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- Convenors:
-
Jessica Fowler
(University of California, Davis)
Roger L. Martinez-Davila (University of Colorado)
Gretchen Starr-LeBeau (University of Kentucky)
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- Location:
- Auditório 1, Torre B, Piso 1
- Start time:
- 17 July, 2015 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel will discuss how efforts to prosecute and eliminate deviant religious praxis and belief in the Iberian Empires was a productive endeavor creating new networks of persecutors, as well as demanding the formulation of new identities for the persecuted.
Long Abstract:
This panel will illuminate two distinct ways that persecution, though generally conceived of as a destructive force, was also productive for those persecuting as well as those persecuted. In the increasingly globalized world of the Early Modern epoch the successful oppression of heresy required a network of functionaries that spanned empires and oceans. The Iberian Inquisitions proved themselves particularly adept at navigating the distances created by these expanding empires in their efforts to create and ensure a Catholic world. On the other hand, those considered likely suspects for heretical offenses, specifically various types of liminal figures, were forced to accommodate themselves to a society that was ready, at any moment, to denounce them before the Inquisition. To avoid such confrontations these figures found ways to construct their identities in dialogue with the expectations of orthodoxy while often refusing to completely forfeit their own heterodox beliefs and praxis. These novel networks and identities, borne of persecution, remind us of the generative capacity of even a force as infamous as oppression.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Lia Nunes (Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies - University of Groningen)
Paper short abstract:
Gregorio Lopez [c.1542-1596] is considered one of the enigmatic figures of New Spain religious history. Although his story would become the basis of a long beatification process in the Vatican, his life is full of obscurities when it comes to asserting him any kind of identity.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will put into question the positive side of the prosecution proposed by the panel convenors. Following the footsteps of Gregorio Lopez from Iberia to America, and highlighting the moments when he crossed the Inquisition, I will question the productivity of formulations and endeavors by the actors on New Spain religious landscape in the last decades of the 16th century. Several times denounced, sometimes examined, Gregorio Lopez was always able to escape a formal process. Besides being one of the figures that many ecclesiastical authorities (as of other spheres of power) would look for intelectual, religious, spiritual council, he inspires exemplarity at the same time he is mentioned in several of the most severe inquisitorial processes against heresy in New Spain (crypto-jews and alumbrados). Filtering the Vida written by his companion Francisco Losa (the first cleric that supposedly examined him formally) while crossing it with other historical sources, I will try to characterize the networks and identities Gregorio used to avoid formal prosecution; and also the way this was (mis)used by the Catholic and Royal authorities to shape the religious identity of New Spain later on. If we can clearly see Gregorio as a strange fruit of persecution, we cannot dismiss the blood on the leaves and blood at the root, nor forget the bitter crop where it comes from.
Jessica Fowler (University of California, Davis)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how the Spanish Inquisition created a self-referential loop in its efforts to identify and prosecute the heresy of "alumbradismo." The burden of disseminating knowledge about heresy rested with the institution whose purpose was to eradicate the products created by this knowledge.
Paper long abstract:
The Spanish Inquisition first defined the heresy they denominated "alumbradismo" in 1525 to address a group of heterodox individuals in Toledo, Spain. Within a century and a half, these heretics would appear repeatedly not only across Spain, but also in Mexico, Peru, and even the Philippines. By identifying a "sect of alumbrados," the Inquisition forced itself into the position of guaranteeing its reality, both internally and externally. Within the institution, regulated correspondence between the Supreme Council of the Inquisition and its individual tribunals assured a flow of information across an inquisitorial network that spanned the entire breadth of the empire. To instruct the laity, the Inquisition implemented pedagogical exercises, such as the reading aloud of Edicts of Faith and public punishment at the auto de fe, to ensure that the public could identify heresy in their midst. The dissemination of this information, alongside instruction to root it out, assured that both the Inquisition and the public vigilantly guarded against alumbradismo. By identifying and teaching about the heresy of alumbradismo, the Inquisition actually encouraged the identification of an ever greater number of alumbrado heretics.
Gretchen Starr-LeBeau (University of Kentucky)
Paper short abstract:
Increased prosecution of Judaizers by Inquisition tribunals in the 1630s and 1640s demonstrates increased global connections. The combined realms of Portugal and Spain communicated their desire to investigate the descendants of Jewish converts to Christianity from Iberia to the Americas and Goa.
Paper long abstract:
In the early 1630s, Iberian inquisitors received claims of Judaizing regarding the Iberian conversos (Jews converted to Christianity and their descendants) in Rouen, France. Although Spanish inquisitors were a part of the Spanish state and did not have authority to operate in another country, they took the accusations seriously. Part of the inquisitors' fears came because they saw the heretical behavior of Judaizers in Rouen as part of a larger, global community of heretics. Inquisitors envisioned a dangerous community whose members stretched around the world. By the end of the decade, Inquisition prosecutions in Peru, Spain, Portugal, Rouen, and Goa had all targeted Judaizers for particular investigation, and in the 1640s a similar series of trials occurred in Mexico and Brazil.
The reason for these persecutions varied. Some were a response to local circumstances, while others resulted from pressure by authorities in the Iberian metropole. This paper traces the entangled links between these various prosecutions, which have previously only been studied in isolation, and the local and global triggers for them. Furthermore, it highlights that these investigations responded to, and in return expanded, notions of distinct global communities of Judaizers and inquisitors, who operated across long distances. Inquisition tribunals comprised an organized if fractious group who could operate with some degree of coordination when required. Judaizers were a much less reifed group, but they, too, spread a community of compatriots across the globe. These two communities, in opposition, helped create the notable rise in Judaizing persecutions in the mid-seventeenth century.