ANDREAS (John) was born a Mahometan, at Xativa in the kingdom of Valencia, and succeeded his father in the dignity of alfaqui of that city. He was enlightened with the knowledge of the Christian religion by being present at a sermon in the great church of Valencia on the day of Assumption of the blessed Virgin, in the year 1487. Upon this he desired to be baptized; and, in memory of the calling of St John and St Andrew, he received the name John Andreas. "Having received holy orders (says he), and, from an alfaqui and a slave of Lucifer, become a priest and minister of Christ; I began, like St Paul, to preach and publish the contrary of what I had erroneously believed and asserted; and, with the assistance of Almighty God, I converted at first a great many souls of the Moors, who were in danger of hell, and under the dominion of Lucifer, and conducted them into the way of salvation. After this, I was sent for by the most catholic princes king Ferdinand and queen Isabella, in order to preach in Granada to the Moors of that kingdom, which their majesties had conquered: by God's blessing on my preaching, an infinite number of Moors were brought to abjure Mahomet, and to turn to Christ. A little after this, I was made a canon by their grace; and sent for again by the most Christian queen Isabella to Arragon, that I might be employed in the conversion of the Moors of those kingdoms, who still persisted in their errors, to the great contempt and dishonour of our crucified Saviour, and the prodigious loss and danger of all Christian princes. But this excellent and pious design of her Majesty was rendered ineffectual by her death." At the desire of Martin Garcia, bishop of Barcelona, he undertook to translate from the Arabic into the language of Arragon, the whole law of the Moors; and after having finished this undertaking, he composed his famous work of The Confusion of the Sect of Mahumed: it contains twelve chapters, wherein he has collected the fabulous stories, impostures, forgeries, brutalities, follies, obscenities, absurdities, impossibilities, lies, and contradictions, which Mahomet, in order to deceive the simple people, has dispersed in the writings of that sect, and especial-
ly in the alcoran, which, as he says, was revealed to him in one night by an angel, in the city of Meke; though in another place he contradicts himself, and affirms that he was 20 years in composing it. Andreas tells us, he wrote this work, that not only the learned amongst Christians, but even the common people, might know the different belief and doctrine of the Moors; and on the one hand might laugh and ridicule such insolent and brutal notions, and on the other might lament their blindness and dangerous condition. This book, which was published at first in Spanish, has been translated into several languages; all those who write against the Mahometans quote it very much.