The legend of Susona and the skull of Santa Cruz

A word of warning: this story deals with the Inquisition and with people burned at the stake.

What does the legend of Susona say?

The version you'll hear today goes roughly as follows. Susona, a young Jewish woman, fell in love with a Christian knight and, for love of him, gave away her father's plans against the Inquisition; he was sentenced to death. That's as far as the city's tourism website takes it. The fuller versions that do the rounds add an ending: overcome with remorse, she was baptised, withdrew from the world and asked that, when she died, her head be hung at her house.

In Calle Susona, in the Santa Cruz quarter, two tiles at number 10 recall the legend, according to that same website. And locally the street was known as the Street of Death, Calle de la Muerte.

It's a perfectly rounded tale: love, betrayal, guilt and punishment. But underneath it there's a real event, and an old document that tells a rather different story. It's worth taking them apart one piece at a time.

What happened in Seville in 1481?

We need to start ninety years earlier. In the summer of 1391, Seville's Jewish quarter was attacked: there were killings, looting and forced or feigned baptisms, and most of the quarter was left empty. Jews who became Christians, and their families, were known as conversos. By 1481, some of Seville's conversos were wealthy and held posts in the city.

At the start of 1481 the first inquisitors arrived. Andrés Bernáldez, a parish priest from Los Palacios who chronicled those years, writes that they arrested many "of the most honourable and the richest". Many others fled to the lands of the nobility, to Portugal or "to the land of the Moors", in the chronicler's words, and guards were posted on the city gates. The first burning, at Tablada, was of six people. A few days later three of the leading men were burned. Diego de Susán was among them.

That same year the tribunal set up in the castle of Triana, across the river.

Who was Diego de Susán?

Most of what we know about him comes from Bernáldez, who lived through those years. He tells us three things about Susán: that his fortune was put at "ten cuentos" (a cuento was a million), that he was a "great rabbi", and that, "so it seemed", he died a Christian.

Notice what he doesn't say. Not a word about a plot. Not a word about a daughter. The chronicler records the death of a very rich man and leaves a contradiction hanging: he calls him a rabbi and, in the same breath, says he died a Christian.

Was there really a plot?

The plot turns up in a different text, an "Account of the meeting and conspiracy" that survives in a seventeenth-century copy in the Biblioteca Colombina and was published by Fidel Fita in 1889. Fita traced it back to the notes of Cristóbal Núñez, a chaplain to Ferdinand and Isabella. It's written from the inquisitors' side and is hostile to the conversos.

According to the Account, a group of powerful conversos met to stand up to the inquisitors. Among them were a man who held the customs and another who was a veinticuatro and a jurado, two of Seville's civic offices. They talked of weapons, men, money and stirring up the people. Among them was "Susán, father of the Susana they called the beautiful woman". And an old man named Foronda asked: "But the hearts, where are they? Give me hearts."

Did it really happen like that? We don't know. We haven't located the trial records for these men, so the only source for the plot is an account written by the side that condemned them. The same Account adds that Susán, who "liked to think himself witty", cracked a joke on his way to the stake. The line, as it survives, no longer makes sense to us.

Who was Susona, according to the oldest text?

Here comes the surprise. The Account says that "this Susán had a Christian daughter, a very elegant lady". Christian, not Jewish. It says she denounced her father while she was the mistress of a man whose name both surviving manuscripts leave blank.

What follows is nothing like a love story. She was made a nun by Bishop Reginaldo Romero, who didn't become a bishop until 1488: by Fita's reckoning, at least seven years after the burning. She left the convent, had children and, in the text's words, "sank into such misery that she became the mistress of a spice merchant".

And finally, her will. She asked for her skull to be placed on the house "where she had led a bad life, as a warning and a punishment for her sins". An inspector carried out the clause and had it put on the wall, facing Calle del Agua, in a street they called the Street of the Coffin "because it is made in that shape".

Why was it called the Street of Death?

We can't say for sure. In an eighteenth-century copy of the same Account, someone added that the "street of death" probably took its name from this affair. "Probably": even the copyist offered it as a guess.

And is today's Calle Susona the old Street of the Coffin? That's what tradition says, and it's what the street's name records.

Two very different Susonas

Put the two versions side by side. In the modern one, Susona is Jewish, betrays her father for love, is baptised in remorse and asks for her head to be hung up. In the oldest version we've found, she's a Christian from the start, her lover has no name, she ends up in "misery", and the skull is the punishment for a life the narrator disapproves of. There's no romantic conversion and no redemption.

They do agree on one thing, mind you: both turn the daughter into a moral lesson. Meanwhile the man who actually is documented, a rich citizen of Seville burned in 1481, has slipped into the background in the street named after his daughter.

Fact or legend?

• Fact: at the start of 1481 the first inquisitors arrived in Seville; after a first burning of six people, Diego de Susán, one of three leading men with a fortune of "ten cuentos", was burned. Bernáldez, who lived through those years, records it and mentions neither a plot nor a daughter.
• A partisan account, unconfirmed: the conversos' plot. Only a hostile Account tells it, surviving in a seventeenth-century copy; we haven't located the trial records.
• Legend: the daughter who denounces her father and the skull put up under her will. Its first known appearance is that same Account, which calls her a Christian.
• Guesswork: that the street was called "of Death" because of the skull. An eighteenth-century copyist suggests it with a "probably".
• Modern retelling: the Jewish Susona, in love and full of remorse.
• Tradition: that today's Calle Susona is the old Street of the Coffin.

Where to hear it

Both halves of this story are told in Calle Susona, on the route Santa Cruz: Seville's Jewish Quarter: first the father, at the stop "Diego de Susán", and a few steps further on the daughter, at "The legend of his daughter's skull". The route begins with "The violence of the summer of 1391" and gives a warning before the passages about violence. The tribunal in the castle of Triana has a stop of its own, "1481: the tribunal in the castle", on the route Triana: Castle, Potters and River.

If you're planning your trip, the Seville guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• Fidel Fita, La España hebrea. Datos históricos, vol. I (Madrid, 1889; in Spanish), with the text of the «Relación de la junta y conjuración…», pp. 184–190. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/laespaahebread00fita
• Andrés Bernáldez, Historia de los Reyes Católicos don Fernando y doña Isabel, ch. XLIV (after the Seville edition of 1870; digital edition by Javier Martínez Romeo; in Spanish). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/25-bernaldez
• Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales eclesiásticos y seculares… (Madrid, 1677; in Spanish), year 1481. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/A039308143
• Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, Anales…, vol. II (Madrid, 1795; in Spanish), year 1391. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_AFVOJ5vbaaIC
• Visit Seville (Seville City Council tourism consortium), "Adéntrate en los callejones de Sevilla". https://visitasevilla.es/en/adentrate-en-los-callejones-de-sevilla/