Patrick J O'Banion

This Happened in my Presence reveals the life in the small Spanish town of Deza during a period that was complex and tumultuous.

The Introduction explains the medieval origins of Deza's Christian, Muslim, and Jewish populations and the changing policies toward religious minorities under the Catholic Monarchs and the Hapsburgs. The workings of the Spanish Inquisition and of Deza's local religious and political institutions are clearly described. Helpful pedagogical materials enhance the primary sources: a timeline interweaving local, national, and international events; a cast of characters; four modern images of Deza; maps; a glossary; discussion questions; and a bibliography. Each set of documents is accompanied by a brief introduction and focus questions.

The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain explores the practice of sacramental confession in Spain between roughly 1500 and 1700. One of the most significant points of contact between the laity and ecclesiastical hierarchy, confession lay at the heart of attempts to bring religious reformation to bear upon the lives of early modern Spaniards. Rigid episcopal legislation, royal decrees, and a barrage of prescriptive literature lead many scholars to construct the sacrament fundamentally as an instrument of social control foisted upon powerless laypeople. Drawing upon a wide range of early printed and archival materials, this book considers confession as both a top-down and a bottom-up phenomenon. Rather than relying solely upon prescriptive and didactic literature, it considers evidence that describes how the people of early modern Spain experienced confession, offering a rich portrayal of a critical and remarkably popular component of early modern religiosity.

From the early sixteenth century, religious and legal authorities provided Spanish crypto-Muslims with guidelines for practicing taqiyya, the Islamic art of dissimulation. As theory collided with local realities, however, local actors innovated practice in the face of the continued divergence between an internal desire to practice Islam and external pressures to conform to Christianity. This article explores these tensions by analyzing the posthumous endowments of two wealthy Morisco brothers from the Castilian town of Deza who succeeded in convincing both Christian neighbors and the Inquisition of their sincere conversion to Christianity. The town’s Morisco com- munity, however, viewed the brothers’ bequests as secret acts of Islamic charity. Such perceived efforts to enact taqiyya not only eroded Christian confidence that true con- verts could be discerned from false ones but also threatened to destabilize the Moriscos’ own religious identity and their relationship to both Christianity and Islam.

Reforming efforts at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the challenges of Protestantism, the rise of national states, and the reassessment of just war doctrine, had initiated a moment of crisis for crusading by the mid-sixteenth century. Indeed, historians have described these trends as signaling the end of the movement. This article explores the theoretical underpinnings deployed by an elite group of Spanish theologian and churchmen in May of 1567 to shore up their monarch’s claim to a lucrative version of the crusade indulgence granted by popes since the fifteenth century. By rehearsing traditional arguments, eschewing those they saw as obsolete, and deploying new ones, these theorists expose the remarkable adaptability of crusading. The integrity of papally sanctioned holy war against the enemies of the faith collapsed in later centuries with the rise of international law and recognition of permanent divisions within the respublica Christiana. Yet, the ability of sixteenth-century Spanish theorists to recast ideology in the face of shifting intellectual, cultural, and social tides indicates the continuing viability of crusading during a period of inchoateness.

In the mid-sixteenth century, King Philip II of Spain entered into tense negotiations with Rome over the fate of the bula de la cruzada, a crusading indulgence that had been granted to Iberian monarchs since the Middle Ages.  That indulgence had become a means of defraying the cost of war against enemies of the faith.  But endemic abuses and concerns about the growing power of Spanish monarchs in ecclesiastical affairs led popes and Tridentine delegates to pursue an end to the cruzada.  Philip emerged the victor from this contest and in so doing signaled the co-opting of the medieval crusading tradition by the early modern state.  While these developments abetted governmental bureaucratization and centralization in Spain, they also undermined its economic, social, and religious stability, a risk made acceptable by Philip’s own sense of divine mission.

Entgegen gängiger Forschungsmeinungen, die die frühneuzeitliche Kreuzzugslehre als verknöchert und fade abqualifizieren, lässt sich in Spanien zwischen 1500 und 1800 eine bemerkenswerte Verbreitung des Kreuzzugsablasses bula de la cruzada feststellen, den jährlich Millionen Menschen aus allen gesellschaftlichen Gruppen erwarben. Sie erhielten damit ein breites Spektrum von Buß- und Fastenvergünstigungen. Nicht der Kreuzzug, sondern diese Privilegien bildeten für das Publikum eine Hauptattraktion und standen im Fokus der cruzada-Predigten. Dabei unterminierte die schiere Verbrei- tung der Kreuzzugsindulgenzen auf dramatische Weise Versuche von bischöflicher Sei- te, das religiöse Verhalten der Gläubigen zu regulieren.

Over the past forty years historians have demonstrated continued interest in tracing the development of radical early modern English apocalypticism. The Tudor and Stuart eschatological scene, however, encompassed more than just millenarian activism. This article emphasises the pastoral ends to which Revelation was used by a group of late sixteenth-century writers as they sought to make it accessible to the ‘common sort’ of Christian. Viewing interest in the Last Days through this pastoral lens highlights both the tense complexities present in the Elizabethan Church and the usefulness of eschatological themes in studying ordinary and normative aspects of religious experience.

Cet article s’inscrit dans le débat récemment relancé sur la relation entre les théologiens scolastiques de la Réforme et les premiers réformateurs, mais propose également de l’amener dans une nouvelle direction. On y analyse d’abord la doctrine de Dieu, telle que développée par Jerome Zanchi (1516– 1590), en mettant en relief comment il fait passer des conclusions de théolo- gie systématique à des implications de théologie pratique, et en particulier, à travers son usage de la convention dite de l’usus doctrinae. L’article cherche ensuite à estimer l’impact de cette convention en dehors des milieux érudits en explorant la relation entre le discours de Zanchi et la tradition anglaise pratique de la divinité. On y met donc en lumière comment les pasteurs et les théologiens populaires ont emprunté à Zanchi dans leur charge d’âmes et de réforme de la nation anglaise.

In spite of repeated papal injunctions forbidding them to abandon their homeland, Iberian Christians, like their co-religionists through- out Europe, were energised by a desire to participate in the Holy Land crusades. The most significant and creative attempt in the first half of the twelfth century to respond to this Spanish desire was the development of the idea of the iter per Hispaniam, which was fostered by Iberian archbishops and monarchs such as Diego Gel- mı ́rez of Santiago de Compostela and Alfonso I of Aragon. This Spanish route was intended to unite the conflicts in the peninsula and the Holy Land, forming a single Mediterranean-wide crusading theatre and thereby granting the Iberian conflict a deeper connec- tion with the struggle for control of the holiest sites in Christendom. This article explores the development of crusading ideology in Spain and the difficulties of doing so in a venue outside of the Holy Land. Additionally, the development of the Spanish route idea provides a unique opportunity to contextualise recent historiographical discussions about the essence of the crusades and to highlight the way in which different perspectives helpfully offer insight into various aspects of peninsular crusading.