Ideology and Inquisition

Claude-Anne Lopez

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780300156034
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: History

This book is the first comprehensive treatment in English of the ideology and practice of the Inquisitional censors, focusing on the case of Mexico from the 1520's to the 1630's. Others have examined the effects of censorship, but Martin Nesvig employs a nontraditional approach that focuses on the inner logic of censorship in order to examine the collective mentality, ideological formation, and practical application of ideology of the censors themselves. Nesvig shows that censorship was not only about the regulation of books but about censorship in the broader sense as a means to regulate Catholic dogma and the content of religious thought. In Mexico, decisions regarding censorship involved considerable debate and disagreement among censors, thereby challenging the idea of the Inquisition as a monolithic institution. Once adapted to cultural circumstances in Mexico, the Inquisition and the Index produced not a weapon of intellectual terror but a flexible apparatus of control.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Orthography and Names
• Introduction
• Part I. Theories of Inquisitional Authority
• 1. Longue Durée Concerns
• 2. Medieval and Early Modern Precedents
• 3. Theories of Adjudication
• Part II. Practice of Censure in Mexico
• 4. The Salamanca Connection
• 5. The Early Inquisitions, 1525–71
• 6. The Holy Office Established, 1571–90
• 7. The Ebb of the Holy Office, 1591–1640
• Part III. Censors and Their Worlds
• 8. Lucre and Connections
• 9. Cordon Sanitaire: Efforts and Failures of Book Censorship
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Inquisitional Trials
• Appendix 2: Censors
• Appendix 3: Inquisitors
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index