spanish inquisition - oxford biblio

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Spanish InquisitionSara Nalle

Introduction

Since its papal authorization in 1478, the Spanish Inquisition has been controversial. A religious courtestablished at the request of the Spanish crown to punish apostate converts from Judaism, the institution over the yearscontinually reinvented itself to confront perceived threats to religious orthodoxy, social harmony, and even national security. Asa result, since its final abolition in 1834 the institution has continued to fascinate, with new scholarly and popular works on thesubject being published every year. Anyone desiring to study the Spanish Inquisition should be aware of the polemical, evensensational, nature of many works, particularly those published before 1975, when ideological partisanship continued toinfluence authors’ agendas and assumptions. For this reason, few works dating before the revolution in Inquisitorial studiesthat began in the 1970s are indexed in this bibliography.

General Overviews

Although not exclusively dedicated to the Spanish Inquisition, the best overall introduction to the institution—its history,procedures, and mythology—remains Edward Peters’s Inquisition (Peters 1988). There are many introductory works to theSpanish Inquisition for those seeking a general overview. Rawlings 2006 provides a balanced, up-to-date summary. Kamen1985 incorporates the new social history research, whereas Kamen 1997 controversially downplays the overall importance ofthe tribunals on Spanish life. Pérez 2005 relies on outdated and exclusively Spanish and French sources. Less well known butrepresentative of Spanish scholarship are Martínez Millán 2009 and García Cárcel and Moreno Martínez 2000. The Italianhistorian Stafania Pastore (Pastore 2003) looks at Spanish opinion of the Inquisition during its first one hundred years.

García Cárcel, Ricard, and Doris Moreno Martínez. Inquisición: Historia crítica. Madrid: Ediciones Temas de Hoy,2000.

Looks at the Holy Office’s history from three points of view: its overall history; its institutional underpinnings; and its victims,their numbers, and types of heresies. Without being polemical, tries to answer some of the enduring questions about theinstitution’s impact on Spanish history.

Kamen, Henry. Inquisition and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1985.

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Retains many features of Kamen’s earlier study The Spanish Inquisition (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965) butincorporates much of the new research from the 1970s and 1980s.

Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

This revision unconvincingly downplays the institution’s impact on Spanish religious, intellectual, and social life.

Martínez Millán, José. La Inquisición española. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2009.

More a very long interpretative essay than an introductory work. Martínez Millán puts aside the discussion points set byprevious generations and focuses on how various power groups around the monarchy and in the provinces used the institutionto promote their interests.

Pastore, Stefania. Il vangelo e la spada: L’inquisizione di Castiglia e suoi critici (1460–1598). Rome: Edizioni di storiae letteratura, 2003.

Pastore shows how in Castile various religious orders and the secular church from the very beginning were opposed ontheological grounds to the state-controlled Inquisition but were powerless to stop it.

Pérez, Joseph. The Spanish Inquisition. Translated by Janet Lloyd. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale UniversityPress, 2005.

A brief introduction tending toward generalizations and relying on an older bibliography of French and Spanish works.

Peters, Edward. Inquisition. New York: Free Press, 1988.

Explains the legal underpinnings, procedure, polemics, and myths surrounding the medieval and modern inquisitions.

Rawlings, Helen. The Spanish Inquisition. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.

An up-to-date, balanced starting point for students.

LAST MODIFIED: 08/26/2011

DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195399301-0150

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