Inquisition Tribunal Research Articles

A holistic approach to understanding the iron-gall inks in the historical documents of the Portuguese Inquisition (1570–1790)

A substantial part of our written heritage is threatened by the fact that much of it has been written using iron-gall ink (IGI). One such example is the documents of the Portuguese Inquisition Tribunals, held by the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo. Here we present the first systematic analytical approach, using SEM/EDS, µ-FT-IR-ATR and µ-Raman techniques, to characterise fragments from historical records of the Inquisition Tribunals of Évora, Lisboa and Coimbra from the 16th to 18th centuries. The writing ink was identified as IGI, providing complementary compositional data and establishing differences between various formulations of the ink. Additionally, the deleterious effects of the inks-associated degradation phenomena were highlighted. This work allowed understand the writing inks used by this Portuguese institution.

From Baroque Spain to 1600s Amsterdam: Emergent Judaism in the Literary Works of Ex-New Christian Miguel de Barrios

Writing from the Hispano-Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam, Miguel de Barrios (1635–1701) used literary forms of Catholic Spain to resist the erasure of Jewish identity in Iberian lands by Inquisition tribunals that prosecuted non-Catholic practices as heretical. Our analysis of sonnets and allegorical plays by Barrios shows how, through them, this converso, or New Christian, of Jewish lineage openly exalts Judaism as a divinely chosen faith. We also argue that, by writing diasporic texts firmly adherent to Baroque Spanish literary trends, Barrios broadens the reach of this literature to include the hybrid identity of former conversos living as Jews. We demonstrate how the poet expresses this identity by examining elements that influenced its expression, including his biography and the importance of Amsterdam as a centre of Sephardic, or Iberian Jewish, settlement, and how he reworks canonical genres of Spanish literature to privilege Judaism and Hispano-Portuguese conversos returned to Judaism.

The Mandinga Experience: Illusion and Proof in the Inquisition Case of Patrício de Andrade, 1690

Abstract: In 1690, Capeverdean freedman and servant Patrício de Andrade was sentenced to exile by the Portuguese Inquisition for putting on performances of bodily invulnerability so convincing that no one could believe he had not made a pact with the devil. These performances, which he called experiências (from experientia meaning both experience and experiment), had a purpose: to demonstrate the protective powers of the amulets he made and sold, later known as bolsas de mandinga . But Patrício, as he sought to prove to the inquisitors, was an illusionist and swindler, whose experiences relied not on diabolical assistance, but on his own dexterity, artifice , and pretense . This article reconstructs and analyzes these performances inside and outside the space of the inquisition tribunal, showing how mandingueiros like Patrício both dramatized and promised a solution to pervasive fears around violence and bodily insecurity in Lisbon and across the empire, and mastered a vocabulary of experiential proof that, before the law, put considerable pressure on existing regimes of verification.

Judging Faith, Punishing Sin: Inquisitions and Consistories in the Early Modern Period, ed. Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-Lebeau

Since their emergence in the 1970s and 1980s, the disciplining paradigm and its offshoot, confessionalisation theory, have come under sustained attack. The most vocal critics were the proponents of a history ‘from below’, whose research, ironically, would have been impossible were it not for the paper trail produced by the disciplining institutions that sprouted all over early modern Europe and other Christianised parts of the world. Therefore, whatever one’s position in the controversy (with which the contributors of the volume under review do not engage), there is no doubt that the disciplining institutions are crucial to the understanding of the period, which is why this collection of twenty-seven contributions, offering a comparative perspective on reformed consistories and Catholic inquisition tribunals, is of great interest and highly welcome. The comparison is not unproblematic, as the editors, Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-Lebeau, admit in their introduction. First, the nature of the two institutions is not entirely equivalent. Catholic inquisition tribunals were staffed with expert judges operating in highly formalised fashion on the basis of Roman law. They were equipped with powers to constrain (and torture) and were backed and assisted by state powers. Their remit was the moral sphere in the external forum (mainly heresy), while the internal forum (sin) was captured through confession. Indeed, in functional terms, consistories were not so much a mirror of the inquisition (although Lutherans tended to denounce them as such) but may rather be regarded as a replacement for sacramental confession, an aspect that William Monter mentions in the conclusion to the volume, where he reminds readers that what was at stake was largely a ‘Reformation of Penance’. For a full comparison of the disciplining institutions, confession would have to be included, but is of course not straightforward, given the sacramental secrecy that enshrouds it. Calvinist consistories intervened both in the external and internal forum of the moral sphere, but they did not possess a comparable punitive apparatus nor a basis in canon law, and, more importantly, they were staffed with pastors and laymen. Secondly, the state of research seems more developed for the inquisition tribunals, which, due to their highly institutionalised nature, left ever more detailed archival records.

Clara Fernandes, uma lésbica perante o Tribunal da Inquisição (1555-1560)

Resumo: Na sociedade portuguesa de Antigo Regime, o sexo entre mulheres era suscetível à pena de morte na fogueira e, por ser um crime de foro misto, também esteve sob a alçada do Tribunal da Inquisição. O objetivo deste estudo é analisar o processo inquisitorial da jovem Clara Fernandes, sentenciada em 1556 por sodomia foeminarum. Apesar de casada e mãe de três filhos, as atitudes de Clara externam um incontido desejo sexual por mulheres. Atormentada por suas “culpas”, buscou o perdão do Santo Ofício, mas encontrou a “justiça” de um Tribunal inclemente.

"¡Que le quieren dar veneno al señor arzobispo-virrey!" Historia de una conspiración dirimida por la Inquisición de la Nueva España (agosto de 1809-enero de 1810)

El propósito de este trabajo es el de ofrecer una interpretación historiográfica sobre un capítulo de la vida y actividad política del arzobispo-virrey Francisco Xavier de Lizana y Beaumont, vinculada a las diligencias del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición durante los últimos meses de 1809, hasta enero de 1810. Mediante el examen a un documento del ramo Inquisición del Archivo General de la Nación, se demostrará que una vez que Lizana y Beaumont se convirtió en la cabeza del gobierno novohispano, tomó la decisión de respaldarse en los ministros del Tribunal inquisitorial, manteniéndose al tanto los rumores que se discutían sobre la organización de una conjura, en que se vinculó a los miembros del Real Acuerdo, que buscaba asesinarlo. El temor a que los rumores sobre la conspiración fueran ciertos urgió al arzobispo-virrey solicitarles a los ministros del Tribunal de la fe, y no a la Junta de Seguridad y Buen Orden, que dirimiesen sobre los testimonios para determinar la verdad sobre la confabulación.

"The Whole Air of Exile Is Yours": Modern Inquisitorial Fiction and the Facts of the Early (Latin) American Jewish Experience

"The Whole Air of Exile Is Yours":Modern Inquisitorial Fiction and the Facts of the Early (Latin) American Jewish Experience Matthew D. Warshawsky (bio) During the past thirty years, multiple works of literary fiction by Latin American authors have helped recover the marginalized history of Iberian "New Christians," or conversos, whom Inquisition tribunals prosecuted as secret Jews in colonial Latin America. In prose, poetry, and drama, these works imagine how a silenced people—Spanish and Portuguese Catholic converts of Jewish origin who tried to practice Judaism despite their baptism—thought, spoke, and acted. Why have contemporary Latin American writers chosen to resuscitate this relatively unknown history, and how does their treatment of it through fiction broaden our understanding of an era of American Judaism that often feels outside the bounds of the Jewish experience on these shores?2 Addressing such questions, this essay aims to show that texts of Homero Aridjis, Moacyr Scliar, Sabina Berman, and Nora Glickman rewrite the "official" story of Latin American history; represent the depth of faith of forgotten Jews living in settings of eclipse; and describe the complexities of this faith, particularly its isolating and divisive aspects. Through this approach, the article also argues for the ability of fiction to transport readers credibly into the minds of secret Jews of the early modern period and the descendants of such individuals today. In so doing, these works testify to two historical realities about the reach and limits of Jewish identity: the unwavering faith of Iberian crypto-Jews and, concomitantly, the fact that converso status did not always imply a secret adherence to Judaism. New Christians were Spanish or Portuguese Catholics who themselves had converted from Judaism or who were the descendants of [End Page 351] such converts. Several conversos accompanied Christopher Columbus on his first voyage of encounter with the "Indies" in 1492, and larger numbers traveled to Latin America during the next century and a half, despite the ban that the Spanish crown had imposed on their doing so.3 From the late 1500s through the mid-1600s, tribunals of the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico City, Lima, and Cartagena de Indias prosecuted a series of trials partially in response to the crypto-Jewish practices of a number of these conversos, effectively uprooting many, albeit not all, roots of their secret Judaism.4 The presence today of descendants of secret Jews, from northeast Brazil to the American Southwest, testifies to the endurance of an identity that has blurred the distinction between religion and ethnicity. Members of these groups have responded variously to greater opportunities to live in an openly Jewish way: while some have become normative Jews, others, feeling irrevocably distinct from the rest of society, have maintained a hybrid identity built on Catholic and Jewish practices. The fact that various authors today have written fiction rooted in this historical reality reflects in part their effort to broaden contemporary awareness of the Iberian origin and legacy of Jewish identity in the Americas, well before the establishment of Ashkenazim on these shores.5 The works discussed in this essay confront the conflation of religion and ethnicity by depicting reactions to the otherness of conversos that originated in late medieval Iberia and accompanied them to colonial Latin America, from martyrdom-inducing embrace of Judaism to disdainful rejection of it. Thus, in the novel 1492: Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezón de Castilla (1492: The Life and Times of Juan Cabezón of Castile, 1983) and the poem "Sefarad, 1492" (1990), the Mexican writer Homero Aridjis establishes the transatlantic roots of the early Latin American Jewish experience by representing the degradation of Jews and New Christians in Iberia in the century before the final expulsion and forced [End Page 352] conversions of the former during the 1490s.6 Likewise, several chapters of the novel A estranha nação de Rafael Mendes (The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes, 1986) by Moacyr Scliar examine from a Brazilian perspective the experience of Portuguese conversos in colonial Brazil in a way that both complements and differs from the experiences of New Christians in Spanish territories.7 The play Herejía (Heresy, 1983), by the Mexican playwright Sabina Berman, conveys the clandestinity and...

The Inquisition Tribunal in Goa: Why and for What Purpose?

Abstract This article aims to explain the process which led to the founding of the Inquisition tribunal in Goa, the first Holy Office tribunal to be created outside Europe. Following a review of previous historiographical studies which have analyzed this question, it examines the mechanisms for Christianization/confessionalization deployed by the Iberian monarchs in Asia and America from a global and comparative perspective, based on a rereading and reinterpretation of Inquisition documents and correspondence from various agents who were involved in the process. It presents an explanation that emphasizes the existence of a cluster of causalities which created a dense network of convergent forces that favored the founding of an Inquisition tribunal in Asia in 1560.

Um humanista “além-fronteiras”: um estudo sobre Damião de Góis

Desejamos, neste artigo, realizar um exercício de interpretação de um pequeno conjunto de textos do humanista português – Damião de Góis (1504-1572) – tendo em vista a trajetória política do Reino de Portugal no século XVI. Processado pelo Tribunal da Inquisição, Góis pareceu ter deixado registrado, em seus textos e no processo, algumas perspectivas e visões de mundo que dialogam com Erasmo de Roterdã e com um Humanismo do Norte. Por sua vez, sua trajetória de vida e algumas anotações feitas pelos inquisidores no processo podem permitir lançar algumas hipóteses sobre como a ortodoxia católica rompeu com o Humanismo ao longo do XVI. Um cristianismo interno e tolerante – mais ligado à Devotio Moderna – foi transformado em luteranismo e, depois, perseguido.

Um humanista “além-fronteiras”: um estudo sobre Damião de Góis

Desejamos, neste artigo, realizar um exercício de interpretação de um pequeno conjunto de textos do humanista português – Damião de Góis (1504-1572) – tendo em vista a trajetória política do Reino de Portugal no século XVI. Processado pelo Tribunal da Inquisição, Góis pareceu ter deixado registrado, em seus textos e no processo, algumas perspectivas e visões de mundo que dialogam com Erasmo de Roterdã e com um Humanismo do Norte. Por sua vez, sua trajetória de vida e algumas anotações feitas pelos inquisidores no processo podem permitir lançar algumas hipóteses sobre como a ortodoxia católica rompeu com o Humanismo ao longo do XVI. Um cristianismo interno e tolerante – mais ligado à Devotio Moderna – foi transformado em luteranismo e, depois, perseguido.

Thomas O’Connor. Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition: Migrants, Converts, and Brokers in Early Modern Iberia.

The primary objective of Thomas O’Connor’s study is to reveal the spectrum of interactions between early modern Irish people and Iberian Inquisition tribunals, from the middle of the sixteenth through the end of the eighteenth centuries. The resulting narrative also suggests the extent of the Irish presence in the Iberian world and its fluctuation over time. Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition: Migrants, Converts, and Brokers in Early Modern Iberia thus adds to a key historiographical trend, underlining the importance of mobility in constructing early modern societies. In so doing, the book enriches our understanding of how new patterns of migration intersected with the religious transformations of the Age of Reformations; it complements current large-scale rethinking of the dynamics of early modern European history, such as that proposed in Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (2015). O’Connor also proposes that studying Irish migrants affords alternate vantage points from which to view Anglo-Iberian relations; he contends that the ability of Iberian societies to absorb potentially rebellious Irish Catholics did far more to stabilize the English crown than to challenge it, despite persisting rhetoric to the contrary.

Después de Lepanto: corsarios turcos y berberiscos en las costas de Galicia en el siglo XVII

Después de la victoria sobre los moriscos y del éxito de la batalla de Lepanto, cristianos y musulmanes continuaron enfrentándose en el mar. En el siglo XVII, los corsarios turco-berberiscos, entre los que se incluían moriscos expulsados de España y un buen número de renegados cristianos, lograron extender sus actividades corsarias hacia el océano Atlántico gracias a la adaptación del modelo de barcos construidos y armados a la europea. En 1617 los corsarios turco-berberiscos iniciaron sus ataques a Galicia con el asalto a la ría de Vigo y el saqueo y quema de Cangas, amenazando a lo largo de todo el siglo de forma constante al comercio marítimo y a las poblaciones costeras, cautivando a sus naturales y perjudicando las faenas pesqueras. Hacia 1621 surgió un corsarismo gallego especialmente dirigido contra ellos y contra los holandeses, iniciándose la construcción de una “Escuadra de Galicia”, que no pudo cumplir sus objetivos. Por otra parte, muchos cristianos cautivos se convirtieron al Islam con la esperanza de un mejor trato y fortuna. Muchos de estos renegados tuvieron la oportunidad de enrolarse como corsarios y de poder huir y volver a la cristiandad, pero, por su condición de apostatas, antes de conseguir su plena reincorporación a la sociedad cristiana debían presentarse ante los tribunales de la Inquisición para ser absueltos. En el siglo XVIII, el corso turco-berberisco inició su declive, quedando anuladas sus bases y actividades predatorias en el siglo XIX con el establecimiento de protectorados europeos en el norte de África y la retirada del Imperio Turco del Mediterráneo occidental.
 
 [gl] Despois da vitoria sobre os mouriscos e do éxito da batalla de Lepanto, cristiáns e musulmáns continuaron enfrontándose no mar. No século XVII, os corsarios turco-berberiscos, entre os que se incluían mouriscos expulsados de España e un bo número de renegados cristiáns, lograron estender a súas actividades corsarias cara o océano Atlántico grazas á adaptación do modelo de barcos construídos e armados á europea. En 1617 os corsarios turco-berberiscos iniciaron os seus ataques a Galicia con o asalto á ría de Vigo e o saqueo e queima de Cangas, ameazando ao longo de todo o século de forma constante o comercio marítimo e as poboacións costeiras, cativando aos naturais e prexudicando as faenas da pesca Cara o ano 1621 xurdiu un corsarismo galego especialmente dirixido contra eles e os holandeses, iniciándose a construción dunha “Escuadra de Galicia”, que non puido cumprir os seus obxectivos. Por outra banda, moitos cristiáns cativados convertéronse ao Islam coa esperanza dun mellor trato e fortuna. Moitos destes renegados tiveron a oportunidade de enrolarse como corsarios e de poder fuxir e volver á cristiandade, pero, pola súa condición de apostatas, antes de conseguir a súa plena reincorporación á sociedade cristiá debían presentarse ante os tribunais da Inquisición para ser absoltos. No século XVIII, o corso turco-berberisco iniciou o seu declive, quedando anuladas as súas bases e actividades predatorias no século XIX con o establecemento de protectorados europeos no norte de África e a retirada do Imperio Turco do Mediterráneo occidental.

Family Rupture among Conversos and the Inquisition Tribunal in 1640s New Spain

Family Rupture among Conversos and the Inquisition Tribunal in 1640s New Spain

Family Rupture amongConversosand the Inquisition Tribunal in 1640s New Spain

This article examines the lives of two Portuguese conversos, Gaspar Robles and Francisco Home, a nephew and his uncle, both tried by the Inquisition tribunal in seventeenth-century colonial Mexico during the decade leading up to the Gran auto de fe of 1649. However, their trajectories were vastly different. Gaspar Robles voluntarily approached the Inquisition tribunal confessing his own and his family's secret Jewish practices. He incriminated his father, his three uncles, and many other acquaintances who formed part of the converso community in New Spain precipitating the mass prosecutions of many in the converso community. In contrast, his uncle Francisco Home was also arrested soon after Gaspar's confession. He was tried and tortured, and he eventually confessed to his own crypto-Judaism. However, he protected some in the converso community in sharp contrast with his nephew's voluntary confession. Through close examination, this article explores the role of individual and community identity among conversos in New Spain to explain why the nephew confessed to the tribunal sealing the fate of his immediate family and that of a whole community. It argues that in cases such as that of Gaspar Robles familial ties proved more a liability than a protection and the final outcome was contingent on a combination of religious and ethnic identity, the process of migration, and individual circumstances.

‘Música Para Los Reconciliados’: Music, Emotion, and Inquisitorial ‘Autos De Fe’ in early Modern Hispanic Cities

The autos de Je organized by the Spanish Inquisition tribunals were urban rituals in which music was deeply integrated. Music played a primordial role in every stage of the event: the proclamation of the day for the ceremony; the procession of the emblem of the Inquisition; the processions of penitents and Inquisition familiars; the religious ceremonies celebrated before and during the auto itself; and the reconciliation of the penitents with the Catholic faith. This article presents the results of an analysis of the musical references found in written accounts of the autos and in other documents related to ceremonies held in several cities in Spain and Latin America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The research reveals who contributed to the music performed at the autos and how members of the public who attended participated in music-making; it affords a glimpse of the musical genres represented; and it shows how music contributed to the evocation of the wide range of emotions experienced by those attending, and thereby to the exaltation of Catholic devotion.

The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820: a documentary history

The Inquisition! Just the word itself evokes, to the modern reader, endless images of torment, violence, corruption, and intolerance committed in the name of Catholic orthodoxy and societal conformity. But what do most people actually know about the Inquisition, its ministers, its procedures? This systematic, comprehensive look at one of the most important Inquisition tribunals in the New World reveals a surprisingly diverse panorama of actors, events, and ideas that came into contact and conflict in the central arena of religious faith. Edited and annotated by John F. Chuchiak IV, this collection of previously untranslated and unpublished documents from the Holy Office of the Inquisition in New Spain provides a clear understanding of how the Inquisition originated, evolved, and functioned in the colonial Spanish territories of Mexico and northern Central America. The three sections of documents lay out the laws and regulations of the Inquisition, follow examples of its day-to-day operations and procedures, and detail select trial proceedings. Chuchiak's opening chapter and brief section introductions provide the social, historical, political, and religious background necessary to comprehend the complex and generally misunderstood institutions of the Inquisition and the effect it has had on societal development in modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Featuring fifty-eight newly translated documents, meticulous annotations, and trenchant contextual analysis, this documentary history is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to understand the Inquisition in general and its nearly three-hundred-year reign in the New World in particular.

The invisible war: indigenous devotions, discipline, and dissent in colonial Mexico

After the conquest of Mexico, colonial authorities attempted to enforce Christian beliefs among indigenous peoples-a project they envisioned as spiritual warfare. The Invisible War assesses this immense but dislocated project by examining all known efforts in Central Mexico to obliterate native devotions of Mesoamerican origin between the 1530s and the late eighteenth century. The author's innovative interpretation of these efforts is punctuated by three events: the creation of an Inquisition tribunal in Mexico in 1571; the native rebellion of Tehuantepec in 1660; and the emergence of eerily modern strategies for isolating idolaters, teaching Spanish to natives, and obtaining medical proof of sorcery from the 1720s onwards. Rather than depicting native devotions solely from the viewpoint of their colonial codifiers, this book rescues indigenous perspectives on their own beliefs. This is achieved by an analysis of previously unknown or rare ritual texts that circulated in secrecy in Nahua and Zapotec communities through an astute appropriation of European literacy. Tavarez contends that native responses gave rise to a colonial archipelago of faith in which local cosmologies merged insights from Mesoamerican and European beliefs. In the end, idolatry eradication inspired distinct reactions: while Nahua responses focused on epistemological dissent against Christianity, Zapotec strategies privileged confrontations in defense of native cosmologies.

Sexuality, Witchcraft, and Honor in Colonial Spanish America

Scholarship on colonial Spanish American sexuality has focused on the literary discourse of honor, institutional regulation, and imperial control. Historians use sources such as marriage documentation and cases that came before criminal courts or inquisition tribunals, to make conclusions relating sexuality to conquest and colonial race and gender hierarchies. Only a few scholars have explored the Spanish American experience of sexual desire and pleasure.

The Tribunal de las Aguas: A Minor Jurisprudence, Not Jurisprudentially Minor

This Article examines Spain’s Tribunal de las Aguas de Valencia as a minor jurisprudence, a unique form of justice, and transparent and communal due process. I couch my study in the history of the court and contrast it with the Inquisition tribunal that shared its geographic jurisdiction. I argue the Tribunal exemplifies Goodrich’s version of a minor jurisprudence, but for the Tribunal’s ability to survive monarchical control and remain true to its community.

Who is Afraid of the Spanish Inquisition? Endogamy and Culture Development Among Chiloe Encomenderos and Catholic Namesakes of Persecution Victims

Almost two centuries after the final demise of the Spanish Inquisition, its effects may still be present. Fear of the Inquisition may have affected endogamy patterns and other cultural attitudes of Catholic families in Chiloe Island in Southern Chile. More generally, the same fear may have eventually influenced the development of Chilean national culture. The article looks at several groups of people with Spanish surnames, from different historical periods. In particular, it explores colonial family trees, partly formed by Chiloe encomenderos and Catholic namesakes of Inquisition victims. Incidences of possibly Jewish Spanish surnames, and the different “crimes” investigated by the Inquisition tribunal in Lima, are examined. A new, short list of those most exposed to harassment and intimidation by the Inquisition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is put together. In its light, the article discusses the evolution of family trees, generation after generation.