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Zusatztext "[T]his comparative study in church discipline is recommended to all scholars in the field. It may be hoped that some of them will imitate its approach in their own research." ---Avshalom Laniado, Mediterranean Historical Review Informationen zum Autor Gretchen D. Starr-LeBeau is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Kentucky. Klappentext On June 11, 1485, in the pilgrimage town of Guadalupe, the Holy Office of the Inquisition executed Alonso de Paredes--a converted Jew who posed an economic and political threat to the town's powerful friars--as a heretic. Wedding engrossing narratives of Paredes and other figures with astute historical analysis, this finely wrought study reconsiders the relationship between religious identity and political authority in late-Medieval and early-modern Spain. Gretchen Starr-LeBeau concentrates on the Inquisition's handling of conversos (converted Jews and their descendants) in Guadalupe, taking religious identity to be a complex phenomenon that was constantly re-imagined and reconstructed in light of changing personal circumstances and larger events. She demonstrates that the Inquisition reified the ambiguous religious identities of conversos by defining them as devout or (more often) heretical. And she argues that political figures used this definitional power of the Inquisition to control local populations and to increase their own authority. In the Shadow of the Virgin is unique in pointing out that the power of the Inquisition came from the collective participation of witnesses, accusers, and even sometimes its victims. For the first time, it draws the connection between the malleability of religious identity and the increase in early modern political authority. It shows that, from the earliest days of the modern Spanish Inquisition, the Inquisition reflected the political struggles and collective religious and cultural anxieties of those who were drawn into participating in it. Zusammenfassung On June 11, 1485, in the pilgrimage town of Guadalupe, the Holy Office of the Inquisition executed Alonso de Paredes--a converted Jew who posed an economic and political threat to the town's powerful friars--as a heretic. Wedding engrossing narratives of Paredes and other figures with astute historical analysis, this finely wrought study reconsiders the relationship between religious identity and political authority in late-Medieval and early-modern Spain. Gretchen Starr-LeBeau concentrates on the Inquisition's handling of conversos (converted Jews and their descendants) in Guadalupe, taking religious identity to be a complex phenomenon that was constantly re-imagined and reconstructed in light of changing personal circumstances and larger events. She demonstrates that the Inquisition reified the ambiguous religious identities of conversos by defining them as devout or (more often) heretical. And she argues that political figures used this definitional power of the Inquisition to control local populations and to increase their own authority. In the Shadow of the Virgin is unique in pointing out that the power of the Inquisition came from the collective participation of witnesses, accusers, and even sometimes its victims. For the first time, it draws the connection between the malleability of religious identity and the increase in early modern political authority. It shows that, from the earliest days of the modern Spanish Inquisition, the Inquisition reflected the political struggles and collective religious and cultural anxieties of those who were drawn into participating in it. Inhaltsverzeichnis Maps and Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter One: Before the Inquisition: Guadalupe! The Virgin! and the Order of Saint Jerome 12 The Landscape and the Virgin 12 The Jeronymites 18 The Expansion of Guadalupe's Economic and Spiri...
