This book examines the effects of Jewish conversions to Christianity in late medieval Spanish society. Ingram focuses on these converts and their descendants (known as conversos) not as Judaizers, but as Christian humanists, mystics and evangelists, who attempt to create a new society based on quietist religious practice, merit, and toleration. His narrative takes the reader on a journey from the late fourteenth-century conversions and the first blood purity laws (designed to marginalize conversos), through the early sixteenth-century Erasmian and radical mystical movements, to a Counter-Reformation environment in which conversos become the advocates for pacifism and concordance. His account ends at the court of Philip IV, where growing intolerance towards Madrid’s converso courtiers is subtly attacked by Spain’s greatest painter, Diego Velázquez, in his work, Los Borrachos. Finally, Ingram examines the historiography of early modern Spain, in which he argues the converso reform phenomenon continues to be underexplored.

The mythological, folkloric, and religious beliefs of Western culture have resulted in a long and ongoing history of esoteric themes in theatre from the Middle Ages to the present in Spain and the America. Now Robert Lima, a noted comparatist, brings to bear on this material his wide knowledge of the world of the occult. Lima defines the terms "occult" and "occultism" broadly to embrace the many ways in which humans have sought to fathom a secret knowledge held to be accessible only through such supernatural agencies as alchemy, angelology, asceticism, astrology, demonolatry, divination, ecstasy, magic, necromancy, possession, Santeria, séances, voudoun, and witchcraft. The dramatic works covered range from medieval materializations of Hell to the Golden Age plays of Lope de vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón de la Barca, to modern stage works by Valle-Inclán, García Lorca, Casona, Miras, and a number of significant Afro-Brazilian and Caribbean dramatists. The concluding comprehensive bibliography of the drama of the occult is invaluable.

In Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned, Stephen Haliczer places the current debate on sex, celibacy, and the Catholic Church in a historical context by drawing upon a wealth of actual case studies and trial evidence to document how, from 1530 to 1819, sexual transgression attended the heightened significance of the Sacrament of Penance. Attempting to reassert its moral and social control over the faithful, the Counter-Reformation Church underscored the importance of communion and confession. Priests were asked to be both exemplars of celibacy and "doctors of souls," and the Spanish Inquisition was there to punish transgressors. Haliczer relates the stories of these priests as well as their penitents, using the evidence left by Inquisition trials to vividly depict sexual misconduct, during and after confession, and the punishments wayward priests were forced to undergo. In the process, he sheds new light on the Church of the period, the repressed lives of priests, and the lives of their congregations; coming to a conclusion as startling as it is timely. Based on an exhaustive investigation of Inquisition cases involving soliciting confessors as well as numerous confessors' manuals and other works, Sexuality in the Confessional makes a significant contribution to the history of sexuality, women's history, and the sociology of religion.

More than just an expression of religious authority or an instrument of social control, the Inquisition was an arena where cultures met and clashed on both shores of the Atlantic. This pioneering volume examines how cultural identities were maintained despite oppression. Persecuted groups were able to survive the Inquisition by means of diverse strategies—whether Christianized Jews in Spain preserving their experiences in literature, or native American folk healers practicing medical care. These investigations of social resistance and cultural persistence will reinforce the cultural significance of the Inquisition. Contributors: Jaime Contreras, Anne J. Cruz, Jesús M. De Bujanda, Richard E. Greenleaf, Stephen Haliczer, Stanley M. Hordes, Richard L. Kagan, J. Jorge Klor de Alva, Moshe Lazar, Angus I. K. MacKay, Geraldine McKendrick, Roberto Moreno de los Arcos, Mary Elizabeth Perry, Noemí Quezada, María Helena Sanchez Ortega, Joseph H. Silverman This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

The Revolt in the Low Countries is one of the major conflicts of early modern Europe. Though it is mostly seen as a war between the Dutch and the Spanish, in reality it was a complex civil war with international involvement. This book returns to the original war narratives of the period, re-establishing the multi-faceted character of the conflict.

"This book provides very important evidence that changes in institutional attitudes toward manual language can be traced to broader changes in the accepted conceptions of the nature of language. . . . [It] will prove to be a milestone in the developing discipline of deaf history."--Harlan Lane, author of The Mask of Benevolence