ANCHIAS, JUAN DE (wrongly Anchisas):

By: Meyer Kayserling

Associate and first private secretary of the Inquisition in Spain (1485-90). He was understood to be especially familiar with the forms of wills and marriage contracts used by Maranos accused of Judaism. In 1507 he wrote, in Belchite, "Libro Verde de Aragon" (The Green Book of Aragon), a genealogy of the richest and most respected baptized Jews at the time of Vicente Ferrer. In 1623 Philip IV. of Spain commissioned the inquisitor-general, Andreas Pacheco, who descended from Maranos himself, had collected and secreted all available copies of the "Libro Verde," to destroy them. A single copy, dating from the sixteenth century, is preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina, Seville. The manuscript was copied by Demetrio de los Rios for his brother, the historian José Amador de los Rios, who had discovered it; and in 1885 it was published in the "Revista de España," vol. xviii., which issue was forthwith confiscated and has remained proscribed until to-day. From this "Green Book" Francisco Mendoza y Bovadilla drew his material for the memorial that he presented to King Philip II., under the title "El Tizon de la Nobleza Española" (The Stain of the Spanish Nobility), and which has been often reprinted (Madrid, Barcelona, etc.).

M. K.