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The Language of Mysticism and the Language of Law in Early Modern Spain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Dale Shuger
Dale Shuger*
Affiliation:
Tulane University
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Abstract

After the Reformation, Catholics developed new ways to express interior religious experiences, including mystic visions. This article considers the epistemological impasse that arose when the Spanish Inquisition, created to prosecute covert Judaizers, was charged with discernment of mystical experiences. Close linguistic study of interrogations shows how a nondialogue between mystical and legal discourse pointed to a broader conflict between a newly interiorized religion and the public space of the law. Practically, these cases weakened the Inquisition; conceptually, they undermined the idea of an Inquisition. If Enlightenment reformers were able to argue for a secularization of the law, it was because a group of mystics and Inquisitors had made such thought possible.

Type
Review Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , Fall 2015 , pp. 932 - 956
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2015

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Andrew Keitt for providing me with his notes and partial transcriptions of the procesos for Mateo Rodríguez, María de la Encarnación, Isabel de Briñas, and María Bautista. All translations are my own, except where noted. Punctuation has been added to unpunctuated manuscript sources for the sake of readability.

References

Bibliography

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Kamen, Henry. La inquisicion española. Madrid, 1973.Google Scholar
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Lea, Henry Charles. A History of the Inquisition of Spain. 4 vols. New York, 1906–07.Google Scholar
López-Baralt, Luce. “Una nueva concepción del lenguaje poético.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 55.1 (1978): 19–33.10.1080/1475382782000355019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno Martínez, Doris. La invención de la Inquisición. Madrid, 2004.Google Scholar
Olivares, Julián, and Elizabeth Boyce, eds. Tras el espejo la musa escribe: Lírica femenina de los Siglos de Oro. Madrid, 1993.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, Terence. From Ignatius Loyola to John of the Cross: Spirituality and Literature in Sixteenth-Century Spain. 1995.Google Scholar
Orozco Díaz, Emilio. Estudios sobre San Juan de la Cruz y la mística del barroco. Granada, 1994.Google Scholar
Pastore, Stefania. Una Herejía Española. Madrid, 2010.Google Scholar
Pérez, Joseph. La Inquisición española. Madrid, 2005.Google Scholar
Pérez Villanueva, Joaquín, and Bartolomé Escandell Bonet, eds. Historia de la Inquisición en España y América. Madrid, 1984.Google Scholar
Sarrión Mora, Adelina. Beatas y endemoniadas: Mujeres heterodoxas ante la Inquisición, Siglo XVI a XIX. Madrid, 2003.Google Scholar
Sluhovsky, Moshe. Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism. Chicago, 2007.10.7208/chicago/9780226762951.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suárez Fernández, L. “Los antecedentes medievales de la institución.” In Historia de la Inquisición En España y América. ed. Joaquín Pérez Villanueva and Bartolomé Escandell Bonet, 1:249–66. Madrid, 1984.Google Scholar
de Ávila, Teresa. The Life of Teresa of Jesus: The Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. Trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers. Garden City, 1960.Google Scholar
Teresa de Jesús, Santa. Libro de la vida. Ed. Dámaso Chicharro. Madrid, 1979.Google Scholar
Thompson, Colin P. The Poet and the Mystic: A Study of the Cántico Espiritual of San Juan de la Cruz. Oxford, 1977.Google Scholar
Thompson, Colin P. The Strife of Tongues. Fray Luis de León and the Golden Age of Spain. Cambridge, 1988.10.1017/CBO9780511898068CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Caenegem, R. C. Legal History: A European Perspective. London, 1991.Google Scholar
Van Deusen, Nancy E. Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima. Stanford, 2001.Google Scholar
Weber, Alison. “Between Ecstasy and Exorcism: Religious Negotiation in Sixteenth-Century Spain.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23.2 (1993): 221–34.Google Scholar
Archivo Diócesano de Cuenca (ADC), Legajo 446, Expediente 6245 and Legajo 450, Expediente 6265. Ruíz, Francisca. 1636–40.Google Scholar
Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN), Madrid, Sección Inquisición (Inq.), Legajo 102, Expediente 2. Bautista, María. 1639–40.Google Scholar
AHN Inq., Leg. 102, Exp. 5. Briñas, Isabel. 1639–41.Google Scholar
AHN Inq., Leg. 104, Exp. 2. De la Encarnación, María. 1639.Google Scholar
AHN Inq., Leg. 115, Exp. 2. Pizarro, María. 1635–41.Google Scholar
AHN Inq., Leg. 106, Exp. 2. Rodríguez, Mateo. 1633–36.Google Scholar
AHN Inq., Leg. 115, Exp. 3. Salgado, Agustina. 1712–15.Google Scholar
AHN Inq., Leg. 7, Exp. 8. Yegros, Juan. 1648–56.Google Scholar
Ahlgren, Gillian T. W. Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity. Ithaca, 1966.Google Scholar
Andrés, Melquíades. “Common Denominators of Alumbrados, Erasmians, ‘Lutherans’ and Mystics: The Risk of a More ‘Intimate’ Spirituality.” In The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind. ed. Angel Alcalá, 457–94. Boulder, 1987.Google Scholar
Arenal, Electa, and Stacey Schlau. Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works. Albuquerque, 1989.Google Scholar
Berman, Harold J. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Cambridge, MA, 1983.Google Scholar
Bilinkoff, Jodi. Related Lives: Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750. Ithaca, 2005.Google Scholar
Byrne, Susan. El Corpus Hermeticum y tres poetas españoles: Francisco de Aldana, fray Luis de León, y San Juan de la Cruz: Conexiones léxicas y semánticas entre la filosofía hermética y la poesía del Siglo de Oro. Newark, DE, 2007.Google Scholar
Clark, Stuart. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford, 2007.Google Scholar
Concha, Víctor G. de la. Al aire de su vuelo: Estudios sobre Santa Teresa, fray Luis de León, San Juan de la Cruz y Calderón de la Barca. Barcelona, 2004.Google Scholar
de Certeau, Michel. The Writing of History. European Perspectives. New York, 1988.Google Scholar
de Certeau, Michel. La fábula mística. Madrid, 2006.Google Scholar
de Certeau, Michel. El lugar del otro: Historia religiosa y mística. Buenos Aires, 2007.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago, 1996.Google Scholar
Durán López, Fernando. Un cielo abreviado: Introducción crítica a una historia de la autobiografía religiosa. Salamanca, 2007.Google Scholar
Egido, Aurora. El águila y la tela: Estudios sobre Santa Teresa de Jesús y San Juan de la Cruz. Palma, 2010.Google Scholar
Escudero, José Antonio. Estudios sobre la Inquisición. Madrid, 2005.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York, 1982.Google Scholar
Giles, Mary E. “Spanish Visionary Women and the Paradox of Performance.” In Performance and Transformation, ed. Mary A. Suydam and Joanna E. Ziegler, 273–98. New York, 1999a.Google Scholar
Giles, Mary E. Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World. Baltimore, 1999b.Google Scholar
Greer, Allan, and Jodi Bilinkoff. Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500–1800. New York, 2003.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeouis Society. Cambridge, MA, 1989.Google Scholar
Haliczer, Stephen. Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain. Oxford, 2002.10.1093/0195148630.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, Alastair. Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth-Century Spain: The Alumbrados. Cambridge, 1992.Google Scholar
Homza, Lu Ann. The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources. Indianapolis, 2006.Google Scholar
Huerga, Alvaro. Historia de los Alumbrados (1570–1630). 5 vols. Madrid, 1978–94.Google Scholar
Jaffary, Nora E. False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico. Lincoln, 2005.Google Scholar
Juan de la Cruz, San. Cántico Espiritual: Primera redacción y Texto retocado. Ed. Eulogio Pacho. Madrid, 1981.Google Scholar
Kallendorf, Hilaire. Exorcism and Its Texts: Subjectivity in Early Modern Literature of England and Spain. Toronto, 2003.10.3138/9781442674721CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kallendorf, Hilaire. “The Rhetoric of Exorcism.” Rhetorica 23.3 (Summer 2005): 209–37.10.1525/rh.2005.23.3.209CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kallendorf, Hilaire, ed. A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism. Netherlands, 2010.10.1163/ej.9789004183506.i-518CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamen, Henry. La inquisicion española. Madrid, 1973.Google Scholar
Katz, Steven T. Mysticism and Language. New York, 1992.Google Scholar
Keitt, Andrew W. Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain. Boston, 2005.Google Scholar
Langbein, John H. Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance: England, Germany, France. Cambridge, MA, 1974.10.4159/harvard.9780674184251CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lea, Henry Charles. A History of the Inquisition of Spain. 4 vols. New York, 1906–07.Google Scholar
López-Baralt, Luce. “Una nueva concepción del lenguaje poético.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 55.1 (1978): 19–33.10.1080/1475382782000355019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno Martínez, Doris. La invención de la Inquisición. Madrid, 2004.Google Scholar
Olivares, Julián, and Elizabeth Boyce, eds. Tras el espejo la musa escribe: Lírica femenina de los Siglos de Oro. Madrid, 1993.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, Terence. From Ignatius Loyola to John of the Cross: Spirituality and Literature in Sixteenth-Century Spain. 1995.Google Scholar
Orozco Díaz, Emilio. Estudios sobre San Juan de la Cruz y la mística del barroco. Granada, 1994.Google Scholar
Pastore, Stefania. Una Herejía Española. Madrid, 2010.Google Scholar
Pérez, Joseph. La Inquisición española. Madrid, 2005.Google Scholar
Pérez Villanueva, Joaquín, and Bartolomé Escandell Bonet, eds. Historia de la Inquisición en España y América. Madrid, 1984.Google Scholar
Sarrión Mora, Adelina. Beatas y endemoniadas: Mujeres heterodoxas ante la Inquisición, Siglo XVI a XIX. Madrid, 2003.Google Scholar
Sluhovsky, Moshe. Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism. Chicago, 2007.10.7208/chicago/9780226762951.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suárez Fernández, L. “Los antecedentes medievales de la institución.” In Historia de la Inquisición En España y América. ed. Joaquín Pérez Villanueva and Bartolomé Escandell Bonet, 1:249–66. Madrid, 1984.Google Scholar
de Ávila, Teresa. The Life of Teresa of Jesus: The Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. Trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers. Garden City, 1960.Google Scholar
Teresa de Jesús, Santa. Libro de la vida. Ed. Dámaso Chicharro. Madrid, 1979.Google Scholar
Thompson, Colin P. The Poet and the Mystic: A Study of the Cántico Espiritual of San Juan de la Cruz. Oxford, 1977.Google Scholar
Thompson, Colin P. The Strife of Tongues. Fray Luis de León and the Golden Age of Spain. Cambridge, 1988.10.1017/CBO9780511898068CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Caenegem, R. C. Legal History: A European Perspective. London, 1991.Google Scholar
Van Deusen, Nancy E. Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima. Stanford, 2001.Google Scholar
Weber, Alison. “Between Ecstasy and Exorcism: Religious Negotiation in Sixteenth-Century Spain.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23.2 (1993): 221–34.Google Scholar