Ferro sells a fifteenth-century altarpiece

Príamo Ferro’s sale of a fifteenth-century altarpiece was an act of pastoral triage, not a simple rejection of sacred art: faced with a crumbling church and impoverished parishioners, he exchanged the work for a repaired roof, medicine, and practical relief. The transaction followed him into his record as a stain, yet its logic illuminates why he later defends Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas against demolition. For Ferro, the claims of faith and heritage are measured against the lives of the people a church exists to serve.

The sale comes under scrutiny

During Lorenzo Quart’s inquiry, Quart raised an item in Ferro’s file from his earlier post in Aragón. A man named Montegrifo, Quart said, had bought a parish altarpiece from him. Ferro remembered the purchaser and the transaction clearly. The question was not an abstract one about the value of church property: it concerned a particular work, sold by a priest entrusted with its care, and a decision that had remained part of his institutional history.

Ferro explained that the parish church was Romanesque, small, and in severe disrepair. Its beams were rotten and its walls cracked; crows and rats nested inside. The parish was so poor that it could sometimes scarcely afford the wine for Mass. Parishioners lived several kilometres apart, and many were elderly, sick, or without prospects. Ferro said that he celebrated Mass alone during the week and for them on Sundays, beneath an altarpiece threatened by damp, leaks, and woodworm. The setting makes the sale a choice between two forms of preservation: protecting a vulnerable artwork, or keeping a parish and its community alive.

A sale for roofs and medicines

The visitors who made the offer included a foreigner who had been to the parish before and a well-presented man who introduced himself as the director of a Madrid auction house. They offered to buy the Christ figure and the small altarpiece from the altar. Quart identified the work as a valuable fifteenth-century altarpiece; Ferro rejected the century as the decisive measure. The buyers were paying for it, he pointed out, and even if the sum was not extraordinary, it could provide a new roof and, more importantly, help his parishioners.

Ferro said that he sold it without hesitation. The money repaired the roof, bought medicine for the sick, and helped mitigate damage caused by frost and livestock disease. He described the proceeds as a means of helping people live and die. His account does not deny the work’s value; rather, it refuses to make its age or artistic status outweigh those immediate needs. What might appear in an institutional file as the loss of church property is presented by Ferro as a concrete answer to poverty, illness, and the hazards of rural life.

An institutional stain

Quart noted that the sale had left a mark on Ferro’s record. Ferro knew this and had already endured an unpleasant interview with his bishop. The episode therefore had consequences beyond the transfer of the artwork: a decision made in the circumstances of a poor parish became a disciplinary and reputational liability within the Church. The surviving evidence identifies the work as a fifteenth-century altarpiece but does not specify a formal penalty for the sale.

Ferro’s account also frames the transaction against a wider vulnerability. He described churches and works of art across Spain as exposed to traffickers, collapsing roofs, fire, rain, and poverty. In that landscape, the object’s survival was never guaranteed simply because it belonged to a church. The sale is morally uncomfortable precisely because it involves both a valuable sacred object and a priest’s responsibility to people who lacked basic resources; Ferro does not evade the decision by claiming the object was worthless or that the choice was easy to judge from outside.

The later contrast at Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas

When Quart pointed out that Ferro now defended Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas, the priest’s earlier sale seemed to create a contradiction. Ferro did not offer an elaborate explanation. He dismissed the importance of the apparent inconsistency and said that the people at the church believed. The remark shifts attention from a fixed rule about preserving every church object or building to the community’s continuing faith and dependence on the parish.

That later defense unfolds amid a different material and institutional crisis. Gris Marsala, the architect responsible for the restoration, says that the building is neglected but structurally sound, with no irreversible cracks in its walls or vault. She identifies damaged coverings and moisture as the principal problems and describes retiling the roof with lime, cement, and sand: nearly ten tons of material carried fifteen metres upward by her and Father Óscar. The restoration has nevertheless been nearly stalled by unapproved budgets and missing funds. The contrast matters: Ferro once sold a treasured object to meet urgent needs in a desperately poor parish; at Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas, the struggle is to secure the resources to repair a still-viable building and keep its religious life intact.

The church’s survival is also bound to a specific obligation. An old privilege granted in 1687 requires a Thursday Mass for the soul of Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija, the benefactor, as a condition of the church retaining its rights. Ferro celebrates Mass every day of the week except Sundays and feast days, when he celebrates twice; the Thursday service is thus part of a larger, repeated ministry as well as the condition that frustrates demolition. Macarena Bruner explains that an emissary of the archbishop and a notary paid by Pencho Gavira watch the Thursday Mass for any irregularity. The building is not protected by its age alone: its use, the community’s practice, and the inherited obligation all bear on its fate.

Meaning of the episode

The episode complicates any easy opposition between a priest who sells sacred art and one who defends a threatened church. In Aragón, Ferro’s account places the needs of sick parishioners, a leaking roof, and vulnerable livestock ahead of an artwork’s historical distinction. In Seville, he maintains the daily and weekly ritual life of a church whose physical repair remains underfunded, while the Church hierarchy and commercial interests contest its future. In both situations, religious stewardship is lived under material pressure rather than resolved by reverence in the abstract.

Quart’s questions bring the two episodes into contact, but they do not settle the moral tension. Ferro’s sale remains a blemish in his file, and the novel does not erase the loss of a fifteenth-century work; neither does it reduce his choice to misconduct detached from the poverty it relieved. The decisive standard in Ferro’s explanation is what happened to the parishioners: a roof was repaired, medicines obtained, and people helped through illness and death. His later defense of Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas extends the same pastoral emphasis in another direction, insisting that a church is not merely a structure or collection of inherited objects but a place where people continue to believe and gather.