serious of vitriolic letters denouncing him.
Friar Antonio was not left entirely without allies, though. He turned to no lesser a personage than the Pope.
The Vatican and the Spanish Crown were in the midst of a power struggle at this time, and the Pope likely saw Friar Antonio’s case as an opportunity to dispute Philip’s authority—to “pluck his beard” as the saying went. Whatever his reasons, the Pope officially absolved Friar Antonio of all his sins and reaffirmed him as Vicar General in Sicily (then, as now, having connections to people in positions of authority made all the difference).
King Philip was seriously pissed—as the Pope no doubt intended him to be—but there was little the King could do about the situation.
And so Friar Antonio finally made it to Sicily and took up his ecclesiastical position there (the image above shows the sort of scene he would likely have seen as he arrived by sea).
There is no clear record of whether or not his mistress accompanied him. We know nothing about this woman. Her age, her name, her background—all are a mystery. The last thing we know for sure is that Friar Antonio successfully ransomed her. After that… nothing.
Given everything that had happened, it seems unlikely that Friar Antonio would have brought his mistress to Sicily, but this was an age when, if you had powerful enough patronage, you could pretty much get away with anything—as Friar Antonio himself proved with his “get out of jail” pardon from the Pope. Friar Antonio’s actions over the years seem to indicate that he was devoted to his mistress. So perhaps he did bring her to live with him in Sicily, and perhaps, very circumspectly, the two were able to spend some happy years together there. Perhaps he even ransomed his servants and brought them back too, though there is no mention of this. The fate of the poor servants is another mystery.
Friar Antonio served as Vicar General in Sicily for three years before his death in 1587, just shy of fifty. The cause of his death is another mystery. He had health problems after his incarceration in Algiers, so maybe some chronic ailment from that time proved fatal. Of the fate of his mistress, we know nothing at all.
§§§
We know the details of Friar Antonio’s life because, while he was in Algiers composing ransom-related correspondence, he was also writing a book. Like everything else in his life, though, the story of the book is complicated.
During this period, the Spanish authorities regulated the publishing industry very strictly. The issue was heresy. Ideas are powerful things, and books are a powerful way to disseminate ideas. In Friar Antonio’s day, in order for a book to be published, it had to be examined by members of the Inquisition and deemed safely non-heretical. Only after it had received this official seal of approval could a book be sent to press. The whole process was taken very seriously: somebody caught publishing an illicit book could be put to death.
It wasn’t just the content of a book that determined its acceptability. It was also the known character of the author. Friar Antonio, with his infamous reputation as a fallen Augustinian friar and a fornicator, would have stood no chance at all of having any book with his name on it published.
So he had to find some other way.
During his years as Vicar General, Friar Antonio served with a bishop named Diego de Haedo. There is no record of what sort of relationship the two men might have had, but we do know this: when the book Friar Antonio wrote was finally published, in 1612, it bore Diego de Haedo’s name as the author. Bishop de Haedo had already been dead for four years by that time, and the book was shepherded through the publication process by the bishop’s nephew who, confusingly, was also named Diego de Haedo.
It seems that Friar Antonio, knowing he could not get the book accepted if his name was attached to it, gave Bishop de Haedo the manuscript. The bishop, in turn, passed it along to his nephew. The nephew finally acquired permission to publish twenty-five years after Friar Antonio’s death. There is also the possibility, of course, that Bishop de Haedo stole the manuscript upon Friar Antonio’s death and passed it off as his own work. There is no way to know for sure.
We do know the book, though. It was a monumental work titled Topografía e historia general de Argel (Topography and General History of Algiers), and it is one of the most important seventeenth century European works on Algiers. It includes a detailed physical description of the city, equally detailed discussions of the customs, mores, and religion of the inhabitants, plus a series of dialogues on captivity, religion, and a host of other topics.
The Topografía is an absolutely invaluable resource for anybody interested in Algiers in the late sixteenth century.
Only in the past few decades has it been generally accepted that Friar Antonio—whose full name was Antonio de Sosa—was in fact the author of the Topografía. For over three centuries, Bishop de Haedo received the credit. Even today, de Haedo is still referred to quite commonly as the author of the Topografía.
§§§
Friar Antonio de Sosa came from a privileged background. He was intelligent and highly educated, with good connections to the powerful men of his age. He could have had—had clearly been groomed for—a long, comfortable life as a respected and honored ecclesiastic. For the love of a woman, he walked away from all that. And through all the painful events that followed, it seemed he never abandoned her.
It must have been a great love.
He must have been quite a man.
In putting together this three-part post on Friar Antonio, I relied on several sources, the most important of which was An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam: Antonio de Sosa’s Topography of Algiers (1612), edited by María Antonia Garcés and translated by Diana de Armas Wilson, a wonderfully clear English rendering of the first part (the pre-dialogue part) of the Topografía. If you’re interested in reading de Sosa, this is the book to pick up.
Corsairs and Captives
Narratives from the Age of the Barbary Pirates
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The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627
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