Antonio de Torquemada

2015 (First edition)
Govert Westerveld
El Ingenio ó Juego de Marro, de Punta ó Damas de Antonio de Torquemada (1547)

Foreword

The book you see before you is the lost book of Antonio de Torquemada, because the academic world is still saying that this was the first book of draughts. Although José Antonio Garzón Roger and I have published that this book never could have existed, the academic world is not rectifying this event. The majority of authors indicate that the book was lost and others state that the book was lost during a fire in the library of the University of Valencia in 1812.

We see something similar in the academic world with authors such as Lucena, whereas practically most professors and students are speaking of Luis de Lucena as the author of a chess book in 1497. And what can we say of the authors Francisco Delicado and Bartolomé Torres Naharro? The university does not stop to publish the biography of these authors, which according to our research are simply nicknames and who as real people never existed.

However, the more I studied the whole history of Antonio de Torquemada, the more I became convinced that this book never existed. We see a similar situation with the author Lucena who wrote a chess book in 1497. As already indicated, the academic world is calling him Luis de Lucena, (Luis Ramírez de Lucena) while Dr. Ricardo Calvo was the first to indicate in his book of 1999 that the name is simply Lucena. Today the internet is full of information on Antonio de Torquemada as the writer of a lost draughts book.  So I will follow the Spanish academic world, but the reader at least will know that I do not believe in him as the writer of a draughts book. But logically speaking, the academic world needs proofs and that is the intention of this book, in which I will describe my research of the latest 29 years with regards to this allegedly lost book.

According to data available at this time the first draughts book written in Valencia in 1547 was titled  El Ingenio o juego de marro, de punta o Damas. This is indicated by Nicolao Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus, 1696 Volume I, page 165. Apparently this work was in the Municipal Library of Valencia under the number 334,904 according to Volume XXIII of the handbook of Antonio Palau y Dulcet. The Generalitat Valenciana in a letter of 1989 informed me that the book appears in "Palau", which says that only one existing copy was known in the Municipal Library of Valencia. In 1960 a catalog was published of existing works in the Municipal Library and the work of Torquemada was no longer cited. Since then more than 300 works were lost. As already indicated by Dr. Manuel Cárceles Sabater in his work of 1904, he could not obtain a copy of the work of Torquemada despite his unsuccessful efforts.

I am able to write about a draughts book of Juan Timoneda, because I came to possession of a photocopy of this book thanks to the intervention of Philip de Schaap in Amsterdam. The cost was rather high, but it was worthwhile to fly to Amsterdam in 1988 to obtain this copy, of which the original is now in unknown hands in Madrid. The positions of the diagrams, letters, and language that I could reproduce here are nearly identical to the original book, thus diagrams with almost the same nice decoration and with almost the same old Spanish letters and the same language of the XV century. Furthermore I reproduced the same positions of the diagrams, thus using the white squares for the pawns and having the long diagonal on the right hand. The drawing of the pawns and Dama are exactly the same as appearing in the original book of Timoneda. Just as in the original book of Timoneda, it is black to move and win.

The Dutch historian Karel Wendel Kruijswijk in his book of 1989 about Timoneda used the white squares for the pawns, but the long diagonal is on the left side. The paws are drawn like the pawns in chess and the Dama is like the King in chess. The diagrams are without any decoration and the letters are poor in quality, but he preserved the old Spanish language and also the rule “black to move and win”.

In the book of Timoneda it is always black to move and win, while today this sitation has been changed, because it is white to move and win. Furthermore in Timoneda the draughts game is played on the white squares, while today it is played on the black or coloured squares. In the Spanish draughts game the long diagonal is on the right side, while it is on the left side in other varieties. Since the variety of the Universal or International draughts game is played on a board of 100 squares (10 x 10) with the long diagonal on the left, Kruijswijk changed the long diagonal in his Timoneda book to the left, negating the historical Spanish board.

In this book I will show you the research done by me and José Antonio Garzón Roger, hoping to convince the academic world that the book of Antonio de Torquemada never existed and that the book was published by the plagiarist Juan de Timoneda in Valencia in 1547

So this time we follow the academic world and mentioned Antonio de Torquemada in the book title as author of the work Ingenio, ó juego de marro, de punta, ó damas and the reader now knows that I do not believe in this author.

                                                         Govert Westerveld