W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2010 Honor, Gender and the Law: Defense Strategies during the Spanish Inquisition, 1526-1532 Katy Iverson College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and the Religion Law Commons Recommended Citation Iverson, Katy, "Honor, Gender and the Law: Defense Strategies during the Spanish Inquisition, 1526-1532" (2010). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects.21220/s2-aqg2-4967 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact scholarworks@wm.
LIBRARY College of William and Mary Honor, Gender and the Law: Defense Strategies during the Spanish Inquisition, 1526-1532 Katy Iverson Claremont, CA Bachelor of Arts, Pitzer College, 2007 A Thesis presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of History The College of William and Mary May, 2010 U8SAJ3Y Coileg© of William an d Mary APPROVAL PAGE This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Katy Iverson Approved by the Committee, April, 2010 _ Committee ChairC^ Professor LuAnn Homza, History The College of William and Mary ^ L J2 jkS L - j A ssociate Professor Philip Daileader, History The College of William and Mary Professor Kris Lane, History The College of William and Mary ABSTRACT PAGE In the last forty years the view of the Spanish Inquisition a s tyrannical and cruel has been overturned in favor of a more nuanced outlook. With the fall of the Black Legend historians have discovered that the Inquisition employed a functioning legal process that required the accused to mount a defense. In exploring the Inquisition trials of known alum brados Antonio de M edrano and Marfa de Cazalla, I have surveyed several of the possible defense tactics available to those who faced the Spanish tribunals. W hat follows is not a narration of th ese two trials, but rather an analysis of excerpts from each.
My research has revealed that defense tactics could take many forms: defendants were willing to challenge the inquisitorial system , utilize their familiarity with the prevailing legal culture and their knowledge of inquisitorial procedure, a s well a s exploit contem porary ideas about the place of women in society in order to secure their freedom. It is therefore no longer appropriate to assu m e that all inquisition defendants were victims of a rigid inquisitorial process a s all were given the opportunity to defend them selves, and som e were quite resourceful in the strategies they employed. I dedicate my master’s thesis to my husband, Jason, whose sacrifices made this project possible. Acknowledgements It is impossible to survive graduate school without the support of friends and loved ones, so I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge those who have been instrumental in seeing me through this era.
First in all things are my parents, William and Stacy, whose love and support have seen me through eight years of higher education. I owe a debit of gratitude to my mom for her willingness to proofread almost every paper I’ve written in those eight years; the tips and insights she provided have made me the writer I am today. I happily thank all of the friends I made while at William and Mary, the fun and memories we shared outside the classroom helped me maintain my sanity throughout the research and writing process. My CMA cohorters, who have proved to be great classmates and even better friends.
Those of us who bonded via Facebook status while trying to write a historiography paper for providing much needed humor during one of the most stressful nights of our lives. The Shakers for “The Pyramid of Historical Awesomeness” and endless hours of cocktail and ginger ale filled fun. My WNTW gals, our immediate bond over a mutual love for dessert and cynicism gave me something to look forward to on Friday nights. And my loves from the Reves Center for International Studies who made me look forward to going to ‘work’ and provided hours of much needed distracting conversation.
I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee, Dr. Philip Daileader and Dr. As if their willingness to be part of this project were not enough, the suggestions they offered proved thought-provoking and informative - 1 could not have asked for more. I am especially grateful to my adviser, Dr.
Lu Ann Homza, who encouraged me to pursue the topic of this thesis. Over the past two years her guidance has pushed me to be a better scholar; if I have succeeded in this endeavor, it is because of her. For this, and for so many other reasons, I consider myself lucky to have come under her tutelage. Lastly, I would like to thank my husband, Jason.
None of this would have been possible without his love and encouragement, which is why I dedicate my thesis to him. 1 It was a twist of fate that caused the Toledo tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition to uncover secret correspondence between its prisoners. In 1533 the tribunal’s despensero came across a package wrapped in unusually white paper. Believing he held something suspicious, he inspected the paper in front of live coals and noticed that letters began to appear.
When a second similar discovery was made a few days later, he reported his findings to the tribunal’s inquisitors. The ensuing investigation revealed that one of the tribunal’s prisoners had been communicating with his brother on the outside and had, in turn, relayed the information he received to his associates within the prison’s walls.1 Given the air of secrecy surrounding the Inquisition, in which defendants swore an oath not to discuss their trials and were barred from communicating with one another, the inquisitors began a massive investigation to uncover the depths of this deception. While this breech in the Inquisition’s code of secrecy was alarming, it was not the only instance of prisoner subterfuge. The Toledo tribunal was confronted by covert communication within its walls on at least two other occasions.
In 1529 a Franciscan friar was imprisoned for publicly accusing the Inquisitor-General of committing a sin in arresting one of his closest spiritual advisers. This friar was held in Toledo at the same time as his adviser, and it was rumored that the two visited one another through holes in the prison’s walls. Unfortunately, there is no record of their supposed interactions and we therefore do not know the extent to which they may have counseled one another. Perhaps more alarming to inquisitors was the violation of every rule banning contact between prisoners, 1 For the full narrative of these events please see Lu Ann Homza, Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance (Baltimore: The John’s Hopkins University Press, 2000), 17-22.
2 Angela Selke, El Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion: Proceso de Fr. Francisco Ortiz (1529-1532), (Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, S. Prompted by rumors of illicit communication between prisoners, a visita was ordered and the ensuing investigation uncovered corruption throughout the tribunal. It seems that a group of prisoners not only sent letters of advice to one another, but were allowed visits within the prison walls and were given special privileges by two of the inquisitors.3 These instances of prisoner subterfuge reveal that defendants were willing to do almost anything in order to obtain any information that would assist in their defense.
This meant, when possible, exploiting connections both inside and outside the prison in order to gauge how to defend themselves. The available records indicate that lists of accusations, witness lists, and general legal advice were possibly exchanged in the trials mentioned above. I would argue that if these prisoners were able to successfully strategize with other inmates, other inquisition defendants were as well. Although Hispanists are now aware that inquisitorial procedure required each defendant to mount a defense, the nature and array of available defenses have yet to be surveyed in sufficient detail.
It is with this in mind that the present study explores several of the possible defensive maneuvers available to those facing the Spanish Inquisition. In doing so I hope to add to the body of scholarship that portrays a more nuanced view of the Spanish tribunals. It is my opinion that inquisition defendants were not hapless victims of a rigid inquisitorial process; all were offered the opportunity to defend themselves, and some were quite inventive in the strategies they utilized. Although not all were successful in their defense, it speaks volumes that they even tried.
What follows is an exposition of the defense strategies utilized by two alumbrados, Antonio de Medrano and Marfa de Cazalla. These defendants were well 3 Richard Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain, (Berkeley and Los Angles: University of California Press, 1990), 140-144. 3 versed in the legal culture of their day, and their ability to call on that knowledge throughout their trials was one of the more impressive aspects of their defenses. Although Medrano and Cazalla both exploited their familiarity with legal and inquisitorial procedure to their advantage, how they applied that knowledge was just as varied as the style of defense they each utilized.
Medrano, in an attempt to establish some sort of connection with his inquisitors, argued that his status as a cleric and the vanity of the women who testified against him should have cleared him of all charges. Unable to adopt the same method, Cazalla utilized her rhetorical mastery and ability to play into sixteenth century stereotypes about women as the basis for her defense. While the approach to each defense may have been different, I would argue that the energy of their arguments were just as calculated as the distinctive styles they each utilized. The Spanish Inquisition was instituted in an era of great turmoil on the Iberian Peninsula.
The convivencia4 that was once thought to exist between Catholics, Jews, and 4 Convivencia, a Spanish word that translates to “living together” or “coexistence,” is a highly contested term in Spanish historiography. The debate began with the publication of Americo Castro’s Espaha en su historia: cristianos, m orosy judi'os, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), wherein he argued that Spanish culture resulted from the interaction of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the eighth through thirteenth centuries. This work was later challenged by Claudio Sanchez-Albomoz who, in his Espaha: un enigma historico, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1956), argued that the nature of contact between Jews, Muslims, and Christians was combative and not conducive to cultural exchanges, and that Spanish culture was either idiosyncratic or based on Roman or Gothic elements.
For an analysis of the extensive debate between these two scholars see Thomas F. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979), 6-13. Castro did not define convivencia as a peaceful existence between these three diverse groups; it has inherited this meaning from a group of historians who believe Christian Spain was tolerant of religious minorities prior to the expulsion in 1492. Norman Roth is perhaps one of the more prevalent proponents of this view, see his Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict (New York: E.
Brill, 1994), or “The Jews in Spain at the Time of Maimonides,” in Moses Maimonides and His Time Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 19, ed.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 1-20, for examples. Roth’s position is challenged by adherents of the Jerusalem school of interpretation, which argues that Judaism, since the fall of Jerusalem, has been plagued by a progression of misfortunes from that time forward.