Pedro Ponce de León

Dom Pedro Ponce de Leon, O.S.B., (1520, Sahagún – 29 August 1584, Oña) was a Spanish Benedictine monk who is often credited as being "the first teacher for the deaf".

Ponce de Leon established a school for the deaf at the San Salvador Monastery in Oña.

His work with deaf children focused on helping them to learn how to speak language audibly.

Ponce de Leon is not known to have developed a working sign language, but there is some indication from the writings of Juan Pablo Bonet — who never credited him for his method — that Ponce de Leon developed a manual alphabet which would allow a student who mastered it to spell out (letter by letter) any word.

This alphabet was based, in whole or in part, on the simple hand gestures used by monks living in silence.