Inquisitorial Process Research Articles

Seis cartas inéditas de fray Luis de León: en torno a la polémica sobre la Vulgata y la invitación a participar en la Nueva Imprenta Vaticana de Sixto V en Roma

One of the main objectives of the Council of Trent was to spread Catholic doctrines and fight against heresy, which had been making good use of the benefits of the printing press. With this purpose in mind, Pope Sixtus V created in 1587 a new Vatican Printing Press to bring out new editions of all kind of religious works. From this project would emerge the so-called ‘Sistine Vulgate’, which was short-lived. This Pope also proposed the names of eight scholars, all of them theologians and experts in their own language, as correctors for the press. This article analyses how one of the scholars chosen was the Spanish writer fray Luis de León, just a decade after his own inquisitorial process, motivated precisely by his public declarations about some textual errors of the old Vulgate. A fundamental resource for this article is a corpus of six unpublished autograph letters by fray Luis, which provide us with unknown information about the circumstances of the invitation to Rome and which are published here for the first time. The correspondent is Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, an Italian nobleman who was a student at the Universities of Salamanca and Alcalá de Henares, a benefactor of writers (well known because Miguel de Cervantes dedicated his first novel, La Galatea, to him), and a future cardinal and viceroy of Aragon. The correspondence of Philip II with his ambassador in Rome, the Count of Olivares, provides us with the political and economic context surrounding the debate on the new Vatican Printing Press, a project that perished with the death of Sixtus V in 1590.

Enhancing Student Learning By Using Mock Trials in Criminal Justice Courses

Lecture-oriented teaching is the principal pedagogical technique in college and university classrooms but instructors will sometimes turn to non-lecture techniques in an attempt to provide a more active learning experience. This article describes a mock trial exercise that has been used over several semesters to provide criminal justice students with an active learning experience and increase their understanding of the inquisitorial process in comparison with adversarial proceedings. We provide sufficient detail to allow interested instructors to conduct a similar exercise in their own course. Results of a multi-semester evaluation to assess student perceptions of the exercise show that students expected and found the exercise to be an enjoyable and informative classroom experience that advanced their learning.

Sorcery, Heresy, and the Authority of the Church

This paper argues that there were multiple forms of heresy implemented by the Church to control opposing ideas and knowledge in the Middle Ages. The term “heresy” shift meanings for its original conception to include all beliefs that were opposed to official Church doctrine, including magic and sorcery. The inquisitorial process was implemented as a response to the laity’s attempts to interpret Church doctrine for themselves alongside their traditional beliefs. As he concept of heresy changed, so too did the Church’s view of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. Before the inquisitorial process became widespread, magic was considered an error that could be fixed through a penitential process. By the time of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the church had decided on what constituted heretical behaviour, and who had the right to punish heretics.

Portugueses al amparo de la nobleza (la inquisición contra los vasallos del Duque de Pastrana acusados de judaísmos durante el siglo XVII)

This project is the result of a detailed study about how the justice system and the inquisitorial institution managed to penetrate the spaces belonging to the jurisdiction of the Spanish Monarchy during the seventeenth century. The duchy and the manor house of Pastrana, situated in the Alcarria district, are the subject matter of this analysis. The protagonists of the complex problem studied were the Portuguese groups who settled on the territory and the manor house of this estate during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These groups participated fully in the social, economic and political life of the estate. Their role in revitalizing and internally organizing the estate was remarkable. The accusation of Judaism against some of these Portuguese people and the inquisitorial process to which they were subjected provide a perspective on some of the fundamental aspects of this interesting topic.

The Coronial System and Determining Manner of Death in Australia -An Overview

Death investigation in Australia was initially founded on the British coronial system. Today it continues to operate under a coroner-based service with each of the individual self-governing states and territories responsible for enacting and administering their own coronial legislation. This has led to some variation within Australia; however, there is broad similarity. Deaths reported to the coroner generally include those where the cause is unknown, there are violent/unnatural circumstances, the death is as a result of an anesthetic or medical procedure, the death occurred whilst held in care/custody, or the identity of the deceased is unknown. Coroners are legally qualified individuals who are appointed to administer the Coroners' Act, but have no medical training. They are required to investigate deaths to determine who a deceased person is, as well as, how, when, where and what caused them to die. This is an inquisitorial process with the purpose of determining the circumstances of death to serve the public interest. Their findings are presented in a written report that outlines the circumstances surrounding death in an attempt to indicate whether a death was natural or unnatural (due to external factors), and in the case of unnatural deaths, to outline the intent and external factors that led to death. Hence, the “manner of death” is presented as a narrative within the coroners' findings. The coroners use information obtained during their investigations to make recommendations about public health policy, justice, and the prevention of similar deaths in the future.

Sin and Redemption: Woman’s Body, Necrophilia, and Spanish Islam

Sin and Redemption:Woman’s Body, Necrophilia, and Spanish Islam Miguel Ángel Vázquez It could have happened at some point during the late 15th century or the first part of the 16th century. It could have been anywhere in the region of Aragon. It was probably under the cover of night, illuminated only by the faint light of a candle. He could have belonged to the Mohamed Escribano family (López-Morillas, “Copistas” and “Trilingual”). The details are not very clear, but one thing is certain: the enterprise he was engaged in was at the same time pious and extremely dangerous. He was a Morisco (a Christian converso from Islam) and he was breaking the law by writing using the Arabic alphabet. But he felt it was worth the danger since the spiritual salvation of his community was at stake. He may have paused to wonder how did it all come to this? His ancestors had ruled the Peninsula (which they called Al-Andalus) for hundreds of years, and had advanced the arts and sciences. Where did they go wrong?1 The beginning of the end started soon after the fall of the Cordoban caliphate (1031) when the Christians started the series of wars called the Reconquista.2 This process culminated in 1492 with the Fall of Granada and, and in 1501, with the subsequent ultimatum given to the mudéjares of Castile and Leon: forced conversion to Christianity or expulsion.3 Those who decided to stay and convert came to be known as “Moriscos.” The conversions, however, were, for the most part, not sincere but just a way to remain on Spanish soil as the newly converted minority engaged in the practice of Islam in secrecy. As part of the clandestine activities of the Moriscos to preserve their culture, they engaged in the production of a corpus of manuscripts containing everything a person would need to know about Islam and the Morisco situation in 16th-century Spain. Since the possession of such a manuscript was grounds for an inquisitorial process, the Moriscos hid them in false floors, walls or columns, where they remained after their expulsion in 1609 and the reason why the manuscripts were able to survive until their discovery in the 19th century. To understand the impact the Moriscos had not only on the culture that surrounded them but also on our understanding of the complex culture of 16th century Spain, we must remember that the official discourse of the Christian authorities was one of homogeneity where purportedly all Spaniards spoke one language (Spanish), professed one religion (Catholicism), and were part of one culture. But the mere presence of the Moriscos in the Iberian Peninsula attempted against the actuality of that discourse.4 The Moriscos may [End Page 147] have had Christian names, but they also had Muslim names that they used in secrecy; their literature was in Spanish, but it was filled with Arabic words, phrases and calques; and they practiced Islam even though they claimed to be Christians. This notion of the “other Spain” that were the Moriscos can also be seen from a literary standpoint. Consider for instance the Moorish novels that were published during the Early Modern period of which the Abencerraje is one of its finest examples. In it, the first appearance of the Muslim protagonist, Abindarráez, seems to come right out of the Arabian nights: he is dressed with a luxurious red tunic embroidered with gold and silver threads, speaks with wonderful Spanish rhetoric, is the model of nobility—Christian nobility that is—and becomes the best friend of the Christian protagonist. But the literature that the Moriscos themselves wrote has little to do with this type of idealistic scenarios. A text like the Tafsira of the Mancebo de Arévalo (edited by María Teresa Narváez) presents the reader with a different kind of Morisco, not idealized, and very much aware of the precarious state of his community in Spain. Morisco poetry is also of note. Writers like Mohamad5 Rabadán (edited by Lasarte López) and Ibrahim Taybili, known in public as Juan Pérez (edited by Bernabé Pons), used traditional Spanish poetic forms to...

O casamento espiritual da beata Josefa do Sacramento: Análise de um processo inquisitorial do século XVIII

O artigo pretende analisar o processo inquisitorial da beata Josefa do Sacramento, irmã da Ordem Terceira do Carmo, sentenciada pelo Tribunal da Inquisição do Santo Ofício de Lisboa em 1732, sob a acusação de molinismo. Pretende-se: contextualizar o processo mencionado no campo religioso do período; analisar as relações que as irmãs terceiras beatas mantinham com seus confessores e diretores espirituais; analisar os delitos de heresia de que eram acusadas; e analisar o conjunto das práticas religiosas das beatas envolvidas, vinculando-as a modelos de santidade e à literatura mística difundida aos fiéis.

Mediating memory: recalling and recording the miracles of St Thomas Cantilupe

The manuscript containing the nine witness testimonies to the double hanging and miraculous resuscitation of William Cragh is an important site in which questions of memory and authority are negotiated. This article offers a detailed analysis of The Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 4015, together with related manuscripts recording the canonisation of St Thomas Cantilupe, to explore how inquisitorial processes were conducted and recorded, as well as the ways in which the witness depositions were re-shaped through various interventions and mediations. This close analysis raises questions about competing models of authority in the thirteenth century, revealing the complex interplay between official written record and orally transmitted memory, as well as between the emphasis on specific evidence attributed to named individuals and the continuing power of popular consensus or public ‘fama’.

No Justice Without Lawyers The Myth of an Inquisitorial Solution

The withdrawal of legal aid from most areas of civil litigation has resulted in a large increase in litigants in person, or unrepresented litigants. The volume of cases in which one or both parties have no legal representation presents the courts with two challenges; one of resources and the other of justice. A court dealing with unrepresented litigants has to devote more time and effort to the process since lay persons cannot handle litigation as efficiently as lawyers. Further, since unrepresented litigants lack the knowledge or skill necessary for the effective prosecution of their case, they are exposed to a risk of losing which is unrelated to the merits of their case; ie, a justice deficit. The paper deals with strategies that have been proposed or employed for dealing with these problems. One of the strategies involves the introduction of a more inquisitorial procedure in order to redress the justice deficit. However inquisitorial proceedings, in which the court takes over the presentation and testing of evidence, provide a poor solution to the problem. Contrary to what some assume, no modern system in Europe or elsewhere employs such inquisitorial process in civil cases. Both the common law and civilian systems embrace an adversarial model because a judge who undertakes the development of party case is bound to lose impartiality long before pronouncing judgment. Both systems recognise therefore that justice, like all other specialist services, can only be delivered by trained professionals. This is why legal representation is mandatory in civil proceeding (other than small claims) in all major European jurisdictions. If legal representation is mandatory in systems considered inquisitorial, how can an adversarial system manage without it?

Trial Process at the ECCC: The Rise and Fall of the Inquisitorial Paradigm in International Criminal Law?

The adherence to the ‘inquisitorial model’ is what distinguishes the criminal procedure in the ECCC from that in all other international and hybrid tribunals. The ECCC’s experience in the two trials concluded thus far (Cases 001 and 002/01) allows testing the suggestion, implied in the critiques of the adversarial process in the ad hoc tribunals, that the inquisitorial process may be more suitable for the investigation and prosecution of international crimes. The promise of more efficient and streamlined trials at the ECCC has not been evidently fulfilled, and the question is what this means for the future of the ‘inquisitorial’ model in international criminal procedure. The chapter first examines the ECCC’s procedural system through a comparative prism and then analyzes its trial practice in the first two cases, with a focus on trial management and modes of examining witnesses. The Cambodia Tribunal’s ‘procedural legacy’ throws empirical light on the abstract debates about the preference for either the ‘adversarial’ or the ‘inquisitorial’ approach and has implications for the contest between the two main models of procedure in the realm of international criminal justice.

Leggere nella Spagna moderna. Erudizione, religiosità e svago by Antonio Castillo Gómez (review)

Reviewed by: Leggere nella Spagna moderna. Erudizione, religiosità e svago by Antonio Castillo Gómez Linde M. Brocato Leggere nella Spagna moderna. Erudizione, religiosità e svago. Pàtron Editore, 2013 By Antonio Castillo Gómez This anthology masterfully synthesizes previously published work to provide a coherent and nuanced account of reading practices in Golden Age Spain. Castillo Gómez approaches reading, writing, and the history of texts in the traditions of Roger Chartier and histoire du livre, Armando Petrucci’s paleographic and documentary approach, and reception theory, making excellent use of an array of non-literary and non-canonical texts, both manuscript and print, their materiality and layout, and examples of early modern visual culture. He also marshals an astounding array of Inquisitorial processes to fill out this full social portrait of reading. Nor does Castillo Gómez hesitate to mine the canon for representations of non-literary reading, using Cervantes’ representations of his own and Don Quixote’s readings to frame his study, and Lope’s representations of and protestations about reading by the barely literate—indeed, Castillo Gómez shows that Cervantes had a kind of reception theory avant la lettre. While one chapter is dedicated to erudite reading, the majority are dedicated to the textual experiences of everyday people, the total horizon of texts and reading in this historical time and place. In the first chapter, “‘Dell’ampio e brillante esame.’ La lettura tra norma e trasgressione,” he makes use of early modern discourses about reading to show what “reading” meant, for both men and women, as authors and subjects of such discourses. He uses the escrutinio of Don Quixote’s library as a launching point for tracing the taxonomies and ethics of books and reading, using many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century primary texts, including treatises, popular and devotional works, correspondence, memoirs, and Inquisitorial archives, to lay out a quasi official canon, both what and how to read. This canon was aimed at preventing uncontrolled practices though there are abundant testimonies of transgressive readings; readings were divided into “good” and “bad,” and the bad were almost ritualistically characterized as “profane, dishonest, and chivalric books,” for being “lies” (fictional) and “poisonous” to the soul and to good habits, and thus harmful to vulnerable readers like women, children, and the uneducated (“gente semplice”). Readings were also prescribed according to status, so that genres generally deprecated for the vulnerable, like poetry, might be useful for powerful elites; thus “proper readings” were those texts that properly formed one’s person in virtue and social propriety according to class. Much of the focus for guiding reading is on children and women, because of the weakness of their intellects, and texts for primary education were supervised by parish priests; throughout the period, catechisms shifted the proportions of pedagogical versus moral and religious formation in favor of the later, particularly after Trent progressively eliminating profane texts from children’s reading. Finally, he details early modern anxiety about what seemed even then to be massive production of reading matter, which increased possibilities of reading among different audiences, and thus the possibility of ideas that escaped official control; hence the imposition of various layers of control, licencias to regulate production and Inquisitorial surveillance to monitor circulation. [End Page 311] The second chapter, “Leggere e annotare. La lettura erudita,” discusses learned reading. Erudite readers are habitual readers, but look for useful teachings rather than entertainment, and in few rather than many books. Castillo Gómez examines this form of private, silent intense reading evidenced in notes, both in margins and in common-place books, using several surviving manuscript commonplace books. In preaching, too, the explicit doctrine was to read a few books well, rather than many badly. For these readers, reading was tightly connected to writing, also explicit in sixteenth-century instruction for “los que son novicios en leer libros” (Castillo Gómez 44; citing Alejo Venegas, Tractado de ortographía en tres lenguas principales, 1531, c1v). Long characterized by intensive rather than extensive reading, appropriating the substance of “essential titles” by deep and repetitive interaction could also consist of underlining or otherwise marking in books themselves—hence the utility of Agostino Ramelli’s book wheel (reproduced...

Law-and-economics: why Gordon Tullock prefers Napoleon Bonaparte over the Duke of Wellington; and why he may end up on St. Helena

Most scholars in the field of law-and-economics lean to the view that the common law is efficient. Tullock, however, argues that the common law is inefficient and suggests dramatic modifications to the American legal system, transforming it from a common law system to a civil code system and abandoning the adversarial proceedings in favor of an inquisitorial process. This essay summarizes and critically evaluates the thrusts of Tullock’s 1988 article and his 1997 book, which, together direct a full-frontal attack on the Anglo-Saxon common law system.

CATCOM: A Database on Performances of Spanish Classical Theater

The research group DICAT (http://www.uv.es/dicat/index_en.html) has been working for almost twenty years on the creation of research instruments that will enhance scholars' knowledge of Early Modern Spanish theater through the use of digital tools that create new ways to combine and apply data.1 The database Diccionario biografico de actores del teatro clasico espanol (DICAT) (Ferrer Valls) was the result of work done during nearly fifteen years. The DICAT group created a database with almost five thousand entries, which document the activity of actors, actresses, heads of companies, and musicians who worked in Spanish professional theatrical companies during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We also included five hundred digitized signatures and a visual database with two hundred images and videos, together with a digitalized edition of the unpublished manuscript Confirmacion de la Cofradia de la Novena, which includes the documents and regulations related to the 1634 foundation of the actors' guild.The project CATCOM. Database of plays mentioned in theatrical documentation (1540-1700), which we are currently developing, is based on our previous experience of creating the database DICAT. It is important to point out that Spanish theatrical documentation is exceptionally abundant, especially if we compare it to other European countries of the early modern period. We find a lot of documents regarding contracts between actors and the heads of the companies; contracts with the lessors of the playhouses; contracts with municipal or with ecclesiastical authorities for religious festivities and the Corpus; receipts for performances at the royal palace; documents reporting expenditures or inventories of costumes and plays; inquisitorial processes or lawsuits that sometimes offer interesting information for the history of Spanish classical theater, etc. In these documents we can often find titles of plays, which can sometimes be difficult for researchers to track due to the vast number of plays in the Golden Age corpus. The objective of the CATCOM project is to collect, classify, and critically analyze the information on these titles, and make it available to researchers in the form of a database that will make it easier to access a calendar of performances, offer information on these performances (name of the company who performed the play, town where it took place, type of theatrical space where it was performed), locate titles and relate them to alternative titles of the same play and adaptations, and provide a current state of the question regarding their authorship. The large amount of information concerning the performance of plays in early modern Spain makes the use of digital tools especially valuable, as the database becomes an extremely useful instrument that enables researchers to connect data in ways that would otherwise be extremely difficult (or even impossible) to do. By gathering, comparing, and analyzing all this information in a single database, we can sometimes detect interesting and relevant issues that the dispersion of documents made difficult to perceive, which then allows researchers to offer a solution to these problems.On our web page we explain the methodology of the project in the section titled Projects (http://www.uv.es/dicat/catcom_en.html), and we offer a selection of our database (http://catcom.uv.es/). In short, our research focuses on two essential issues:1) Critically treating the data in order to create a digital calendar of performances.2) Identifying the titles that are mentioned in the documents with particular plays and their authors, which can present some difficulties specific to early modern Spanish theater.The documents we work with are not usually of a literary nature, but rather are legal and historical documents. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the titles that are mentioned with specific plays, which often present one or more alternative titles, or have controversial attributions. …

The operation of criminal process under Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana

The paper is divided into four larger parts. The first part is the introduction where the author briefly describes the history of born of inquisition procedure. The second part is devoted to the characteristics and the structures of the procedure. The author here shows Theresiana has all the features of a classical inquisitorial process. The process is generally divided into investigation and trial. In addition, there was a procedure for solving a so called 'racurs', that was not a legal remedy in the strict sense of the word, but an appeal for judgement reversal and amnesty. As the investigation is the central part of the process the paper devotes the most attention to this phase of the process. It analyzes the division, commencement, operation and ending of the investigation. The paper talks separately about the process of bringing the judgement, and the process based on 'racurs'. The fourth part is the conclusion where the author summarizes the characteristics of the process and the position of the accused. The paper concludes that despite important changes in the process, the position of the accused entirely reflected the spirit of feudal law and the accused remained a disempowered object of the process.

Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents, 1583-1671 (review)

Reviewed by: Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents, 1583-1671 Gonzalo Lamana Keywords John Charles, Gonzalo Lamana, Spanish colonialism, Colonial Peru, Andean Catholic Church, Andean Church Assistants, religious conversion, Literacy and Colonialism, Religious Syncretism, lettered city, Quechua Catechesis, Khipus, Idolatry in the Andes, Violence and Conversion, Extirpation of Idolatries, Legal Discourse, Dos Repúblicas Charles, John . Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents, 1583-1671. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2010. xi + 283 pp. Allies at Odds fleshes out a largely understudied yet important group of indigenous agents which specialized scholars will have to address from now on: local native church assistants in the territory of the Archbishopric of Lima, Peru. It studies cases from ecclesiastic courts filed between 1583 and 1671—dates set, respectively, by the Third Lima Provincial Ecclesiastic Council and the end of the tenure of archbishop Pedro de Villagómez, a staunch supporter of the campaigns to extirpate idolatries from indigenous communities (the equivalent of inquisitorial processes for Indians). Although their existence was known to specialized scholars, the book is the only sustained attempt at fleshing out and shedding some light on this previously largely anonymous group that played the role of intermediaries between the Spanish clergy and native peoples. While Charles often uses the same sources that studies of resistance to Spanish colonialism and religious conversion do (extirpation records), he situates his analysis in contrast to those studies' well-known frame: Indians vs. Spaniards. He recognizes that in some "extreme cases" (8) such [End Page 153] a frame characterizes religious dynamics, but argues that most often conflicts were more complex, even heterogeneous: a number of indigenous and Spanish actors allied and confronted each other along lines other than ethnoracial ones. Drawing on studies that put forward the key role of mediators in the everyday works of Spanish colonialism,1 Charles calls for the need to adopt "a single framework of analysis" (10) that does away with the model of the two repúblicas that Spanish administrators strived to enforce and specialized scholars have, either explicitly or implicitly, often adopted. The trials, he claims, show that "shared religious interests and political commitments" created "elastic ties and discontinuities between all colonial participants" (194), which short-circuited colonial boundaries as they have so often been conceived. The material the book presents is also relevant beyond the field of Andean religious studies. It offers an almost unique window into the peers and contemporaries of some of the most well-known indigenous intellectuals in the Americas, like Guaman Poma de Ayala or Pachacute Yamqui Salcamaygua. These flesh-and-bone literate Indians found throughout the Andes are also relevant to scholarly debates about writing and colonialism. Their use of literacy and legal language against their masters' ends makes clear that there was no abyss separating indigenous peoples and the "lettered city," be it in terms of the medium of expression (the oral vs. written model) or in terms of the social milieu and concepts used. The structure of Allies at Odds resembles that of social history studies in two ways. First, the interpretive effort focuses on a "broader context" (12) that is always social; although several of the fascinating quotations immediately triggered memories of The Cheese and the Worms in this reader's mind, there is no in-depth cultural analysis. Second, the study cuts a large, synchronically constructed object into largely autonomous slices; there is neither an argument that unfolds throughout the text nor diachrony. The archival material is generously present in all chapters. Chapter one centers on literacy. It shows that local Andean intermediaries (alcaldes, alguaciles, sacristanes, cantores, maestrescuelas, etc.) were highly literate and connected individuals: they owned ink, books, even libraries, and shared books with priests, and/or circulated books among themselves. Although the degree of literacy was higher on the coast than in the sierra, the overall picture challenges the "tyranny of the alphabet" (15) argument posed, implicitly or explicitly, by many specialized studies. Chapter two focuses on the language proficiency of rural priests. Using debates among Spaniards regarding the best language for religious conversion to frame [End Page 154] indigenous complaints against rural priests, Charles suggests that the...

The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors by Karen Sullivan (review)

Reviewed by: The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors by Karen Sullivan Lola Sharon Davidson Sullivan, Karen , The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011, cloth; pp. 312; R.R.P. US$45.00; ISBN 9780226781679. In this fascinating book, Karen Sullivan, whose previous books include The Interrogation of Joan of Arc and Truth and the Heretic: Crises of Knowledge in Medieval French Literature, explores the motivations of selected medieval inquisitors as revealed by their words and actions. She reminds us that, however impersonally institutions may wish to present themselves, they are composed of individuals who possess subjectivity and hence the capacity for moral choice. In focusing on the individual inquisitor rather than on the historical development and circumstances of the Inquisition's operation, Sullivan sees herself as countering the impersonal emphasis of recent historians. As a professor of literature rather than of history, Sullivan is concerned with texts and their epistemic structures. She aspires to represent, in her own words, a New Humanism. Wazo was an eleventh-century bishop of Liège who believed that every effort should be made to convert heretics to the Church. Aquinas was a thirteenth-century Dominican who believed that every effort should be made [End Page 310] to protect the Church from heretics. If we understand love as an emotion that can be manifested both as charity and as zeal, we can see Wazo motivated by a charitable concern for the salvation of the heretic and Aquinas by a zealous concern for the salvation of the faithful. This contrast, between charity and zeal, structures Sullivan's book. Sullivan begins with Bernard of Clairvaux's zealous pursuit of Paris masters and Cathar heretics. Bernard's famous rhetoric abounds in images of vicious predatory beasts (heretics, Abelard) attacking innocent, defenceless women (the Church). Bernard's flat refusal to listen to any arguments for the defence provided a model for subsequent inquisitors. Bernard was not technically an inquisitor. Dominic Guzman, the founder of the Dominicans, was. Yet Dominic emerges as profoundly desiring the conversion of heretics. It was this, after all, which led him to found the convent at Prouille and to establish his order of humble preaching brothers to lead the erring back to the Church. Conrad of Marburg would have a hard time inspiring sympathy in anyone's book. It is difficult not to applaud the overdue murder of this sadistic, homicidal maniac. Conrad regarded heretics as followers of the Devil and thought it far better to burn a hundred faithful Catholics than to allow a single heretic to escape. From a penitential perspective, everyone is guilty and guilt can only be expiated through suffering. In torturing and burning the innocent, Conrad was opening for them the path of martyrdom and hence salvation, an argument that was to provide an enduring justification for the Inquisition. With Peter of Verona, the focus is on the rhetoric of his martyrdom as it was constructed immediately following his death at the hands of an assassin hired by heretics. Himself from a heretical family, Peter was dedicated to converting his former co-religionists, but it was his passive acceptance of death that made him an exemplar of an innocent Church murderously assaulted by its enemies. In Bernard Gui, we come closest to the impersonal figure of the ideal inquisitor. A tireless administrator, Gui served for seventeen years as inquisitor of a notoriously heretical region and wrote one of the most important inquisitorial manuals. Often perceived as relatively lenient, given the large number of people he failed to burn, he is nevertheless placed by Sullivan in the zealous camp for his indifference to the heretics' welfare and his preoccupation with the performative, hence educational, nature of the inquisitorial process. Bernard Délicieux was a Franciscan who incited his countrymen to rise up against the (Dominican) inquisitors who were (unjustly?) accusing them [End Page 311] of heresy, defaming their good name, seizing their goods, and torturing and burning their bodies. Unsurprisingly, he died in a papal prison. Bernard emerges as a dedicated revolutionary, ultimately indifferent to the question of heresy. Sullivan finishes with Nicholas Eymerich, composer of an inquisitorial manual later expanded by Francis Peña. It...

"Católico, de coração!" Um Wild Geese no Santo Ofício de Lisboa

Esse artigo investiga o processo inquisitorial do católico irlandês Robert Walters que, após servir aos ingleses na ilha de São Cristóvão, no Caribe, apresentou-se ao Santo Ofício de Lisboa, em 1631. O jovem, que seguiria para lutar contra os neerlandeses no Brasil, reflete na sua trajetória as contradições inerentes aos sentimentos religiosos da sua época, submetidos aos objetivos das políticas nacionais e mercantis da Era Moderna.

La trayectoria política del cardenal Giulio Alberoni (1708-1720)

Este artículo estudia la carrera política del cardenal Giulio Alberoni. Considera sus comienzos, al servicio del duque de Parma, su papel durante la guerra de Sucesión española, su triunfo como hombre de confianza de Isabel de Farnesio y Felipe V, hasta su caída por un proceso inquisitorial, del cual se explican las causas que lo produjeron.

A Comparative Examination of the Purpose of the Criminal Justice System

A recent Gallup poll found that only 20% of Americans have a substantial amount of confidence in our criminal justice system, a 14% decline from only four years ago. Since the legitimacy of our criminal justice system depends upon the public’s confidence in that system, this is matter of great concern. As a result of my acquaintance with both our system and the inquisitorial system used in Europe and elsewhere, I am aware of the specific areas that lead the American public to distrust our process and the way in which those areas are dealt with in the inquisitorial system. As is noted in this article, a fundamental difference arises from the fact that, as one distinguished American author has noted, our adversarial system is based on the “fight theory” while the inquisitorial system is based on the “truth theory.” The article identifies each of the areas in our system that can give rise to public mistrust, such as plea bargaining, constitutional questions, selection and training of judges, prosecutorial discretion, and our trial process. I then describe the inquisitorial approach to each issue, and point out how that approach is less troublesome to the public and better promotes the ascertainment of truth. I also discuss why there is a disconnect between our judges and lawyers who value our system highly and the great majority of Americans who distrust the process. I then review what we can learn from the inquisitorial process that might assist us in restoring Americans’ faith in our criminal justice system.

The Tribunal of Zaragoza and Crypto-Judaism, 1484–1515 (review)

Reviewed by: The Tribunal of Zaragoza and Crypto-Judaism, 1484–1515 Sybil Jack D'Abrera, Anna Ysabel, The Tribunal of Zaragoza and Crypto-Judaism, 1484–1515 (Europa Sacra, 3), Turnhout, Brepols, 2008; hardback; pp. x, 242; 1 b/w line art; R.R.P. €60.00; ISBN 9782503524726. In the ongoing argument about whether the records of the tribunals of the Inquisition are reliable evidence of the beliefs and practices of the accused, Dr D'Abrera comes firmly down in favour of their acceptability, rejecting arguments that they are unusable. Her discussion of the historiographical background to the debate, from the early argument of Llorente (1811), to the recent wholesale dismissal of their utility by Benzion Netanyahu (1995), is designed to emphasize the factual nature of the surviving documentation. [End Page 201] This is the territory of anti-Semitism where the historical examination of the delicate issue of whether the new Christians, conversos, were sincere converts or deceitful practisers of Crypto-Judaism becomes peculiarly difficult. D'Abrera argues that the treatment of the New Christians must be seen in the context of a long period of plague and famine where minorities throughout Europe were blamed for the misery and natural disasters that were disrupting society. The New Christians, many of whom were prosperous and held prominent positions in Spanish society, were both envied and blamed. Although some of her claims – such as that the Dominican Inquisitors were theologians rather than canon lawyers – are unsupported, she gives a useful summary of the background and major texts, such as those of Bernard Gui and Nicholas Eymerich, that Inquisitors would draw on to conduct their trials. Although she may not have studied the Inquisitors' Manuals (p. 192), she concludes they had a reasonable working knowledge of Judaism, presumably knowledge of their daily life rather than of the more religious understanding that Jews with access to rabbinical teaching might have. Jews in Aragon before 1492 were compelled to answer the Inquisitors on an oath that they would regard as binding in return for complete anonymity. This is a critical issue in the debate over the utility of evidence that 'flouted inviolable judicial principles' (p. 65) but D'Abrera concludes that the Inquisitorial process was reasonable – the accused was permitted a defence lawyer and the Inquisitors appreciated the unreliability of confession under torture and required its ratification the following day. The notaries who recorded the proceedings were, she asserts, professionally impartial in their transcriptions. She presents a number of specific cases to demonstrate that the process gave the defendants some chance of acquittal and that the Inquisitors followed the judicial procedures laid down and did not impede 'the natural course of justice'. She then uses the questions put by the Inquisitors, both before and after 1492, regarding observance of some known Jewish rituals, to investigate the extent to which Jewish ritual practices survived in some New Christian households, and the frequency of contact between New Christians and their Jewish relatives, friends and acquaintances. Since the Sabbath ritual was in the woman's domain many of those accused were women. She emphasizes the reluctance of women to work on Saturday and the willingness of the accused of both sexes to work on Sunday. She is also concerned with the examination of how far they were able to, and did, consume only kosher meat. [End Page 202] It is understandable that the Inquisitors focused on household events since attendance at public religious places such as synagogues was not an essential part of a life of Jewish prayer and it is surprising that some New Christian men did visit synagogues rather than holding a minyan at home. Observing religious feasts, however, required knowledge of the Jewish lunar calendars and where this involved asking practising Jews it was clearly of value to the Inquisitors. Evidently longstanding prohibitions from both Christian and Jewish authorities on Christians and Jews eating together were frequently ignored, both groups regularly entertaining one another and even sleeping in one another's houses, apparently without scruple about the finer implications of such interaction. What this tells us about the religious understanding of Jews in their interaction with non-kosher Christians deserves further scrutiny, as does the...