Ebook: Forging the past: invented histories in counter-reformation Spain

Spain's infamous 'false chronicles' were alleged to have been unearthed in 1595 in a monastic library deep in the heart of the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire by the Jesuit priest Jeronimo Roman de la Higuera. Though rife with anachronisms and chronological inaccuracies, these four volumes of invented 'truths' about Spanish sacred history radically transformed the religious landscape in Counter-Reformation Spain and were not definitively exposed as forgeries until centuries later, after nearly two hundred years of scholarly debate. In this study, Katrina B. Olds explores the history, author, and legacy of one of the world's most compelling and consequential frauds.