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In this long-awaited English translation of his comparative analysis of the three great inquisitional systems of early modern Europe, Francisco Bethencourt pioneers a comparative approach that is audacious and wide-ranging. His analysis focuses on rites and etiquette, organizational forms, strategies of action, and systems of representation. The book is based on his vast knowledge of both the secondary literature and the documentary records from Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Bethencourt argues that all three Inquisitions were religious tribunals legitimated by papal delegation of powers and shared a common penal code and system of classification. But they differed widely in geographical and hierarchical configuration and composition, their independence from other secular and ecclesiastical powers, the way they were perceived by the populace, and their social impact in terms of both exclusion and inclusion.Bethencourt rejects what he calls the essentialist approach to the Inquisition, which sees it as an extension of widely held beliefs and attitudes. He argues that heated controversies and widespread opposition marked the Inquisition and left the inquisitors with a siege mentality. Constantly under threat of loss of power and prestige, they spent considerable energy and resources on rituals for internal and external consumption and status disputes. They also extended their jurisdiction to an ever wider array of crimes against the faith. This expansion allowed the Inquisition great flexibility over time.Bethencourt also argues that we often underestimate the social impact of the Inquisition. In the Iberian world the tribunals reinforced and intensified ethnic prejudices through social exclusion imposed upon convicted heretics and their families. They also displaced many thousands who fled or were socially demoted and marginalized. The Edicts of Faith and of Grace helped define the parameters of acceptable conduct and personal conviction. The inquisitional censure may not have been able to stop the printing and circulation of prohibited books, but it did stifle their impact because it silenced open contemplation of their ideas. The Inquisition also served as a training ground for bishops and other high-ranking ecclesiastical officials. The creation of large networks of lesser lay and clerical officials also entrenched the tribunals of faith in local societies and permitted the tribunals to enter the trade in privileges and to open this market to the middling ranks of society. This social entrenchment allowed the tribunals to survive for three centuries.The militant propaganda employed by the tribunals emphasized their role as defenders of Christendom and the need for penance, punishment, and even execution; yet this became an intellectual Trojan horse. The critiques of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries turned this propaganda on its head and used the Inquisition as the symbol of the repression, intolerance, self-interest, and anti-intellectualism that Enlightened Europe was rejecting.The comparative method employed by Bethencourt offers insights and understandings of broader patterns that escape the narrow confines of regional studies, and this is the work’s great strength. Yet this method, with the constant movement back and forth between tribunals, makes it difficult to get a good sense of each tribunal, especially the Spanish American tribunals, which receive very little treatment. Few topics of inquisitional studies are left untouched, but many topics are very superficially treated, even though they would have advanced the author’s broader arguments. For example, Bethencourt does nothing with the Brotherhood of St. Peter Martyr, which played an important role in entrenching the Inquisition socially and, later in Portugal, in funding inquisitional operations. He also does not seem to understand that the Portuguese Crown limited privileges available to familiares (lay officials); this played a role both in limiting the depth of sentiment in favor of the Inquisition and, later, in creating internal apathy and even animosity that contributed to the lack of resistance to the abolition of the Inquisition of Portugal in 1821.These failings are largely the result of a failure to keep abreast of new research. Granted, this is a daunting task in such a productive field. But all of Bethencourt’s data for the officials of the Portuguese Inquisition are dated by 10 to 30 years. He overlooks Edward Peters’s influential book Inquisition, which covers much of the same territory as his chapter 8. He ignores Irene Silverblatt’s work Modern Inquisitions, which would have allowed him a much deeper analysis of the enduring social and political impact of the tribunals of faith on western European racial and political attitudes and practices.Despite these shortcomings, the work is a triumph of erudition that will remain one of the most useful and important reference tools and starting points for any examination of the early modern Inquisitions.
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