Note 318 — Chapter X

Pulgar was permitted by his admiring sovereigns to have his burial-place where he knelt when he affixed the Ave Maria to the door of the mosque, and his descendants still preserve his tomb there with becoming reverence, and still occupy the most distinguished place in the choir of the cathedral, which was originally granted to him and to his heirs male in right line. (Alcántara, Historia de Granada, Granada, 1846, 8vo, Tom. IV., p. 102; and the curious documents collected by Martinez de la Rosa in his “Hernan Perez del Pulgar,” pp. 279-283, for which see next note.) The oldest play known to me on the subject of Hernan Perez del Pulgar’s achievement is “El Cerco de Santa Fe,” in the first volume of Lope de Vega’s “Comedias” (Valladolid, 1604, 4to). But the one commonly represented is by an unknown author, and founded on Lope’s. It is called “El Triunfo del Ave Maria,” and is said to be “de un Ingenio de este Corte,” dating probably from the reign of Philip IV. My copy of it is printed in 1793. Martinez de la Rosa speaks of seeing it, and of the strong impression it produced on his youthful imagination.