VIDAS INFAMES

During its more than 300 years in existence, the Spanish Inquisition tried tens of thousands of people suspected of committing offenses against the Catholic faith and the Spanish crown. This revealing compendium gathers the confessions of six of these individuals, among them a politically incendiary prophet, a self-proclaimed hermaphrodite accused of violating the marriage sacrament for having married a woman, and a female convert to Catholicism who nonetheless served as a rabbi in the New World. These unprecedented and involuntary autobiographies combine with the historical narrative to shed light on both the personal lives of the persecuted as well as the cultural, social, and political realities of Spain’s Golden Age.

 Durante sus más de 300 años de existencia, la Inquisición Española juzgó a millares de personas sospechadas de cometer ofensas contra la fe católica y la monarquía. Este compendio revelador reúne las confesiones de seis de estos individuos, entre ellos un profeta políticamente incendiario, un autoproclamado hermafrodita acusado de violar el sacramento del matrimonio por haberse casado con una mujer y una conversa a la fe católica que aún así sirvió de rabí en el Nuevo Mundo. Estas autobiografías sin precedentes e involuntarias combinan con la narrativa histórica para arrojar luz sobre las vidas personales de los perseguidos así como las realidades culturales, sociales y políticas del Siglo de Oro español.

Richard L. Kagan is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of several books on Spanish history, including Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain and Spain in America: The Origins of Hispanism in the United States. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Abigail Dyer received her PhD from Columbia University and is an independent scholar. She lives in New York City.