Two published novels with 50,000 copies sold so far, according to the publisher, and rave reviews. Behind this fortune lies the conversion of Gonzalo de Berceo, the religious man and first poet of known name in the Spanish language, into a detective who solves gruesome murders and who likes wine and plump innkeepers. Who is its author, Lorenzo G. Acebedo? You won’t find him even on Wikipedia because it is the pseudonym of the writer? female writer? writers? who in little more than a year has published a pair of books that, as Horacio said, manage to to benefit and delight (sorry for the Latin phrase, “teaching by delighting”). The tavern of Silos y The Holy Company (Tusquets) also illustrate how medieval monks lived on the Peninsula.
Acebedo hides his identity, so he has not been seen signing books or in interviews. We know what the inside of both titles says: “He abandoned theological studies in his youth for a monastic retreat and, some time later, the monastic retreat for a woman. He lives in a town in La Rioja.” We can believe it… or not, as Mariano Rajoy would say.
Mr. Acebedo, why did you choose Gonzalo de Berceo to star in your novels? “I wanted to transport Bogart, a skeptical and cynical investigator who searches for criminals in the underworld, where he moves with ease, to the Middle Ages, and finds that behind them are the real ones, the criminals of etiquette,” the author replied by email to a questionnaire sent to his publisher.
In The Holy Companythese criminals, rather than a label, wear a habit. The book, set in the first half of the 13th century, begins with Gonzalo de Berceo in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, during a mass celebrating the jubilee. An archdeacon, who seems to be in a trance, crosses the path of the famous botafumeiro —“the largest censer in the world”, according to the Xunta de Galicia, with a height of one and a half meters and weight of 54 kilos—. The result gore Such recklessness led the Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, a former classmate and companion of Berceo’s, to ask him to solve the case.
Juan Cerezo, editor of Tusquets, says by phone that it all began “with a manuscript (The tavern of Silos) that arrived with that author’s name.” “I thought it was shocking because of the genre, a historical novel with a detective component, but I started reading it and saw that it was very well written. Without a big advertising campaign, it was one of the best-selling books at our stand at the Book Fair in 2023.” Cerezo highlights as an attraction “that the protagonist is based on a real character about whom little is known.”
It is true that there is not much biographical information about the rhapsodist born in Berceo (La Rioja) around the year 1196. “His life is a fiction invented by philologists based on documents in which his supposed signature appears,” says Acebedo. “I take as true what is taken for granted, and from there I invent things that fit.” Like his fondness for hitting a sack hanging from the ceiling to keep fit? Berceo was probably a cleric, cultured and linked all his life to the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla. In fact, he wrote the life of the founder of that monastery, but he is best known for the 911 stanzas in cuaderna via de los Miracles of Our Lady.
The bookseller Marina Sanmartín, from Cervantes y Compañía (Madrid), was one of the first to notice that something was happening with The tavern of Silos. “It sold very well, it was word of mouth, people came asking about it.” For Sanmartín, the great success is that the author has managed to mix “ingredients that are fashionable in crime novels, such as friendly crime, cozy crime; The sarcastic humour, the combination of dark and historical elements and the casual tone of the protagonist”. “Funny”, “a joy”, “delicious”, “pleasant reading” are some of the comments with which critics celebrated this first novel.
Regarding the author’s preference to remain secret, Cerezo says: “At first we thought it might work against us, but it has helped.” The editor does not reveal his identity: “What is clear is that he is not a newcomer.”
Yes, we know that Lorenzo G. Acebedo is an anagram of Gonzalo de Berceo and that in his books he portrays both the high ecclesiastical hierarchy and the lower clergy as the suck-ups for all their corruption and vices. “I want to talk about our pleasures and sins, and how badly those in charge make us ordinary people live, unable to leave others in peace. The Middle Ages and the present are more similar than one might think,” he writes. Acebedo shows in all their crudeness the struggles for power and money in the Church. “They are like those within the State or in a political party, which dramatically show the enormous difference between what we think and what we do.”
Another distinguishing feature of her books is how well documented they are about monastic life: “There are many testimonies and fictional and autofictional accounts of the period (mystical autobiographies, letters, chronicles, lives of saints…) in addition to the studies of historians. But the fundamental basis is having experienced from within the functioning of a monastic community. A human group in which women are prohibited is a utopian experiment doomed to end in dystopia,” she says.
Regarding this faithfulness to the life of medieval monks, art historian Pablo Avella Villar, a reader who was enthusiastic about the first installment, said by phone: “As I read, I was amazed because I saw that the author knew very well what he was talking about.” Avella, who is participating this weekend in a course on the Romanesque monastery, organized by the Santa María la Real Foundation in Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia), emphasizes that in the entire book he only found “a couple of errors in some references.” For him, the fact that in the plots “there are homosexual relationships and we see monks dedicated above all to eating and drinking may seem histrionic because there is an idealized image of them, always praying and deprived, when that was not the case.”
So, was Acebedo really religious before becoming a writer? “I don’t understand why I joined a monastery. I think it was because as a teenager I was very afraid of women, I never had a sister or a close cousin. The story of how I met the girl who helped me break away from that during the cloister is too intimate to tell here.”
Today he lives in private his unexpected fame as a writer. “I started doing this for fun. I feel like I won the lottery.” However, with the egos that exist in the literary world, isn’t it tempting to reveal his identity? “When I left the monastery I didn’t do it in style, I’m afraid, and there is an abbot who would love to pay me a visit. Besides, with this anonymity I am safe from jokes and invitations.”
Acebedo is already thinking about the third installment of Gonzalo de Berceo’s research. “It could be in al-Andalus, in search of the Phoenician formula for sherry. I have also thought about a chronicle of my monastic life.” What is certain is that there will be crimes, wine, sex… and religion.