Through Cracks in the Wall

Modern Inquisitions and New Christian Letrados in the Iberian Atlantic World
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-90-04-17920-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 19, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 549 g

Reihe: The Atlantic World

Recent comparative, interdisciplinary scholarship has underscored the Inquisition’s function in the imperial and colonial Iberian world, particularly in relation to the development of modernity. This book illustrates and enhances these debates on the Inquisition’s relationship to imperialism, colonialism, and modernity through specific case studies of New Christians who became the target of the Inquisition. Drawing on research in the archives of the Spanish and the Portuguese Inquisition in different parts of the Iberian Atlantic World, it analyzes literary writings and inquisitorial testimonies produced by individuals of Jewish heritage who lived in the Iberian Atlantic world during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and brings to light the direct and mediated discourse produced by New Christians, revealing the still veiled contributions of an important but understudied ethnic and social group.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Costigan, Lúcia Helena

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Portugal, Portuguese America and New Christians: A Missing Link in Iberian and Colonial Latin American Studies
I. The Modern Inquisition in Portugal: A Spanish Imposition
II. New Christian letrados and the Inquisition in the Spanish and Portuguese Americas

1. Luis de Carvajal, the Younger, and the Inquisition in New Spain Under Philip II
I. From Victim of the Holy Office to Transformed Subject
II. Carvajal’s Stand and Mediated Voice in the First Trial Proceeding
III. Self-Fashioning and Public Voice through Literary Discourse
IV. Carvajal’s Second Trial
V. Carvajal’s Letters and Testamento

2. Bento Teixeira: A New Christian Caught by the First Visit of the Inquisition to Brazil
I. From Poet and School Teacher to Prisoner of the Holy Office
II. In the Cells of the Lisbon Inquisition
III. Bento Teixeira’s Prosopopéia: Text and Context

3. Ambivalent Acts of the Inquisition toward New Christians in the Seventeenth-Century Iberian Domains
I. Spanish Conversos and Portuguese cristãos-novos in Seventeenth-Century Portuguese America and the Spanish American Colonies
II. Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão and his Diálogos das grandezas do Brasil
III. Dawn and Dusk of Brazil as Terra da Promissão
IV. Manuel Beckman and the Levante do Maranhão

4. The Inquisition and Eighteenth-Century Portugal: The Case of Antônio José da Silva
I. Framing Antônio José da Silva’s Case
II. Glimpses of Antônio José da Silva’s life through his First Trial
III. Embracing Literature and Theater after His First Trial
IV. From Abjuration to Second Incarceration
V. Resistance Through Writing
VI. In Search of Possible Answers

Afterword

Manuscript Sources
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Lúcia Helena Costigan, Ph.D. (1988) in Spanish, University of Pittsburgh, is Associate Professor of Spanish and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Cultures at the Ohio State University. She has published extensively on Colonial Latin American Literatures, and on Early Modern Luso-Brazilian and Peninsular literatures and cultures.