New from Cambridge University Press:
Between Court and Confessional: The Politics of Spanish Inquisitors, by
Kimberly Lynn. A description from the Press:
Between Court and Confessional explores the lives of Spanish
inquisitors, closely examining the careers and writings of five
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inquisitors. Kimberly Lynn considers
what shaped particular inquisitors, what kinds of official experience
each accumulated, and to what ends each directed his acquired knowledge
and experience. The case studies examine the complex interplay of
careerism and ideological commitments evident in inquisitorial
activities. Whereas many studies of the Spanish Inquisition tend to
depict inquisitors as faceless and interchangeable, Lynn probes the
lives of individual inquisitors to show how inquisitors' operations in
their social, political, religious, and intellectual worlds set the
Inquisition in motion. By focusing on specific individuals, this study
explains how the theory and regulations of the Inquisition were rooted
in local conditions, particular disputes, and individual experiences.
A few blurbs:
"The Inquisitor is a figure engulfed in myth, yet about whom very little
is actually known. Kimberly Lynn sets the record straight in this
thoroughly researched and well-written book. Showcasing individual
portraits of five inquisitors from different parts of the early modern
Hispanic empire, she offers a lively and convincing composite biography
of a unique - and uniquely complex - figure poised between medieval
theocracy and modern bureaucracy." -- James S. Amelang, Universidad
Autónoma, Madrid
"This outstanding piece of scholarship
demonstrates how little the Spanish inquisitors fit the conventional
view of them as insular men in single-minded pursuit of heresy. In a
series of exacting and illuminating portraits, Kimberly Lynn reveals
them in the full range of their activities, engaged in turf battles,
jostling for position at court, moving from post to post, suffering
career setbacks and disappointments, and seeking patronage and bestowing
patronage - that is, negotiating the complex power structures of early
modern Spain like other members of the power elite." -- Miriam Bodian,
the University of Texas at Austin
