[1542]. Carta de Pedro López de la Cañada, tañedor de vihuela, para su tío.

Family letter from Pedro López de la Cañada, musician, to his uncle.

The author informs his uncle that he is being held in jail in Ocaña (Toledo), and asks him to go there soon and try to set him free.

Pedro López de la Cañada, musician, was accused of bigamy by the Inquisition of Toledo: he married a second time when his first wife was still alive. Even before that, he had gotten married to a different woman, but that marriage had been annulled. There was also the suspicion that he might have married another young woman, but this was never confirmed. The letters that he wrote to his family from the jail in Ocaña (Toledo) were intercepted and included in his Inquisition files as a proof of his crimes. In them, he used a code that consisted of replacing all the vowels by the letter "p" - over each false "p" he put one to five horizontal lines, thus signaling the vowel that was meant to be. He was later condemned to an "auto de fe" and to stay out of Toledo for two years.