 In the Spanish text, the translator's note is itself preceded by a Preface by one assuming the pseudonym 'Fra Marino', claiming to have stolen a copy of the Italian version from the library of Pope Sixtus V. Fra Marino, clearly a high ranking Italian ecclesiastic, reports that having a post in the Inquisition Court, he had come into possession of several works which led him to believe that the Biblical text had been corrupted and that genuine apostolic texts had been improperly excluded.Fra Marino also claims to have been alerted to the existence of the Gospel of Barnabas, from an allusion in a work by Irenaeus against Paul; in a book which had been presented to him by a lady of the Colonna family.Marino outside Rome was a Colonna estate, and during the later 16th century Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, a close associate of both Sixtus V and Philip II of Spain, was building a palazzo there.