Between Court and Confessional The Politics of Spanish Inquisitors

Between Court and Confessional explores the lives of Spanish inquisitors, closely examining the careers and writings of five sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inquisitors. Kimberly Lynn considers what shaped particular inquisitors, what kinds of official experience each accumulated, and to what ends each directed his acquired knowledge and experience. The case studies examine the complex interplay of careerism and ideological commitments evident in inquisitorial activities. Whereas many studies of the Spanish Inquisition tend to depict inquisitors as faceless and interchangeable, Lynn probes the lives of individual inquisitors to show how inquisitors' operations in their social, political, religious and intellectual worlds set the Inquisition in motion. By focusing on specific individuals, this study explains how the theory and regulations of the Inquisition were rooted in local conditions, particular disputes and individual experiences.

Introduction: arbiters of faith, administrators of empire; 1. Visiting the flock: the pastoral agenda of Cristobal Fernandez de Valtodano; 2. Writing the inquisition: the trials of Diego de Simancas; 3. Courting the king, courting the pope: Luis de Paramo between Spain and Italy; 4. Falling from grace: the disenchantments of Juan Adam de la Parra; 5. Negotiating the Catholic monarchy: the transatlantic maneuvering of Juan de Manozca y Zamora; 6. Building careers, making a legal culture: toward an appraisal of inquisitorial office; Epilogue: the afterlife of Spanish Inquisitors.

Kimberly Lynn is an Associate Professor of Early Modern Europe in the Department of Liberal Studies at Western Washington University. Professor Lynn has been awarded a William J. Fulbright Fellowship to research in Spain and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies. She also won a Philanthropic Educational Organization Scholar Award, as well as short-term research fellowships to the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.