Inquisitorial inquiries
Subtitle: brief lives of secret Jews and other heretics
By: edited and translated by Richard L. Kagan and Abigail Dyer
Edition: 2nd ed.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Baltimore, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 228
ISBN-13: 9781421403403; 9781421401966
Subjects: Inquisition; Jews; Persecutions; Marranos; Sephardim; Ethnic relations; Sources; Trials (Heresy); Biography
Description: "On the first day of Francisco de San Antonio's trial before the Spanish Inquisition in Toledo in 1625, his interrogators asked him about his parentage. His real name, he stated, was Abram Rubén, and he had been born in Fez of Jewish parents. How then, Inquisitors wanted to know, had he become a Christian convert? Why had a Hebrew alphabet been found in his possession? And what was his business at the Court in Madrid? 'He was asked,' according to his dossier, 'for the story of his life.' His response, more than ten folios long, is one of the many involuntary autobiographies created by the logic of the Inquisition that today provide rich insights into both the personal lives of the persecuted and the social, cultural, and political realities of the age.  In the first edition of Inquisitorial Inquiries, Richard L. Kagan and Abigail Dyer collected, translated, and annotated six of these autobiographies from a diverse group of prisoners. Now they add the fascinating life story of another victim of the Inquisition: Esteban Jamete, a French sculptor accused of being a Protestant. Each of the autobiographies has been selected to represent a particular political or social issue, while at the same time raising more intimate questions about the religious, sexual, political, or national identities of the prisoners. Among them are a politically incendiary prophet, a self-proclaimed hermaphrodite, and a morisco, an Islamic convert to Catholicism."--Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Renegade Jew : Luis de la Ysla; title: A Protestant threat? Esteban Jamete; title: Sexuality and the marriage sacrament : Elena/Eleno de Céspedes; title: Miguel de Piedrola : the "soldier-prophet"; title: The price of conversion : Francisco de San Antonio and Mariana de los Reyes; title: A captive's tale : Diego Díaz; title: Keeping the faith : Doña Blanca Méndez de Rivera.