Zumarraga and the Mexican Inquisition, 1536-1543

Zumarraga and the Mexican Inquisition, 1536-1543

Author: Richard E. Greenleaf

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2018-12-01

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1789124778

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the inquisitorial activities of Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga, first Bishop and Archbishop of Mexico, 1528-1548. Zumárraga served as Apostolic Inquisitor in the bishopric of Mexico from 1536 to 1542, when he was superseded in that office by the Visitor General, Francisco Tello de Sandoval, largely because he had relaxed Don Carlos, the cacique of Texcoco, to the secular arm for burning, an act regarded as rash by the authorities in Spain. Throughout this essay an attempt is made to relate the Inquisition to the political and intellectual life of early sixteenth-century Mexico. Zumárraga is pictured as the defender of orthodoxy and the stabilizer of the spiritual conquest in Mexico. The relationship of the individual and of society collectively with the Holy Office of the Inquisition is stressed. With the exception of background materials, this study is based entirely upon primary sources, trial records which for the most part have lain unstudied since the sixteenth century. In all, two years of research in the Ramo de la Inquisición of the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City were consumed in ferreting out these materials. Subsidiary investigations in other sections of the Mexican archives were made in order to place the Inquisition materials in their proper perspective.—Richard E. Greenleaf


Death by Effigy

Death by Effigy

Author: Luis R. Corteguera

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-09-05

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 081220705X

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On July 21, 1578, the Mexican town of Tecamachalco awoke to news of a scandal. A doll-like effigy hung from the door of the town's church. Its two-faced head had black chicken feathers instead of hair. Each mouth had a tongue sewn onto it, one with a forked end, the other with a gag tied around it. Signs and symbols adorned the effigy, including a sambenito, the garment that the Inquisition imposed on heretics. Below the effigy lay a pile of firewood. Taken together, the effigy, signs, and symbols conveyed a deadly message: the victim of the scandal was a Jew who should burn at the stake. Over the course of four years, inquisitors conducted nine trials and interrogated dozens of witnesses, whose testimonials revealed a vivid portrait of friendship, love, hatred, and the power of rumor in a Mexican colonial town. A story of dishonor and revenge, Death by Effigy also reveals the power of the Inquisition's symbols, their susceptibility to theft and misuse, and the terrible consequences of doing so in the New World. Recently established and anxious to assert its authority, the Mexican Inquisition relentlessly pursued the perpetrators. Lying, forgery, defamation, rape, theft, and physical aggression did not concern the Inquisition as much as the misuse of the Holy Office's name, whose political mission required defending its symbols. Drawing on inquisitorial papers from the Mexican Inquisition's archive, Luis R. Corteguera weaves a rich narrative that leads readers into a world vastly different from our own, one in which symbols were as powerful as the sword.


The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America

The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America

Author: Virginia Garrard-Burnett

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-04-11

Total Pages: 995

ISBN-13: 1316495280

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The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America covers religious history in Latin America from pre-Conquest times until the present. This publication is important; first, because of the historical and contemporary centrality of religion in the life of Latin America; second, for the rapid process of religious change which the region is undergoing; and third, for the region's religious distinctiveness in global comparative terms, which contributes to its importance for debates over religion, globalization, and modernity. Reflecting recent currents of scholarship, this volume addresses the breadth of Latin American religion, including religions of the African diaspora, indigenous spiritual expressions, non-Christian traditions, new religious movements, alternative spiritualities, and secularizing tendencies.


Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition

Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition

Author: Thomas O'Connor

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1137465905

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This book explores the activities of early modern Irish migrants in Spain, particularly their rather surprising association with the Spanish Inquisition. Pushed from home by political, economic and religious instability, and attracted to Spain by the wealth and opportunities of its burgeoning economy and empire, the incoming Irish fell prey to the Spanish Inquisition. For the inquisitors, the Irish, as vassals of Elizabeth I, were initially viewed as a heretical threat and suffered prosecution for Protestant heresy. However, for most Irish migrants, their dual status as English vassals and loyal Catholics permitted them to adapt quickly to provide brokerage and intermediary services to the Spanish state, mediating informally between it and Protestant jurisdictions, especially England. The Irish were particularly successful in forging an association with the Inquisition to convert incoming Protestant soldiers, merchants and operatives for useful service in Catholic Spain. As both victims and agents of the Inquisition, the Irish emerge as a versatile and complex migrant group. Their activities complicate our view of early modern migration and raise questions about the role of migrant groups and their foreign networks in the core historical narratives of Ireland, Spain and England, and in the history of their connections. Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition throws new light on how the Inquisition worked, not only as an organ of doctrinal police, but also in its unexpected role as a cross-creedal instrument of conversion and assimilation.


The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Conversos

The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Conversos

Author: Marie-Theresa Hernández

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2014-07-15

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 081357417X

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Hidden lives, hidden history, and hidden manuscripts. In The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Conversos, Marie-Theresa Hernández unmasks the secret lives of conversos and judaizantes and their likely influence on the Catholic Church in the New World. The terms converso and judaizante are often used for descendants of Spanish Jews (the Sephardi, or Sefarditas as they are sometimes called), who converted under duress to Christianity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There are few, if any, archival documents that prove the existence of judaizantes after the Spanish expulsion of the Jews in 1492 and the Portuguese expulsion in 1497, as it is unlikely that a secret Jew in sixteenth-century Spain would have documented his allegiance to the Law of Moses, thereby providing evidence for the Inquisition. On a Da Vinci Code – style quest, Hernández persisted in hunting for a trove of forgotten manuscripts at the New York Public Library. These documents, once unearthed, describe the Jewish/Christian religious beliefs of an early nineteenth-century Catholic priest in Mexico City, focusing on the relationship between the Virgin of Guadalupe and Judaism. With this discovery in hand, the author traces the cult of Guadalupe backwards to its fourteenth-century Spanish origins. The trail from that point forward can then be followed to its interface with early modern conversos and their descendants at the highest levels of the Church and the monarchy in Spain and Colonial Mexico. She describes key players who were somehow immune to the dangers of the Inquisition and who were allowed the freedom to display, albeit in a camouflaged manner, vestiges of their family's Jewish identity. By exploring the narratives produced by these individuals, Hernández reveals the existence of those conversos and judaizantes who did not return to the “covenantal bond of rabbinic law,” who did not publicly identify themselves as Jews, and who continued to exhibit in their influential writings a covert allegiance and longing for a Jewish past. This is a spellbinding and controversial story that offers a fresh perspective on the origins and history of conversos.


Cultural Encounters

Cultural Encounters

Author: Mary Elizabeth Perry

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2024-07-26

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0520414284

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More than just an expression of religious authority or an instrument of social control, the Inquisition was an arena where cultures met and clashed on both shores of the Atlantic. This pioneering volume examines how cultural identities were maintained despite oppression. Persecuted groups were able to survive the Inquisition by means of diverse strategies—whether Christianized Jews in Spain preserving their experiences in literature, or native American folk healers practicing medical care. These investigations of social resistance and cultural persistence will reinforce the cultural significance of the Inquisition. Contributors: Jaime Contreras, Anne J. Cruz, Jesús M. De Bujanda, Richard E. Greenleaf, Stephen Haliczer, Stanley M. Hordes, Richard L. Kagan, J. Jorge Klor de Alva, Moshe Lazar, Angus I. K. MacKay, Geraldine McKendrick, Roberto Moreno de los Arcos, Mary Elizabeth Perry, Noemí Quezada, María Helena Sanchez Ortega, Joseph H. Silverman This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.


Embracing Muslims in a Catholic Land: Rethinking the Genesis of Islām in Mexico

Embracing Muslims in a Catholic Land: Rethinking the Genesis of Islām in Mexico

Author: Jonathan Benzion

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-02-28

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 9004510311

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This work is an academic pursuit that aims to produce innovative scholarly general interest that explores, through a fresh perspective and from a historical approach and a multidisciplinary angle, an understudied subject of Colonial and Early Independent Mexico’s History: Islam.


Anthology of Religious Poetry from the Mexican Inquisition Trials of 16th-Century CryptoJews

Anthology of Religious Poetry from the Mexican Inquisition Trials of 16th-Century CryptoJews

Author: Mark A. Schneegurt

Publisher: OpenCharm LLC

Published: 2020-12-08

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13:

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Complete Collection of Poetry and Prayers from the Carvajal Clan of Jews in Colonial Mexico City Presented in Spanish with Full English Translation Jewish Martyrs – Burned at the Stake for the Laws of Moses All of the Poetry from the Original Inquisition Trial Transcripts of Luis de Carvajal, el Mozo Leonor de Andrada Isabel Rodríguez Justa Mendez Francesca de Carvajal Manuel de Lucena and Leonor de Cáceres With excerpts from the trials of Sebastián Rodríguez, Lic. Manuel López de Morales, Francisco López Blandón, and others. Cantico 6 from Leonor de Carvajal Cuan suave cossa es deleytossa muy mas que nayde save ymaginar sequir aquella via muy gloriossa por donde Dios nos manda caminar toda la ley de Dios es muy sabrossa y aquel que la ossare blasfemar blasfemados sera en aquella vida a donde no ay tiempo cierto ni medida... How pleasant it is, how delightful, much more than anybody knows to imagine to follow this very glorious path whereby God commands us to walk; the whole law of God is very pleasant, and he who dares to blaspheme, cursed will they be in that life where there is no certain time nor measure... Keeping Judaism Alive After 100 Years in Exile A century after being expelled from Portugal, cryptoJews in Mexico, false converts to Christianity, could not speak of their beliefs for fear of becoming embroiled in the imprisonment, torture, and death in flames that characterized the Inquisition. Without written texts, the Jewish liturgy lost, clans of cryptoJews created a unique body of religious poetry, connecting them to the Laws of Moses, seeking redemption from sin, or hoping for an escape from their embittered lives. The Carvajal clan was led by Luis el Mozo, an alumbrado, a mystic, and his Judaizing sisters. Once discovered to be secretly practicing Judaism, years of suffering at the hands of the Inquisitors were meticulously recorded in the transcripts of their long demeaning trials. The Carvajal's friends, spouses, children and grandchildren were implicated as Judaizers, with many being reconciled by the Church to secular authorities to be burned alive at massive public ceremonies. The burning of Luis and his sisters was the main attraction for cheering crowds at the auto de fé of 1596 in Mexico City. The cruelty of the Inquisitors was matched by their attention to legal detail and testimonies made at trial. Buried within thousands of pages of transcripts, hiding in library special collections of rare books around the world are the only remnants of the religious poetry that sustained cryptoJews hiding in Mexico. Anthology uncovers these hidden treasures! Keeping Judaism Alive Today, 400 Years Later There is intrinsic historical value in preserving this richest cultural remnant of a Jewish sect from the risk and obscurity of single-copy documents in library special collections. The poems are moving and beautiful, depicting a deep faith in the Lord and a constant striving to live more virtuously to gain His favor. Poems from the tongues of Jewish martyrs, that gave up everything, including their lives, withstanding torture and years of imprisonment, but refusing to abandon the Laws of Moses.


Genealogical Fictions

Genealogical Fictions

Author: María Elena Martínez

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 0804756481

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Genealogical Fictions examines how the state, church, Inquisition, and other institutions in colonial Mexico used the Spanish notion of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) over time and how the concept's enduring religious, genealogical, and gendered meanings came to shape the region's patriotic and racial ideologies.